John W. Holmes
Capsule Review
Summer
1982
Capsule Review
Spring
1980
Essay
Oct
1967
The most significant fact about the Canadian-American relationship may prove to be that the United States is growing less dependent on its allies- including Canada. That Canada is growing more dependent on the United States is a more frequent assumption, especially of Canadians, who make a political sport of accusing each other of abetting this deplorable trend. The United States cares less and less what Canada does because it has a declining interest in our territory for its defenses in a missile age. This trend is unlikely to strengthen our bargaining power in Washington, but it leaves us freer to follow our own course. American independence of Canada encourages Canadian independence of the United States. It tempts us to "neutralism"-if "neutralism" means much in a world shifting from alignment to duopoly, when the "neutralist" heretic General de Gaulle could be outflanked by President Johnson on the road to Moscow.
Essay
Jul
1963
Canadians like to remind their more turbulent friends that they have grown by evolution rather than revolution. In the language of the country, therefore, the present might be described as a pre-evolutionary phase. The change of Government from Conservative to Liberal in April may usher in changes, but politics are only the surface manifestation of a crisis which involves the whole fabric of national life. For several years there has been an intense examination of Canada's economic, constitutional and cultural foundations, conducted in a charged political atmosphere, by no means entirely rational, but a grand debate nevertheless. Canadians have been staring with less blinking than usual at the harder facts, even asking themselves whether the continued existence of the country is justified. They have been stung by criticism from abroad which reached beyond the acts of the Government to question Canadian institutions and traditions- criticism which was unqualified by the benevolent indulgence to which nicely behaved lesser powers have become accustomed. Canada has perhaps suffered too long from the illusion that it is a young country with the license of youth in world affairs, and its course may be firmer as Canadians realize that they are not only middle-powered but middle-aged. The sobriety which has followed a tumultuous election, with the world for the first time looking on, is a mood in which fundamental changes can be accepted. On the eve of the hundredth anniversary of confederation, Canadians in anguish have been discovering its worth and seem disposed to meet present challenges with restored faith-if only they and their leaders can work out some answers.
Essay
Oct
1961
About a decade ago a Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs created a furor on both sides of the border by saying that "the days of relatively easy and automatic political relations with our neighbors are, I think, over." Nourished for years, as we all had been, on post-prandial pap about the unfortified frontier and the capacity of North American good will to mellow away all differences, Americans and Canadians were unduly shocked. They disregarded the fact that Mr. Pearson had not said relations were deteriorating; he merely said they had become more complex. They had become more complex be cause they were no longer a simple matter of line- fence disputes over borders and waterways. We had both ceased isolating ourselves from the troubles of the world and, for that reason, we were likely to have differences on a great many more subjects than in the past. Mr. Pearson aimed to persuade people on both sides of the border to adopt an adult attitude to our relations, to abandon the persistent North American illusion that good will without understanding was adequate and that problems could be smiled away in intercommunity singing, to recognize that any two countries in close proximity were bound to go on having disputes and differences and that the mark of intelligence was not to pretend they did not exist but to approach them tolerantly, judiciously, and unemotionally-and, in a sense, to take them for granted.
