Graham Carr

Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood (review)

Late in August 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that his Conservative government was cutting federal funding for the arts by

The literature of labour : two hundred years of working-class writing

45 million. Several programs would be eliminated, including the showcasing of Canadian artists abroad. The announcement elicited predictable outrage from the arts community. It also struck a discordant note with many media commentators and arts patrons who claimed that cutting culture was tantamount to assaulting national identity. Other critics chimed in by citing a Conference Board of Canada report that concluded that ‘the creative economy’ had injected

Rules of Engagement: Public History and the Drama of Legitimation

46 billion into the Canadian economy in 2007, accounting for more than 7 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Unfazed by the critics, Prime Minister Harper added fuel to the controversy. In the midst of an election campaign that returned his party to power with a minority government, Harper was quoted on CBCnews.ca (23 September) as suggesting that ‘when ordinary, working people come home, turn on the TV and see . . . a bunch of people at a rich gala all subsidized by the taxpayers, claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough when they know the subsidies have actually gone up, I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people.’ In microcosm the tempest that blew up over the Conservative government’s cuts to culture in 2008 distilled a spectrum of opinions about the arts and public policy that had become visible in Canada during the previous half century. The general outlines of this story are well known to cultural historians and policy specialists. Yet Ryan Edwardson’s book describes in genealogical detail the complex and often rancorous process by which issues of national identity, state protectionism, and industrial promotion became entwined and