Word: canadas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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ROBERTSON DAVIES' NEW NOVEL opens with a mystery: an elderly priest of the Anglican Church of Canada drops dead during a particularly dramatic moment in the Good Friday services. Very near its end, The Cunning Man (Viking; 469 pages; $23.95) provides an explanation for this long-ago demise, although it is doubtful that any reader simply intent on finding out whodunit will still be turning these pages. The overriding appeal of a Davies book, as his legion of fans will attest, rarely rides on something as mundane as suspense. Instead, Canada's foremost living author, now 81, entertains with...
...Ottawa, when Bill Clinton may wonder why he is bothering to run for re-election. At the end of a summit with Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Clinton was asked by an American reporter if it was true, as a local newspaper had suggested, that he had traveled to Canada more as a "titular" leader than an actual one, given how power had shifted to the Republican-controlled Congress. Clinton bristled. "Unless I miss my guess, a bill doesn't become law unless I sign it or it passes over my veto," he said evenly. Then he delivered a blistering assessment...
...province has never shown a definitive will to secede, and has further never defined such a will. In 1980, Quebecers overwhelmingly chose to remain within Canada in a referendum on the vague concept of `sovereignty-association.' Since then, support for independence has remained low. Then, as now, it is unclear as to whether a simple 50 percent majority would suffice to grant the government enough of a mandate to negotiate separation...
Quebecers are not in any way oppressed within Canada. Secessions are recognized in the modern era when a people desire fundamental rights and freedoms denied to them. For a nation which the United Nations repeatedly singles out as the best place in the world to live, any such claim of oppression or denial of rights is ridiculous...
Nations like Canada which conduct themselves "in compliance with the principle of equal rights... and possessed of a government representing the whole people... without distinction as to race, creed, or colour" are guaranteed protection against dismemberment by the 1970 U.N. Declaration on Principles. It is unlikely that Quebec, part of a respected nation and with no certain territory or claims to oppression, could ever gain recognition in the international arena without consent from Canada...