Re: "We're Still Watching," by Paul Wells (November 2009).

English, John ; Gwyn, Richard

As the author of a biography of Robert Borden and another book about his governments, I am gratified that Paul Wells wants people to read books about Robert Borden. Alas, Wells appears to be unaware of my books, not a great fault, but, more seriously, seems oblivious to the existence of what he calls "a great big book" about Borden. That book exists: a definitive two-volume biography by Craig Brown, one of Canada's finest historians. Written four decades after Borden's death and 60 years after the conscription crisis, Brown's book apparently tells Canadians, Wells apart, more than they want to know about Borden. His splendid biography, like my own less worthy effort, is now out of print.

The great issues of Borden's era are now far in our past: the British Empire has died; the conscription crisis is far away; the Tories are now free traders; and Canadian "independence" is defined as distance from the Americans not the Brits. But Trudeau haunts us still. The American Empire endures, multiculturalism roils our politics and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms infiltrates our daily lives. Trudeau fascinates us because the choices he made deeply affect us. The journalist Wells seeks final judgement but limbo is sometimes more appropriate for a historian.

Wells complains about the length of Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000 but then asks for more words about the times when he toiled in Ottawa but Trudeau did not. As Sacha Trudeau commented, Trudeau never discovered creativity and energy outside of the prime minister's office. His interventions in Meech and Charlottetown were a sudden efflorescence that briefly illuminated Canadian politics after 1984, but Trudeau's significance for a biographer lies in his accomplishments and failures when he was prime minister. He changed little after 1984, but Canada did.

Finally, Wells suggests that Just Watch Me contains the seeds of "a delicious revisionist Trudeau history," which would depict him as "flighty, clueless on the economy, racked by domestic unhappiness and too easily romanced by fancy theories that did not work in real life." Wells evidently has a taste for stale seeds. They were planted long ago in Calgary's Petroleum Club, fertilized in many university common rooms, gleefully nurtured in several editorial board rooms including those that have paid Wells's salary, and are now fully in bloom at 24 Sussex Drive. It is an old tale too often and badly told. Surely a truly revisionist approach points to a highly disciplined leader, acutely sensitive to changing political winds and highly resistant to theories emanating from Chicago and his own finance department that, implemented under his successors, appear to have made real life much worse for most of us.

If Paul Wells is not too much affected by our current economic woes, he's welcome to buy my remaindered Borden books at a fraction of their price at used book stores.

John English

Waterloo, Ontario

In the movie Butley, Alan Bates plays a randy, exceptionally ill-clothed professor of English out to bed a student. One line he uses to impress her is, "I really hate to have to give a lecture on a book I haven't read."

Absent the girl, my present task is somewhat similar. It is to review a review of a book that I have not read yet--John English's second volume of his biography of Pierre Trudeau, Just Watch Me.

So I'll just assume that Wells is entirely accurate in his description of the book itself, namely that it is comprehensive and rigorous and balanced and fair, but overly judicious or lacking in bite.

The outstanding question then becomes whether Wells is right to say that rather than another biography of Trudeau, what we need is a biography of Sir Robert Borden.

Borden was competent and worthy. But introducing rural mail is not enough. Okay, okay, Wells was only using Borden as a teaser. His real thesis is that we have had more than enough of Trudeau.

He has a point, up to a point. Trudeau no longer "haunts us still": time does that to everyone.

But of all our prime ministers, only two actually interest Canadians: Trudeau and Sir John A. Macdonald (about whom I admit to a potentially disqualifying "interest").

The interest is justified. This has nothing to do with the stuff Wells seems to be exercised about, such as lousy economic policy or that multiculturalism upset some Quebec intellectuals: stuff happens.

What mattered about Trudeau then--still does--is that he challenged us, stirred us up, gave us bragging rights we had never before imagined we might possess. He communicated to a great many Canadians his belief in the pursuit of excellence for its own sake. He dared Canadians to stick their heads above the parapet that, for the preceding century, was as un-Canadian as you could get.

Wells does have a perceptive point to make, but buries it in his closing paragraph. This is that what's really needed is a book on Trudeau by "a Russian novelist."

Or by a Canadian one. The imaginative challenges would be to capture how it was that Trudeau animated the rest of us far beyond what we were when he came in, including by reminding us that prime ministers remain sexual beings.

He animates us still. However, Wells has a case that we may need a good new biography of Borden.

Richard Gwyn

Toronto, Ontario