A FAIR COUNTRY: Telling hard truths about Canada that few Canadians know

A FAIR COUNTRY: Telling hard truths about Canada that few Canadians know A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, by John Ralston Saul, Penguin Group (Canada), 340 pages, hard cover $34.00

Review by Roy LaBerge

Canadian philosopher and novelist John Ralston Saul has written about a Canada much different from the one most Canadians know or think they know.

In A Fair Country: Telling the Truths About Canada, he makes many unusual assertions, including these:

* Canada is a M�tis civilization. The First Nations played a major role in the shaping of this country that went on for twice as long as Canada has existed as a Confederation - a role that was military, civil, and commercial.

* Very few of the United Empire Loyalists were English. They consisted almost entirely of minorities, including, Irish, Dutch, and Highland Scots. About 40% were of those who went to Upper Canada were German-speaking, mainly of Rhineland origin. The refugees fled "not because they were Tories, but because they had been caught up in the meat grinder of Englishmen fighting each other."

* "Through all of our history, through all our legal and constitutional documents, all the precedent-setting declarations, the phrase Peace, Order and Good Government has been used only twice. The rest of the time, the phrase used was Peace, Welfare and Good Government." Welfare had meant not public handouts to help the poor, but "faring well, well-being, good fortune, happiness, felicity."

The author dedicates this work simply "for Adrienne," presumably his spouse, Adrienne Clarkson, who was GovernorGeneral of Canada for six years.