"The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier: A Chronicle of Our Own Time" is a historical and biographical novel of the Canadian lawyer, statesman, and politician who served as the seventh Prime Minister of Canada from 1896 to 1911. The first French Canadian prime minister, his 15-year tenure remains the longest unbroken term of office among Canadian prime ministers and his nearly 45 years of service in the House of Commons is a record for the House. Laurier is best known for his compromises between English and French Canada. The main emphasis of the book is to look more at the significant events in Canada during his time in office, rather than a more personalized biography.
The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier retells the chronicles of a successful man in politics living in Quebec in the 1800s. You will enjoy this humble and comprehensive snapshot of Canadian history. Contents: The Making of a Canadian, Politics in the Sixties, First Years in Parliament, In Opposition, 1878-1887, Leader of the Opposition.
From the author of Macdonald, comes a new novel about an extraordinary love triangle set at the apex of Canada’s national life at the dawn of the twentieth century. A deeply absorbing novel of passion and politics, Laurier in Love reveals a side of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Canadians have never known him: romantic and idealistic, inspiring and seductive, yet conflicted and compromised, as he balances his time between his wife and his mistress. Elegant, silver-tongued Sir Wilfrid Laurier is just beginning his fabled career as one of the nation’s greatest leaders. Some Canadians revile him simply because he is French-Canadian and Roman Catholic, the first Prime Minister from Quebec. Keenly aware of the difficulties lying ahead, Laurier tells his devoted wife, Zoë Laurier, how much he needs her. At the same time, he assures his ambitious, literary lover, Émilie Lavergne, that she too is indispensable to him. Through the eyes of these two fascinating women, we see Laurier the orator, charming Americans in Chicago; Laurier the statesman, starring at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations in London; Laurier the conciliator, walking the perilous line between demands of English and French as Canada fights her first foreign war in distant South Africa. The cast of characters includes the aging monarch, the doomed President McKinley, a young Winston Churchill, an even younger Mackenzie King. Both epic and intimate in scale, Laurier in Love gives readers the authentic sense of the man, the era, the politics and the complex personal life Laurier led behind the scenes.
The length of Sir Wilfrid's public career alone challenges admiration and respect. He had been almost half a century in active politics; forty-six years a salient figure in Parliament; a leader of the Liberal party for thirty years; Prime Minister for fifteen years. He saw generations of men and generations of statesmen. He saw Confederation in its cradle and watched it grow to nationhood. Since he entered public life England has had three Monarchs, while the figures of Disraeli and Gladstone, of Salisbury and Campbell-Bannerman have passed across its national stage. He witnessed the rise of Cavour and saw the sword of Garibaldi flash, and he sympathized with their aspirations for an United Italy. He saw the German States confederated by Bismarck into blood and iron, saw France, his Motherland, crushed and bleeding at the feet of the Teuton conqueror, and lived to see the structure which Bismarck reared crumbled into utter dust. Since he entered public life, Russia has had two Emperors, emancipated its slaves, fought three great wars, overthrown the House of Czars and plunged into anarchy and ruin.
With masterly sweep and vigorous prose, this biography, first published just two years after Laurier's death, surveys his career, especially the fifteen eventful years of his premiership. This volume covers the years 1841-1896.
During the First World War, Henri Bourassa – fierce Canadian nationalist, politician, and journalist from Quebec – took centre stage in the national debates on Canada’s participation in the war, its imperial ties to Britain, and Canada’s place in the world. In Duty to Dissent, Geoff Keelan draws upon Bourassa’s voluminous editorials in Le Devoir, the newspaper he founded in 1910, to trace Bourassa’s evolving perspective on the war’s meaning and consequences. What emerges is not a simplistic sketch of a local journalist engaged in national debates, as most English Canadians know him, but a fully rendered portrait of a Canadian looking out at the world.
