Never mind all that

Doug Saunders suggests all that blustery talk of The North is a bunch of hooey.

In fact, it is emerging that the North never really has been a major part of the Canadian identity. A more accurate representation was outlined two years before Confederation by British Liberal leader and future prime minister William Gladstone. He stood in the House of Commons, during an 1865 debate about whether to grant semi-independence to the colony, and dismissed Canada glibly as a “long and comparatively thin strip of occupied territory between the States on one side, and the sterility of pinching winter on the other.”

Lawrence Cannon carries on undaunted.