Law, Rhetoric, and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture

The phrase 'Peace, Order, and Good Government' is to Canada what 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' is to the United States, a project of the authority of governance. But more than that, the phrase speaks to the arts and manners of governance; the styles or mentalites that both inform and perform how governance gets acted out ... Both phrases reflect a common historical discourse that permeated such discussions in the early modern period. The difference between the two is that the Canadian one derives from an earlier period in the discussion; the American phrase appears at its end, an end that will be forever ruptured by political revolution and revolutionary war ... In the Canadian case, while there will be breaks and ruptures in the modes of governance, these will not be clothed in the language of revolutionary discourse. On the contrary, and this is vital to this study, Canada stumbles into the modern age without having recourse to the facilities revolutionary language provides ... The resulting inarticulateness has been one of the principle problems that Canadian political and civil culture has faced. Book jacket.

MICHAEL DORLAND is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. MAURICE CHARLAND is Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University.