Nature Of Canada Research Articles

From Politics to Transformative Politics of Nature in Canada (book excerpt)

An excerpt from the opening chapter Transformative Politics of Nature: Overcoming Barriers to Conservation in Canada, edited by Andrea Olive, Chance Finegan, and Karen F. Beazley (University of Toronto Press, 2023).

What Are the Characteristics of Canadian Independent, Scholarly Journals? Results from a Website Analysis

The dominance of commercial publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon 2015) has led to a discussion in Canada focusing on alternative models for supporting independent, non-commercial, scholarly journals. Although small in number, these journals represent an important contribution to Canadian and global scholarship. They also act as a counterbalance to the increasingly for-profit nature of scholarly publishing. Despite their importance, there exists no definitive list of journals of this nature in Canada, making analysis and understanding of their characteristics difficult.In order to address this gap, the researchers undertook an analysis of the websites of 485 Canadian, independent, scholarly journals. Independent was defined as journals which are not affiliated with a commercial publisher. The researchers gathered data for each journal on their access type (e.g., closed, open access), subject area, size and composition of the editorial team, and any affiliation(s). This data was then analyzed to create a portrait of these journals with these themes. The researchers found that most of these journals were affiliated with at least one organization, with over half being associated with two or more. They also discovered that affiliations varied depending on the discipline and that the size of the editorial team was correlated to the access type. Journals were predominantly in the humanities and social sciences, and the majority were open access (OA) without article processing charges (APCs).While the focus of this study is on Canadian journals, this article provides a framework for other researchers to examine non-commercial, independent publishing in their own countries. Its results also provide preliminary data which may inspire future avenues of research, particularly into models for non-APC, open access journals as well as the editorial board structure and size for independent journals.

Environmental History at Work: New Environmental Histories of Canada and Atlantic Canada

Environmental History at Work: New Environmental Histories of Canada and Atlantic Canada Blair Stein (bio) WHAT IS “ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY”? Who produces it, and who is it for? These are questions environmental historians encounter often: while teaching, in grant proposals and book pitches, and in job application letters. In many ways, the three recent edited volumes in review here – Colin Coates and Graeme Wynn’s The Nature of Canada, Claire Campbell, Edward MacDonald, and Brian Payne’s The Greater Gulf, and Edward MacDonald, Joshua MacFadyen, and Irené Novaczek’s Time and A Place – all do what we expect from environmental histories.1 They tell stories of human and non-human interactions with the natural world. They examine the environmental aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural change. They centre the winds and waters, the plants and animals, the rocks and trees and beaches. More than anything, though, these three volumes hint at all of the things that environmental history can do. The environmental history community in Canada is robust, as the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) and the University of Calgary’s related open-access “Canadian History and Environment” series suggest.2 These three volumes – the arguments, themes, etc. – engage with what we might call “traditional” Canadian environmental history, but also put it to work by expanding its boundaries. As a set of books, the Nature of Canada, the Greater Gulf, and Time and a Place act as a sort of matryoshka doll of the cutting edge of Canadian environmental history. Each makes its own critical and crucial intervention [End Page 135] by expanding under-studied areas, deflating over-studied ones, and opening the field to new practitioners and audiences, all while sitting comfortably within each other as a set of concentric narratives that generally cancel out each other’s flaws. This essay will explore how these books probe the ways that environmental history is, has been, and can be mobilized as well as how the contributors to each engage with common themes in Canadian environmental history: economies, commodities, and work; geopolitics; tourism and culture; and the histories of non-human actors.3 The Nature of Canada is the broadest in temporal, thematic, and geographic scope, and the editors and authors have deliberately removed their “common scholarly blinkers” in favor of “provocative arguments” that present a highly nuanced and hopeful picture of the past, present, and future of human-nature interactions in Canada.4 The “nature” in the Nature of Canada has multiple meanings; not only are the contributors interested in what we might imagine as “the natural world” – trees, animals, rivers, minerals – but they also interrogate Canada’s nature as a settler colony. What role has the environment played in constructions of Canada, they ask, and what have those constructions in turn done to the environment? To answer these questions, the contributors address both the content and context of environmental history in short essays written largely by historians or historical geographers that run from geological-scale “deep time” to the early 21st century. Because this book is focused on “the nature of Canada (and Canadians),” we hear voices that have long been central to thinking about Canadian environments, such as Tom Thomson, Northrop Frye, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and David Suzuki.5 But the contributors to the Nature of Canada also remind us to “listen for different stories.” Julie Cruikshank is a good example of this as her essay forces us to re-consider who gets to be an “expert” on the environment and how even Indigenous “Traditional Environmental Knowledge” (TEK) is only seen as valuable once it is made palatable to the “modern bureaucratic state,” forcing Indigenous ways of knowing nature into commensurability with settler time-spaces.6 Each of the essays in the Nature of Canada, by design, takes a fairly common topic in Canadian environmental history and manipulates it by looking for a [End Page 136] different story, listening for a different voice, or asking an existential question. More than anything, the authors look to the past to try to better understand the present and future. Ken Cruikshank asks what will happen to the Canadian preoccupation with using communications technologies to have control over the “Dominion...

How “wild” are hatchery salmon? Conservation policy and the contested framing of nature in Canada and the United States

The idea of the Anthropocene presents a paradox for conservation: to restore and protect wild species and ecosystems, greater human intervention is required through efforts such as artificial propagation. This paradox is evident in efforts to conserve Pacific salmon. Salmon hatcheries produce millions of salmon to augment wild populations and sustain fishing industries, but emerging knowledge about salmon genomics has called into question the “wildness” of hatchery salmon. This article examines how the scientific uncertainties regarding wild species are contested by a range of stakeholders and how particular frames become concretized in policy frameworks. Despite the significance of laws and policies to the governance of such hybrid species, they have received limited attention. Drawing on archival documents, legislation, policies, government reports, and media sources, we conduct a cross-national comparative analysis of how wildness is framed in policy debates in Canada and the United States. We find that hatchery-born salmon occupy a position at the threshold of scientific and cultural definitions of wildness and this ambiguity facilitates political contests among groups with divergent interests in conservation and views of the human–nature relationship. As a result, hatchery salmon have been regulated differently across time and geographic and jurisdictional space. These findings contribute to an expanding literature on conservation in the Anthropocene and managing wild species.

The Nature of Canada. Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn, eds.

<i>The Nature of Canada.</i> Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn, eds.

The Nature of Canada. Edited by Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2019. 376 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliographic essays, and index. Paper $29.95, e-book $29.95.

<i> The Nature of Canada. </i> Edited by Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2019. 376 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliographic essays, and index. Paper $29.95, e-book $29.95.

The Trudeau government and the case for multilateralism in an uncertain world

ABSTRACT In an era when multilateral institutions and global cooperation are under attack from the United States and under threat around the world, should Canada restore and maintain its historical commitment to global multilateralism? This paper argues that it should for three reasons: 1) the greatest problems facing the world demand multilateral solutions; 2) multilateral commitments acknowledge and mirror the cosmopolitan nature of Canada; 3) recent NAFTA negotiations have proven the US to be an unreliable ally and dangerous to Canada’s economic well-being. Developing alternatives to the US market is imperative. The Liberal and Conservative parties’ approaches to multilateralism reflect the two parties’ divergent visions of Canada. The Conservatives favor an ethnocentric view of Canada that, increasingly, caters to the right-wing populism sweeping the Western world. The Liberal vision of Canada is more inclusive. This latter view is, ultimately, more sustainable and accepting of Canada’s diverse ethnic and religious reality.

At-a-glance - What can paramedic data tell us about the opioid crisis in Canada?

The nature of Canada's opioid crisis necessitates additional data sources that can provide a more comprehensive picture of the epidemic, in order to provide public health officials and decision-makers with a robust evidence base. Paramedic data provide a conduit into the community where overdoses occur. Prehospital events and circumstances surrounding opioid-related overdoses provide unique opportunities to collect evidence that can contribute to prevention, harm reduction and health promotion efforts. Using data extracted from the Ottawa Paramedic Service (OPS), this proof-of-concept study demonstrated that paramedic response data were useful in providing near real-time epidemiological information (person, time and place) on the opioid epidemic and in assessing trends and opportunities to develop alert triggers. Between January and June 2017, the OPS responded to an average of four opioid-related calls each week. On average, 0.5 mg of naloxone was administered each time. For the study period, linear trends show a small but insignificant increase in calls (p = 0.18). A higher volume of calls occurred between April 16 and 29, 2017. According to local media reports, this spike in paramedic responses was due to the arrival of high-grade fentanyl in Ottawa. With further validation, paramedic data can potentially provide a novel data source to monitor opioid-related overdoses.

The representation of canada in political discourse

The primary purpose of this article is to examine the Canadian image in political discourse, to identify the factors creating this image. Due to the most relevant political speeches, messages, government reports, analysis of statistical data there are being worked out some tools for building the image of Canada on the world stage. Lately, political discourse is becoming a subject of study for linguistics. The interest in the phenomenon is motivated by a wide range of linguistic instruments used as an effective tool to manage the public perceptions. Study and analysis of the mechanisms of political communication allow to decode pragmatic information hidden in the political texts. The subject of the work consists in highlighting the linguistic approaches to the representation of Canada in the international diplomacy. The object of the work is an examination of political discourse in the public statements made by political figures, government documents, which reflect social and political realities. The methodology has developed under the influence of cognitive linguistics of domestic and foreign scientists. Research study includes cognitive and conceptual analysis to reveal distinctive features of the social and political realities; interpretive and context analysis to select political texts. It exposes the ways of representation of Canadian image, demonstrates its weak and strong sides. A vast factual material reveals multi-faced nature of Canada and provides an identity set of lexical units which are reflected in political discourse. The material illustrates today’s image of the country and the perceptions of Canada throughout the world. The idea of multiculturalism is justified by the guiding ideology of ethno-cultural plurality. The main sources of information are official government documents (laws, acts, reports), statistical data, parliamentary debates, party agenda, political speeches. All the provided material combined mass-media information, the Internet.

Securitizing Development Assistance: India’s Nuclear Program and Canadian Societal Views on Nuclear Reactor Exports, 1974–1978

ABSTRACTThis article examines an often overlooked but nevertheless important element of Canada’s Cold War-era development assistance policies—the export of nuclear reactors to the developing world. In particular, the focus is on societal responses to India’s explosion of an underground nuclear device in May 1974, an accomplishment made possible in part through the export of Canada’s nuclear expertise, technology, and material. India’s entrance into the nuclear club sparked an intense and wide-ranging debate in Canadian society concerning the nature of Canada’s development and foreign policies, and more specifically, the types of policies that would enable the country to fulfill its main international purpose as a middle power—contributing to conditions of international peace and security. The protracted debate which involved not only politicians but many civil society actors revealed stark divisions among Canadians centered on the extent to which nuclear reactor exports served Canadian national interests.

Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies by Shiho Satsuka

Reviewed by: Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies by Shiho Satsuka Okpyo Moon (bio) Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies. By Shiho Satsuka. Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2015. xii, 263 pages. $89.95, cloth; $24.95, paper. According to author Shiho Satsuka, Nature in Translation aims at exploring the following questions: What is the appeal of magnificent nature to Japanese travelers? How has the vast scale of nature in Canada served as a site for young Japanese to transform their subjectivities at this historical moment? What do their experiences tell us about the subjectivity of flexible workers who were pushed into transnational labor markets? How are the guides’ experiences shaped by the larger historical context of cultural encounters in asymmetrical global power relations? (p. 2) As can be surmised from this list of research objectives summarized by the author herself, this book is more about young Japanese tour guides and their lives, experiences, and perceptions than about Japanese tourism to the Canadian Rockies per se. Nor does it seek to analyze how different understandings of “nature” are translated by the guides and conveyed to tourists from Japan, affecting the ways the latter appreciate and consume the destination. Satsuka does show by a few examples how the role of the guides may influence the Japanese tourists’ understanding of Canadian nature, but her main focus throughout is on the experiences of the guides rather than those of the tourists. I must say, therefore, that Nature in Translation slightly sidestepped the original expectation I had about the book’s content when I was first given the title for review. Largely on the basis of doctoral fieldwork conducted at a Japanese tour guiding company operating in Banff National Park in western Canada in 2000–2001 and through her own experience as a guide, Satsuka offers a detailed description and analysis of the life trajectories of a dozen or so Japanese tour guides, of what motivated them to move to Canada and to choose to become tour guides, and of how their lives have been transformed by their work experience in the tourism business in the Canadian Rockies. [End Page 214] As background for this specific type of transnational labor migration, Satsuka discusses in chapter 1 the deteriorating and increasingly precarious conditions of the Japanese economy and job market during the postbubble period that have disillusioned and driven some young people to “escape” Japan and its deep-rooted corporate culture, family obligations, and gender expectations in search of more freedom. Satsuka then goes on in chapter 2 to explore the characteristic features of the cosmopolitan aspirations of those young people in which Canada with its vast nature is imagined as a space of freedom. Canada was chosen because, in Japan, the dominant image of the West that had been represented by the United States during the postwar years is being gradually replaced by an alternative model of Canada or west European countries that are supposed to be less competitive, less materialistic, and therefore more humane. In this connection, the chapter specifically examines the influence of a well-known television entertainer, Ōhashi Kyosen, in redirecting “Japanese fascination with overseas travel from American culture to Canadian nature” (p. 35). Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to detailed description and analysis of the meaning of tour guides’ experiences including their transformation through the guide-training program. It is true that many guide trainees are placed in situations of being commodified in their new role as a guide despite the fact that they feel they have escaped the commercialized society and workplace of Japan. Satsuka argues, however, that they interpret the commodification of self in their new work roles as an opportunity to develop a unique individuality rather than as an expression of the alienation or decay of an authentic self. The Canadian natural landscape plays a significant part in this conflation of commodification and performative construction of individual subjectivity. This theme of subjectivity construction in the workplace is further elaborated in chapter 4 by focusing on female outdoor guides and their negotiation of gender and family, which challenges the normative family system and gender relations that are considered “natural.” In chapters...

On the Threshold: Haunting Transgressions in Gaétan Soucy’s The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches

The main aim of this article is to show how Gaetan Soucy’s 1998 bestselling novel The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches both extends and complicates the Canadian Gothic tradition. The first part focuses onCanada as a “haunted culture,” and attempts to identify the ghosts which hauntCanada and make themselves manifest in the nation’s gothic literature. I ponder the postcolonial character of Canadian Gothic, and reflect on the representations of monstrous nature inCanada’s early fiction. A short section is devoted to the characteristics of French-Canadian Gothic. The second part of my article proposes a reading of Soucy’s novel which concentrates on gothic transgressions the story revolves around. One of my assumptions is that the novel invites ecocritical and ecofeminist interpretations, and that its representations of nature also reveal the subversive character of the text whose narrator, by her own admission, locates herself on the threshold of things.

Beyond LAVs: corruption, commercialization and the Canadian defence industry

ABSTRACTThe Trudeau government’s decision to uphold a 2014 contract to sell CAD $15 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia has attracted considerable controversy in Canada, garnering both opposition and support. Yet public discussion of the Canada–Saudi light armored vehicle (LAV) contract has sidestepped the most serious problems raised by Canada’s escalation of its involvement in the international arms market through this sale: the violence and corruption of the international arms trade, to which this sale contributes; the subordination of Canadian foreign policy and of international peace and security to commercial aspirations and the short-term interests of electoral politics, which this contract evinces; and the questionable importance of the Canadian defence industrial base, upon which arguments in favor of this contract rely. Given both the political and economic salience of defence industry jobs in the 2015 election and the export-driven nature of Canada’s defence industry, Canadians should not be surprised by the Canada–Saudi LAV deal. The real question, however, is whether Canada should support its own defence industrial base, whatever the costs and contribution to corruption – or not.

The Northern Canada Vessel Traffic Services Zone Regulations (Nordreg) and the Law of the Sea

This article explores the nature of Canada’s laws and regulations governing the Northern Canada Vessel Services Zone Regulations (nordreg) within the context of the international law of the sea. It provides context for the response to nordreg by the United States, and forecasts the impact of nordreg on future shipping regulations in the Arctic Ocean more generally. As Arctic nations develop shipping regulations, Canadian statutes—and their intersection with the international law of the sea and the rules adopted by the International Maritime Organization—are instructive for ensuring safety and security in the unique marine polar environment.

Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life

At a time when Indigenous hunger and strife is gaining public attention in Canada, James Daschuk’s book Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life provides a necessary glimpse into the issue’s deep-seated roots. Now a professor at University of Regina specializing historical Indigenous research, Daschuk has published a number of works regarding the health of First Nations peoples of the Canadian Plains. Compiled as part of his doctoral research, Clearing the Plains succinctly consolidates a breadth of ostensibly buried Canadian historical literature to reveal the true nature of Canada's Midwest settlement, while depicting monopolization’s devastating effects on marginalized populations in the process.&#x0D;

Virtual Soil Monoliths: Blending Traditional and Web-Based Educational Approaches

Since soil plays a crucial role in all aspects of global environmental change, it is essential that post-secondary institutions provide students with a strong foundation in soil science concepts including soil classification. The onset of information technology (IT) and web-based multimedia have opened new avenues to better incorporate traditional, static educational resources such as soil monoliths into post-secondary teaching and learning. The objective of this study was to develop an open access, web-based educational tool entitled “Virtual Soil Monoliths” (VSM) (http://soilweb.landfood.ubc.ca/monoliths/), based on a soil monolith collection at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. With 197 monoliths, the UBC collection is the second largest of its nature in Canada, but due to poor storage and displays it has been underutilized in teaching. The VSM tool was developed by a team of scientists, instructional designers, IT specialists, and students and integrated into the Introduction to Soil Science course at UBC to support lectures and laboratory sections on parent material identification and soil classification. Student feedback indicated the VSM tool was helpful in facilitating student achievement of learning objectives related to basic soil classification and soil identification skills. Students used the VSM tool to complete assignments in the Introduction to Soil Science course, and students pointed out that the high-resolution monolith photographs were the most useful feature of the tool. This study provides a framework for incorporating inventory-type learning resources into an interactive teaching tool and a “living” educational resource that helps students grasp connections across disciplines.

Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century by Neil S. Forkey

Reviewed by: Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century by Neil S. Forkey Sean Kheraj Forkey, Neil S. – Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. 157. To write an environmental history of Canada in fewer than one hundred and fifty pages is no simple task. Neil S. Forkey’s recent contribution to the “Themes in Canadian History” series from the University of Toronto Press ably takes on this daunting challenge, offering a brief and accessible account of the field for undergraduate students and other non-specialist readers. Like other books in this series, Forkey’s textbook successfully synthesizes current literature while providing a broad geographic and chronological survey of Canadian history. Canadian environmental historians now have a small collection of textbooks from which to choose for teaching this growing sub-discipline. David Freeland Duke’s 2006 book Canadian Environmental History was the first such textbook, offering a collection of previously published articles and book chapters from Canadian and US literature. Since its publication new textbooks have attempted a variety of styles to suit different course formats. Graeme Wynn’s lengthy, Canada and Arctic North America: An Environmental History (2006), serves as a useful comprehensive text with a strong narrative argument. Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (2009), edited by Alan MacEachern and William J. Turkel, is a collection of original essays on an assortment of topics. This collection with its focus on methodological approaches and challenges to studying environmental history is well-suited to advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars. Finally, UBC Press’ recently published An Environmental History of Canada by Laurel Sefton MacDowell is one of the first to attempt a traditional comprehensive survey textbook format. Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century provides a succinct narrative of Canadian environmental history that is structured by a clear central argument. As such, it is very well suited for use in undergraduate seminar courses. The book is primarily driven by Forkey’s contention that “[a]t the surface level, Canadians’ experience with the natural world has been informed by two major impulses. The first is the need to exploit natural resources, while the second is the desire to protect them” (p. 3). Forkey uses this argument as a hook for his readers to think critically about the various fluctuations in human relations with the rest of nature in Canada since European colonization in the early seventeenth century. [End Page 233] In five brief chapters, Forkey impressively covers a chronology from the early 1600s to the present. His first chapter encompasses the broadest time frame, examining European resettlement across what is now Canada from the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. This chapter admittedly skips across an enormous sweep of history, but does so in order to demonstrate the ways in which natural resources became knowable to European/Euro-Canadian colonizers through natural history. Such early scientific observations, according to Forkey, were used to simultaneously amass knowledge about exploitable natural resources and to build an appreciation for the natural world. In the following two chapters, Forkey looks at the histories of conservation and preservation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These two chapters capture best the tension at the heart of this narrative between consumption of natural resources and the protection of the environment. Drawing from a substantive body of literature, these chapters outline the emergence of the conservation movement in Canada and its transnational connections through forestry sciences and wildlife and fisheries management. They also cover the romantic inspirations for the development of parks in Canada, particularly the national parks in the Rocky Mountains. In the final chapters, Forkey explores the origins and development of modern environmentalism in Canada after the Second World War, a period when Euro-Canadians re-evaluated their relationship with nature and sought to protect the environment through the application of ecological principles. The last chapter of the book specially looks at the place of Aboriginal peoples in twentieth-century Canadian environmentalism. Citing specific case studies, including the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and James Bay hydro-electric power projects, Forkey shows the effects of natural resource exploitation in northern Canada...

Child care: implications for overweight / obesity in Canadian children?

Over recent decades, two prominent trends have been observed in Canada and elsewhere: increasing prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity, and increasing participation of women (including mothers) in the paid labour force and resulting demand for child care options. While an association between child care and children's body mass index (BMI) is plausible and would have policy relevance, its existence and nature in Canada is not known. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, we examined exposure to three types of care at age 2/3 years (care by non-relative, care by relative, care in a daycare centre) in relation to change in BMI percentile (continuous and categorical) between age 2/3 years and age 6/7 years, adjusting for health and sociodemographic correlates. Care by a non-relative was associated with an increase in BMI percentile between age 2/3 years and age 6/7 years for boys, and for girls from households of low income adequacy. Considering the potential benefits of high-quality formal child care for an array of health and social outcomes and the potentially adverse effects of certain informal care options demonstrated in this study and others, our findings support calls for ongoing research on the implications of diverse child care experiences for an array of outcomes including those related to weight.

Pluralismo cultural y educación: el caso canadiense

El presente artículo se centra en las estrategias educativas que promuevan "la inclusión y la participación de todos los ciudadanos garantizando la cohesión social, la vitalidad de la sociedad civil y la paz" (UNESCO, 2001) en una comunidad multicultural paradigmática como la canadiense. El abordaje consta de tres partes. En la primera se examina la naturaleza multicultural de Canadá: la composición socioétnica de su población, diacrónica y sincrónicamente. En la segunda parte se analiza el pluralismo cultural entendido como compromiso político ante el multiculturalismo descripto anteriormente. Para ello, se revisa la política del "mosaico" así como la legislación canadiense a este respecto. Finalmente, se describen las estrategias educativas a través de las cuales dicha política cobra existencia. Con este estudio se pretende promover una reflexión sobre la forma en que otros países dan respuesta a la realidad multicultural actual.

Principles and Partnership: Merchant, Heeney, and the Craft of Canada–US Relations

Entitled “Canada and the United States: Principles for Partnership” and prepared at the behest of American President Lyndon Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, the so-called Merchant–Heeney report set out a series of guiding principles for the smooth conduct of bilateral relations. Drawing on their vast experience at managing this relationship, Arnold Heeney and Livingston Merchant, two former ambassadors, devised their guidebook by tracing the nature of Canada–US relations, examining areas where problems commonly arose, and offering suggestions towards building a more successful partnership. “Principles for Partnership” may have been their swansong but it was not Merchant and Heeney's sole statement on the Canadian–American relationship. Drawing on speeches, memoranda, and diplomatic cables, this article shows how Merchant and Heeney each conceived of the partnership between their two countries and how they viewed the influence of factors such as Canadian nationalism and the United States' preponderant power.