Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism

Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, by George Grant (1965; repr 1970 with an introduction by the author), is a short book which eloquently argues that Canada has ceased to be a nation. Grant argues that this demise was inevitable, for although Canadians had hoped to build a more ordered and stable society than the liberal experiment in the US, that county's emergence as a leader in modern science, technology and corporate capitalism precluded the preservation of Canada's indigenous culture.

Grant places blame on the Liberal Party's willing surrender to Continentalism, which inexorably reduced Canada's role to a mere branch plant of American corporate capitalism. He further suggests that while John Diefenbaker's government struggled to reverse the trend, in a last gasp of nationalism, it did not succeed. Although some critics praised Grant's theories as brilliant and profound, others rejected them as overstated and simplistic; nevertheless, Grant's analysis did provoke a lively debate on the issue of Canada's capability to maintain some independence from the American empire.