Long Synopsis
After 1984, Canada entered an age that looked peaceful compared with the wars, Depression, and constitutional births of earlier volumes. But the peace was cracked from the beginning. The Fractured Peace follows the country through free trade battles, constitutional failure, Indigenous land defence, regional anger, public-sector cuts, globalization, Quebec’s near departure, post-Cold War uncertainty, September 11, Afghanistan, and the refusal to join the Iraq War.
Brian Mulroney’s Canada begins with a vast political coalition and the promise of renewal, then moves into the storms of free trade, the GST, Meech Lake, Oka, Charlottetown, environmental crisis, and party collapse. Jean Chrétien’s Canada inherits deficit panic, austerity, NAFTA, western populism, Quebec separatism, urban diversity, global markets, and a transformed political landscape. The 1995 referendum brings the country within a breath of rupture. Nunavut’s creation, Delgamuukw, Nisga’a, and the long shadow of Oka reshape arguments over land, law, and sovereignty.
This final volume is not a quiet epilogue. It is the story of a country that balanced budgets while cutting deeply, embraced globalization while communities absorbed the cost, celebrated diversity while suspicion sharpened after 9/11, and reached the end of the twentieth century still arguing over land, belonging, sovereignty, memory, and power. The Fractured Peace brings Canada’s Long Century to its landing: not with a finished monument, but with a country still alive, still divided, still stubbornly unfinished.