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Since Confederation, Canadian prime ministers have consciously constructed the national story. Each created shared narratives, formulating and reformulating a series of unifying national ideas that served to keep this geographically large, ethnically diverse, and regionalized nation together. This book is about those narratives and stories. Canadaâs Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity offers a unique telling of Canadaâs postâSecond World War political history. Raymond B. Blake shows how prime ministers were identity entrepreneurs: regardless of political stripe, they worked to build national unity, forged a citizenship based on inclusion, and defined a place for Canada in the world. They created for citizens an ideal image of what the nation stands for and the path it should follow. Through their differences and similarities, they collectively told a national story of Canada as a modern, progressive, liberal state, and portrayed a strong commitment to inclusion coupled with a deep respect for diversity and difference, and a fundamental belief in universal rights and freedoms. This definitive analysis of prime ministerial speeches and rhetoric is grounded in meticulous archival, primary document, and secondary literature research, and utilizes the latest theoretical approaches in the study of rhetoric, nationalism, and identity. Ultimately, Raymond Blake provides readers with a new way to see and understand what Canada is, and what holds us together as a nation. |
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