True North Not Strong and Free

by Peter C. Newman

In this incisive and devastating assessment of Canada's long-ignored defence policies, Peter C. Newman applies his authoritative and analytical style to the subject of this country's military priorities. As a benign, non-aggressive world power, Newman asserts, Canada has become almost comically careless of its military commitments. We are taking a free ride, he warns, on the American defence machine - a ride which makes us so vulnerably dependent on and beholden to our powerful neighbour that we have become a colony of the Pentagon. Newman documents the deplorable condition of Canada's "tinpot" navy, the dangerous inadequacy of our land-based troops, and the ludicrously antiquated state of our arctic defences; our only snow-traversing vehicles can be outrun by sled-dogs.In a world beset by awesome atomic stockpiles, Newman comes out strongly against a policy of Canadian nuclear arms, but suggests that Canada must play a positive role in world security with an effective, conventionally armed military force.In this timely, arresting analysis, Peter Newman puts Canadian defence issues into a sometimes frightening global perspective, cogently and accessibly addressing defence problems that have been too long neglected, as well as highly topical issues, such as the testing of cruise missiles on Canadian soil. Newman here is at his trenchant and articulate best, posing the many controversial defence questions that Canadians can no longer ignore.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Peter Charles Newman (born Peta Karel Neuman), CC, journalist, author, newspaper and magazine editor (born 10 May 1929 in Vienna, Austria; died 7 September 2023 in Belleville, ON). Peter C. Newman was one of Canada’s most prominent journalists, biographers and non-fiction authors. After starting out with the Financial Post, he became editor-in-chief of both the Toronto Star and Maclean’s. His 35 books, which have collectively sold more than two million copies, helped make political reporting and business journalism more personalized and evocative. His no-holds-barred, insiders-tell-all accounts of Canada’s business and political elites earned him a reputation as Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” journalist. A recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, Newman was elected to the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1992. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978 and a Companion in 1990.

Early Life and Education

Originally named Peta Karel Neuman by his secularized Jewish parents, Peter C. Newman grew up in the Czech town of Breclav, where his father ran a large sugar beet refinery. As Newman wrote in 2018, “I lived the charmed life of a little rich boy in Moravia, Czechoslovakia — until age nine, that is, when the world as I knew it vanished.” Fleeing the Nazis, his family came to Canada as refugees in 1940.

Newman initially attended Hillfield School in Hamilton, Ontario, a prep school for the Royal Military College of Canada. But, envisaging a business career for his son, Newman's father, Oscar, enrolled him as a “war guest” boarder at Upper Canada College in 1944. There he met future members of the Canadian establishment whose lives he would later document.

After graduating, Newman joined the Canadian Navy Reserves. He was a reservist for decades and eventually reached the rank of captain. For many years, he was rarely seen in public without his signature black sailor cap.


Career Highlights

Once he mastered English, Newman began writing, first for the University of Toronto newspaper, then for the Financial Post in 1951. By 1953, he was Montreal editor of the Post. He held the position for three years before returning to Toronto to be assistant editor, then Ottawa columnist, at Maclean's magazine. In 1959, he published Flame of Power: Intimate Profiles of Canada's Greatest Businessmen. It profiles 11 of the first generation of Canada's business magnates. In 1963, Newman published his masterly and popular political chronicle of John Diefenbaker, Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (1963). According to the Writers’ Trust of Canada, the book “revolutionized Canadian political reporting with its controversial ‘insiders-tell-all’ approach.” Five years later, Newman published a similar but less successful study of Lester Pearson, The Distemper of Our Times (1968).

In 1969, Newman became editor-in-chief at the Toronto Star. During this period, he published some of his best journalism in Home Country: People, Places and Power Politics (1973). He then published popular studies on the lives of those who wielded financial power in the Canadian business establishment. These included his two-volume The Canadian Establishment (1975, 1981), The Bronfman Dynasty (1978; see also Bronfman Family), and The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982). A third book called Titans: How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power was added to this series in 1998.

Newman was also editor of Maclean's from 1971 to 1982. He transformed the magazine from a monthly to a weekly news magazine — the first of its kind in Canada — with a Canadian slant on international and national events. In 1982, he resigned to work on a three-volume history of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Honours

Peter C. Newman received the Canadian Journalism Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Toronto Star's Excellence in Journalism award in 1998. He received a National Newspaper Award and in 1992 he was elected to the Canadia

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is from the early 80s and therefore concerns itself with the former Soviet Union a lot, but it still makes a persuasive and relevant argument for increasing our defense spending. It argues that neutrality is not cheap nor something that happens by default, and that using our identity as a peaceable kingdom to ignore international threats to Canada's sovereignty doesn't make them go away.

[Robert Muir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Out of date since the eighties.