By Felan Parker
Norman Hillmer, professor of history and international affairs at Carleton University, writes about Canada’s international policies and the country’s abundant nationalisms. The two subjects are inter-related. Hillmer suggests that the ways in which Canada interacts with the world, and how the world interacts with Canada, have defined and continue to define national identity and national destiny.
Canada’s international role is thus embedded in Canada’s self-identification, and vice versa. Convinced that their place in the international community is unique, Canadians often feel that the country is obliged to connect with and to shape the world. Yet our close alignment with the United States and (a while ago now) Great Britain has complicated Canada’s international life, as Canadians walk a fine line between independence and an imperial embrace. The resulting dynamic creates a variety of confusions, problems, and challenges for our international policies- and for our sense of self.
Hillmer’s recent books seek better to understand Canada’s position in the world. Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World Into The Twenty-First Century (co-authored with J. L. Granatstein; Thomson Nelson) explores the history of Canada’s foreign policy; Canada’s International Policies (co-authored with Carleton’s Fen Hampson and Brian Tomlin; Oxford University Press) applies a public policy model to continuities and changes in international policy, and Canadas of the Mind: Twentieth Century Canadian Nationalisms (co-edited with Adam Chapnick; McGill-Queen’s University Press) approaches those subjects from a variety of angles and methodologies. In 2013, O. D. Skelton: The Work of the World, 1923-1941, a study of the chief foreign policy adviser to three Canadian prime ministers, was published jointly by The Champlain Society and McGill-Queen’s University Press. At the same time, Hillmer is delivering a full scale biography of Dr. Skelton to the University of Toronto Press.