ISBN 921870-64-7   6 x 9 210 pp, $14.95 Non-Fiction Social Commentary, History, Community Planning

In this lucid yet impassioned book Clarence Bolt reveals how Canada is rapidly losing its sovereign status to the liberal, globalizing drive that has, since Confederation, endeavoured to eliminate regional diversity, self-reliance and distinctiveness by blending our regions into a centralized economic and political system. Echoing George Grant, Bolt proposes that Canada can remain a unique, sovereign state only by fostering sustainable regional units in which citizens are committed to the stewardship of their natural and cultural environments.

"Clarence Bolt has written a book for all those Canadians who feel uneasy about what's happening to their country, but can't quite put their finger on what's going on. He explores the real Canada — the community that has won the UN's 'best country' honours several years running — and details how it is slowly, subtly, eroding away. The corrosive force is a relentlessly grinding and homogenous globalism, made 'inevitable' by the capitulation of our national leadership to the mechanistic cant of neoliberal market economics. Does it really matter? A good question that Bolt thinks is worth answering. Otherwise, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell's famous lament, "We won't know what we got 'til it's gone." — Professor William Rees, Director of the School of Community and Regional Planning, University of B.C.

Clarence Bolt is an instructor of modern history at Camosun College in Victoria, BC. Born in British Columbia, he has extensive experience in local politics, having served on the executives of various citizens groups, on government committees and boards, and on the municipal council of his community. He is also the author of Small Shoes for Feet too Large: Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian (1992).