Power, Prime Ministers and the Press by Robert Lewis

Author:Robert Lewis [Lewis, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2018-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

We now know how that ended. Newman ran with his “man for our time” idea for a while and started writing an upbeat book on Ignatieff. The project ended as the sad story of the leader’s demise in Newman’s 2012 book, When the Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada.

The critics accused Newman of constantly chasing stardust. In a 1989 Books in Canada review of Newman’s Sometimes a Great Nation, writer Norman Snider argued: “Newman has indefatigably mythologized a rogue’s gallery of swarthy pols and carpetbagging CEOs with the ‘glowing light’ of his undiminished enthusiasm. In sensibility, if not taste, he is Canada’s Andy Warhol, displaying a promiscuous adoration of wealth, power, and celebrity, in whatever form they may take.”

Newman tended to apply the coup de grâce after the battle was over. True, he did curry favour with the elite, and he protected his friendly sources from scrutiny. But in the end he also ushered his main characters to their inevitable demise, usually gleefully. His usual reaction to the downfall of the people he venerated was one of lamentation — for the lost hope of the leader who might have been, for the country he genuinely loved. In truth, Newman said it best in Here Be Dragons: “I was in search of a hero, all right. But the hero, I blush to admit, was me.” In the winter of 2016 the quest went on. Peter C. Newman, stooped and shuffling at eighty-six, his memory fading, was putting the finishing touches on a book about the United Empire Loyalists of Upper Canada — another tribe that went out across the wilderness in search of acceptance and respectability.

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