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Page THE HERALD OUn00 Saturday January Book Review Outlook on Lifestyle Fun of anecdotes in the eye of the beholder By ALLAN GOULD The wit and satisfaction we ob tain from anecdotes are like beau ty very much In the eye of the beholder The astronomical growth in interest in gossip and anecdotal stories that we have seen in the past few years is reflected in the success of such magazines as People and such television programs as Entertain ment Tonight and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous So it is with great pleasure that the new Oxford Book of Canadian Political Anec dotes edited by professor and humorist Jack McLeod Oxford pages can be described as very witty and very satisfying indeed There are many disappoint of course in a book that ranges from Samuel Champlaln sailing up the St Lawrence River In 1603 to a 1986 statement by Brian I am not denying anything I did not say In bet ween we get a fair number of un funny senseless and not par impressive anecdotes and quite a few others that dont seem to belong in a book of this kind Its delightful to read that the great humorist Stephen used to take letters that be had written and throw them out on the lawn outside his of flee He explained that it saved him a trip down to the mailbox some passerby seeing a heap of ad dressed letters would post them But is that really a political anec dote merely because the writer once opposed Laurier on Reciprocity with the United States back But why complain The many dozens of wonderful stories tales and oneliners contained in this book help give an often profound sense of this countrys history as well as leadership and it is good to read just how charming and even comedic our politicians have been Many are familiar such as the inebriated prime minister of Canada Sir John A Macdonald telling McGee Look here two drunkards is too much for any government and one of us has to stop so I suggest you quit Ditto with Macdonalds quietly profound statement that anybody may support me when I am right What I want is a man that will sup port me when I am wrong What is less known and all the more delightful to discover is the A Directory of Services Offered in Our Community BUM fact that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was obsessed with Abraham Lincoln even delivering a lecture in in which he presented the entire Get Address in French Or the wise wit of suffragette Nellie Mc Clung who once proclaimed You men say women are angels and plead that politics are corrup ting therefore you cant get women into public life too soon bee there is a shortage of angels In politics There is some pain to be en countered amongst these hundreds of anecdotes as well It is still acutely embarrassing to read that our longest serving prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King saw Hitler as a genuine patriot a simple peasant and a man with whom it should be possible to work with a good deal of trust and confidence and actual ly wrote in his diaries that the man who would soon cause the deaths of more than SO million people is a pilgrim his love of music of Wagner Opera his habits abstinence purity vegetarian etc all evidence of the mystic who is conscious of his mission and lives up to it Abb but what a joy to read of how Vincent Masseys obnoxious anglopbilia was cut to the quick during die Second World War when a vicechancellor of a British university declared after hearing Massey rave about how the English were the only people in the world who knew how to rule others justly and effectively And in what respect Vincent do you consider that ideology ferent from the one we are fighting And what of the of John Diefenbaker by the Liberals such as the time the federal government rented an empty house next to his home at Prince Albert and converted it into a foster residence for unwed Indian mothers Or the fact that the only time Lester Pearson ever used the hot line to Washington was in 1967 when the transmission of bis car broke while he was on his way to his summer residence He phoned the US capital to arrange for a tow truck to be sent out from downtown Ottawa There are other great moments Media guru Marshall McLuban writing Pierre Trudeau about why the prime minister was so suc cessful Your corporate mask you charisma is both powerful and very popular with the young in part because of the subtle hint in your image of mask of the native Indian As you know the Red Man is very powerful with the TV generation since he is Third World and they are also Third World There are other great jokes used to howl at the one about a Toronto man who is convicted of murder in Quebec and makes one last request before his hanging like to learn French But more than anything this marvelous collection of Canadian political anecdotes is a superb way to get a comic sense of our often fascinating history and even save thousands of dollars Why Because the books from which most of these stories are drawn number many dozens and this volume is in fact a kind of best of from the finest political biographies and autobiographies of our century For that alone many thanks STEREO SYSTEMS ACCESSORIES FOR YOUR HOME AUTOMOTIVE RECORDS STAPES COs sunk