Laurier LaPierre starts this book from a laudable premise: that Laurier was a great Canadian, and that his fight for Canada has meaning for our own time. The book reflects the strengths and excesses of the writer, who is known to Canadians as a passionate and provocative man. He will be remembered by too many as the journalist on This Hour Has Seven Days who was not afraid to cry on television. This is unfortunate, because what he lacks in gravitas he often makes up for in insight.

Biography has undergone a great revival in our time, and this is all to the good. Academic historians have dominated the writing of history for a long time in Canada, with the result that we have not seen the breadth and depth of biographical work that has emerged in the United States, Britain, and France. Roosevelt and Churchill have a new study seemingly every few months: some are terrible, some are trivial. But the interest is there, and from it all comes a recognition that character matters, that personalities and leadership are not to be denied and denigrated, and that some men and women are worthy of our attention and respect.

LaPierre’s Laurier suffers from a patina of romantic excess, which is not surprising given the book’s title (Laurier and the Romance of Canada). The book is overwritten, but it has its strengths as well. The dramatic events of Laurier’s political life – his struggle with clerical conservatism in Quebec; the execution of Louis Riel and the profound split in the country that resulted; the Manitoba language and schools issue; the Boer War; the battle over free trade; and the final struggle over conscription – are all compellingly described in a way that shows LaPierre has a strong grasp of the issues and a sense of how they are all connected, not only to Laurier’s life but to our own time.

LaPierre tells us that he was moved to write this book because of the defeat of the Charlotte-town Accord, which he strongly supported. His passion for Canada pushed him to re-immerse himself in the life of the man for whom he was named. Ironically, having made this point in the introduction, he doesn’t really move beyond the biography to make the connection and argument he wants. This is our loss, because LaPierre is a shrewd as well as a passionate observer. Dafoe and Skelton may have been more authoritative and long-winded, and Schull may have been more judicious, but LaPierre’s book is an entirely worthy addition to our understanding of Laurier. It is not “the definitive book,” because it is too partisan, and doesn’t really describe enough of how Laurier was seen by his contemporaries, his friends, and opponents. Politics is partly theatre, and there can be no doubt that Sir Wilfrid was a great performer and a fine actor. Yet it is more than that. Its really successful performers (and Laurier was no doubt one, being re-elected several times as prime minister) were shrewd and more than occasionally ruthless. We learn less about this than we should.

All this means is that there is lots of room for more books about Laurier, as there are about Macdonald and King. It may be that our history divides us as much as it unites us. But to understand, and to keep on trying to understand, is a task that never ends. Surely we have learned by now how interesting we are. That is no less true of the men and women who led us in the past.