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The Order of Canada: Its Origins, History, and Development.

Article Excerpt
Christopher McCreery, The Order of Canada: Its Origins, History, and Development. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. 350 pp., 61 color and black-and-white photographs. $65.00 cloth.

Christopher McCreery, The Canadian Honours System. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2005. 408 pp., 517 color photographs. $60.00 cloth.

Decorations and honors, including knighthoods and other titles, have deep roots in Canada and yet are viewed with considerable hostility, ambivalence, and what Christopher McCreery calls "confusion and amnesia" (The Order of Canada, 43). In 2001, Jean Chretien, as Prime Minister, invoked the otiose "Nickle Resolution" of 1918 to prevent or delay Conrad Black from receiving a life peerage from the Queen. This honor, arranged by Tony Blair, is similar to a Canadian senatorship, and was no more than conventional recognition of Black's media proprietorships in the U.K. There has never, in fact, been any effective ban on Canadians receiving such honors in modern times: the late Kenneth Thomson's father, also a newspaper owner, was made Lord Thomson of Fleet in 1964, a hereditary barony now in its third generation. Chretien's grounds were as spurious as his motive was spiteful: Black's flagship National Post had done more than any other news source to expose Chretien's corruption scandals.

Much of the animus against honors and distinctions stems from an egalitarian impulse to prevent successful, brave, or clever individuals from standing out, usually camouflaged as a lofty mission to eliminate patronage and elitism. One of the merits of McCreery's The Order of Canada is...

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