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OK, first of all, up front: Stockwell Day's political views are not mine. However, I have made every attempt in this review to be fair, and to review the book itself and not the man.
For those of you who don't know, Stockwell Day is the current leader of the Canadian Alliance party (the most right-wing of the major Canadian political parties). He is also, by virtue of his party's second-place finish in the last federal election, the leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons. However, Stockwell Day: His Life and Times was written almost a year ago, during the campaign for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance, and thus the recent federal election campaign is not included in it.
Hoy has given us a fairly comprehensive overview of Day's life, beginning with his childhood, and covering right up to just before Day's election as leader of the Canadian Alliance. In particular, Hoy presents a detailed overview of Day's activities as a member of the Alberta Government, where Day served for over a decade, his most important position being that of provincial treasurer. Most of his legislative and policy initiatives are listed, although more discussion of these initiatives would have been nice.
There are a couple of problems with this book. First of all, at the time when the book was written (and, to be honest, still even now), Day had done little worthy of a full-length political biography. A successful career in Alberta government in the 80s and 90s is not the stuff of electrifying reading. However, as Hoy seems to have been intending his book as background information for those seeking to know more about Day, this is not a major problem; it just means that the book is a bit dull.
Far more serious is Hoy's obvious and persistent bias in favour of his subject. I do not mean by this that he is merely favourably inclined towards Day; the book all too often lurches away from biography and into the realm of hagiography. Without any question Day has many admirable traits, but when Hoy greets practically every instance of criticism of Day (and Stockwell Day has had his share of criticism) with an attack on the critic, it begins to look like he has something to hide. Hoy also takes runs at Day's political opponents, especially in the section concerning the then-ongoing leadership contest, where the book begins to read almost like campaign literature. This lack of objectivity is a various serious flaw, not to mention extremely irritating; when the praise is as lavish and unending as it is in this book, it serves merely to insult the intelligence of the reader.
Thus, to sum up, Stockwell Day: His Life and Politics is a not-terribly-thrilling, excruciatingly biased piece of work. However, it is thorough, and, even though it is now a tad out-of-date, it can serve as a valuable source of background information for those interested in the on-going political career of Stockwell Day.
Reviewed by Patrick Conway on February 6, 2001. Photograph from the Canadian Alliance website.
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