Geoff Meggs

Dave Barrett was the 26th Premier of British Columbia, serving from 1972 to 1975. With a premiership that lasted only three years, and sandwiched between the cumulative thirty-one year reign of the Bennett dynasty, it's easy to write off Barrett's term as a fluke, an anomaly, a flash-in-the-pan. Indeed, that was more-or-less the initial impression and assessment of Barrett's term among pundits and scholars; a book on the brief premiership written in the late 70s portrayed it as chaotic and, ultimately, a failure.

But Barrett's programs and reforms proved resilient— surviving, largely unchanged, through a succession of conservative premiers— which has lead to a gradual reassessment of Barrett. The Art of the Impossible (TAOTI) is the first history of the Barrett years to look at it in hindsight, and truly assess his legacy. With this book, Geoff Meggs and Rod Mickleburgh seek to put a modern view of Barrett into an accessible, digestible form.

TAOTI is broken into twelve chapters, ten of which are focused on initiatives and reforms undertaken by the government (the other two are on election campaigns). These ten chapters are an eye-opening and eye-popping read, as the sheer magnitude of the Barrett government becomes apparent. So many of modern-day British Columbia's programs, policies and institutions were his creations, such as: ICBC; the labour code and Labour Relations Board; Agricultural Land Reserve; preservation and protection of parks, including the Cypress Bowl. It's hard to believe, also, that it wasn't until Barrett that the legislature had things as essential as transcriptions of debates or provided staff for MLAs (or even the very idea that being an MLA was a full-time job!). And those are just the major initiatives; the book includes a four-page, 97-point list (!) of accomplishments at the back. TAOTI illuminates that the Barrett government truly was— as Barret supposedly put it— "here for a good time, not a long time"; it was perhaps the most transformative government Canada has ever seen, before or since.

Yet, despite how it may sound, TAOTI is not revisionist history. While Meggs and Mickleburgh are clearly admirers of Barrett, they are not uncritical; indeed, they agree that Barrett's government was chaotic, as ministries acted without co-ordination and backbenchers frequently criticized their own party. Barrett himself is shown as something of a bold visionary, but who had a stubborn streak that regularly made him stumble into problems of his own making— entire scandals resulted purely from Barrett's refusal to own up or back down. They write with an even touch, and never feel like they're in his corner nor have any particular axe to grind.

The book itself is very readable, being informative and dense yet moving at a brisk pace. This owes to two aspects. First, TAOTI is concerned only with Barrett's time in office and his government as a whole instead of delving the man himself; similarly, issues of party politics or public perception are glossed over, only covered when contextually relevant. This keeps the book focused and interesting, instead of getting lost in trying to cover every aspect of the era. Second, instead of moving in a strict chronological order, each chapter is dedicated to a particular reform and the personalities involved, and follows them from beginning to end. Given the sheer speed of the Barrett government— with new, groundbreaking legislation introduced so often it was dubbed "legislation by thunderbolt"— a chronological undertaking would be impossible to keep straight; focusing on them one at a time helps keep it straight.

I also found the writing to have a certain meta-narrative wrinkle. Just as each ministry acted independently, with minimal co-ordination, so too do we read about them one after the other. And just as Barrett's government was noted for its quick pace, so too is the book chronicling it. This is likely unintentional; but it does, I think, add something.

All in all, a worthy addition to any Canadian history bookshelf.… (meer)