“Going my way?" asked John Turner’s campaign brochure in 1962, “my way is the Liberal way." It was, that is, until Pierre Trudeau came to power. Turner was his party’s star apprentice in the Liberal art of managing a heterogeneous nation through brokerage politics, but in the 1968 election Canadians opted instead for a newly minted celebrity leader for a re-imagined nation. Turner played a key role in the Trudeau cabinet as a reform-minded minister of justice and as a highly effective minister of finance during difficult economic times. Universally acknowledged as the heir apparent, he rocked the Liberal party by resigning in 1975. As a private citizen Turner became a mythical figure, a prince in exile whose return would redeem Canadian politics. When he did come back in 1984, winning the Liberal leadership and becoming prime minister, image problems quickly burst the myth, contributing to his party’s catastrophic loss in that year’s federal election. Turner later fought a glorious campaign to preserve Canada’s independence in the 1988 free trade election, only to be brought down by Tory tactics that impugned his motives and character. A political biography extraordinaire, Elusive Destiny reveals the inner workings of the Liberal Party in its heyday as charted through the meteoric rise and fall of John Napier Turner. It highlights Turner’s vision for the country and tallies the political price he paid when he deviated from the Trudeau legacy on matters such as language rights, social spending, and Quebec. It also provides a new perspective on federal politics from the 1960s through the 1980s while giving John Turner his rightful place in Canadian history. | Elusive Destiny by Paul Litt, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters