Bøger af J. Patrick Boyer

This colourful story of one town's library provides material enough for a movie as it reveals universal patterns about love of reading and battles for books while librarians, politicians, architects, educators, philanthropists, and avid book readers mix it up for more than century.

The story of a formidable campaign organization - "the Big Blue Machine" - that ran a string of successful Progressive Conservative Party campaigns in a several provinces over four decades. Devoted to the art of winning campaigns, it pioneered new techniques in polling, advertising, fundraising, communications, and policy development.

In this timely book, Patrick Boyer examines the important role that direct democracy - through the occasional use of referendums, plebiscites, and initiatives - can play in concert with our existing institutions of representative democracy.

J. Patrick Boyer draws together new patterns that help explain why Canadians who care deeply about our country nevertheless feel perplexed, angered, and even embarrassed by the way we now govern ourselves. Since the late 1700s "representative government" has been part of our Canadian birthright, and since the 1800s "responsible government" has additionally been a constitutional foundation of our country. That the forms of both endure, but not their substance, is the thesis of Boyer¿s book. The result? An absence of accountability in Canadian government. Most of our country¿s pressing concerns and complex problems - from regional economic disparities to the Quebec and Western Canadian separatist movements, from tax evasion to voter apathy - can be traced back to this fundamental lack of accountability. A citizen who understands this absence sees that it makes sense to step back from a dysfunctional system. Making this accountability connection is critical, Boyer concludes, because only when we clearly understand the root cause of the problems we face as a nation can we begin to develop workable, long-term solutions.

Quiet Isaac Jelfs led many hard lives, his escape from each wrapped in deep secrecy. In 1869 he reached Toronto and started his new life with his new wife and his new name. His great-grandson follows that journey, revealing Jelfs' well-hidden tracks and the reasons for his double life.

World leaders addressing the House of Commons show us Canada through foreign eyes, in light of Canada's maturing role in world affairs. Foreign Voices in the House gathers, for the first time, sixty landmark speeches by world leaders and luminaries, with photos and background written by parliamentary veteran J. Patrick Boyer.

Rocked by extremely public scandals at the highest levels of power, the Canadian Senate is an institution on the defensive. As the upper chamber starts to look more and more like a comfortable private club for has-beens, the real scandal is that the Senate exists at all.