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downplaying narrow bilateral trade and commercial issues while Canada does the reverse, the nuances of psychological and cultural differences take on a salience to partnership that both countries sometimes find difficult to manage; nevertheless, these nuances become imprecise barometers of the state of the relationship. Turning to history, Reginald C. Stuart outlines some of the very earliest origins of bilateral cultural similarity and divergence in British North America. John Herd Thompson revisits the phenomenon of ambivalence that so often characterizes the political, economic, and social cultures of the two countries. Kim Richard Nossal examines a number of specific political actions taken by elected leaders, focusing on differing attitudes and approaches taken by both sides that often generate policy clashes with disheartening consequences for the relationship. In the same vein, Brian Bow takes on the many tensions arising from geographical proximity between two asymmetrical but similar cultures. And finally, Pierre Martin and Louis Balthazar separately examine Québec as a unique and distinct component of partnership.
New Challenges to Partnership (NC)
Finally, this volume adds a fourth dimension to Doran’s three, a dimension that reflects a shift of issues in Canada-U.S. relations toward domains that were not as prominent when Forgotten Partnership was published 25 years ago. The environment has long held a prominent place in Canada-U.S. relations, since at latest the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, but public awareness of global climate change has altered the public policy debate and is shaping the future of partnership. Moreover, the growing prominence of subfederal actors in the Canada-U.S. relationship has grown with deeper continental integration. And of course, the prominence of those subfederal actors has been joined and influenced by Mexico as an additional participant in a broader, trilateral partnership. To these issues have been added debates over the direction of institutional development in North America, raising the question whether partnership remains a viable paradigm for understanding Canada-U.S. relations or should be adapted to reflect trilateral realities.