Straight From the Heart Is a very enjoyable and straightforward Autobiography on 'then' soon to be prime minister Jean Chrétien.
A fair bit of the book is dedicated to the issue of the Quebec question. And rather or not the separation of this province when the rest of Canada was not only possible but if it should be done. Which is kind of strange to think about giving that they had one of the biggest votes on that issue during Jean's time as leader of the country.
It almost sounds counter addictive to his other major statement in the book which is the strength and solvency of the Canadian Nation both in how it's wishing to get away from the influences of Great Britain which ironically were almost finalised during the days of Perry Trudeau and stopping themselves from becoming integrated with the United States. A point that Jean is very adamant on.
There's also a lot of bad-mouthing of corporate entities both Canadian, American and anyone else who wants to use greedy manipulation to try and screw is many people out of money is humanly possible. In fact there's a lot in this book that goes on and on about the problems of capitalism that I've seen a lot of people claiming of only even talked about today.
But that's only if you're focusing on the key issues of the book. Most of the other writing is just how he's career advance from one section to the next. From working in the Canadian Revenue to moving on to Indian Affairs* before finally making his way into the finance sector we had to play a balancing act between the party officials of Canada's primary political organisations the private sector and its corporate lackeys and then somehow finding a way to make either one of those work with the increasingly stubborn and headstrong bureaucrats who somehow able to keep this country going.
Jean Chrétien also spend a lot of time talking about his relationship with Perry Trudeau.
Mainly and how the two works together the meeting of each other back in the early days as part of the liberal party and they're friendly but business-like attitude towards their job.
The only thing I can see against Jean's writing in this how it kind of makes Parry Sound like a bit of a doormat.
Jean says he wants to do something and Trudeau decides to go along with him. But the two of them only having one major confrontation in the book somewhere towards the end when Chrétien wants to run for prime minister himself. Which ultimately hadn't worked out at the time due to a difference in Party politics but it becomes irrelevant as you know that years later he'll end up becoming prime minister regardless.
Really that might be the most interesting thing about the book at this point. It's less intriguing information about a man and More Time Capsule where that guy wasn't his life. It works through various administrations in the Canadian government tried running for prime minister and ultimately failed. Only then to be left with the message of I did my best I brought many positive changes to Canada and I helped keep cool back from separating from Canada. But now we know that he went on to do even more. It's like watching the first alien movie and thinking oh boy I got away from The Monster at the End not knowing that you're about to have an entire film Trilogy of monster alien freaks.
The Canadian Parliament and Xenomorphs... Yeah that sounds about right.
And is it just me or does Jean run against other liberals every time it becomes prime minister.
It's very rare that I hear about him having to put up with strong conservative opposition. Oh for sure it's there as he lost out to a few of them before they ever became prime minister. But the other big guy ended up running against later on was Paul Martin another liberal.
This was a really great book but trying to write about it after the fact is just proving to be a real pain in the butt. I hate writing about books. I love to read them but I just can't get my mind straight when trying to rethink about them. Especially in a case of an autobiography I don't want to say something incorrect about a man's life.
Like so many other books I've read I may have to come back and re-evaluate how I'm looking at this one. I'm sure there's a million things will come to my mind once I finish writing these little sentences out.
It is kind of funny to read a book where Jean tries to get along with everybody. Or implies that he has a pretty neutral if not friendly relationship with everybody. Given just how much of a Hardline Man he could be. The guy fought with everybody at some point. And today is more famous for choking some random protester than he is just about anything else.
At least in the popular opinion. I'm pretty sure his work with the Indigenous peoples back in 1982 will trump that but, who knows.
*Now it's known as indigenous Affairs. A lot of people would like to point to political correctness as a big reason for the name change but I think a bigger reason would come down to the treaties. All of the old treaties made with various peoples would have done under the name Indian. Thank you Columbus for that blunder. But the point remains if you change the name you could see a bunch of lawyers then saying maybe we don't have to commit to these treaties anymore if we're acknowledging the name change I have no proof on any of that it just seems like the kind of weird loophole you'd expect to see out of higher tier legality.
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