The other day I was noting the discomfort some American historians have about the unending flood of biographies of their Founding Fathers, to the exclusion of much else. By contrast, there has never been a scholarly biography of, fr'instance, the confederation politician and second prime minister of Canada Alexander Mackenzie. (Closest thing, published 1960)
It is only a YouTube of speaker's notes, but with its wealth of documentation, it shows what an opportunity there could be for a scholar, not to praise, necessarily, but surely to ponder what the Mackenzie government suggests about how Canada might have developed if George Brown's expectation of a succession of progressive federal governments post-confederation had not run into John A Macdonald. Supreme Court, secret ballot, electoral reforms, vigorous assertion of Canadian independence, hmmm.
