By Ron Dart

Synopsis:

A significant struggle began in the year 1776 over the fate of a continent, and there are those who believe that this struggle ended in the year 1783, with the ancient ways of the Old World being given over entirely to those of a New. Is it true, however, that the end of what has been called ‘The First American Civil War’ saw the complete victory of the republican way, and the banishment of the older Tory tradition from these shores? The North American High Tory Tradition tells another story, one in which a different vision for life in North America emerges from the cold of the True North where its flame has been kept burning until the present day. George Grant (1918-1988), the most influential High Tory intellectual of the 20th century, warned us in his Lament for a Nation of the collision course which lies ahead for these two different ‘North Americas’–that embodied in the Dominion of the North, and that in the Republic to its South. Is the disappearance of the Tory alternative an inevitable fate to our future as ‘North Americans’? In The North American High Tory Tradition Ron Dart shines light upon the classical lineage, deep wisdom and enduring nature of the High Tory tradition as it has been planted and grown in the soil of North America, and in doing so reveals how Canada may serve as a north star to lead North Americans to a different destiny than that planned for them by a certain few in 1776.

About the Author:

Professor Ron Dart has taught in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, British Columbia, since 1990. He was on staff with Amnesty International in the 1980s. He is the political science advisor to the Stephen Leacock Home and Museum, and serves on the boards of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada and the Society of Archbishop Secker. He has published more than thirty books, served as an editor for The Anglican Catholic, The Friend: The High Tory Review and Anglican Tradition journals and has contributed poems, articles and reviews to a wide range of publications in both North America and the United Kingdom. Ron Dart is a leading authority on the North American High-Red Tory religio-political tradition.

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