Promised land: Inside the Mike Harris revolution

by John Ibbitson

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction

294 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

John Ibbitson (born 1955 in Gravenhurst, Ontario) is a Canadian writer and journalist. He is currently Ottawa Bureau Chief for The Globe and Mail. He has written three books on Ontario and Canadian politics - Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution (1997), Loyal No More: Ontario's Struggle for a Separate Destiny, and The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream (McClelland & Stewart, 2005).

His latest young-adult novel, "The Landing," was winner of the 2008 Governor General's Award for children's literature. His latest political work, "Open & Shut: Why America Has Barack Obama and Canada Has Stephen Harper" was published in May 2009. It was written while he was in Washington, covering American politics and society for the Globe.

He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1979 with a B.A. in English. After university, he pursued a career as a playwright, his most notable play being Mayonnaise, which debuted in December 1980 at the Phoenix Theater in Toronto. The play went on to national production and was adapted to a TV broadcast in 1983. In the mid-1980s, Ibbitson switched over to writing young-adult fiction, including the short YA science-fiction novel, Starcrosser (1990). He also wrote two full-length novels, 1812: Jeremy's War and The Night Hazel Came to Town. "The Landing" followed in 2008.

Apart from his Governor-General's citation, Ibbitson has been nominated for several awards for other works, including a Governor General's Award nomination for 1812. Hazel received a nomination for the Trillium Book Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. His journalism has also been nominated for a National Newspaper Award.

Ibbitson entered the University of Western Ontario in 1987, graduating with an M.A. in journalism one year later, and joined the Ottawa Citizen, where he worked as a city reporter and columnist. He covered Ontario politics from 1995 to 2001, working for The Ottawa Citizen, Southam News, The National Post and the Globe and Mail. In August 2001, Ibbitson accepted the post as Washington bureau chief at The Globe and Mail, returning to Canada one year later to take up the post of political affairs columnist. He moved back to Washington as a columnist in May 2007, returning to Ottawa in September 2009.

Reviews

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written in 1997, two years into the first mandate of Mike Harris’ Progressive Conservative provincial government. I will state my own bias at the outset. I am a long time supporter of the Liberal Party at both the federal and provincial levels. I was and remain opposed to the majority of reforms implemented by the Harris government. That being said this is an outstanding book. It details how Mike Harris and his team of young advisers changed the Progressive Conservative party of Ontario from the Canadian Tory tradition of Bill Davis, Leslie Frost and Robert Stanfield to the neoliberal policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Interestingly, this book, written in 1997, uses the term “neoconservative” to describe policies of tax cuts, service cuts and privatization. Nowadays, the term “neoliberal” is typically used to describe these types of policies).
The author, political columnist John Ibbitson, is largely sympathetic with the aims of the Harris government and it’s “Common Sense Revolution” policy platform for the 1995 Ontario election. He does an outstanding job in describing all of the transformative changes that the Conservatives implemented in their first two years in office. Ibbitson, who has won a Governor's General Literary Prize for his Young Adult fiction, is an excellent writer and is able to make often dry matters related to public policy engaging to the general reader.