Hurtig, Mel
Nationalist, Anti-American, Anti-poverty author, Anti-Globalism Warrior. Hurtig brought us the Canadian Encyclopaedia a few years ago, for which we ought to be more grateful than we are. Because Hurtig’s upper middle-class priggery too often convinces him that the upper middle class spendour he enjoys constitutes everyone else’s reality, and that choosing to buy a Saab instead of a Buick is a serious blow against American cultural imperialism (and that he has a sacred obligation to share such insights with Canadians who drive Honda Civics and Chevy Cavaliers), we aren’t grateful at all. Hurtig’s chronically too-certain judgments have ensured that the string of political entities he has mounted over the years have the political appeal of a tea-sipping gathering of tenured professors talking retirement in Toronto’s Rosedale.