Author Description

Before the GST and before Free Trade, Brian Mulroney was a small-town boy who announced at age nineteen that he would one day be Prime Minister. This is his story. Growing up in the remote company town of Baie-Comeau, Mulroney was immersed in Québécois culture, in a close-knit community with an enduring social order and spirit of self-help. A hardworking electrician's son, he wanted to be "the guy who makes things happen." Mulroney pursued that goal through a meteoric career as a labour lawyer, an unswerving partisan for the Conservative cause in Quebec, the president of a major corporation. In 1984, equipped with a deep understanding of Quebec, a small-town sense of social compassion, and skill as a negotiator and businessman, he was ready to take on the nation. Informed by interviews with Mulroney, his aides and enemies, Brian Mulroney: The Boy from Baie Comeau is a remarkable portrait of the political ascent of one of Canada's most controversial Prime Ministers.