In this book, Katherine Fierlbeck looks at the legacy of ideas taken from (or shaped in reaction to) the nations that have been most influential to Canada's development: the United Kingdom and the United States.

This book corrects an imbalance in Canadian political literature through offering a conservative account of Canadian political thought. Across 15 chronologically organized chapters, and with a mixture of established and rising scholars, the book offers an investigation of the defining features and characteristics of Canadian conservative political thought, asking what have Canadian conservative political thinkers and practitioners learned from other traditions and, in turn, what have they contributed to our understanding of conservative political thought today? Rather than its culmination, Canadian Conservative Political Thought will be the beginning of conservative political thought’s recovery and will spark debates and future research. The book will be a great resource for courses on Canadian politics, history, political philosophy and conservatism, Canadian Studies, and political theory.

Compared to the United States, it is assumed that religion has not been a significant factor in Canada’s political development. In God’s Province, Clark Banack challenges this assumption, showing that, in Alberta, religious motivation has played a vital role in shaping its political trajectory. For Henry Wise Wood, president of the United Farmers of Alberta from 1916 until 1931, William "Bible Bill" Aberhart, founder of the Alberta Social Credit Party and premier from 1935 until 1943, Aberhart’s protégé Ernest Manning, Alberta’s longest serving premier (1943–1968), and Manning’s son Preston, founder of the Alberta-based federal Reform Party of Canada, religion was central to their thinking about human agency, the purpose of politics, the role of the state, the nature of the economy, and the proper duties of citizens. Drawing on substantial archival research and in-depth interviews, God’s Province highlights the strong link that exists between the religiously inspired political thought and action of these formative leaders, the US evangelical Protestant tradition from which they drew, and the emergence of an individualistic, populist, and anti-statist sentiment in Alberta that is largely unfamiliar to the rest of Canada. Covering nearly a century of Alberta’s history, Banack offers an illuminating reconsideration of the political thought of these leaders, the goals of the movements they led, and the roots of Alberta’s distinctiveness within Canada. A fusion of religious history, intellectual history, and political thought, God’s Province exposes the ways in which individual politicians have shaped one province’s political culture.

In 1892, Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley donated the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup – later known as the Stanley Cup – to crown the first Canadian hockey champions. Canada’s Holy Grail documents Lord Stanley’s personal politics, his desire to affect Canadian nationality and unity, and the larger transformations in Anglo-liberal political thought at the time. This book posits that the Stanley Cup fit directly within Anglo-American traditions of using sport to promote ideas of the national, and the donation of the cup occurred at a moment in history when Canadian nationalists needed identifying symbols. Jordan B. Goldstein asserts that only with a transformation in Anglo-liberal thought could the state legitimately act through culture to affect national identity. Drawing on primary source documentation from Lord Stanley’s archives, as well as statements by politicians and hockey enthusiasts, Canada’s Holy Grail integrates political thought into the realm of sport history through the discussion of a championship trophy that still stands as one of the most well-known and recognized Canadian national symbols.