Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
Observatory, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, 315 Bloor St West, Toronto, ON M5S 0A7
View Larger Map ›
Please join McGill-Queen's University Press and U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs in celebrating the launch of Thumper: The Memoirs of the Honourable Donald S. Macdonald, co-written by Rod McQueen.
This event will be held in the library of the Munk School Observatory.
"At a certain point in our lives we are left only with our close relationships and our clear recollections." So begins Thumper: The Memoirs of the Honourable Donald S. Macdonald.
An early supporter of Pierre Trudeau for the Liberal Party leadership, Donald Macdonald has had a career in public life spanning four decades that included posts as House leader, minister of national defence, minister of energy, and minister of finance. He chaired the landmark Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which led to free trade between Canada and the United States, and as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom he conferred with Margaret Thatcher and dined with Queen Elizabeth II.
Drawing on extensive archival resources and contemporaneous personal diaries, Macdonald insightfully details his friendship with Trudeau, fascinating encounters with world leaders, and personal revelations about the October Crisis. In this behind-the-scenes account of the business of governing, he also describes high-stakes disputes with Alberta over soaring energy prices, the real story behind the resignation of John Turner as finance minister, and the decisive action taken against inflation using wage and price controls.
Interlaced with anecdotes that reveal Macdonald's self-effacing good-nature, Thumper is a riveting memoir written with humility and candour, recalling an exceptional period in Canadian politics.