Direct Intervention recounts the political and diplomatic relationship between Canada and France at a critical juncture in Canada's history. As a Minister in the Canadian Embassy in Paris, Eldon Black witnessed a range of fateful events - from visits (successful and unsuccessful) of ministers and prime ministers between Ottawa, Quebec City and Paris, to meetings at the Elysée palace, and exchanges of a myriad of telegrams, notes and other diplomatic correspondence.

This well-researched account of French interference in Canadian constitutional and federal-provincial affairs includes criticism of Quebec's involvement, and of how Embassy staff in Paris and the Canadian government in Ottawa strove to control and normalize relations among the contending parties. Central to the national unity debate of the day, the ensuing diplomatic wrangles and political conflicts have a curiously contemporary ring, even reverberating into Canada's future.