Politically Incorrect

Author: Mair, Rafe
Publisher: Watershed Sentinel Books, Comox, Canada
Year Published: 2017
Pages: 169 pp including Index, Foreword by Mark Hume
ISBN: 978-0-9953286-2-4
Softcover | $20 $14 CAD

As a politician, broadcaster, advocate and speaker of truth to power, Rafe Mair was crucial to the public conversation in BC and forever altered the course of Canadian politics.

His eleventh and last book, Politically Incorrect is part memoir, part history, part constitutional analysis and part pure Rafe – on federation, BC’s role, the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, how Canada’s “responsible government” undermines democracy, and what to do about it – the “Mair Solution”

Sadly, Mair passed away on Thanksgiving day while the book was at the printers. His wife Wendy Conway-Mair recalls his last months spent working on the book: “As Rafe lamented this past summer, ‘this is my last kick at the can!’ so with blood, sweat and tears he wrote, researched and edited, to leave this legacy for future generations…. I think he hoped that with the completion of this book he could rest somewhat in peace.”

To order:

Canada: $20 $14 + $6 shipping
USA and International: $20 $14 CAD + $15 shipping
Bookstore and library discounts available. Contact: orders@watershedsentinel.ca

Pay by cheque: download this order form and mail to:

Watershed Sentinel Books
PO Box 1270, Comox, BC
V9M 7Z8
Canada

Order by phone: 250-339-6117

Mair’s August 2017 blog post announcing the book

Read an excerpt from the book on the Tyee: Mair on Media’s ‘Unholiest of Alliances’ With Energy Industry | In new book Politically Incorrect, the late Rafe Mair dissects democracy’s decline.

What people are saying…

“Our system is neither democratic nor responsible, but rather a dictatorship of the Prime Minister with the elected MPs utterly irrelevant,” Mair wrote at the intro of his explosive little tract from 2017, Politically Incorrect: How Canada Lost it’s Way and the Simple Path Home.

…The cantankerous journalist (God bless his soul) supplied testimony of legislative powerlessness from former MPs, which I won’t depress you with. Where I differ from Mair is his choice of words; he insisted we live in a “dictatorship of the PM,” but I prefer the less rhetorically charged “virtual democracy.”

— Geoff Olson, Bastards and bodhisattvas – from high hopes to high office, Common Ground, May 8 2019,

“In a well reasoned and sharply argued work, Rafe Mair shows us that the prerogatives of the voter have been usurped by those who control the political parties. They in turn are most responsive to powerful economic and ideological lobbies. As this system plays itself out, the particular regional interests of a province like British Columbia are likely to get ignored or distorted by those in control at a national level. If you want to know what is politically ailing you and what you might want to do about it, the best thing you can do is pay attention to what Rafe Mair has to say.”

— Dr. Lawrence Davidson, professor emeritus of history at West Chester University, PA, USA.

“Rafe Mair is [a] happy warrior, cheerfully tossing and goring pomposity, falsehood and greed wherever he finds them….

“Rafe thinks this book is about British Columbia. Well, yes, it is. But it’s also a book about Canada by a great citizen whose particular service to the body politic is to toss it and gore it. And that’s exactly what it needs.”

— Silver Donald Cameron, Host and Executive Producer of TheGreenInterview.com, author of Warrior Lawyers

“The Indigenous People(s) of BC greatly valued Rafe’s political support, given his stature and prominence in the political discourse concerning the major Indigenous land and human rights and environmental issues confronting First Nations in BC…. We shall greatly miss his powerful, principled and uncompromising voice on the battlegrounds of public debate and public opinion.”

— Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

“Rafe Mair has been the voice of reason and liberalism in British Columbia. Like the Athenian Demosthenes, Rafe is the guardian of democracy who employs his gift of oratory in print to think of how representative government should be and to warn us when it fails.”

— Dr. André Gerolymatos, board member, Canadian Advisory Council on National Security.

“Rafe has never pulled a punch anywhere in his long career in the public arenas. At times fearsome cajoling and always articulate, he chased after the truth daily. And he still does.”

— George Orr, former CBC TV news producer and journalism instructor.