Questions of Order: Confederation and the Making of Modern Canada

"Questions of Order is a nineteenth-century scrapbook of the land we left behind. Price is an enthusiastic chronicler. He guides readers through a time capsule of an era so different from ours Canada Day would be unrecognizable to the Fathers of Confederation."

Holly Doan, Blacklock’s Reporter

"Price delivers admirably. His book is a detailed exploration of how certain individuals (mostly highly educated and articulate) wrote about this new thing called the Dominion of Canada. He does a wonderful job digging into the magazines and books that were published in the decades after Confederation; Questions of Order essentially follows a nineteenth-century version of a scholarly Twitter debate, although, as was fitting for its age, the debate was long and drawn-out."

Christopher Dummitt, Trent University, Literary Review of Canada

"Price has advanced the discussion, producing a focused and readable study of the many ways that English Canadian thinkers struggled with the meaning of Confederation."

Steve Penfold, University of Toronto Press, Early Canadian History

"This is a fascinating and original intellectual history of the making of Canada in the first four decades of Confederation. It breaks new ground in the understanding of nation and nationalism in Canada, a subject that some might have thought was exhausted. The result is the most interesting work of Canadian history that I’ve read in some time."

Kenneth C. Dewar, Mount Saint Vincent University

"In Questions of Order, Peter Price presents modern Canada not as something that was brought into being as a fully formed nation-state in 1867, but as the end result of a decades-long process of political and identitarian discussion. By doing so, he invites historians to reconsider their assumptions about Confederation and the new Dominion. With sound and up-to-date scholarship, Price makes an excellent and original contribution to Canadian historiography."

Michel Ducharme, University of British Columbia