Before the GST and before Free Trade, Brian Mulroney was a small-town boy who announced at age nineteen that he would one day be Prime Minister. This is his story.

Growing up in the remote company town of Baie-Comeau, Mulroney was immersed in Québécois culture, in a close-knit community with an enduring social order and spirit of self-help. A hardworking electrician's son, he wanted to be "the guy who makes things happen." Mulroney pursued that goal through a meteoric career as a labour lawyer, an unswerving partisan for the Conservative cause in Quebec, the president of a major corporation. In 1984, equipped with a deep understanding of Quebec, a small-town sense of social compassion, and skill as a negotiator and businessman, he was ready to take on the nation.

Informed by interviews with Mulroney, his aides and enemies, Brian Mulroney: The Boy from Baie Comeau is a remarkable portrait of the political ascent of one of Canada's most controversial Prime Ministers.

RAE MURPHY is a retired professor of Canadian studies at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario.

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NICK AUF DER MAUR was a legendary Montreal journalist and politican. He died in 1998.

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ROBERT CHODOS is an experienced author and translator who has published widely in the fields of Canadian business, politics, and transportation and of Quebec history. Among his most recent books are The Unmaking of Canada (1991), Lost in Cyberspace? (1997), and Paul Martin: A Political Biography (1998), all co-written with Rae Murphy and Eric Hamovitch, and all published by Lorimer.

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