Where is Canada going in the next half-century? Have her people a sense of purpose for themselves or their country in the dangerous excitements of the affluent society and the nuclear age?
A number of writers well known for their articles and books on the Canadian cultural, social, and political sense come together here to take up these vital questions. Their concern has been to reveal the purposeless, the mediocre, the inequitable beneath the glitter of our prosperity and to issue a challenge to all Canadians to become fully alive as individuals and as citizens to both the dangers and the potentialities of the post-Hiroshima world. This book is social criticism at its best—alert, authoritative, urgent.
This common concern brought the authors together in the planning of an unusual book. The finished work shows that they share a left-of-centre viewpoint; it also shows that they write as individuals. The essays, it is confidently predicted, will be found greatly stimulating for the high quality of their analysis by serious readers of all persuasions who are concerned about the Canadian society.

Michael Oliver is the author of two monographs on the poet Alden Nowlan, and of a number of creative and critical writings that have appeared in various journals and anthologies. His latest book is a novella called The Final Cause of Love (Poietikos Editions) and he has recently finished writing a suite of twenty-five poems entitled The Poet Orpheus. Oliver knew Kay Smith when he was teaching at UNBSJ, and once shared a poetry reading with her at the New Brunswick Museum-an experience he vividly remembers for the brilliance of her subtle poems and the gracious manner of her reading.

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