In Bed with an Elephant

Using archival film footage, this hour-long documentary provides a gripping retrospective of United States-Canada relationships as personified by successive presidents and prime ministers. It becomes quite clear that our prime ministers, from John A. Macdonald down, have started their tenures on a sort of first-things-first basis by making overtures to their American counterparts. Attitudes and outcomes have varied widely, and this is what intrigues when seen in close-up. The almost comic antipathy between Kennedy and Diefenbaker, for instance, is as palpable here as is the folksy camaraderie of Reagan and Mulroney. Part four of the series Reckoning: The Political Economy of Canada.