“The US, for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defence, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that.”

— Robertson Davies

Literature in a Country Without a Mythology (1988).

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Robertson Davies 282

Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and nov… 1913–1995

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