Last month, John Fraser published a book about Canada’s governors general. It’s a topic that seems so preposterously dull that even Fraser’s own publisher said, “Better you sell me a book on the softwood lumber industry.” But what Fraser eventually turned in—twelve “personal and undoubtedly arbitrary” portraits of the various crackpots and savants who have held the post since 1952—is a delight and, with Louise Arbour’s appointment last week, timely to boot.
Arbour is one of the country’s most famous legal minds. A former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, she served as chief…
