Volume 2 describes the period 1885-1921 as one of economic expansion - sustained by the Great War - in which there was a great wave of social reform connected with industrialization and urbanization. The next period, 1921-1945 - which includes the Great Depression and the Second World War -is characterized by what Stephen Leacock called 'The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice.' The war itself brought national sovereignty to Canada and gave birth to the welfare state. The growth and affluence that followed, along with striking changes in lifestyles and headlong developments in thearts, are described for the period 1945-1972. The 1970s to the present, when all the givens of the past - Liberalism, centralism, and nationalism - were attacked from several directions and began to unravel, are brilliantly surveyed by Bumsted, who inevitably concludes his study before theresolution of the most profound crisis in the history of the country.