In High Places Book Summary
The novel is set during a fictional crisis of the Cold War. The characters are presented as attempting to lead Canada as the country faces the imminent threat of thermonuclear war.
James McCallum Howden is portrayed as Canada's Prime Minister, the leader of an unnamed party. The Howden government possesses a rocky, unstable majority in Canada's Parliament. Howden's political struggles are shown in counterpoint with the mingled strength and troubled feelings that he gets from his marriage. He and his wife Margaret are depicted as having a pleasant, passionless relationship, with the politician troubled by guilt over the memories of a past extramarital affair with his assistant, Milly Freedeman. Despite this misstep, Howden is portrayed as a sympathetic character.
Three main storylines are intermingled in the novel, with the characters involved crossing paths at one point or another and influencing each other's lives indirectly through third parties or by feeling the consequences of each other's action. The first storyline follows James Howden and the people from his immediate surroundings' interactions at work or personal affairs, such as the development of a romance between Howden's right-hand man Brian Richardson and Milly Freedeman, the second one describes a seemingly completely unrelated event on the other side of the country in Vancouver, BC, involving an illegal immigrant and his lawyer's attempts to gain him admission in the country, and the third deals with the imminent threat from a nuclear war and the diplomatic events set into motion between Canada and the United States as a result of their efforts to coordinate their defense against the Soviet Union and its satellite states.
During the course of the novel, it becomes increasingly clear that Howden's premiership is gravely threatened by the consequences of an amoral political pact that Howden was forced to make with erstwhile ally Harvey Warrender in order to gain the party leadership. The deteriorating relationship between Howden and Warrender forms one of the key plot movements of the novel. Another major plot element is the destabilization of the internal political situation in the country as a result of a PR campaign led by the opposition centering on the case of the illegal immigrant involved in a court case in British Columbia. While Howden successfully negotiates the treaty with the U.S. that guarantees Canada's survival at the end of the future war and the threat from his former political ally is eliminated by Richardson, Howden still faces the prospect of losing the approaching election and descending from power as a result from his actions in the immigration case. The novel ends on a cliffhanger, with Howden preparing to give a speech in the House of Parliament about the future treaty with the U.S. that could change North America's political map forever.
Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suffer exile, but sometimes social entities like institutions are forced from their homeland.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats. Building on the earlier Page Act of 1875, which banned Chinese women from migrating to the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the only law ever implemented to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States.
Arthur Frederick Hailey, AE was a British-Canadian novelist whose plot-driven storylines were set against the backdrops of various industries. His books, which include such best sellers as Hotel (1965), Airport (1968), Wheels (1971), The Moneychangers (1975), and Overload (1979), have sold 170 million copies in 38 languages.
The libertarian perspective on immigration is often regarded as one of the core concepts of libertarian theory and philosophy. There is considerable disagreement among libertarians as to what stance towards immigration best accords with libertarian principles. Some hold that restrictions on immigration are an infringement of the rights of immigrants and other property owners and constitute a threat to individual liberty. Others maintain that open borders amount to a policy of forced integration on the part of the state, and that protecting the rights of property holders requires that present governments adopt much more discriminatory policies on who is allowed to enter a country.
Wheels (1971) is a novel by Arthur Hailey, concerning the automobile industry and the day-to-day pressures involved in its operation.
Marchmont is a mainly residential area of Edinburgh, Scotland. It lies roughly one mile to the south of the Old Town, separated from it by The Meadows and Bruntsfield Links. To the west it is bounded by Bruntsfield; to the south-southwest by Greenhill and then Morningside; to the south-southeast by The Grange; and to the east by Sciennes.
Flight into Danger is a 1956 Canadian live television play starring James Doohan, Corinne Conley, Kate Reid, Zachary Scott and Philip Gilbert. It was written by Arthur Hailey, produced and screened by CBC Television, and broadcast on April 3, 1956, on the General Motors Theatre series. It was later adapted into two different feature films, a parody feature film, a novel, and international television versions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.
Airport is a bestselling novel by British-Canadian writer Arthur Hailey. Published by Doubleday in 1968, the story concerns a large metropolitan airport and its operations during a severe winter storm.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, codified under Title 8 of the United States Code, governs immigration to and citizenship in the United States. It came into effect on June 27, 1952. Before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, various statutes governed immigration law but were not organized within one body of text. According to its own text, the Act is officially entitled as just the Immigration and Nationality Act, but it is frequently specified with 1952 at the end in order to differentiate it from the 1965 law.
Postern of Fate is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie that was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1973 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at £2.00 and the US edition at $6.95.
Haitian Canadians are Canadian citizens of Haitian descent or Haiti-born people who reside in Canada. As of 2016, more than 86% of Haitian Canadians reside in Quebec.
As of 2019, Canada has the eighth largest immigrant population in the world, while foreign-born people make up about one-fifth of Canada’s population—one of the highest ratios for industrialized Western countries.
Stereotypes of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States are general representations of Americans considered of Hispanic and Latino ancestry or immigrants to the United States from Spain or Latin America, often exhibited in negative caricatures or terms. Latin America is generally considered to comprise all of the politically independent territory of the Western Hemisphere other than Canada and the United States that was originally colonized by the Spaniards or Portuguese. "Latino" is the umbrella term for people of Latin American descent that in recent years has supplanted the more imprecise and bureaucratic designation "Hispanic." Part of the mystery and the difficulty of comprehension lie in the fact that the territory called Latin America is not homogeneous in nature or culture. Latin American stereotypes have the greatest impact on public perceptions, and Latin Americans were the most negatively rated on several characteristics. Americans' perceptions of the characteristics of Latin American immigrants are particularly strongly linked to their beliefs about the impact of immigration, especially on unemployment, schools, and crime.
Opposition to immigration, also known as anti-immigration, has become a significant political ideology in many countries. In the modern sense, immigration refers to the entry of people from one state or territory into another state or territory in which they are not citizens. Illegal immigration occurs when people immigrate to a country without having official permission to do so. Opposition to immigration ranges from calls for various immigration reforms, to proposals to completely restrict immigration.
Fatherland is a 1992 alternative history detective novel by English writer and journalist Robert Harris. Set in a universe in which Nazi Germany won World War II, the story's protagonist is an officer of the Kripo, the criminal police, who is investigating the murder of a Nazi government official who participated at the Wannsee Conference. A plot is thus discovered to eliminate all of those who attended the conference to help improve German relations with the United States.
Canada–Poland relations are foreign relations between Canada and Poland. Both countries are full members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, NATO and the World Trade Organization.
An open border is a border that enables free movement of people between jurisdictions with no restrictions on movement and is lacking substantive border control. A border may be an open border due to intentional legislation allowing free movement of people across the border, or a border may be an open border due to a lack of legal controls, a lack of adequate enforcement or adequate supervision of the border. An example of the former is the Schengen Agreement between most members of the European Economic Area. An example of the latter has been the border between Bangladesh and India, which is becoming controlled. The term "open borders" applies only to the flow of people, not the flow of goods and services, and only to borders between political jurisdictions, not to mere boundaries of privately owned property.
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures.
Criticism of multiculturalism questions the ideal of the maintenance of distinct ethnic cultures within a country. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that are associated with the idea of a nation state. Critics of multiculturalism may argue against cultural integration of different ethnic and cultural groups to the existing laws and values of the country. Alternatively critics may argue for assimilation of different ethnic and cultural groups to a single national identity.
George Smith is a fictional character from the British Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks, played by Steven Roberts. George debuted on-screen on 5 September 2011. George was introduced alongside the characters Neil Cooper and Callum Kane ; forming a new group of sixth-form college students. George is homosexual and is characterised as a "sharp tongued fashionista" with an unusual dress sense. He is best friends with Maddie Morrison and Tilly Evans, Roberts has said that George acts like their "lap-dog". However, George lacks confidence around the series' male characters.
