Crosbie, John. With Geoffrey Stevens.

No Holds Barred:
My Life in Politics

Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 1997.

No Holds Barred is the political memoir of John Carnell Crosbie (b. 1931), one of the ablest and most entertaining Newfoundland politicians of the post-Confederation era, one who would most certainly have figured prominently in a national government if Newfoundland had remained independent. We encounter Crosbie at his most vituperative and most antagonistic as he revisits the characters and events of a lifetime. Beginning with his privileged upbringing as the son of St. John's businessman Chesley A. Crosbie (who refused to sign the Terms of Union with Canada in 1949), his schooling at St. Andrew's College (Aurora) and his university education at Queen's, Dalhousie Law School, and the London School of Economics, we proceed to his life in politics. Called to the bar in 1957, Crosbie was first elected to public office in 1965 as a St. John's municipal councillor, resigning in 1966 to enter the cabinet of Premier Joseph R. Smallwood, whose presence animates the first half of the book. The drama surrounding Crosbie's resignation from cabinet in 1968 with Clyde Wells (later to be premier himself) brings this phase to a close.

The following year, Crosbie unsuccessfully challenged Smallwood's leadership of the Liberal Party, then sat as an independent Liberal and leader of the Liberal Reform Group until he joined the Progressive Conservative Party in June 1971, serving in the cabinet of Premier Frank Moores before being elected to the House of Commons in 1976. As federal Minister of Finance in 1979, Crosbie suffered the defeat of his budget and the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Joe Clark. In 1983, he then ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Invited to join the cabinet of Brian Mulroney, he implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement as Minister of International Trade. As Newfoundland's cabinet representative, he also brought about approval of the Hibernia oil project and negotiated the financial compensation package precipitated by the collapse of the cod fishery. He retired from public life in 1993.