Making a Difference : Reflections from Political Life

Saskatchewan's long-time NDP politician, Eric Cline, delivers the political and personal in Making a Difference: Reflections from Political Life. This memoir positively depicts Saskatchewan political life by sketching Cline's early experience as a nineteen-year-old “paper candidate” for the NDP, and the several years he spent as a legal advisor, before detailing his sixteen-year run as an elected official. Serving in a variety of high-profile positions, Cline's name pervaded provincial media and politics as much as it often rankled the opposition. Serving as Saskatchewan's longest-running Finance Minister, since 1960, under two Premiers, and often assigned hot positions such as Justice Minister during the Stonechild and Milgaard inquiries, or the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority during the casino debates, Cline became a “go-to” guy in the NDP's long run of power.

Cline's writing approach is accessible, friendly, and often humorous breaking from the dense political language and the staid tradition of political memoir. With Cline's gamut of experience in Saskatchewan politics he need not depend on name-dropping to establish historical significance. Through openness and in a quiet anecdotal style, Making a Difference offers a meaningful glimpse into the back rooms of politics, while illustrating life in the political fishbowl, and the sacrifices that are made in private life.

Those who relish the political insider's view will be engaged with the noteworthy deliberations on important Saskatchewan events that Cline reveals in Making a Difference: Reflections from Political Life.

ERIC CLINE, lawyer turned politician, served the NDP government in a variety of capacities for over thirty years. As a steadfast social democrat, his convictions, commitments, and diligence served his cause both in the legislature and his constituency.

He remains one of Saskatchewan’s legitimate political generals in guiding the province from debt and deficit to its present status as a “have” province.