EDINBURGH — Imagine the scene that would have greeted any poor Scot who wandered off the street in Edinburgh to find himself in the middle of the annual British Association of Canadian Studies conference. Yes, there really is such a thing as the British Association of Canadian Studies (BACS) and 2025 is its 50th anniversary.
BACS is the well-worn but admirable remnants of the kind of soft power Canadian governments used to try to exercise — by getting people in other countries talking about Canada and encouraging academic links across the ocean.
