History of (Across) the Universe

Nah, no real history content here -- just want to say Across the Universe is a terrifically entertaining movie, Julie Taymor has visual imagination to burn, and the new takes on the old songs sounded great to me.

I could claim it's the history of the sixties, but it's just a movie, really. http://www.acrosstheuniverse.com/

American Heritage magazine to return

D.B. Scott's Canadian Magazines website announces American Heritage, the US history mag that folded last spring, will return with new investors and new editor.

Viv Nelles on Richard Gwyn on John A

Literary Review of Canada (http://www.lrc.reviewcanada.ca/) for November has Viv Nelles's very positive review of the first volume of Richard Gwyn's biography of John A. Macdonald. (Globe and Mail liked it too.) So far, it's only in the LRC print edition; they have not posted November stories online yet.

One of the things Nelles notes is the duty Gwyn felt to justify a new biography of Macdonald. The previous one is pretty substantial and is only, like, about 55 years old!

Later: LRC has put up the online November -- but without the Nelles article.

Lepore on American History

Jill Lepore, becoming an interesting contributor on American history to the New Yorker, has an impressive essay here on two big books with big competing interpretations of the evolution of the United States between 1815 and 1848.

Can't help wishing we had controversies on this scale in Canadian history. But I'm also struck by her suggestion that both these big-picture syntheses were a deliberate reaction by historians to the earlier trend to the writing of micro-histories, which she describes as often brilliant but also as pieces of a puzzle no one can put together.

Noted: websites

Always looking for interesting history websites, and recently got directed to this one. I admire the book called The Midwife's Tale, but this site suggests there's a whole industry developing around it.

Every journalist loves a fascist?

The Globe & Mail editorializes today on Bill Casey, MP, ejected from the Conservative Party caucus for being right too soon. (He voted against his government's budget to support Nova Scotia's position on the Atlantic Accord, a position now accepted by the federal government.) Sez the Globe, "It was legitimate for Mr Casey to vote his conscience; it was legitimate for Mr Harper to kick him out of caucus for voting no-confidence in the budget."

There's barely a political journalist or political scientist or politician in the country who would disagree with this statement. But it is dangerous nonsense. Arbitrary governments are bad, but unaccountable arbitrary governments are worse. In a parliamentary system, one of the first lines of accountability for a government must be to its own caucus. The breakdown of that accountability lies at the root of the democratic deficit in this country

Ultimately, a parliamentary caucus consists of elected members who agree to band together under a label, and it is the caucus that has authority to determine its membership. In practically every parliamentary system but Canada's, leaders are caucus members like all the rest, and act as leaders only on caucus's suffrance; most see their leadership careers end when the caucus decides they have outworn their welcome.

In Canada, a party leader draws his title from an extra-parliamentary process. Generally, Canadian party leaders are elected by bunches of people gathered in hockey arenas who bought their votes or had them bought for them.

But in the end he or she is a caucus member like the others, and must be accountable to caucus -- or to no one. A caucus that has surrendered its control over its membership to a leader is a mob of MPs who have surrendered the fundamental responsibility of MPs. They cannot act, because they cannot hold the leader accountable.

True, it doesn't work that way in Canada. But no one should suggest Mr Harper's way is the right way just because things work like that in all Canadian political parties today.

Nothing could be more valuable today than a reminder from the Conservative caucus to Mr Harper (and to the Globe's editorial board) that it is up to the caucus to decide whether Mr Casey can be a member.

Come, friends of piracy...

Publishing trade mag Quill & Quire online (paywalled) reports that University of Toronto Press is so keen to digitize its backlist and do it cheap that it will even destroy its last copy of particular works rather than pay for non-destructive scanning.

But the key to the initiative is the press's request that authors accept a reduction in their digital royalty share from 50% to 10%. As long as there were no digital sales, that is, UTP was willing to share the revenues equally. But now that there is revenue potential....

Think of the costs to the press of buying paper, printing, binding, shipping, warehousing all those backlist books in paper form: substantial. Think of the costs to the press of delivering a digital file: tiny.

UTP reports most of its authors are rolling over for this. Course, their authors are mostly profs, who can be as innocent as babes about their rights.

Today in History, almost

I was going to note the anniversary today of the battle of Queenston Heights, an event likely to be swept up in a great bicentenary fervour five years from now. But checking, I find the battle was October 13.

Historica notes today as the 108th anniversary of Henri Bourassa's resignation from Parliament over the Boer War -- but somehow it does not have the same ring. Nor does the 25th anniversary of the death of former Ontario premier John Robarts, noted in the Globe & Mail today.

Later (sound effect: blogger smacks forehead): The anniversary for October 18 is Persons Day, of course. Robert Sharpe and Patricia MacMahon have just written a terrific new book about it: The Persons Case from UTP and the Osgoode Society. And I have written about it for Law Times -- except (sound effect: blogger gnashes teeth) they have not printed the column yet, either in paper on online.

Library Archives bad contract withdrawn

Hey, sometimes the good prevails.

Following protests from Carfac and other arts groups, the Library and Archives withdrew its copyright grab and apologized for its mistake regarding the contract described in yesterday's post.

Now to work out language that provides both access and rights.

G-G nominations in

John English's Trudeau biography Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968 and Karolyn Smardz Frost's I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad are the history nominees in this year's Governor-General's Award in non-fiction. English's Trudeau would be the big authoritative entry and Glory Land a small tale meticulously told; both good books.

Pretty solid jury, too: Michael Bliss, Afua Cooper, Maggie Siggins. I'd have some faith in the judgment in that team.

Hmm, what else might have been there among history titles?

Also nominated on an eclectic list: Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce for Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent; the Globe and Mail's Stephanie Nolen for 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa; and Bridget Stutchbury for Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them.

They put the prize money up to $25,000. Jeez, it was $5000 when I won - and not much publicity either (so I'm making up for it).

New Library and Archives Scandal

Fresh from alienating the research community with its plans to cut research hours at the library and archives to the bone, Library and Archives Canada has now extended its attack to Canadian artists and creators.

Canadian Artists Representation (CARFAC) and its collective licensing agency CARCC are distributing warnings about LAC's recent efforts:

"Library and Archives Canada is presently contacting a large number of visual artists with the goal of having them sign a contract in which they are asked to cede their copyright to the Canadian government in perpetuity.

"The pretext for this is the supposed need, for a specific project, to provide Library and Archives Canada, free of charge, with the right to make certain works that are in their collections available to students, researchers and the general public. The letter asks these artists to sign the contract and to return it as soon as possible - for some, the deadline is October 8th.

"WE DO NOT ADVISE YOU TO SIGN THIS CONTRACT, since it allows the federal government to strip you of what rightfully belongs to you.

"In fact, by signing this contract, not only are you signing away your copyright ownership on these works to the Canadian government and even renouncing part of your moral rights, but you will receive no financial compensation..... [B]y signing this contract, you would authorize the government to reproduce your works in any context they see fit, to exhibit them in public, or to present them on the Internet without paying you copyright royalties. In addition, by renouncing part of your moral rights, as is being requested, you would expose yourself to the possibility of seeing your works modified, distorted or mutilated, depending on the whim of a graphic designer employed by the federal government or a communications agency under contract with the government."

The Writers' Union and other artists' organizations gave significant support to academic scholars in their campaign to restore research hours. It would be good to see that support reciprocated here. But I'm not holding my breath.

Further information: carcc@carcc.ca

Legal Historians talking

Off today to the stately premises of Osgoode Hall for the Law Society of Upper Canada's Symposium on the History of the Canadian Legal Profession, where I'm one of the presenters.

Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen West in Toronto, East Doors 9.30 - 5.00 today. Good seats still available.

(Last night Charles Levi, fine young legal historian, asked if I had announced the event on my blog. So this one's for you Charles.)

Ontario Education History; a vignette

On his sixty-fifth birthday, 8 March 1868, Egerton Ryerson, the founder of Ontario's education system and a man of deep Christian faith, contemplated his mortality. He decided that before his inevitable end he should settle his relationships with all the people he had been in dispute with. At the top of that list was editor and politician George Brown, who, he reflected, was the only person with whom he had had really personal disagreements.

So he wrote to Brown that day and said, "I wish to assure you of my hearty forgiveness of the personal wrongs I think you have done me in the past…."

Brown replied the same day. "I am entirely unconscious of any ‘personal wrong’ ever done you by me, and have no thought of receiving forgiveness at your hands."

Brown lived another twelve years, Ryerson fourteen. There was no further correspondence.

Missing Plaques at The Beaver

The October-November issue of The Beaver is now appearing. The Letters column is full of furious epistles over the "Worst Canadians" feature from the previous issue, which I thought quite wonderful, not least for the very provocativeness now being testified to.

My own column is about guerrilla plaquing -- the placing of historical plaques and commemorations by... well, by all kinds of people and organizations who are not the official plaquers and commemorators. Look for www.murmurtoronto.ca or www.missingplaques.tao.ca for examples. That's while you are getting your own copy of The Beaver, that is.

BC's Electoral Reform Guru would vote no on Ontario's MMP

Gordon Gibson's column of today is behind a paywall at the Globe and Mail. But it's a big one. A leading advocate of electoral reform says Ontario's MMP proposal is not supportable.

Gibson is a former leader of the BC Liberal Party, a politically active citizen for decades, and one of the west's leading advocates for electoral reform, Senate reform, and other systemic changes to Canadian politics. He was appointed by BC Premier Campbell to direct the Citizen Assembly on Electoral Reform. That assembly recommended the new voting system for B.C. which was put to a referendum there last year -- and narrowly failed to get the 60% support required.

The B.C proposal was for STV, "single transferable vote" and, as Gibson says in his Globe piece, STV empowers elected members, whereas MMP empowers parties. Party organizers and party leaders already have too much power, he argues. If he lived in Ontario, he writes, he'd be on the No side.

The Ontario Referendum

Don't know how the Ontario referendum on the electoral system will go next week. But I'd say the No side has had the best of it in the discussion leading up to it.

It's been a mostly out-of-the-way debate, it's true; for the truly committed only. But there has been a deep upswelling of reasoned scepticism about the wisdom of letting the parties appoint 39 people to the legislature. And that observation has brought out a hectoring, shouting-down denial from pro-MMP supporters that really does not make their movement look good.

DemocraticSPACE, a politico-blog, said the other day the discussion was over, the NO side had nothing to offer, "end of story." Today in The Globe MMP activist/political scientist Denis Pilon writes from British Columbia there's no room for debate, the only question is: Do you accept majority rule? Last week Globe columnist Rick Salutin said YES was a "no-brainer," and only idiots would think otherwise.

This week Salutin redeems himself. He got heaps of mail, apparently, and he actually read it. He now acknowledges people may be voting no because of their democratic commitments. He's still for the YES, but he's not shouting abuse at everyone else. (He also acknowledges he's on the advisory board of the principal PR lobby group. He's entitled to be, but he might have said so before.)

Something called the Churchill Society has quietly been amassing a lot of commentary from both sides at http://www.churchillsociety.org/. Okay, one of them is mine.

Fifty Years Ago Today...

... sputnik went up. Yet the space age now seems to have been around forever.

I recently heard a fifteen-year old speculating that space travel might be available to ordinary people within her lifetime. Funny, that's what we were speculating when I was fifteen.

History of Architecture

I used to think the Robarts Library in Toronto was the worst building in the city -- ugly, insensitive to its context, and ill-designed for what it is used for.

Now I think the Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum may have replaced it. It's not ugly; it's rather beautiful in a certain way. But surely one of the things the architectural heritage movement has taught in recent generations is that buildings ought to work with their surroundings. The Crystal spits at the ROM and the neighbourhood.

Val Ross, the Globe & Mail's writer on historical and museological stories (and what an asset to the paper she has become on that beat), has a piece today that is both coolly objective and absolutely devastating about the Crystal as a museum space.

Faction and non-faction writing

I'm stealing this story from BC writer and historian Lynne Bowen.

She was giving a talk recently and the nervous host introduced her as "Lynne Bowen, who does creative non-writing fiction."