Mothers and others of Confederation

The Globe on the weekend had a nicely turned piece by Moira Dunn for the 145th anniversary of the Charlottetown conference on Confederation:

We need to turn the kaleidoscope we use to envision history. Let's not just consider Canada's birth solely through the 72 resolutions discussed and agreed to by the Fathers of Confederation, let's also consider the weather in 1864, the prices in the shops, the births and deaths, the kitchen garden vegetable crops, the fashions, the lateness of the Cunard mail ships – the social minutiae more likely discussed by the Mothers (and others) of Confederation.

Well, yes, those things can be wonderfully evocative. But, you know, I can't help thinking that as a political nation, politically constructed, still struggling with constitutional conundrums, it would not hurt to try giving some attention to the ideas in those 72 resolutions either. It's not as if we are too well versed in them.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #60

Friday, August 31, 1759. Wolfe, still struggling with the fever that laid him low last week, expresses his gloom and discouragement in what proves to be his last letter to his mother.

No personal evils worse than defeats and disappointments have fallen upon me. The enemy puts nothing at risk and I can’t in consequence put the whole army to risk. My antagonist has wisely shut himself up in inaccessible entrenchments so that I can’t get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad soldiers and I am at the head of a small number of good ones that wish for nothing so much as to fight him.

Except for the relative size of the armies -- hardly so unfavorable to Wolfe -- all this is a precise summary of the situation.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #59

Thursday August 30, 1759 While the grand strategy of the siege is being reoriented, Captain Knox offers an anecdote that illustrates both the travails of the colonists and the fate of amateur soldiers who go up against trained forces:

A company of rangers, on a scout towards Beaumont [on the south shore downriver from Quebec] eastward, surprised about twenty Canadians reaping their corn, who instantly took to their arms and made to a coppice that covered the road, at half a mile's distance, intending to way-lay them. They gave our rangers a fire before they were within reach, which discovered their design, whereupon the Captain retired a little way, formed his men into three divisions, detached one to the right, and another to the left, while the third moved on at a gentle pace. Upon the center party's advancing, the enemy fired again, and immediately the other divisions got round, and rushed upon them unexpectedly. Five of those wretches were killed and scalped, and four were made prisoners. The rangers had two men slightly wounded, who returned to the field where the Canadians had been reaping and found a bag of bread, a second of powder, and a third of letters. Many of them I read, which breathed most emphatically of misery and distress.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #58

Wednesday, August 29, 1759. Brigadiers Townshend, Monckton, and Murray reply to General Wolfe’s invitation to advise him. (At least, their memorandum is dated today; the historian Charles Stacey suspects revisions continued until tomorrow). They start by tearing the heart out of Wolfe’s plans to focus his attack on the Montmorency-Beauport shore.

The natural strength of the enemy’s situation between the River St. Charles and the Montmorency, now improved by all the art of their engineers, makes the defeat of their army if attacked there very doubtful.

They go on to point out that even if the British get ashore, Montcalm can fall back to the St. Charles (just east of the city, the western edge of the Beauport defences) and hold out there. Then comes what bloggers nowadays call the money quote:

We are therefore of opinion that the most probable method of striking an effectual blow is to bring the troops to the south shore and to direct the operations above the town. When we establish ourselves on the north shore, the French general must fight us on our own terms. We shall be betwixt him and his provisions and betixt him and their army opposing General Amherst.

The brigadiers conclude their bold and concise outline by declaring that, whatever he does, Wolfe will find them “most hearty and zealous in the execution of his orders.” No more, apparently, of Townshend’s snarky caricatures of his commanding officer.

Francis on Pierre Berton, activist

Daniel Francis ponders Pierre Berton the politically-committed activist in a lively piece at The Tyee via Geist magazine. I can hardly believe he never noticed that side of Berton until he read Brian McKillop's big biography, but that's what he says.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #57

Tuesday August 28, 1759 The diarist Foligné wraps up yesterday's developments:

With the winds out of the north-east, the enemy took advantage of the foggy night to send four vessels upriver under cover of darkness. In spite of the lively fire from our ramparts, they successfully joined their other ships at Pointe aux Trembles. This convinced our commanders to send orders to the frigates not to come down but to remain in the Richelieu harbour and to send the crews back to town. The crews greatly regretted losing an opportunity to distinguish themselves.

The French vessels’ planned attack on the British naval force upriver from Quebec could probably not have dislodged the British ships from their position. But the British success in reinforcing their naval strength in the upper river -- was the transit of the additional ships under the guns made easier by the French gunners removed to man the ships? -- put an end to all such hopes. The British now definitely command the upper river. They have the shipping they need to move large numbers of troops rapidly up and down this shore.

Also today, General Wolfe's three brigadiers meet aboard the flagship Stirling Castle with Admiral Saunders. Wolfe, still recovering from his fever, has sent them a memorandum outline his plans and formally asking their advice. The record suggests that Wolfe had not consulted with his subordinates on strategy and tactics throughout the siege before now, but now he throws himself open to them.

"That the public service may not suffer by the general's indisposition, he begs the brigadiers will be so good as to meet and consult together for the public utility and advantage and to consider of the best method of attacking the enemy."

Wolfe presents three battle plans for the brigadiers' consideration. All three focus on the Beauport-Montmorency front, where he had attacked on July 31. The brigadiers' response will turn the siege inside out.

(Image: Brigadier Townshend's portrait of Wolfe; we will get to his less respectful caricatures another day. h/t Neil Ross)

Barbara Sears 1946-2009

Researchers are people who know the good, inexpensive places to eat around all the libraries and archives. When I had lunch with Barbara Sears in one of those places in January 2008, I was thinking of profiling her, for I was aware her contribution to Canadian history in the last forty years was really second to none, and I was intrigued to know how she had built a career that seemed entirely unique. But she deftly and artlessly turned the conversation away from herself, and in the end I wrote a much different column from her suggestions.

She was like that. Not an author of books, not the star director, never seen in the media as a commentator, not caught up in The Barbara Sears Show. She first gained renown as Pierre Berton's lead researcher, and as she became an indispensable part of his team he credited her lavishly and shared royalties with her. She then helped other people -- as diverse as Dave Broadfoot and Frank Augustyn -- write their books. But in particular she became the go-to person for film and television research and she worked constantly but mostly behind the scenes in that field. Dig around in the credits, and you will be astonished how many Canadian historical documentaries she played a vital part in. She would be brought in as researcher, or visuals researcher, but her contribution was generally a lot larger than than, at least if she was working with people capable of spotting talent and listening to it.

She was mostly a facilitator of other people's work. Sometimes they were people with much less conviction about history that she herself brought to the work, but mostly she worked with what was at hand and improved everyone's game. She wasn't academically trained and took a restrained interest in that world. She took one university course nearly every year, but she told me it was partly so she had a student card and access to all the library and online resources that provided.

Sandra Martin wrote a brief obit in the Globe the other day. Barbara probably would not have wanted it any longer. Hers seems to me an entirely admirable career. The death notice suggests donations to an endowment fund in her name at The Visual Researchers Society of Canada. Y'know, it's not up to me, but if they named the organization the Barbara Sears Society, they wouldn't be going far wrong.

Barbara Sears photo from the Visual Researchers website

Historical memory in Spain

Trying to forget, to enforce forgetting, never seems to work.

New Senate appointments -- good!

I accept I'm alone in this, but I'm happy enough with the appointive Senate, to which Prime Minister Harper is about to appoint eight more party loyalists. (Though Warren Kinsella is funny today in quoting all the prime minister's promises never to appoint anyone to the Senate.)

On the Senate, I'm a Rogersian. I follow the analysis of Will Rogers, the American humorist who said, "Thank goodness we don't get all the government we pay for." We do pay something for the Senate, but at least it does not do anything.

The most important thing about the Senate is its weakness. There are no good reasons for having a powerful Senate. The senate is by its nature unrepresentative, and must always be. If it were a representative house, it would be the House of Commons, and we don't need two of those. Since it will be unrepresentative, it should be weak.

The confederation makers wanted an upper house for ceremonial and traditional reasons, but they were determined that it would not present a strong challenge to the representative lower house to which the government was accountable. The best way to ensure it was weak was to make it appointive, so that it lacked the legitimacy to challenge the elected lower house. And it only has stood up to the Commons in extreme and temporary circumstances, generally when the lower house was screwing things up.

I could live with Senate abolition, and I'm okay with term limits. But until that day, the best thing for democrats and parliamentarians to advocate is leaving it alone. The cost of running a home for old party faithful is tiny compared to the price we would pay if we actually empowered the Senate. And the one sure way to give the Senate a sense of entitlement is to make it elective. It would still be unrepresentative and undemocratic, but suddenly it would start actually interfering in government. Could not be a good thing.

Update: Stephen Michael MacLean comments:

I too am ‘happy enough with the appointive Senate’. I have some qualms about term limits but, if one is to square the circle, I would support (and probably advise) that the minimum age be raised from thirty to maybe something like forty-five. With mandatory retirement at age seventy-five, a rather liberal term limit of thirty years.

I agree entirely with your statement that we don’t need two representative houses and that ‘one sure way to give the Senate a sense of entitlement is to make it elective’; anyone who thinks that an elected Senate would remain submissive is delusional, especially since (i) constitutionally it is almost co-equal with the Commons (why I think the Fathers of Confederation were a bit more serious than your essay suggests) and (ii) would, depending upon the electoral system selected, have members more representative of the electors than MPs (apportioning 24 senators for Ontario, for instance, compared to 107 MPs).

More SMMacL at the Disraeli-Macdonald Institute

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #56

Monday, August 27, 1759. The diarist de Foligné has news of a new French initiative to blunt the British attack:

Headquarters ordered the sailors distributed around our gun batteries withdrawn in order to man five of our frigates that are upriver and to sail them down to Pointe aux Trembles to attack the enemy vessels.

The men, 600 or 700 strong, led by seven naval officers, reach Cap-Santé and are distributed among the French vessels that have been sheltering there throughout the siege. The British naval force upriver from Quebec is still quite small. Given the risks of passing beneath the town’s batteries, only a few ships have run that gauntlet. The five frigates have some hope of seriously damaging the British naval strength above the town.

Weakening the town’s gun batteries by removing several hundred men seems a serious risk. But powder for the guns is low anyway. And if this naval thrust can eliminate or even weaken the British naval forces that have made possible the raids and landings Brigadier Murray had recently led, the security of the north shore of the river upriver from Quebec will be greatly increased.

More developments tomorrow.

History Wars: European division

Last week marked the seventieth anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939, which gave Hitler a free hand to invade Poland and start the Second World War, more or less.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe recently voted overwhelmingly to agree that this was A BAD THING -- but with furious dissent from Russia which called the resolution an insult to all Russians. It was "the Stalin-era Soviet Union that made the biggest sacrifices and the biggest contribution to liberating Europe from fascism," the Russian delegate declared. Details on the historico-political controversy here

History magazine rocks the prize lists

The Beaver is nominated for a National Newsstand Award for its February 2008 special issue Quebec at 400 -- which sold a ton, both in English and in French as Le Beaver. More detail here.

Speaking of prizes, the Geoffrey Bilson Prize for Historical Fiction for kids announced its shortlist recently. Full details here, but the nominated titles are:

The Ancient Ocean Blues by Jack Mitchell (Tundra Books)
The Apprentice’s Masterpiece: A Story of Medieval Spain by Melanie Little (Annick Press)
Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanjji (Second Story Press)
Greener Grass: The Famine Years by Caroline Pignat (Red Deer Press)
The Landing by John Ibbitson (Kids Can Press)

The jury members were Merle Harris, storyteller and author; Kimberly Sutherland-Mills, Children's and Teen Services Librarian, Kingston Frontenac Public Library; Gail de Vos (chair), storyteller and professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, and well, moi, Christopher Moore, author.

It's always impressive, the range and sophistication of historical fiction being written and published for young readers.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #55

Sunday, August 26, 1759. The British siege guns have devastated the town, but as counter-battery fire they have been less successful. It is lack of ammunition that does most to silence the French batteries. When called on, they can still give a hot reception to, for instance, ships that try to pass upriver through the narrow; only a few British naval vessels have made the attempt. So the big-gun duel continues. The supply clerk describes today’s action:

The enemy fired with the greatest possible vigour. At one in the afternoon a canonnier-bombardier at the ramparts battery had his legs carried away by a ball. For several days they have fired neither shells nor fire-pots. It would not be surprising if they have run low, considering the quantity they have fired at us.

We have just learned that the enemy has raised its camp at St-Antoine [upriver on the south shore, opposite Pointe-aux-Trembles] and may try farthere upstream. We have heard a lot of cannonry on the Pointe aux Trembles shore but we know nothing of what is going on there.

Colonel de Bougainville is in that area with 1400 men. He moves up and down matching his movements to those of the enemy vessels. He has a lot of terrain to cover. I always fear some surprise.

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville is just 29 and began his military career just eight year earlier. In his future, he will circumnavigate the globe, have the well-known tropical plant named for him, and narrowly escape the guillotine. He came to New France as Montcalm’s aide-de-camp in 1756, but was rapidly promoted (being a count counts); he is now a colonel. Despite doubts among the professionals about his military training and among colonial officials about his loyalty to Montcalm over Governor Vaudreuil, he has performed effectively as he has received increasing responsibility.

By now he is one of the key sub-commanders in the French force. As the British shift their attention to the north shore upriver from the city, his role in patrolling that area is increasingly vital.

[Correction: St-Antoine above was originally mis-identified as the site of the British Montmorency camp.]

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #54

Saturday August 25, 1759: Captain Knox reports that Brigadier Murray has returned from his raids upriver from Quebec, bring plunder -- and news. The French, with interior lines of communication, have been aware of developments at Niagara and Lake Champlain since early August. Now the same news encourages the British siege army.

By sundry letters that were found, and are confirmed by some fashionable prisoners, we have agreeable accounts of General Amherst's success at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the enemy being obliged to abandon those important posts, upon the approach of his artillery; and Monsieur Bourlamaque is retired to a strong pass at isle au Noix, on the lake Champlain, with his forces, amounting to near three thousand men where they are fortified with a resolution to defend it, as they give out, to the last extremity. Through the same channel we have the happy news of the reduction of Niagara, by a detachment of Mr. Amherst's army commanded by Brigadier-General Prideaux, consisting of three regiments of regulars, some provincials, and a large body of Indians, under Sir William Johnson ; but that unfortunately the Brigadier and another Officer of distinction were killed.

We are likewise assured that the whole number of men in arms throughout this province do not exceed twenty-five thousand, including regulars, Indians, and Canadians, from the age of sixteen to seventy, that the latter are very discontented and would cheerfully surrender their capital, if they had people of resolution among them to excite and encourage a revolt, rather than see their country thus groaning and bleeding under the calamities of war.

History of free expression

John Degen notes the fiftieth anniversary of the successful defence of Lady Chatterley's Lover against obscenity charges in Canada, and suggests it's a case historians of law or free expression should look into.

Toronto -- history on the move

Jamie Bradburn, one of the Historicist gang who put up a moment of Toronto history on the Torontoist blog every Saturday, this week recalls in words and terrific photos the 1972 transfer of Campbell House, today a museum of legal historyand HQ of the Advocates Society. The house was put on wheels and moved through the downtown streets from its original location way to the east to this current location at Queen and University in Toronto, where one might think it has sat since the 1820s

History of the seat belt

History Today online reports that Volvo introduced the assembly-line production of cars with seatbelts as standard equipment fifty years ago this month. It is estimated a million people have had their lives saved by seatbelts since then.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #53

Friday August 24, 1759: From the journal of de Foligné:

Once again, after having made several previous requests to be permitted to go home, some Canadians came to headquarters to request that they be permitted to go to get in their harvests. Headquarters refused them, promising that they would be provided for. But the Canadians seemed reluctant to rely on this promise and made up their own minds, so that as soon as it was night at least two hundred of them went off and the command was unable to keep order, despite the complaints of Marquis de Montcalm, who feared that the enemy would take notice of the desertions, which he estimated at more than two thousand men.

Captain Knox, on the 19th, had a slightly different version of these events, as picked up in the British camp:

By the deserter above-mentioned we are informed that two thousand Canadians have been permitted to withdraw from the army to reap their harvest. A heavy storm of rain in the evening, with great thunder and lightning.

Knox went to visit General Wolfe at Montmorency this day, but Wolfe was too ill to come downstairs to dinner. Knox took the opportunity to stroll along the Montmorency Falls ("a strength and rapidity not to be conceived") and was very nearly shot dead by a French soldier:

I was hastily called to by one of our sentinels, when, throwing my eyes about, I saw a Frenchman creeping under the eastern extremity of their breastwork, next the main river, to fire at me. This obliged me to retire as fast as I could out of his reach and, making up to the sentry to thank him for his attention, he told me the fellow had snapped his piece twice, and the second time it flashed in the pan, at the instant when I turned away from the fall. Having satisfied my curiosity, and not finding myself disposed to give Monsieur another chance at this time, on so trivial an occasion, I returned to the headquarters.

Fete de St-Louis at Louisbourg

This blog seem to be developing an 18th century habit lately, but we cannot resist noting that this week marks the feast of St-Louis, more or less the royalist equivalent of Bastille Day in pre-revolutionary France.

At Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, they have plans for military demonstrations, puppet shows, guided tours, theatrical pieces, Mi'kmaw storytelling, and for tonight astronomical observations and a talk about the Marquis de Chabert and the astronomical observatory he built at Louisbourg in 1753, Canada's first.

Unfortunately meterology may be displacing astronomy today. Hurricane Bill is blowing up the Cape Breton coast this afternoon. Vive le roi and batten down the hatches!

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #52

Thursday August 23, 1759: In June 1759, when the siege of Quebec was looming, the Bishop Pontbriand of Quebec wrote to his parishes: “If by chance the enemy come into a parish, the parish priest will greet them as courteously as possible, asking them to spare human lives and the churches.” Throughout the war, the vast majority of parish priests fulfilled this instruction. In the parishes downriver from Quebec, however, the British have been destroying crops, seizing livestock, and burning buildings systematically for weeks, and resistance among the residents was growing. Father Philippe-René Robinau de Portneuf, 52, the longtime parish priest of St-Joachim, on the north shore of Quebec roughly opposite the eastern tip of the Ile d’Orleans, has decided it is time to stop turning the other cheek.

Father de Portneuf is the son and brother of officers in the colonial regular troops and a diocesan priest (that is, he is not a member of one of the religious orders). He’s been corresponding with Governor Vaudreuil with reports of British ship movements in the river channel, and Vaudreuil in reply has urged him to ensure that “the habitants be united, that they be constantly on the watch and able to put up the most vigorous resistance to the British.” Father de Portneuf takes this to heart. He stands with a group of his parishioners (fifty? A hundred?) who are determined to defend their homes, or at least to seek some retribution for the destruction falling upon them.

Captain Knox, who yesterday noted the dispatch of a force to quell the resistance at St Joachim, describes the encounter at St-Joachim from the British viewpoint: "They were attack’d by a Party of French, who had a Priest for their Commander; but our Party kill'd and scalp'd 31 of them, and likewise the Priest, their Commander. They did our People no Damage." *

In the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, historian Jean-Pierre Asselin has compiled French reports of Father de Portneuf’s death:

After having overcome the priest and his parishioners, these “cruel enemies” in cold blood had “his throat cut . . . in his own church.” Another account speaks of the priest “whose head was split wide open and completely scalped,” without explaining how these two operations could be combined. In still another, the priest, after being killed, is blamed by the British “for having abandoned his priestly role and roused some habitants to insult them.” By way of adding some spice, one author specifies that the priest and his parishioners were “on their knees crying for quarter. . . .”

It’s sometimes said the battle of the Plains of Abraham lasted eight minutes. Live-blog the siege daily, and you begin to feel what a long, vicious horror it really was. Recall that for the people of New France, the war had been continuous since early in the decade.

* [Correction: this description comes from A Journal of the Expedition up the River St. Lawrence, written by an anonymous Sergeant Major of the 40th Regiment’s Grenadiers (part of the Louisbourg Grenadiers) and available online here.]

Live blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #51

Wednesday August 22: Captain Knox gets his first news of a crisis in General Wolfe's health:

It is with the greatest concern to the whole army, that we are now informed of our amiable General's being very ill of a slow fever : the soldiers lament him exceedingly, and seemed apprehensive of this event, before we were ascertained of it, by his not visiting this camp [Knox writes from the Pointe de Levy camp; Wolfe is at Montmorency] for several days past…..

The General was lately heard to say in conversation, “that he would cheerfully sacrifice a leg or an arm to be in possession of Quebec.”

Knox has some other news of military events.

A Priest, with about four score of his parishioners have fortified themselves in a house a few miles to the eastward of our camp, on the north side of the river, where they indiscreetly pretend to brave our troops. A detachment of light infantry, with a field-piece and a howitzer, are to be sent to reduce them.

More on this matter tomorrow.

Real History

A clever and pointed post about the American health care debate by a blog that always impresses me with its seriousness about history and its wit and imagination in the way it is written -- ideals sometimes assumed to be antithetical.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #50

Tuesday, August 21, 1759. Captain Knox's journal delivers the news from a grumpy siege camp.

We fire a little on the town to-day without any return. The weather is so extremely wet and disagreeable that very little advantage can now be reaped anywhere. At noon General Wolfe discharged some howitzers into the enemy's camp. The project of erecting a fortress on the island of Coudre, for a garrison of three thousand men, is laid aside for want of proper materials and the season being too far advanced for such an undertaking. The enterprise of storming Quuebec is also given up, as too desperate to hope for success.

Brumwell on Wolfe

Stephen Brumwell, British author of a recent biography of General Wolfe, makes a case for his military brilliance in a History Today article.

If you are following the live-blog of the siege, you may have grasped I'm less in awe of Wolfe's acumen. He still strikes me as the classic death-or-glory boy: make a frontal assault, engage the enemy as closely as possible, trust to superior training at the crunch. He used that tactic four times and had a fifty-fifty record (disasters at Rochefort 1757 and Montmorency July 1759, triumphs at Louisbourg July 1758 and Plains of Abraham September 1759). Not so great a percentage, and not acceptable for any commander who had to think about keeping an army in being for the long term. (Not so good for one's own life-expectancy, either; Wolfe certainly had the courage of his convictions.) Compare Jeffrey Amherst's careful hoarding of men and materials as he moves slowly to nearly inevitable victory against Wolfe's throw the dice style.

Brumwell's point about the excellent training and fire-discipline of Wolfe's British regiments is sound, but has been taken for granted in Canadian scholarship about the battle for a generation at least. And the crucial advantage was comparative: Montcalm's forces, an awkward mix of two professional armies and a mass of militia, continuously in the field for several years and continuously short of supplies and reinforcements, could hardly have matched the level of freshness, cohesiveness, and firepower of any newly arrived British force, whether or not its commander shared Wolfe's dedication to training.

Just sayin'. Story is still worth a look.

(h/t Stephen MacLean)

History tweets and history rocks and history trailers

Either history is getting hip to the 21st century or digital media is just taking over everything. Three snippets:

Two hundred years ago, John Quincy Adams kept a line-a-day diary. Today the Massachusetts Historical Society has republished the whole thing -- in Twitter posts.

Meanwhile, younger, hipper, more historico-musically inclined folks than me say Adam Bell's recent album Canuck is good sound on CanHist themes -- and can be downloaded free from his blog at Group of Seven Music.

And The Walrus has a trailer -- magazine stories have trailers like movies, you say? -- for Helen Humphreys's story on the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. It has an odd, self-hating-Canadian sort of opening, but people seem to like that kind of thing.

Citizens' Assembly -- Is California dreaming?

Recently, we were regretting the disasters that direct democracy has wrought in California. In the current New Yorker, Hedrik Hertzberg provides an abundance of detail on all the ways that ill-considered and mutually contradictory initiatives, propositions and plebiscites have hamstruck the elected legislature and made it impossible for the state to plan or budget effectively.

Hertzberg reports an attempt to solve the crisis wrought by direct democracy by... more direct democracy. There is an ballot initiative in California to create a citizens' constitutional assembly to review and probably rewrite the state constitution. Members of the assembly will be chosen at random from among the citizens of the state.

"To have faith in such a process requires a faith in the good sense and sincerity of ordinary people — a faith that just about everybody professes," Hertzberg writes. In Canada, we have had some experience with these citizens' assemblies. In both Ontario and British Columbia, the proposals for new voting systems came from assemblies of this kind. I can't say the experience is promising.

What was most striking (though indeed it seemed to strike very few) was the Stalinist levels of agreement the citizens' assemblies achieved. In both provinces, the assemblies were close to unanimous in the proposals they supported. Yet the B.C. and Ontario proposals were strikingly different.

The B.C electoral reform assembly was directed by Gordon Gibson, a political veteran. Gibson's experince had made him deeply concerned about the power imbalance between parties and elected representatives, so he has long advocated a complicated single-transferable-vote system intended to strengthen individual candidates against party-line domination. The Ontario assembly, by contrast, was guided by conventional political scientists who, like most political scientists, were attracted by the mathematical symplicity of the mixed-member-proportional system, in which many of the legislative members would be appointed by the parties in proportion to the parties' share of the popular vote.

What should have caused alarm about how citizen assemblies work is the way that the randomly selected B.C. citizens were almost unanimous behind Gibson's STV ideas -- while the randomly selected Ontario citizens were equally unanimous in support of their advisors' MMP views. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a kind of Stockholm syndrome took charge in these assemblies. The citizens, well-meaning but ill-prepared, did not provide the kind of vigorous debate among competing alternatives that we hope to find in representative legislatures. There were, let us say, no loyal oppositions arguing divergent views. Instead they became one mass seeking consensus, and so they became sheep to be driven, herded in a flock toward the program that was presented to them most enthusiastically.

(The machine-like unanimity of the randomly chosen citizens hardly proved, however, that the population they were chosen from was equally certain about what it wanted. Both the B.C. proposal and the Ontario proposal went down to massive defeats when put to the electorate in plebiscites.)

Hertzberg in the New Yorker thinks the citizens' assembly is California's only hope. Indeed, change has to come from somewhere. And given the liveliness of political debate in the United States, and the money available to underwrite political ideas of all kinds, it is possible the California version will not become so easily captured by whatever fashionable consensus its experts present to it.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #49

Monday, August 20, 1759: The diarist Foligné reports details still buzzing in the French camp about Brigadier Murray’s Deschambault raid of August 18.

M. de Bougainville arrived there as the enemy was re-embarking with the captured livestock. Our cavalry fired on the rear guard and took three prisoners, who told them that one of our people from the parish of Lotbinière had shown the enemy where our stores were and served them as guide, for a payment of twenty guineas. The same man guided them in the south part of the community where he pointed out the cached goods of the people and the women’s hiding places in the woods. The burnings cost Father Gabriel a chest containing all his books. Compared to how Recollets usually behave, he was most upset.

Knox: “On the 20th the Louisbourg Grenadiers [not really a Louisbourg force, but an elite corps that had been drawn from the best troops in the army assembled there the previous year] began their March down the main Land of Quebec, in order to burn and destroy all the houses on that Side.” Wolfe had written earlier, “It is to very little purpose to withhold the rod, seeing they are incorrigible. They have had Indians on the Isle of Orleans and have scalped four sailors very lately.”

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #48

Sunday, August 19, 1759. It is one of the oddities of the siege that the French, beleaguered as they are, continue to attract deserters from the British forces. (And Captain Knox also reports on news and rumours from French soldiers who have deserted to the British, so it evens out.) The supply clerk writes today:

We have just received three deserters brought to us by people from Pointe de Lévy. I don’t know yet what they are reporting….

A fourth deserter also came in. He reports that the English cannot stay here much longer – he heard that from two officers talking to each other. First they must make a general attack, but he does not know where it will be.

This is a pretty accurate report of the state of the campaign, actually.

The "archives = dusty" archive

It's well known that journalists will rarely write the noun "archive" without being seized by the need to add the adjective "dusty." I've always been meaning to build, well, an archive of examples. Here's one, from Michael Posner's Globe & Mail feature on the revival of "Billy Bishop Goes to War," the classic theatre piece by John McLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson, at Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto:

They spent a week researching in a dusty military archive in Ottawa and discovered some treasures: wartime letters from Bishop to his wife and family.

I must say in my experience archives are notably undusty. They tend, indeed, to be almost antiseptically clean, well-lit, orderly places, with sophisticated climate control systems and professional office cleaners coming by regularly. I've even been in the Ottawa military archive Gray and Peterson most likely visited, and it was clean as a whistle.

But the idea that an archives resembles your eccentric great-uncle's attic probably cannot be eradicated.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #47

Saturday, August 18, 1759. Brigadier Murray, commanding British forces in the ships upriver from Quebec, lands a force at Deschambault on the north shore.

Murray later reports that the French “never came near enough to hurt a man of my detachment.” Foligné, the French military diarist, reports that the British retreated as soon as Colonel Bougainville and his mobile forces reached Deschambault. Whatever the case, the British force departs promptly. After seizing a French supply cache and burning some houses, it returns to its boats with a herd of captured cattle. Murray does not entrench and does not engage the French in a big way.

Montcalm, who hurries to support Bougainville, grasps the ominous significance of landings like these. His priority all summer has been to keep the British at a distance but, now that the British have ships above Quebec, the north shore upriver of Quebec is the place Montcalm is least able to prevent them coming ashore. His diarist reports:

It is fortunate for the country that [Murray] limited himself entirely to this operation instead of taking post and entrenching himself; it would not have been easy to dislodge him. We all feared this and M. de Montcalm felt the importance of this position so strongly that he left here intending to attack it, strong or weak, entrenched or not. No more communication with our stores, no or very little food here, the country open to the enemy. The colony [would have been] lost or next to it.

Wolfe has not yet grasped what Montcalm understands. In the wake of the Deschambault raid, Wolfe criticizes Murray for using too many men and boats on what he considers a diversion. “Finding that the [French] ships were not to be got at and little prospect of bringing the enemy to battle, he reported to me. I ordered him to rejoin the army.”

The next stage of the siege, however, has been set.

God guard thee, Gros Morne

Bond Papers continues to document Danny Williams (aka the Newfoundland government)'s truly insane plan to run hydro power lines all through Gros Morne National Park

History of Protest: from stopping Spadina to raging about "death panels"

At the blog Economic Principals, David Warsh recently reviewed Wrestling With Moses by Andrew Flint, a new book on Jane Jacobs's legendary battles with Robert Moses over whether or not to build superhighways all over Manhattan.

Warsh ponders whether Jacobs's citizen protest methods were different from the Americans' current town-hall ragefests against health insurance reform. Yes, he thinks, they were.

Where are they now? And what would they look like naked?

Woodstock was forty years ago. YouTube offers a snippet from the famous film.

History of wealth

The Economist reports a simple method for how you or your children can be wealthier than otherwise: take a math class.

Mr Goodman has found that each extra required maths course raised the annual income of black males by 15%. (More reading classes had a negative or no effect on earnings.) More maths also increased the likelihood of young black men going to university and someday having a job requiring quantitative skills. But an advanced degree or better job accounts for only a fraction of the earnings increase. Mr Goodman reckons most of the wage increase reflects greater worker productivity.

One reason why people who learn more mathematics earn more is because doing maths makes you smarter and more productive.

Now they tell me.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #46

Friday, August17, 1759:

The enemy continued to direct a heavy fire upon the town. The large number of cannonshots directed at the Chateau St-Louis in the last several days have left it on the verge of collapse. This targeting has been very hard on the Recollet fathers, whose [adjacent] property has received since the start of the bombardment more than 2000 bullets and about 500 bombs, fireballs and mortars; all of which have left the house uninhabitable.

One of the batteries firing from the west-south-west has been giving the same treatment to the Jesuit fathers. The seminary and the bishop’s palace are no more than shells. The only religious community buildings left are the Hotel-Dieu [hospital] and the Ursuline convent. So far they been hit with only a few bombs and cannonballs, which have not caused great damage to these two buildings.

--- from Foligné's journal of the siege.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #45

Thursday August 16, 1759. General Wolfe is near the nadir of his relations with his three junior commanders, Monckton, Townshend, and Murray, all of whom find him hard to work with and all of whom are beginning to doubt his strategy and tactics. Wolfe evidently grasps the need to keep at least Monckton, his second-in-command, on his side. After a dispute about troops under Monckton’s command whom Wolfe had ordered moved, Wolfe twice send his apologies. On the 15th, he writes, “I am too well convinced of your upright sentiments and zeal for the public service not to set the highest value on your friendship.” Today he send a second note, “I heartily beg your forgiveness.”

Wolfe’s official diary does not survive beyond this date. His aide late reported that the portions destroyed included “a careful account of the officers’ ignoble conduct towards him in case of a parliamentary inquiry.”

Moil for gold, redux

The Klondike gold rush of 1898 was the biggest thing in the world for a while. It pretty much created the Yukon Territory, as well as some maddeningly memorizable poetry. But all the gold found in the rush was outwash gold, found in the streams and rivers that were carrying it downstream from the place it was eroding from. That site, the fabled motherlode, was never found. Or maybe now it has, according to a story in Report on Business.

(Photo from McCord Museum via Google Images)

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #44

Wednesday August 15, 1759: The supply clerk notes the news that has just reached the besieged city, of the devastation befalling towns and farms in the British-held territory.

“We have just learned from the people of Baie St-Paul that the enemy has burned about forty houses there. Thirty or forty habitants fought them as best they could. A building belonging to Sieur Bazin was spared from the flames, and after the enemy retired our people went inside it. They found bloodstains and a dozen blood-soaked scarves, which suggests that some of the enemy were killed or wounded.”

Joseph Goreham, captain of the ranger company that did the damage, returns to British headquarters on the Ile d'Orléans today with his report.

That on the 4th of August they proceeded down to St. Paul’s Bay (which is opposite to the North Side of this Island) where was a Parish containing about 200 men, who had been very active in distressing our Boats and Shipping. At 3 o 'Clock in the Morning Capt. Gorham landed and forced two of their Guards of 20 Men each, who fired smartly for Some Time, but that in two Hours they drove them all from their Covering in the Wood, and clear'd the Village which they burnt, consisting of about 50 fine Houses and Barns, destroy'd most of their Cattle, &c. That in this one Man was kill'd and 6 wounded, but that the Enemy had two kill'd, and several wounded, who were carried off. That from thence they proceeded to Mal Bay [La Malbaie, sometimes Murray Bay], 10 Leagues to the Eastward on the same Side, where they destroyed a very pretty Parish, drove off the Inhabitants and Stock without any Loss, after which, they made a Descent on the South Shore, opposite the Island of Coudre, destroyed Part of the Parish of St. Ann's and St. Jean, where were very handsome Houses with Farms, and loaded the Vessels with Cattle; after which they returned from their Expedition.

History this week -- worth a look

There are a lot of today-in-history sites and features around the web. One I've recently bookmarked is Parks Canada's This Week in History, with original content developed by the historians of Parks Canada's historic sites service.

(h/t Elliot Worsfold)

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #43

Tuesday, August 14, 1759 Captain Knox repeats a favourite rumour of the besiegers, predicated on the assumption that Quebec will not fall this summer:

A strong fortress, to contain a garrison of three thousand men, this winter, on the island of Coudres, is again reported to be determined upon, and the plan to be very soon put in execution. [The Ile aux Coudres is a short distance downriver from Quebec and the Ile d’Orleans.]

And the supply clerk notes the news circulating among the besieged:

The English officer taken prisoner in the action of July 31 has died [of his wounds] tonight. The cares and remedies of the surgeons could not save his life or cure his mortal wound. His loss is regretted by everyone. [This was Captain Ouchterlony of the grenadier company of the 47th Regiment -- hardly "English" to his Highland compatriots]

On the ramparts we have had two men killed by a shot. We have just learned the enemy has set fire to the St Roch district and a part of St Nicholas. The churches have been spared.

Knox also reports another instance of the successes of French (mostly, First Nations, actually) raiding parties that infuriate the British command and persuade them they are justified in unlimited warfare: "Four sailors, who have been for some time missing, were found scalped on the lower end of the isle of Orleans."

Saint of the Mohawks

The National Post reports the saint of the Mohawks, Kateri Tekakwitha, is "on the verge" of canonization -- thanks to some mysterious recent miracle attributed to her intervention.

Which gives me a change to note Allan Greer's Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, a study that makes "history from hagiography," as one reviewer noted with relief. The book was published by Oxford University Press three years ago to rather less notice than I had expected, perhaps -- although the reviews are pretty terrific.

Greer suggests that Tekakwitha may be the most famous Canadian who ever lived. The Jesuits wrote scores of hagiographies of her which were published in every place and every language in which they did mission work among "pagan" nations.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #42

Monday, August 13, 1759: Captain Knox notes some of the routine business of the siege camp:

Upwards of a thousand cannon shot and twenty thirteen-inch shells, which came from the enemy at different times, have been collected in the precincts of our batteries, and were sent on board an ordnance-ship to be transmitted, as it is said, to Louisbourg. The soldiers are allowed two pence for a shot, two shillings and sixpence for a ten-inch, and five shillings for thirteen-inch shells. Two marines deserted to-day. Nothing extraordinary at our batteries; moderate firing between them and the town. Our weather gloomy; wind right ahead, and, by the deluges of rain we have had of late, the air is rendered cool, and our camp uncomfortable.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #41

Sunday, August 12, 1759. Another day under shot and shell inside the battered town of Quebec, as seen by the supply clerk/diarist:

A child was killed in a house in the St. Roch neighbourhood, and a woman died after being injured by the explosion of a bomb. A bomb that fell right on the gun platform dismounted a cannon at the battery between the chateau and the house of big Girard. The cannonballs that hit the walls of the lower town smash down yards of masonry each time.

And gunner Foligné gives the defenders’ perspective on the ships that had attempted to move upriver the day before:

This morning at nine M. Deboulle, commanding four gunboats, attacked the schooner that had made its way upriver during the night. After a fight lasting nearly an hour it was forced to beach itself on the south shore for repairs.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #40

Saturday, August 11, 1759. General Wolfe is slowly reinforcing the troops commanded by Murray in the British naval vessels above the city, ready to launch raids (or more) upriver from Quebec. Today the wind is fair and he plans to send more ships and 200 men past the guns of the city. Captain Knox reports:

This night at nine o'clock, the Leostaff, Hunter, and some transports, worked upwards, and attempted to pass the town; but, the tide of flood being almost at the height, and the wind failing them, they were obliged to put back. While they were within reach, the enemy bombarded and cannonaded them vigorously, which was most spiritedly returned by our batteries.

Knox also reports news and rumours from the enemy camp:

Some wretched Canadian families are brought in today by our rangers. General Wolfe having lately dispersed some placarts throughout the country, wherein he limited the inhabitants to disperse by a certain day, and observe a neutrality; some of their Chiefs went lately to Monsieur Vaudreuil and to Monsieur Montcalm to inquire what part to take when the appointed time should expire? — to which they got for answer, "This is a piece of policy by the British General; continue to defend your country, as ye have hitherto nobly done; for we have certain intelligence that their fleet is only victualled at full allowance to the latter end of this month.'

New/old book on the siege of Quebec

Those hardy souls still with us on the long march to the Plains of Abraham will have noted our drawings from from the anonymous journal of the siege by the royal supply clerk, who provides much of the best information on the conditions of life within the besieged town of Quebec.

Les Presses de l'Université Laval has recently re-published the journal in a handsome new edition. Well, sort of new. It's really the edition of 1922 with Aegidius Fauteux's brief introduction and his copious footnotes, rather than a new scholarly edition. But the previous one is not only eighty-seven years gone, it was a private edition of just 250 copies, apparently. So welcome back.

Interestingly, you can either order it as a printed paper book or download it as a .pdf. The price is identical: $24.94. But the same Fauteux edition of the journal, having gone out of print and out of copyright, is also available free online from the digital history repository Our Roots/Nos Racines. So the market for the .pdf among the web-savvy may be small.

More on Oil and Alberta

My column on Alberta's oil history in a previous Beaver mused about the dearth of good big readable histories on the subject. After a flurry of letters, the Beaver website now offers a range of readings about oil history. I'm grateful to the mag and to its readers, and this is a nice example of what a mag website can do. These are useful links if you are deep into the subject. But my point stands, I think.

Rules for research on (some) human subjects

Do research on living people and societies (unlike those of us who focus on the 250-years dead)? You might take a look at Janet A's musings on the new SSHRC guidelines.

Walrus on the siege

The September Walrus magazine features a semi-fiction by novelist Helen Humphreys, a sort of musing on the events of the battle of the Plains of Abraham. It's on the newsstands, but not, or at least not yet, available on their website.

Update: Paul Isaacs from The Walrus tells me it's now available right here.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #39

Friday, August 10, 1759. With Montcalm holding his lines, the British temporarily bereft of strategic initiative, and British raiding parties out torching the downriver communities, the journal of the anonymous supply clerk keeps us up with how the city endures:

The enemy continues to bombard us constantly. Most of the bombs fall in the St-Roch neighbourhood, where several houses have already been smashed. However, now they have begun to distribute their favours upon all the other parts of the town, not wanting to make anyone jealous.

We have just learned that the English landed at Ste-Croix and St. Nicolas where they encountered some residents who fired on them for half an hour before having to flee into the woods. Soon the enemy mounted a hillock, formed up in battle order, and beat the drums. We think they lost a man in this encounter.

Statues of Ottawa

Robert Sibley of The Citizen continues his tour of the capital's statues and monuments.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #38

Thursday, August 9, 1759: Captain Knox notes: “A great smoke is perceived this morning on the north side, at a distance below Orleans. This is supposed to be occasioned by Captain Goreham's detachment, who are burning the settlements abreast of the ile of Coudres.” The community of Baie St-Paul has been destroyed.

News has reached Quebec of the fall of Fort Niagara at the end of July. Meanwhile Chevalier La Corne, commanding a small detachment where Lake Ontario enters the St. Lawrence, had found his position untenable. If the British attack, he will be obliged to retreat to La Presentation, virtually at the western end of the settlements of New France.

Lévis's journal:

Analyzing the situation, we decided to leave nothing to luck. We agreed that M. de Levis will head for that frontier with 800 men, a hundred from the French regular troops, the rest militia, to do everything possible to limit the damage. M. le marquis de Vaudreuil gave orders assigning him command of all the Montreal frontier. He left August 9 in the evening with M. de la Pause and Le Mercier.

This is a serious blow to Montcalm. Lévis has been his strong calm capable right arm throughout the siege, the only French officer besides Montcalm skilled in more than regimental manoevres. Lévis will do all he can to shore up the Montreal defences, but even more than the troops he takes away, Montcalm will miss the military skill and knowledge Levis has been contributing all through the siege.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #37

Wednesday, August 8, 1759:

"Barges that had joined the enemy ships above the city attempted to land soldiers at Point aux Trembles where, being vigorously attacked, they returned aboard their ships. The same day fifteen or twenty men of Ange-Gardien confronted an enemy party of about five hundred men who had rounded up two or three hundred cattle from the surrounding countryside. Our people forced the enemy to abandon the cattle and drove the catle back into the deep woods."
-- Foligné's journal

Montcalm’s second in command, Lévis, mentions the same events (though dating them August 7) but he ascribes the small victory to “the good behaviour of our detachments defending that area. They had been reinforced in the last few days. M. de Bougainville had been sent to take command there, replacing Major Dumas of the colonial troops."

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #36

Tuesday August 7, 1759. Quebec learns of the the French forces' evacuation of Carillon (Ticondiroga) on Lake Champlain some days before, and of their entrenching at the Ile-aux-Noix (at the northern end of the lake, on the upper Richelieu River) reaches Quebec. Montcalm probably understands this to mean that General Amherst’s progress toward Montreal from the south is going to be as slow as he has hoped.

Foligné, commanding a gun battery on the ramparts of Quebec, reports on the ongoing gunnery duel: "Today there was a great cannonading from here and there in the various encampments. Our loss amounted to fifteen men killed or wounded. We do not know the enemy’s losses, but the fire of our ramparts having silenced their guns two or three times, we have reason to think they were not without loss."

We have company: Le Soleil on the siege

Le Soleil, Quebec City's leading newspaper, started a daily journal of the siege of Quebec on August 1. Welcome to the game!

Demolishing history

Heather Pringle, the terrific western Canadian writer who has made herself one of North America's leading archaeology journalists (yes, there is such a thing) covers the demolition of a treasure of American archaeology to provide dirt fill for a new Wal-Mart building project. It's not new, but I just came across it, and no one else seems to have mentioned it.

Update, August 7: For a sense of the history being destroyed, consider Timothy Pauketat's new study of Cahokia, the 12th century city state located near what is now St. Louis, Missouri.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #35

Monday August 6, 2007. Two days ago James Wolfe decided “to destroy the habitations and settlement in the Bay of St. Paul. [We] will employ Gorham [Joseph Goreham, captain of a Nova Scotia-based ranger company] in that service with 200 or 220 men.”

Today Wolfe elaborates in a note to Brigadier Monckton:

If any more fire attempts [i.e., the launching of fireships against the British fleet] are made, I shall burn all the houses from the village of St. Joachim to the Montmorency River, except exactly such as we have occasion for. And I would have you (if Goreham returns in time) enable him by reinforcements to burn every house and hut between the Chaudiere and the River Etchemin… The houses, barns, etc., from your camp down to the Church of Beaumont may be consumed at the same time."

Late in July, Wolfe had threatened the Canadian population with this fate if they took up arms against the British. (Militia service was compulsory for every Canadian over sixteen). He gave the population until August 10 to submit to the British authorities. Monckton, apparently reluctant to assist in the campaign against civilians that Wolfe is undertaking, writes on the back of Wolfe’s note to him, “Not to burn until the time is expired….”

Live-blogging the Quebec siege+250 #34

Sunday, August 5, 1759. Back in March, James Wolfe had written to General Amherst (his commanding officer and senior British officer in North America) that if “we find that Quebec is not likely to fall into our hands (persevering, however, to the last moment), I propose to set the town on fire with shells, to destroy the harvest, houses, and cattle, both above and below, to send off as many Canadians as possible to Europe and to leave famine and desolation behind me. Belle resolution et très chrétienne!"

Wolfe's siege has not yet reached that last moment, but the season wears on. The town is already crumbling under his bombardment, but Wolfe's mind now begins to turn to the other aspects of his in-case-of-failure program.

Captain Knox reports buzz around the British camp:

We are told by deserters, that they will wait until General Wolfe is obliged to draw his troops from the north camp, then fall on him with their whole force and cut the flower of his army to pieces. An attempt to this effect would afford his Excellency the highest satisfaction, as he might then hope to bring them to a regular action, what he seems moft to wish for.

As we have seen, Montcalm is not thinking that way at all. He will hold to his defensive lines.

History blogs in the summertime

My friends at TheBeaver.ca remind me they are live all summer with weekly updates. And they tweet, too at #Canada'sHistory!

Open up the Ontario Archives

Months ago we saluted the opening of the new Ontario Archives building in a built-for-the-purpose structure near York University.

Now we discover the familiar edifice complex: they build the fabulous new building... and haven't the funds to keep the place open. The new Archives works on civil service hours and researchers are no longer allowed even to have reading room access evenings and weekends.

The Global Gazette, Canada's online genealogy magazine, leads the campaign for better service.

Future posting the Quebec siege

See several days worth of advanced daily siege posts below. (Summer calls the blogger.)