HistoryWire is back...

... from that unexplained summer hiatus. It still seems to feature a lot of contemporary politics with its history, but that seems to be an occupational hazard for historybloggers. Welcome back, guys.

Active history

Active History, "a new website to help connect historians with the public, policy makers and the media" is "actively soliciting papers in all areas of historical inquiry." It's an initiative of Canadian historians who put it together at a conference at York University in the fall of 2008.

We define active history variously as history that listens and is responsive; history that will make a tangible difference in people’s lives; history that makes an intervention and is transformative to both practitioners and communities. We seek a practice of history that emphasizes collegiality, builds community among active historians and other members of communities, and recognizes the public responsibilities of the historian.

The principles seem admirable. I hope they prosper, and maybe some readers of this will be moved to contribute. But Active History's method -- put up a website, ask contributors to fill it, wait some more, put out another request for contributors -- seems, well, passive history.

This ain't Wikipedia. You want to put history into the blogosphere, you gotta do the work.... They do have some links I'm going to pursue, however.

Update, October 2: Jim Clifford assures me that Active History will "increase the activity over the next few months, but we also see this as a long term project." And maybe the Wikipedia model does have traction here. "We also noticed that Historyandpolicy.org took a few years to really gain momentum, but it now has the leading historians in Britain writing accessible papers on a regular basis."

Twitterstorians... like a nest of singing birds

Ici, on ne tuite pas. But at Notes from the Field, they have whole lists of historians who, well, tweet.

Update, September 29: And there are history apps for the iPhone too, it says here.

Belich on The Anglosphere

[Should have credited Andrew Smith, who got to this story first!]

The New Zealand historian James Belich's new global history Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World (Oxford University Press), thoughtfully reviewed here, seems to be history book of the week. Canadianists will want to be looking at how he integrates Canadian experience into this global development.

Belich reflects on the transformation of the world caused by the settlement colonies, from the United States to New Zealand. His subject is:

the migration of the British people over the globe, including North America; with the aid of some state power, certainly – the general protection afforded by the Royal Navy, occasional military expeditions to pull the migrants out of trouble, charters and treaties – but not in order to dominate anyone. Rather, the aim was to reproduce British-type “free” societies, usually freer than Britain’s own, in what were conveniently regarded as the “waste” places of the earth.

Well, yes, though having just refought the siege of Quebec, I'm inclined to think more than "occasional military expeditions" helped make all that territory British. And I'm a little gobsmacked to read:

with all due respect to the rich scholarship on European imperialism, in the very long view most European empires in Asia and Africa were a flash in the pan

I'm reminded of the Oxbridge don who tried to defend some reforms to his college by demonstrating that they were perfectly in keeping with the last three hundred years of college tradition. Ye-es, said one of his fellows, surely. But wouldn't you agree the last three hundred years have been, well, rather unusual. How long a view does it require to persuade Asians and Africans to see most of the last five hundred years as a flash in the pan?

History of British Courts: judges not lords, please

Times Online views with alarm the arrival of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. They are about 134 years behind Canada (slightly shorter times for the rest of the commonwealth)in creating a unified, judicially-based highest court of appeal. As you might have guessed, however, the Times's whole analysis of taking judicial power away from political actors goes ahead with some alarmed reference to the United States, but no awareness at all that scores of other parliamentary countries have achieved this evolution and now have decades if not centuries of experience with it.

Drivel watch: the Globe on rep-by-pop

We never had a debate and said that new Canadians, visible minorities, people who live in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area], Calgary, Edmonton and the Lower Mainland [of British Columbia], young people, gays and lesbians - that they should all have less representation," observes Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation.

No, we did not. Fortunately we did not need one.

Somehow John Ibbitson of the Globe took a routine announcement about the potential decennial adjustment of House of Commons seats to reflect census changes in the size and distribution of the Canadian population -- and evoked some kind of looming race-war gotterdammerung. Okay, people like Mendelson aided and abetted, but the whole Globe&Mail story is full of this kind of nonsense.

Fortunately, at least one letter to the editor has argued for a rational analysis.

It is highly spurious to insinuate that the new proposed seat distribution for the House of Commons falls along racial lines or pits minorities against whites (Catching Up To The New Canada: Ottawa Wants To Add More Seats – front page, Sept. 25). The proposal is colour-blind, and is only about population counts. The fact that the demographics may show these new seats will be populated by a more diverse ethnic population is merely coincidence.

Thanks, J.D.M. Stewart, we needed that.

There seems to be something about the principle of representation by population that has always driven political scientists a bit bonkers. But this one is extreme.

The Mowat Centre is a recently launched thingee at the University of Toronto, according to a university press release. This seems like an inauspicious start. Mendelsohn, the panic-monger on this story,:

a former professor of political science at Queen's University, comes to U of T fresh from his term at Queen's Park. He served as deputy minister for intergovernmental affairs, the Democratic Renewal Secretariat and the Office of International Relations and Protocol in Ontario from 2004 to 2007, making him a natural to teach students how to be effective practitioners and leaders in public policy.

Maybe that explains it.

Update, September 28: Steven Michael MacLean comments:

I just have one question for the Globe’s editorial board: What would George Brown think?

Archaeological find: gold of the Mercians

Said to be like finding a new Book of Kells, a huge archaeological find in Staffordshire, England (land of my own forefathers, as it happens, not that I'm making a claim).

History blogging as history teaching

At Dalhousie's History Department, Jerry Bannister has a public blog, The Historian's Gaze, that looks like being an integral part of the masters' seminar he leads. Where is blogging going to fit into teaching? They may be finding out, and it should be worth watching.

Samuel Johnson in America

It's Samuel Johnson's 300th birthday this month, and there has been a slew of new biographies, profiles and conferences. Joshua Kendell in the Boston Globe ponders how the wise, the witty, the brilliant Samuel Johnson could have been such a critic of ... Americans. He demonstrates that "Americans are a race of convicts [who] ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging," is pretty much standard for Johnson on America.

Kendell concludes Johnson was just sort of mistaken. The piece suggests if he had understood himself better, or been luckier, he would have surely been an American-supporter, if not actually an American.

But Johnson's query, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from among the drivers of negroes?" remains the most devastating one-line challenge ever launched against the claims of the American revolution and the American nation. It goes to the heart of all Johnson's scepticism about American claims and pretensions. Kendall quotes it but avoids thinking about it.

Another Johnson line, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," doesn't seem particularly anti-American, and Kendell doesn't cite it. But in 18th century Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, the concept of "loyal opposition" was still only weakly developed. Criticism of the king's government seemed to be criticism of the Crown and hence was to flirt with treason. So 18th century critics of government insisted they were truly loyal to their country and to a King being misled by incompetent or unscrupulous courtiers. They were, they insisted, true patriots. In Britain and even more in the American colonies, a "patriot" was not simply a lover of his country but a critic of its government. The patriots, oddly enough, were always the opposition party.

Johnson, deeply suspicious of the motives of American critics of the British government, was saying the same thing in his "patriotism is..." aphorism as in his "How is it that we see...? query.

History Quote of the week

Veteran technology journalist Mitch Ratcliffe once said, “Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns”

(Source: "Uh, an internet link somebody sent me." More precisely, here.)

An archives with four full-size ice rinks

Now that's Canadian. (h/t The Beaver's weekly News Splash.)

History comes to a stop... museums on strike.

The Museum of Civilization and the War Museum in Ottawa are strike-bound as of yesterday.

Business History Casebook

Joe Martin has been working for some years to develop a Chair in Business History in the Rotman School of Business in Toronto. (Smart management technique: he had a study done showing how many other top business schools around the world had Business History strengths. Worked wonders, I hear.) Anyway, next week Joe and the Rotman are releasing Relentless Change, a casebook in business history. They will fill that chair yet.

1609, Mannahatta, Henry Hudson

National Geographic's September 2009 striking reconstruction of "Mannahatta" -- what New York City looked like when Henry Hudson ventured by in 1609 -- has been all over the magazine stands recently. Which reminds me that the authoritative book on Henry Hudson on the 400th anniversary of his tour up the river now named for him is from Canadian writer (and, blush, friend of this blog) Douglas Hunter. Half Moon is published this month.

The Dead of 1759

Andrew Smith makes the case for remembering the dead of 1759 in this year's Remembrance Day ceremonies at the War Memorial in Ottawa.

Andrew's well worth a read. But the dead of 1759 who continue to resonate for me are the townspeople killed as their houses crumbled under shellfire during the siege of Quebec, the civilians shot down in skirmishes with the British, the militia who died in their thousands during the whole of the war, even the elderly and the children who died of malnutrition and fevers during the grim winters of that struggle. And that's not to mention the Acadians, the people of Louisbourg, ....

I once guessed -- it's in the Illustrated History of Canada -- there may have been 6000 or 7000 Canadian casualties during the Seven Years War. And that would have been a tenth of the population of New France. No Canadian population ever had such an experience before or since.

War on our own soil, around our own homes, is something Canadians have been spared for a very long time. It would be too bad if our understanding of that became caught up in honouring a French and a British general -- or wrangling whether to honour them. Could we not honour an unknown soldier of the Canadian War of the Conquest?

Update: Andrew replies.

Round-up

Newly merged Historica-Dominion Institute is looking to hire some people shortterm to work on their Memory Project initiative. Contact is Jeremy Diamond at the HDI.

Pacific Review of Books, new to me (and more poetry and aesthetics than non-fiction and history, but we take a broad view) is in some financial difficulty and seeks donations and subscriptions. See here.

Cool book watch: Canada's Stonehenge.

Canada Council does its annual public meeting in Moncton on September 30, and will live stream the thing online too.

Weird history watch: Nifty medieval-history blog A Corner of Tenth Century Europe ponders evidence of pre-Maori settlement in New Zealand, apparently a hot topic for the crankier end of the NZ blogosphere. Well, it would be the tenth century or thereabouts.

Ooh, and we cracked 10,000 on that counter thing sometime last night. Thanks, midnight readers.

Broken Democracy?

Coyne v. Wells, the debating Macleans columnists (do they find their work easier than undergraduate essay-writing, I wonder?) are holding a public dustup on our parliamentary and governmental problems. "Our Democracy is Broken" is the title, various great brains will contribute, it's in Toronto, it's next Monday, and the rest of the details are here.

Speaking of Canadian democracy and politics, a team of political scientists is bringing out a volume of essential readings on the subject. It's not out yet, but after the assessment from Janet Ajzenstat here, it feels like it is dead on arrival. Can we have politics that work without a working understanding of the origins of our politics?

Jill Lepore and NiCHE on history in the magazines

A magazine called Humanities features an interview with the remarkable American historian/journalist Jill Lepore. She's a lively writer and, not surprisingly, makes a lively interviewee. They describe her as "a well-known scholar of early American history, a winner of the Bancroft Prize, a former NEH research fellow, and the author of numerous essays and several distinguished books. She is also a staff writer at the New Yorker and, with fellow historian Jane Kamensky, the coauthor of Blindspot, a work of historical fiction set in Revolution-era Boston."

I try to think of a Canadian-history equivalent of that.. and then I stop.

Meanwhile, the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE) is sponsoring a graduate workshop on Monday, October 19, 2009 in London, Ontario which promises to teach participants "how to sell an article about their work or experiences to a popular publication." (Info on the NiCHE website). Here's their pitch:

While peer reviewed journals may make the academic world go round, it’s through magazines and newspapers that your work can make its way into homes across the country – and you might be surprised to find out how interested Canadians are in what you do. Did we mention that you also get paid, and the amount of work is probably less than you spent on your first undergrad paper?

Now they are right about the interest, and I'm much in sympathy with the aspiration, for I often lament the public muteness of our scholarly historians, and there is something sweetly appealing about NiCHE's naivete.

But there is a notion abroad in academia that the public is like undergraduates, only dumber, and we see it at work here. In my experience, however, anyone reasonably glib and wrapped in academic authority can tell young and impressionable undergraduates almost anything, whereas the public that is interested in history tends to be well-read, widely experienced, and sophisticated in its judgments. I do wonder if the people running this seminar about magazine articles that are easier than undergraduate essays know anything about the craft of magazine journalism, the magazine market these days, or even about the non-academic audience for history?

I wonder, for instance, if Jill Lepore finds her New Yorker essays easier than undergraduate essays? As she says:

To be a public historian, not a public intellectual, not a popular historian, not a pundit, but a public historian, is to be a keeper of our memory as a people. And that, if I had my druthers, and the capacity, is what I would want to be.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250: Comments from the siege militia

Stephen Michael MacLean:

Your updates were enjoyed more fully after reading two books by William Wood — The Passing of New France and now The Winning of Canada — that, no matter how frowned upon by historians, at least gave me an overall perspective on what Montcalm and Wolfe achieved in 1759 (I’ve gone back to look at the DCB to see if Vaudreuil and Bigot were the scoundrels of Wood’s retelling).
I’ve also looked at the National Battlefield Commission site (as well as Parks Canada for information on the Fortress of Louisbourg) and I can’t say they were very helpful — especially Louisbourg. One would have hoped that even the barest narrative of events (with pictures of uniforms and armaments and user-friendly maps of the terrain) would have been available for the curious (such as school children, for instance) and in my exercise, at least, I came up empty.
A benefit of quotidian reviews is their ability to convey the particulars of events. Last night, walking our Jack Russell terrier to a local pond to watch a pair of beavers hard at work, and with a cool chill in the air, I had a sense of the impending winter that despaired the British and gave false hope to the French 250 years ago.

Brian Busby:

Fine series. Yes, please do consider "trying again".

Larry Marshall:

I've followed your siege of Quebec series and found it fascinating. I'm an American living in Quebec City and while I know the basic history of the events, you allowed me to understand this part of Quebec history.
I'll certainly continue following your blog and hope very much that you do another live-blogging series.

Anita and Bill Stewart:

I thoroughly enjoyed the series, especially as I visited Quebec this summer and walked the various locations. I thought the day by day approach gave a new perspective to the development of the siege that is missing from the various historical accounts. One of the inevitable consequences of the histories is that time is compressed during periods when not much is happening. However, for the participants time does not compress, so we can better understand the experience of the besiegers and the besieged. One of the challenges of traditional narrative history is that we read the course of events in hours when the event may take days or weeks and this distorts to some extent our understanding of the event. A poor analogy may be viewing the highlights of a hockey game on TV gives a different and weaker appreciation of the game versus watching the game live.

Mark Reynolds:

Loved the live blogging, and I hope you find another similar topic worthy of the considerable effort you take with it.

I must say, I was a little disappointed with how you ended it: I had grown rather attached to the Supply Clerk, and wanted to know what happened to him. Could you do a wrap up post?

Quite right. The supply clerk ended his siege diary with a brief undated entry covering the few days immediately after the battle. The last lines:

Reading this diary, one will see with shame the gross errors made during this campaign. It is as if we worked alongside the enemy to learn ways for them to take us with ease. Nothing proves this better than the battle of the 13th and the surrender of the town on the 18th. These will always give testimony against the arms of France. I no longer see a way to get back to ourselves. Only a good and happy peace can procure us that sweet and agreeable tranquility. I hope for it with all my heart, should that be the holy will of God. Amen.

Aegidius Fautoux, the cleric and historian who first edited and published the supply clerk's diary early in the twentieth century added this final annotation:

So ends on this prayer the diary of a brave man who clearly loved his country and who suffered in his soul to see it so afflicted.

This is so perfect that I have wondered if Fauteux composed the whole thing himself, but scholarly opinion seems united on its authenticity. (Shame on me for my cynicism, but one needs to be careful.) Fauteux's edition of the diary is available here at Nos Racines if you read French. The identity of the supply clerk remains unknown.

Stephen Owen on caucus reform

On the whole, I'd rather pound nails through my eardrums than listen to a podcast of Cross-Country Checkup, but I did hear a little of yesterday's program live on CBC Radio 1, and I distinctly heard Stephen Owen, lawyer, former federal MP and cabinet minister, argue that Parliament would work better and leaders be more accountable if MPs hired and fired their own leaders.

Too bad he didn't seem to push that idea when he actually was an MP. But I felt a little glow to hear someone even remotely connected to the Canadian political process acknowledge the existence of this notion. As faithful readers may have gathered, it's been an idée fixe of mine for years, argued out in 1867: How the Fathers Made A Deal and this essay.

Historical Mysteries remain unsolved

The Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project recently send us a notice about how it's taking over the world. Good on them. Worth a look, if you don't already know them.

The 12 Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History have been drawing as many as 2,200 Internet sleuths a day over the summer and as students return to school and teachers use them to teach everything from architecture to religion, usage will likely double. In China users include students learning English at the Huamei-Bond International High School, while 12-year-olds in Limerick, Ireland are learning history with the site. A professor at the University of Bologna, Italy uses it to teach history and computer science and one in Erie, Pennsylvania uses the site to teach Criminological Theories at Gannon University. A teacher in Houston is teaching world history to high school students with the website, while another in North Carolina uses the mysteries to teach Searching for Clues: Logic, Law, and Literature to advanced college students. In France high school students in Toulousse learn about battered children, using the resources on the mystery “Aurore! The Mystery of the Martyred Child”. Some universities in Japan are using the site in a preparatory course for students who will spend one year at University of British Columbia. The list is endless – a research course in the Dominican Republic, a conversation course taught in Prague, E-learning tools for History at the University of Florence in Italy…

History of Journalism

This Atlantic magazine essay about how media coverage of the recent nomination/confirmation of a new judge on the American Supreme Court developed in the new media environment is ... well, read it for yourself. I'm not sure I want to be a blogger when I grow up.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #73: The End

Thursday, September 13, 1759. Okay, if you have been following this series at all, you surely know the rest. Wolfe’s advance guard surprises the defenders at the Anse au Foulon. The British seize the heights, get the rest of their army up. All that stuff happens.

[Meanwhile, I'm interested in reader reaction to all this "live" blogging of history. Interested? Way too much? Worth trying again? I'll be grateful for responses via the poll at right or by an email comment. Glad to quote opinions of all kinds.]

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #72

Wednesday, September 12, 1759. The French in Quebec are in dire need of supplies, and the supply corps urges an effort to smuggle some boatloads downriver past the British ships. Quite inadvertently, they will give cover to the British boats following the same route downriver from their stations around Cap-Rouge and Pointe-aux-Trembles.

Where will the British boats head? Even the brigadiers do not know. In the evening they send Wolfe a note: What is the plan? At 8.30 pm Wolfe replies, “The place is called the Foulon, distant about 2 miles or two and a half from Quebec where you remember an encampment of ten or twelve tents and an abattis below it.” [Abattis: a barricade of sharpened tree trunks and branches]

Tonight’s the night.

Why the change in landing site? Fred Anderson, the author of Crucible of War, the principal recent history of the Seven Years War in North America, thinks Wolfe believed Quebec could not be taken. Anderson argues that Wolfe, resigned to his failure, had altered the brigadiers’ plan in order to get himself killed with the least possible loss to his army. Thereafter the brigadiers could clean up the mess and withdraw:

Wolfe had assumed that he would come ashore with the advance guard, that there would be resistance and … that he would be killed leading his men against the French outpost. If his wish were granted, he would have risked only the advance guard, the survivors of which would be free to re-embark. Monckton, the second in command, would be free to call off an operation of which he clearly disapproved.” (page 354)

In a footnote, Anderson acknowledges “a large measure of speculation in this” but cites contemporary opinions that support his interpretation.

Granatstein on a parliament deciding

Jack Granatstein had a good solid piece in yesterday's Globe and Mail on the constitutional significance of Canada making it clear by its declaration of war, September 10, 1939, that Canada's Parliament, and only Canada's Parliament, could make that decision.

But the force of Mackenzie King's "Parliament will decide" that Jack salutes here needs to be qualified a little.

Mackenzie King was the first parliamentary party leader (in the world, I believe) to be chosen by an extra-parliamentary group rather than by the elected MPs of his caucus. Ever after, he pounded home the message, in defiance of all precedent and of all the fundamental principles by which parliaments work, that the Liberal MPs were accountable to him and not vice versa. So he could say "Parliament will decide" knowing that as long as his party held a majority and its MPs were kept from exercising their constitutional mandate to hold the government accountable, he really meant he would decide.

That's how Canadian politics has operated ever since, to the point that most of our political scientists and commentators are unable to grasp there even is an issue here. Pity.

(Photo courtesy LAC -- even Mackenzie King's organizers could not spell his name sometimes.)

A bag over the head of the National Portrait Gallery

Best analysis I've seen of the apparent shutting down of the National Portrait Gallery was heard rather than seen: Robert Enright on As It Happens Thursday evening. (It's on part 2 of the audio available here).

Director Lily Koltun is gone, but the portrait gallery website is still live today. The portrait opposite, of lawyer and politician Edward Blake by Wyly Grier, is from its recent acquistions section. I don't think I had ever seen it before. Maybe I never will, not as paint and canvas on a wall.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #71

Tuesday, September 11, 1759. The weather clears. Why doesn’t Wolfe launch his attack today? Apparently because, having permitted the troops to leave their cramped shipboard quarters during the bad weather, the regiments need a little time to get them back aboard. Wolfe’s orders for today focus the mechanics of that.

The troops on shore, except the light infantry and Americans, are to be upon the beach, to-morrow morning, at five o'clock, in readiness to embark. The light infantry and Americans will re-embark at, or about, eight o'clock, the detachment of artillery to be put on board the armed sloop this day. The army to hold themselves in readiness to land and attack the enemy.

The supply clerk's journal, meanwhile expresses jitters on the other side of the lines:

All the English vessels except two at Pointe-aux-Trembles have come down to Sillery. Some think they intend to return downstream. May God will it so. But I always fear some surprise.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #70

Monday, September 10, 1759. James Wolfe and brigadiers Monckton and Townshend, all of them disguised in grenadiers’ coats so they will not be observed, move downriver closer to Quebec, and Wolfe studies the cliffs opposite. This seems to be the day that Wolfe throws his own change into the brigadiers’ plan for a landing. They have emphasized, not hitting the enemy directly, but getting the British army established across the French communication and supply lines at least ten miles above the city, so that Montcalm will be forced at some time to come out and confront them. This seems too methodical to Wolfe. But as he reconnoiters, he does not take the brigadiers into his confidence about his changing plans.

First to the North Pole: history and "motivated reasoning"

The New York Times offers a pungent review of the rival claims of Frederick Cook and Robert Peary to have reached the North Pole a hundred years ago this month. Hey, they say, if people believed George Bush about Saddam Hussein, why wouldn't they believe Cook, or Peary -- but not both, since each denounced the other as a fraud.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #69

Sunday, September 9, 1759. Weather stops the course of history for another day. Captain Knox quotes the British order of the day:

As the weather is so bad that no military operations can take place, and as the men are so excessively crowded in the transports and in the men of war, so as to endanger their health, it is ordered that the under-mentioned troops be landed at the mill upon the south shore, and that they may be cantoned in the village and church of St. Nicholas, in readiness to embark at the first slgnal.

The signal to march and embark by day will be two guns fired fast and two slow from the Sutherland. The signal by night will be three lights at the main-top-gallant masthead of the same ship, and two guns.

On the other side of the barricades, the supply clerk has been putting little more than the ‘headlines” into his journal in the last several days. But an aside today describes in one sentence what the town and its people continue to experience every day, whatever the weather, whatever the grand strategy. “The enemy always maintains a heavy fire from Point Lévis.”

Death of the Dominion Institute

It was fun while it lasted.

For a dozen years, The Dominion Institute, "an NGO for Canadian history," was a nimble and clever and provocative actor on the national scene. In the cause of Canadian history and Canadian citizenship, the DI was always coming up with innovative projects and publicizing them brilliantly. It partnered with novelists and veterans and celebrities and new-media gurus in startling ways, and it practised convergence across media platforms long before the concept was a cliché. Its cheeky polls became a July 1 tradition to rank with fresh strawberries and cold beer. The Dominion Institute was history in your face, of a kind we've never quite seen before. It did discomfit the usual spokesmen from time to time. But I admired it all. (Yeah, I got some work from them too, and they kept me on the invitation list for some terrific parties over the years.)

Anyway, today the announcement is out that the DI has been merged into the Historica Foundation, to create Dominion-Historica. Even the startlingly retro name has become a meaningless hyphen-thing.

The Historica Foundation has done useful things, for sure. Just keeping the Canadian Encylopedia alive, let alone all it has done to make it online, interactive and up-to-date, has been a great service to the world. But by comparison to the DI, the Historica Foundation has always seemed ponderous and sanctimonious and expensive and bureaucratic. It's not hard to guess which culture will dominate in the merged institutions.

Started with what seemed like vast financial endowments from two Canadian zillionaires, Historica somehow exhausted them and began competing against the DI (and everyone else) for public and private funding. The government started asking why it should have to listen to two or three agencies and began pushing for mergers. And no doubt the current economic downturn, shrinking the budgets of donors and funders everywhere, was the last nail.

Well, I wish the best for the newly merged institution and its projects, and all the people who labour on them. But some of the fun just went out of Canadian history. Rudyard, Marc, Alison, Eric, Jeremy, and all of you, you did a terrific thing while it lasted.

LRC on the siege

Literary Review of Canada has a terrific survey, now online, of a group of books about the Plains of Abraham, by the young Toronto writer Jack Mitchell.

As an amateur strategist, Mitchell has a cranky idea or two. At least, this amateur strategist isn't much taken with his idea that Montcalm should have frittered away his troops trying to hold unsustainable outposts like Point Lévis, or that the February 1760 battle at Ste-Foy mattered much in the scale of things.

But in assessing the merits of the various books, Mitchell is both generous and astute. Even more so when he reflects on the wrangles last February that led to the cancellation of a planned "reenactment" of the battle. As Mitchell suggests, the cancellation proved, not the irrelevance of Canadian history but the fact that it is almost too important. A "let's have fun and promote tourism" attitude to the Plains of Abraham was absolutely the wrong way to grasp the significance of Canadian past.

The organizers of opposition of the renactment were labelled "hardline separatists" and no doubt some were. But they spoke for at least some who care about history and about Canada.

Before reading Mitchell, I had been unaware of the book pictured, which seems to have done in book form and properly, more or less what we've been messing with here in our Live-Blog: Québec, ville assiégée, 1759–1760 by Jacques Lacoursière and Hélène Quimper, published by Séptentrion.

Also not to be missed, in the current LRC Letters section (but I think you have to have the hardcopy for that, at least so far): Michael Bliss's fiery-and-thoughtful-too opinion of last winter's prorogation wrangle.

Churchill -- liability to the free world?

That'll set some blood boiling. Here's the story.

Edgar Dewdney, who he?

Nice to see an old historical interest of mine in the news. Regina writer C.J. Cooney, working on a biography of Edgar Dewdney, concludes that the pioneer surveyor, early lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories, windbag, and self-promoter extraordinaire, was a self invented man. Amazingly enough, CanWest News does a pretty good job on the story -- kudos to reporter Randy Boswell. The story is based on Cooney's article in the B.C. Historical Journal.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has Dewdney "born to a family of means" -- which is certainly what he always said. But Cooney is pretty sure he was a nobody who reinvented himself the day he got off the boat in Victoria.

T'other hand, Dewdney apparently arrived with some skill as a civil engineer and an introduction from the Colonial Secretary and . Where'd that come from?

This is a Dewdney letter to John A. Macdonald, written March 25, 1885, explaining how Dewdney's personal intervention with Louis Riel will prevent the Red River uprising.

If I see I can do good, I will go straight to Duck Lake to camp with him. I believe that Riel and most of the halfbreeds will stick to me if I go there, for I should tell them I go as a friend and mediator. I know they have no unfriendly feeling toward me.

Fighting breaks out at Duck Lake the next morning.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #68

Saturday September 8, 1759. Captain Knoxreports on the British buildup, and the response of the still-lively batteries of the city:

Wet weather, wind up the river. This morning, at daybreak, a transport cat, two sloops, and a schooner passed the town with provisions, etc. and were followed soon after by two other small vessels. They were all warmly cannonaded in their passage, and sustained some damage.

The rain pours down all day, and makes an attack impossible. Wolfe has time to think. The British plans are focussed on ground just east of Pointe-aux-Trembles, about 4 leagues or 12 miles upriver from the city. The shore is low offering lot of space for the regiments to land and form up, and once ashore they will be astride the road linking Quebec to its supply bases and to Montreal. It fits the brigadiers’ plan perfectly. But, during the rain delay, Wolfe goes downriver to reconnoiter some more.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #67

Friday September 7, 1759. British ships, carrying several thousand troops primed for a landing, lie in the river adjacent to Cap-Rouge. Colonel Bougainville watches them anxiously from the shore.

The British order of battle for the landing forces has been issued, but Wolfe stays flexible. The British forces, naval and army, are working superbly together. Wolfe has tremendous freedom to order them into action almost spontaneously. He can go or not go on a moment’s notice.“When the coast has been examined and the best landing places pitched upon, the troops will be ordered to disembark, perhaps this night’s tide.”

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #66

Thursday, September 6, 1759. Brigadier George Townshend writes to a friend in Britain:

I never served so disagreeable a campaign as this. Our unequal force has reduced our operations to a scene of skirmishing, cruelty and devastation. It is war of the worst shape. A scene I ought not to be in...

Gen. Wolfe's health is but very bad. His generalship in my poor opinion is not a bit better -- this only between us. He never consulted us ‘til the latter end of August, so that we have nothing to answer for, I hope, as to the success of this campaign, which for the disposition the French have made of their force must chiefly fall to General Amherst and General Johnson.

Our campaign is just over. I shall come back in Admiral Saunders’s ship and in two months shall again belong to those I ought never to have left.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #65

Wednesday, September 5, 1759: Montcalm: “M. Wolfe is just the man to double back.” Montcalm theorizes that Wolfe is like a gambler who will feint left (Murray’s early skirmishes upriver), feint right (the Montmorency attack) and then hit the middle (the Beauport shore, or perhaps straight into the town itself). Despite the new British concentration upriver, he dare not commit all his resources to the region above Quebec

The upriver defences depend on Colonel Bougainville’s mobile forces, which try to move up and down the river following the British boat brigades, hoping to be on the scene whenever, wherever they try to land. He has accumulated about 3000 men for the long coast from the Plains of Abraham to Deschambault and beyond. Governor Vaudreuil writes to Bougainville today: “I have no need to tell you, sir, that the salvation of the colony is in your hands. That the enemy’s plan is certainly to cut our communications by making a landing on the north shore. Only vigilance can protect us.”

Historico-literacy on the net

Thing that amazes me about Edge of the American West is not just that it is so smart and literate and historically engaged, but that the people who comment there are equally smart and, etc. See this high-end discussion of historical novels, f'r instance. Most comment sections prove that the internet really is just some skuzzy bar at closing time, but then there's EotAW.

History of Architecture

Thanks to Dave LeBlanc, the weekly "Architourist" in the Globe and Mail's real estate section, I've been browsing a little in the online Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Architects. It announces itself as an "authoritative work" that "lists every Canadian building of importance between 1800 and 1950 whose architect can be identified, together with essential information on the date of design, construction, alteration or demolition of the work." And it backs up the claim, with a mass of information that is searchable almost anyway you want.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #64

Tuesday, September 4, 1759. Today both General Wolfe and Admiral Saunders move upriver, and Saunders "hoists his flag" (that is, he establishes his headquarters) in the Sutherland, which has been in the upper river for weeks. More of the boats the troops will need go upriver too. The troops are assembled, the transportation is available. The British can land whenever conditions seem right.

But there remains a substantial British force at Montmorency, and Montcalm has to consider all the threats against his lines. Still, he repositions his troops, concentrating more of them near the St Charles river, just east of the town, ready to operate where most needed, “even above Quebec if necessary.”

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #63

Monday, September 3, 1759. As the British reorganize their whole campaign, the French must still consider more homely concerns, such as getting the crops in. And it is so important that Montcalm detaches troops to cross behind the British lines at Montmorency to support the farmers in case of a British attack upon them in their fields. Foligné:

M. de Repentigny with about 700 men crossed at the Falls and distributed his men to guard that coast as far as St- Joachiim. This is to assist the people to make their harvest -- to which the enemy have done no damage. The command took this precaution because two enemy ships have anchored opposite Ange-Gardien.

St-Joachim and Ange-Gardien are north shore downriver communities where the British have already burned most of the homes and mills and barns. But the farmers come out of the woods each day to try to salvage something of their food supply they will need both immediately and through the winter.

Gopnik on Ignatieff's country

Adam Gopnik, to my mind consistently the best writer in the New Yorker and interesting on anything, profiles Michael Ignatieff and his country in the current issue. (abstract only, full story just for subscribers)

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #62

Sunday, September 2, 1759. James Wolfe has accepted his brigadiers’ plan for an attack upriver from Quebec. To that end, he is shifting thousands of men, many ships, and tons of weapons and supplies to new positions. He is committed. But he remains sick and discouraged and unable to believe that the new plan offers much hope of success. Today, he sends a lengthy history of his siege directly to the prime minister, William Pitt. He begins:

I wish I could, upon this occasion, have the honour of transmitting to you a more favourable account of the progress of his majesty’s arms, but the obstacles we have met with in the operations of the campaign are much greater than we had reason to expect or could foresee.

Wolfe lays out for the prime minister the frustrations of the campaign, the failure of his efforts at Montmorency, and his decision to “lay waste the country … partly in return for many insults offered to us by the Canadians.” Near the end, he summarizes the brigadiers’ new strategy. “I have acquiesced in their proposal, and we are preparing to put it into execution,” he writes, but he promises nothing from it. He concludes:

In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine…. However you may be assured that the small part of the campaign which remains shall be employed (as far as I am able) for the honour of his majesty and the interest of the nation.

Live-blogging the Second World War

This battle blogging is catching on: This is George Orwell on September 1, 1939. (Don't miss the commenter down below: "Now we have to wait six years to find out how it all turns out!")

I promise: we'll wrap up the siege of Quebec in less than two weeks.

Update, September 2: And now: live-blogging of the American Civil War too.

Museum of Toronto... maybe in another hundred years

The Globe reports on difficulties with the project to develop a Museum of Toronto. Converting the strange, dynamic Canada Malting silos into a museum was always a quirky cool idea, but apparently the city doesn't consider it feasible in these hard times. Old City Hall? Maybe after 2016.

History of Money ... and Philosophy

The amazing David Warsh, at Economic Principals, discusses a history of the Greeks' invention of money.... and how that led to the invention of philosophy, and law, and Aristophanes's plays, and much else. And he draws the lessons for the 21st century, too.

In brief, Cindi Lauper explained it all. Money changes everything.

Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #61

Saturday, September 1, 1759. General Wolfe issues the vital order that puts into motion the brigadiers’ recommendation for an attack above Quebec. Troops, guns, and stores are to be shifted from Montmorency, where they have faced the easternmost French lines, to Point Levy on the south shore and on upriver from there. Wolfe leaves a substantial force at Montmorency -- to disguise the British intentions, to pin down the French defenders, and to threaten an attack if Montcalm himself shifts troops westward. But the tip of the British spear is turning westward. The British are focussing their gaze on the north shore, upriver from the city.

During the night five more British vessels have successfully moved past Quebec’s gun batteries to reach the upper part of the river, further expanding British potential to move men and equipment in that area. The very name “Quebec” means “the narrows;” Champlain had chosen the site 150 years earlier for potential to command all movement up the great river. But six weeks of incessant fire against the French gun batteries now begins to deliver results; Quebec’s command of the narrows is being lost.

Foligné, the French sea officer serving in the gun batteries, is well aware that British efforts are shifting to the territory upriver from Quebec (though he dates these events August 31]:

After burning their works at the Falls, the British embarked and set up camp, some on the Ile d’Orléans, some at Point Levy where their encampment now seems greatly enlarged. There were busy troop movements there: sometimes manning the boats, sometimes forming up facing the town. They remained in battle order for some time. Finally they marched to the River Etchemin [on the south shore, up river from Point Levy], where they settled in the woods and spend the night under arms. …. This same day, M. le Marquis de Montcalm, seeing the enemy evacuate their positions at the Falls, shifted the position of our encampment.

The civilian supply clerk, often pessimistic, also observes the British movements and wonders if the high command is paying attention..

Here we have at least 20 or 25 English ships upriver, and bodies of troops that we have seen going upriver by land with their arms and baggage. They is digging going on at the Falls, but that means nothing. We still guard Beauport, apparently believing it would be impossible to land anywhere else. I hope so but I fear we may be making a mistake.

But Montcalm writes to Bougainville as if he were reading Wolfe’s mind:

I am always afraid that the English will try to establish themselves somewhere to cut our communications; take care at Jacques-Cartier and Deschambault [two of the brigadiers's potential landing places on the north shore upriver of Quebec].