Reason to be glad we have the Senate we do

Unlike the American one, it does not get in the way of the democratic process. Slate's Timothy Noah explains why the US would be better off without its powerful, unrepresentative upper house

History of lathing, or History as lathing

When I was an undergrad thirty years ago all the old profs gave you a history, and all the young profs gave you a methodology when one asked them what they were.

Is one a historian of France or the Canadian prairies or the Renaissance, or rather a social historian, a cultural historian, a quantitative historian? Edge of the American West thinks it's mostly the second these days, and suggests historians should be addressing problems in history rather than simply practising a method. (The comments are good too)

Update, November 2: Jim Belshaw comments:

Cultural history is just as much a field as any geography or time limited area. My personal view is that there is remarkably little discussion on history method. I think that it’s partly because historians lack the skills required to discuss either history philosophy or methodology.

The problem, I think, is that these discussions actually threaten historians because they challenge their competence in their craft.

Franklin mystery solved again

Robert Grenier, Parks Canada's indefatigable marine archaeologist, will explain it all in a lecture at Greenwich, England, tomorrow, but The Guardian Online has it already. (Hint: they all died.)

Words you never thought you'd see in the media:

I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to read more about Sir Robert Borden.

It's how Paul Wells launches his review of John English's new Trudeau book in the Literary Review of Canada.

Update Nov 2: Wells points out that English has pointed out that English has already written a Borden biography. Wells must have meant Bowell, it's Mackenzie Bowell he really needs to read about.

What credentials should the historian of 1989 have?

Timothy Garton Ash knows:

The time has come for a brilliant young historian—at home in many languages; capable of empathizing both with powerholders and with so-called ordinary people; a writer of distinction; tenured, but with few teaching obligations; well-funded for extensive research on several continents; Stakhanovite in work habits; monastic in private life—to start writing this necessary, almost impossible masterpiece: a kind of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk of modern history.

(I was thinking it would probably be Garton Ash himself.)

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #18

Thursday, October 27, 1864:

“All right!!! Conference through at six o’clock tonight – constitution adopted – a most creditable document – a complete reform of all the abuses and injustices we have complained of!! Is it not wonderful? *French Canadianism entirely extinguished!! They are crying to me to hurry and my baggage is gone down. There they are again! You will say our constitution is dreadfully Tory – and it is – but we have the power in our hands (if it passes) to change it. Hurrah!
-- George Brown describing the end of the conference in a letter to his wife.

That’s it. They are done: 72 resolutions moved and adopted. There is some wrapping up in Montreal a couple of days later, and the official record of the resolutions is a bit of a mess. But the ideas the delegates have worked through since October 10th are still the fundamentals of the Canadian constitution.

(There will be a huge political fight in 1865-66 to get the Quebec deal ratified in enough provincial legislatures to make it worth proceeding with the plan. PEI and Newfoundland will opt out. Quebec's resolutions will have to be tweaked by the delegates in London in December 1866 and by the legislative drafting process for the British North America Act. But those are other stories.)

As the delegates hit the road to promote their deal, where did they stand on some of the big issues that still drive our constitutional debates?

On federalism? There is a powerful historiographic tradition that the centralists held sway at Quebec, that the delegates had no real appreciation of federalism, that it was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council that invented federalism and made the provinces into serious actors in Canadian politics.

It's true the JCPC often hobbled the feds vis-a-vis the provinces. But they also hobbled the British government vis-a-vis Canada whenever the vestiges of British authority became an issue. The JCPC didn't know much about Canada, perhaps, but they knew English constitutional principles, and those deep principles sustained the authority of responsible governments against supervisory authorities of all kinds. The Quebec conference, for all its gestures at legislative union and its sympathy for disallowance and such, established that kind of responsible-government federalism; the JCPC just sustained it.

On French-English relations and the national question in Quebec? It's striking how little this issue comes up in the official record: just minority education rights and some bilingualism in legislatures and courts. What's more important on this topic is the agreement that local matters, cultural matters, will be handled locally. Language, education, property law, social services, agriculture -- all the hot-button community subjects are broadly provincial. Even with only a minority in the national parliament, a linguistic or cultural community with a provincial base can assert its interests. (Quebec, yes, but Alberta too, they might have said.) It was not to be the seat count in the Commons that mattered (Senate seats even less).

On rights? The kind of rights that are so powerful for us really don't get a mention. The idea of rights charters is available at Quebec: the American Bill of Rights, the English one from the 1690s. But they mostly see rights as political -- rights are defended in and by legislatures full of independent representatives vigilant against incursions by the state. Judges could decree the existence of rights rooted in the English common law and "the rights of Englishmen." But the ruling idea was that rights were civil rights, to be defended by citizens -- by political action.

It didn't work that badly for a while, but it didn't work that well either. By the 20th century, it was clear that legislatures were quite capable of ignoring minorities, and the developing stranglehold of political parties made legislatures less and less inclined to challenge governments, anyway. But the idea that courts could hold government accountable to the constitution existed in the Quebec resolutions, and by the 1950s Supreme Court of Canada judges were attempting to create and enforce an "implied Bill of Rights," by declaring that the responsible government principles of the BNA Act pre-supposed and could not function without freedom of speech, of assembly, and so on. In the end, the one great revision Canadians have made to the Quebec principles was adding on a written Charter of Rights in 1982.

Plug: I've been using Rex Woods's copy of Robert Harris's "The Fathers of Confederation" for the logo of this series. Today, I've substituted my own 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, where some of the material here was worked out in rather different form. Still in better bookstores everywhere, at least the online ones....

* Does George Brown need defending? "French-Canadianism" was a nasty slogan he had developed in a decade and more of arguing that in pre-confederation union of Quebec and Ontario, the big francophone bloc had been able to interfere in Upper Canada’s affairs at will. He was a pungent controversialist, but he did not mean “French Canada extinguished”! (Funny, though, his idea that the constitution would be easy to amend.)

Canadian wikipedia?

There are various wiki-type projects relating to Canadian history, but I had not seen this thoughtful analysis of Wikipedia's APOV (American point of view) until today. Participant Historian, sadly, seems no longer to be, well, participating, but this post won a Cliopatria Award for best single post for 2006.

The argument is that there are Wikipedia in English, French, Russian, German, Basque, even Klingon, but within the English-language one, American interests and perspectives generally dominate, or at best, non-American perspectives have to accept being labelled as such. Not that the problem is uniquely Canadian. As PH says, the Basques get a Wikipedia, but the Mexicans don't.

Book Notes

Myrna Kostash launches The Frog Lake Reader at the Hudson's Bay building in Fort Qu'Appelle on Wednesday. (Bannock and tea will be served).

John English will be launching the second (1968-2000) volume of his Trudeau biography, Just Watch Me, just about everywhere.

And Marni Jackson launched Cabin Fever, her anthology of recent Canadian short non-fiction from the Banff School program, months ago, but I came across it in the bookstore the other day.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #17

Wednesday, October 26, 1864:

A resolution affirms the independence of the judiciary -- and confirms that superior court judges shall be federally appointed.

Then John A. Macdonald gets approval for an ambition still unrealized in the 21st century. The federal legislature shall be entitled to codify one single body of law on property and civil rights (otherwise a provincial responsibility), but only for the common law provinces, not in Quebec. A lawyer, Macdonald aspires to a single body of law and jurisprudence and a unified bar throughout common-law Canada. But there's a rider: it won't happen in any province without the consent of the provincial legislature. So for at least another century and a half, lawyers will still get called to the bar of Ontario or Alberta or Prince Edward Island and practice the law of their own province. (Though Macdonald sort of gets his way: in fact, barriers to interprovincial law practice have become vanishingly low, and there is much overlap between provincial statutes in many areas.)

They fix the capitals of the new provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and make Ottawa the national capital. Bilingualism: they confirm the use of both French and English in the national parliament, and in the legislature and courts of Quebec.

And then they get back to the money -- delegated since several days back to a committee, but now speedily passed. It is the same basic rules, but with a hodge-podge of special grants and accomodations for the provinces with the most adept finance ministers, it seems. (Leonard Tilley, we're looking at you. Charles Tupper, what were you doing the last few days?) A per capita grant of $0.80 will provoke the complaint that Nova Scotia has been sold to Canada for eighty cents a head.

According to the notes of A. A. Macdonald, a Prince Edward Island delegate, the islanders put forth a motion for the federal government to provide funds to the buying out of the large landed estates that hold most of the property on the island. The official minutes have nothing of that, and the Islanders get nothing, which pretty much kills Confederation's prospects in PEI. The island votes no on the financial resolution. The minutes for today have nothing about a proposal to fund the Intercolonial Railway from Quebec to the Maritimes -- but a resolution to this effect will be in the final list of motions passed. Did they vote on it today, or simply agree later they had meant to?

They will meet again tomorrow, but you know what? They are damn near done, and getting a bit giddy about it. We'll wrap up tomorrow.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #16

Tuesday, October 25, 1864:

[If constitutional history makes you crazy with boredom, let me say the conference only has a couple of days to run. But I'm enjoying this - and the numbers seem to be holding up.]

So today they get back to the list of provincial powers, having concluded that there will be enumerations of both federal and provincial powers.

They make a number of seemingly minor adjustments, reserve on a detail or two (why "weights and measures"?), and pass the whole thing. But D'Arcy McGee offers a consequential amendment on the "education" heading:

Saving the rights and privileges which the Protestant or Catholic minoriy in both Canadas may possess as to the denominational schools at the time when the constitution act goes into operation.

Eventually this will spawn a lot of debate (and recently an Ontario provincial election campaign disaster for John Tory) as to whether it is a sensible compromise or a disgraceful special pleading in favour of a couple of favoured religious minorities. On McGee's motion, however, the minutes simply say, "Agreed to."

In the evening they pass a motion that says "the laws of the federal parliament shall control and supersede those made by the local legislature and the latter shall be void so far as they are repugnant to or inconsistent with the former." Disallowance -- the power of the feds to stamp out any provincial act they don't like -- enters the equation. Does this entitle the feds to legislate freely even on the subjects just entrusted to the provinces? And how would that square with the right of responsible governments to act on behalf of the people to whose representatives they are accountable. A million constitutional law lectures and nearly as many trips to the Supreme Court and the Judicial Council will be floated on these issues.

They also add some federal responsibilities seemingly forgotten on the original list: Indians. Foreign Affairs.

And they take up some hardly insignificant process questions. The judges of the superior courts, run by the provinces, shall "aid assist and obey" the federal government in criminal law and other matters of federal jurisdiction, "and for such purposes shall be held to be judges and officers of the general government." This may be the germ of principle behind the odd fact that the superior courts are provincially-run, but their judges are federally appointed and paid. (A less principled reason may be that a lot of the delegates are lawyers who expect to be in the federal government and who like keeping open a route to judgeships for themselves and friends.)

Another biggee passes: The House of Commons shall not pass any money bill not first recommended by the cabinet. The government can't spend money without consent of the assembly -- but the assembly can't spend money in ways the responsible ministry doesn't support. Janet Ajzenstat will tell you this is why a lot of prominent political scientists and historians are dead wrong when they repeat that the fundamentals of Canadian parliamentary practise are unwritten conventions.

And another couple of resolutions to shore up the power of disallowance by the feds of "any bill passed by a local legislature." These two will also come up against responsible government principles: can it be legitimate for one government simply to cross out the legislation of another government that is enacting the popular will within its defined sphere of responsibility?

Finally they go back to the resolution of October 13, the one that started with the language about "our colonial condition." They reemphasize they will make no declaration which might fetter them in doing what is best "for the general and local government of the country"

All in all, a substantial day's work. They adjourn at midnight. Back tomorrow.

A bunch of country lawyers

Paul Wells in two minds about what we now call the Constitution Act, 1867:

Unfortunately, some people are preoccupied with what a bunch of country lawyers wrote in a constitution 36 years before the Wright Brothers’ first flight. (UPDATE: That’s badly phrased. It should have said, “Unfortunately, some people want to duck their responsibilities based on a culpably sloppy misreading of a constitution a bunch of country lawyers wrote 36 years before the Wright Brothers’ first flight.”

What Britain needs: a Senate like Canada's

Thomas Bingham, delivering a prestigious lecture in Britain last week, pondered how to replace the House of Lords with something truly useful. His proposal: it should be appointive and advisory, principally a chamber for expert review and sober second thought, able to block the will of the Commons only in narrowly specified circumstances.

Pretty much what the Canadian confederation-makers proposed in the 1860s.

Live blogging the Quebec conference #15

Monday, October 24, 1864:

They zipped through the list of federal powers a couple of days ago. Today Oliver Mowat of Ontario moves the resolutions on the provincial powers. The provinces get: agriculture, education, emigration, sale and management of public lands, property and civil rights, municipal institutions, inland fisheries, penetentiaries, hospitals and charities and eleemosynary* institutions, local works, the administration of justice and the constitution and the courts, local offices and local officers, direct taxation, borrowing on the province's credit, licensing of shops and saloons and taverns and auctioneers, and "private and local matters," soon to be rephrased "generally all matters of a private or local nature."

It will become a Canadian historical tradition that the constitution-makers were centralizers determined to make the provinces distinctly minor and secondary. But this is a pretty impressive range of powers: not just agriculture (though the feds also have authority here) and hospitals and education, but also the administration of justice and local government and local business. The provinces take ownership of crown lands. They will control property and civil rights (though civil rights was generally understood to mean matters of private law such as contracts and the right to sue and so on, rather than freedom of speech and the other personal rights we call civil rights.) They have taxation powers ("direct" mostly means property taxes) Then there is that residual clause. How much authority can be gathered up under "generally all matters of a private or local nature"? Link this to the confirmation that provincial governments will be responsible governments (that is, accountable to elected legislatures) and it's hard to deny that they are conferring a lot of power on the provinces.

They barely get started on a point-by-point discussion today. Instead, they get into a discussion of whether provincial powers should simply be all those not specifically granted to the federal government -- or the reverse, and this leads into discussions of what's wrong with the American constitution, and much else. More on the provincial powers tomorrow. One notable point: they do seem to foresee that future disputes over the constitution will be subject to judicial, not just political, review. A couple of delegates specifically refer to a Supreme Court for such matters.

* Eleemosynary = just a big word for "of or pertaining to almsgiving,charitable."

History in the 'hood

Dave LeBlanc, the Globe's Architourist, visits the West Toronto Junction neighbourhood to promote the terrific historical work of the Toronto Public Library system and to salute the cool events the Junction Historical Society dreams up. The Society's latest, the Wild Wild Junction, will be a guided pub crawl to commemorate the last night before the district went dry. That's this Sunday afternoon, and tickets, as they say, are still available.

Live-blogging the Quebec Conference #14

Sunday, October 23, 1864:
It's Sunday. The conference does not meet. But that's not to say no work is being done.

Mercy Coles, the daughter of Prince Edward Island opposition leader and ex-premier George Coles, keeps a diary during the conference (actually the best we have, though there is very little actual politics in it). On Sunday night, she notes, John A. Macdonald dines with her family. "After dinner he entertained me with any amount of small talk," she writes.

But Macdonald's real interest is surely her father, who has been both pro- and anti-confederation, and at this point seems to be concluding that it can never be sold to Island voters and that by opposing it he may well be able to ride the anti-confederate tide back to power. (Indeed, he does.) When Macdonald leaves the dinner, it's to get to yet another soirée, doubtless to sound out more options and allies.

This is Macdonald's greatest strength -- working the room, keeping in touch, keeping even his enemies close, never writing off any possible source of support. He does not love the confederation idea; as recently as last June he voted against a Canadian parliamentary committee report endorsing federalism. It was the Brown-Cartier deal -- federalism and rep-by-pop together -- that launched the confederation coalition, and Macdonald had to go along with a plan he himself would never have initiated.

But Macdonald is good at going along, and once in, he puts his intuitive political sense and immense powers of persuasion and negotiation to work. The ideas may not have been his, but nobody does more to turn the political wheels that will drive them forward.

History of the Common, no "s"

One of Halifax's many assets is its beautiful and civilized Common (not, apparently, "Commons.") It was set aside in 1763 "for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax forever" (and the occasional Paul McCartney concert). When they built a high school on part of it recently, people started to say, Huh?

Turns out less than a third of the Common now survives, and some people want to hold on to what remains. Tomorrow Friends of the Halifax Common are going to chalk around the Common -- literally draw a chalk line on the sidewalks to mark out the original boundaries. Wish I were there.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #13

Saturday, October 22, 1864:

"That the confederation shall be vested at the time of the union with all cash, bankers' balances, and other cash securities of each province.... The confederation shall assume all the debts and liabilities of each province." The money, at last they are getting down to the money.

Alexander Tilloch Galt, the Quebecker who is the Canadian cabinet's financial expert, presents a long resolution proposing financial structures for confederation. Publicly owned works like canals and railroads will go to the federal government, but crown land in general will be provincial. Galt, following on Macdonald's federal-powers resolution, foresees the central government as the taxing power: "In consideration of the transfer to the general legislature of the powers of taxation, a grant in aid of each province [based on population] shall be made... in full settlement of all future demands upon the general legislature for local purposes, and to be payable half yearly in advance to each province."

It ain't to be that cut-and-dried -- though the federal transfer grant clearly has a long pedigree. They discuss Galt's resolution all day, but most of the discussion goes unrecorded, and they adjourn without a vote, delegating the matter to a financial committee of delegates from all the provinces.

More on that head of state thing

Andrew Cohen, journalist, thinker, new head of Historica-Dominion, says we need to talk about it. (h/t Andrew Smith)

Last week in the same paper, Dan Gardner argued we need the queen because otherwise the federal government will get to appoint the lieutenant governors. But the feds always have named the lieutenant governors, and it "hasn't tipped the balance" -- as discussed in live-blog #11 on the 1864 Quebec conference.

October 27. Dan Gardner responds:

Your short blog post on my short blog post (which was reprinted in the Ottawa Citizen for some reason) misrepresents what I wrote. I know how L-Gs are appointed. It's a relic of the original vision of the constitution, in which the federal government was clearly the superior of the provinces.

I stuck with the formulation "constitutional symmetry" because, one, it's accurate, and two, it avoided a long detour into constitutional history.

Dan blogs here.

Neverendum

A referendum brought New Zealand its MMP version of proportional representation in the early 1990s. Now they're planning another on whether to keep it. Fruits and Votes (mandate: tree fruits, electoral systems, and a little baseball) has the info. In Canada, by contrast, the voters always say no, but the question keeps coming back.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #12

Friday, October 21, 1864:

Federalism. This one is huge. One might think they would spend weeks on this one. John A. Macdonald introduces the future Section 91, the long list of powers assigned to the national government. He moves that the general government hold authority for trade and commerce, customs and excise, taxation, currency, public credit, banking, bills of exchange, interest rates, legal tender, weights and measures, postage, bankruptcy, lighthouses, ocean shipping, sea fisheries, patents, copyrights, telegraphic communications, naturalization, marriage and divorce, census, military and militia, immigration, agriculture, criminal law, interprovincial roads and railroads, other works declared for the general advantage, a general court of appeal, grants to local governments, public debt and public property, “and generally all matters of a general character.”

Trade and commerce? Banking and finance? Taxation? Marriage and divorce? Roads and bridges? What do all these powers imply for the scope of the new national government's authority in the future? Nobody says, nobody asks. There has been quite a bit of work in the Canadian cabinet on what's appropriately national and what's appropriately local (as we will see when the list of provincial powers comes up). But, almost two weeks in, the delegates seem to be a bit punchy. Maybe it was smart to let them wear themselves out for days on an irrelevancy like the Senate. There really is not much discussion today.

They go through the list, ask a few questions, raise a few points, make a few changes (this list is not exactly the future Section 91). But they approve it unanimously by four in the afternoon, and go off to get ready for another party. No meeting tonight.

No more opinions in Canada?

Opinions Canada used to provide a long daily list of headlines and links to dozens of Canadian blogs (including this one, sometimes). But it seems to have died. Who's doing something similar, I wonder?

Update, October 21: Allan Janssen recommends Blogscanada. I liked OC because it was a little more discriminating -- an invited list of opinionated blogs rather than an open one. But BC has lots to read, for sure.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #11

Thursday, October 20, 1864:

“I desire to ask if the Prince Edward Island delegates will state what their views are on the resolution of last night.” George Brown has built his career on the principle of rep-by-pop, on the equality of voters as the foundation of accountability. He has seen it cemented into the confederation settlement. Now he confronts PEI, which voted no on his rep-by-pop motion last night (and lost, 5 provinces to 1). A paraphrase of Brown’s question might be: “You voted no? WTF?”

The Islanders stand their ground. Though Edward Palmer says he might come around, depending on the financial terms, most of the Island delegates insist they cannot go home with only five seats to share among the three Island counties. But when A.A. Macdonald declares, “We are not bound by the principle of representation by population,” he faces a torrent of disagreement. McCully of Nova Scotia: “The rule of representation by population must be rigid and unyielding.” Fisher of New Brunswick: “I came here convinced that representation by population was settled.” Galt of Quebec: “We cannot defend the action of giving 13,000 [voters] in Prince Edward Island a member where it requires 17,000 in any other province. It would be indefensible.”

The rest of the day, they make rapid progress. They delegate constituency boundaries and election rules to the provinces (at least until the federal parliament acts). They define the life of the federal parliament (five years, and it must meet at least annually). They agree that executive authority shall “be administered according to the well-understood principles of the British Constitution.” Brown, seeing the conference approving one thing after another, seeks agreement that the provincial legislatures shall be without upper houses, but Nova Scotia’s Jonathan McCully, who has a knack for deft interventions on vexed questions, wins agreement for his motion: each province may determine its own constitution. (Brown will get his way in the long run; all the provinces will eventually get along without upper houses.)

They agree that the lieutenant governors will be appointed by the feds – though some doubt the British government will ever yield that patronage power – but even John A. Macdonald declares, “he must be independent of the federal government,” since responsible government principles oblige a lieutenant governor to act on the advice of his provincial advisors. There is a little exchange on the scope of provincial sovereignty here. Brown, normally the apostle of federalism, proposes weak, quasi-municipal structures, but fellow reformer McCully underlines the vital point: the provinces must be responsible governments, with executives accountable to legislatures representing the people.

They break at ten p.m. tonight. Not a bad days’ work, unless you are an Islander and want to see your province in confederation. (The Islanders also achieve their point in the long run. About a decade after confederation, Canadian politicians will start hedging on rep-by-pop, at least at the margins. Today several deviations from the principle are built into the constitution.)

Careers in history you wouldn't have imagined

Chesterton Humberts, a British real-estate agency, employs an in-house historian to study the past of the buildings it's listing.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #10

Wednesday, October 19, 1864:

Not the Senate again? Yes.

The provinces endorse, with Prince Edward Island opposed, Premier Tupper's proposal that in filling the first Senate, priority will be given to members of existing provincial upper houses. But will they do this by lot, or maybe by rules to be determined later? Just before the afternoon break, Jonathan McCully, newspaperman and Liberal member of the Nova Scotia upper house, presents the winning formula. He proposes that in appointing members to the first Senate, the federal government shall take advice from each provincial government and give due regard to oppositon members "so that all political parties be as nearly as possible fairly represented."

This pretty much ends the weeklong Senate debate. In formally settling how the first senators will be chosen, they have accepted the original motion for Senate seats: life appointments in the power of the federal cabinet. It's only in filling the first senate that the feds need to listen to the provinces or balance party standings.

Why an appointive Senate? Indeed why an appointive Senate virtually without debate on an elective one? And why put it in the gift of the feds instead of the provinces? Well, because they were parliamentary democrats.

They know that in the 1780s the American framers plumped for an upper house in which all states, not all citizens, would be equally represented, and where the states will control the choice of Senators. They reject that. The American framers wanted equality among the states, but they also wanted an elite, quasi-aristocratic Senate with real powers to counter the possibly too democratic House of Representatives.

They got one. In the 1860s the American Senate is growing in power and influence. Senators, currently appointed by state governments, will soon be elected by each state's voters, but the unrepresentativeness of the Senate is maintained. Small population states have just as many senators as large population ones. In Britain, by contrast, the power of the unrepresentative House of Lords is declining; power is shifting steadily to the (more) representative Commons.

The Canadians know about powerful upper houses -- the upper house of the United province of Canada has been elective since 1856 -- and they prefer the British trend. They plump to have a weak, largely advisory upper house in future. And having its members appointive rather than elective is what confirms the upper house's weakness. Canadian Senators will never have the legitimacy to withstand the will of the democratically-elected Commons. Since they are not even chosen by their provinces, they cannot even claim authority as defenders of provincial interests in Ottawa. The consensus of the conference is that upper houses must defer to lower houses, the ones that are truly accountable to the population.

How seriously the confederation-makers take this matter will be confirmed by the next resolution. With the Senate debate done, George Brown moves for strict representation by population in the Commons, with seats adjusted every ten years to reflect population changes in the decennial census.

The idea of a truly representative house, with strict equality of voters, is something Quebec and Ontario have been struggling with for more than a decade. The representatives of French Quebec, sure to be in the minority in the new federal house, have accepted rep-by-pop -- but only in exchange for federalism. They can accept the likelihood of being outvoted in the federal house, because the local matters vital to French Quebec will be delegated to the provincial legislature of Quebec.

This is really the key to confederation. The Canadian coalition had been founded on this deal. The principle had been discussed and endorsed at Charlottetown in September. There is no alternative on offer. Brown's motion passes. But Prince Edward Island has voted no.

They adjourn on that disagreement, and it looks like they may be dropping Prince Edward Island out of confederation. More tomorrow.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #9

Tuesday, October 18, 1864:

It's the Senate again, and they go at it hot and heavy. They agree prospective senators must be over thirty, British by nationality, and have a certain wealth (specifically, $4000 in real property).

The vital question, however, is how they are to be chosen. They start with a long discussion as to whether members of the existing provincial upper houses will have priority when the first national Senate is filled. Premier Tupper wants the first Senate to be filled from the legislative councillors who currently sit in the provincial upper houses. Jonathan McCully of Nova Scotia suggests each province should find its own method of selecting the first senators, and Premier Cole of Prince Edward Island want anyone to be eligible, not just the current legislative councillors of each province. This keeps them busy until almost midnight.

It's worth noting what's not at stake. According to the official record, no one advocates an elective upper house. (In later years, Ontario delegate William McDougall will suggest he and Oliver Mowat had actually made some suggestion along these lines). More tomorrow.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #8

Monday, October 17, 1864:

Officially they took Sunday off, but some talk/dealing/strong-arming must have been going on, because the allocation of Senate seats they have deadlocked over since Thursday is quickly settled. The tripartite equality proposed at the start of the debate -- 24 senate seats each for Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes -- is affirmed, but with a supplementary resolution affirming additional seats if Newfoundland (and by extension, future western provinces) come in. This passes unanimously, and they adjourn for the afternoon.

What has happened here? Let's hold that question until the next issue is addressed, because the two go together. When they reconvene at 7.30 pm, Macdonald moves for senators to be appointed for life by the national government. This keeps them going until midnight.

Canada's 150th anniversary

I heard someone say recently that every time a new city is chosen for a future Olympic Games, he does a rough calculation: hmmm, wonder if I will live that long.

Well, with a little life expectancy, you can be part of the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017. And already there's an org for that. They are planning a conference for March 2010.

Update October 20: Andrew gives us some love. Thanks!

History of self-googling

Noted authority on phimosis, Chris Moore is determined to save adult foreskins. How did his odd passion get started?

Funny how you google yourself and find all the other people with your name doing such, um, interesting things.

Update, Oct 19: Deborah Morrison reports if you really want to check yourself out, you gotta go here.

How to invest in the Toronto Reference Library

Spending stimulus money on the Toronto Central Reference Library?

The Prime Minister announced Ottawa and the City of Toronto would combine on a $9-million renovation of the central downtown reference library

The footsore researcher in me hopes they spend some on it on stairs between the book levels. It's a beautiful building, but the only staircase is a big, looping, inconvenient one, more for show than go. Sometimes feels I've spent less time looking for books there than waiting for the elevators.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #7

Sunday, October 16, 1864:

It's Sunday. They take the day off, at least from formal conference sittings. Back to the table tomorrow.

Historica-Dominion lives

Down last night to the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in Toronto for the new Historica-Dominion Institute's launching party. I was a little sceptical here about the merger when it was first announced, and boy, did it get noticed. So it is only fair to report that my old and new friends there make a strong case that good things will surely flow from the new institute. And indeed, they still put on lively parties with interesting people.

Non-fiction GG shortlist

Randall Hansen, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-45.

Trevor Herriot, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds.

Eric S. Margolis, American Raj: Liberation or Domination? (Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World).

Eric Siblin, The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece.

M.G. Vassanji, A Place Within: Rediscovering India.

An intriguing mix of subjects and styles, from literary essay (I greatly admire Herriot and the novelist Vassanji, don't know of Siblin) to hard-edge journalism (Margolis) to scholarly history (Hansen's colleagues at Western Ontario will be cheering for him). It will be noted no books by women are on the list this year.

The jury was Stephen Kimber, Ross A. Laird, and Nelofer Pazira.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #6

Saturday, October 15, 1864. “We have had such a week of it. Council from 9 to 11. Conference from 11 to 4, Council again from 4 to 6 and sometimes to 7 – every day – and then letters and orders-in-council to write at night. It has been very hard work.” -- George Brown, writing to his wife today.

The constitutional conference has yet to start on most of the principal items. Indeed, they have deadlocked on the first one to arise. So today they revise the schedule. Starting Monday, instead of meeting from 11 am to 4 pm, they will meet daily (and Saturday, bien sur) from 10 am to 2 pm and then from 7.30 pm until they decide to adjourn -- sometimes after midnight. The workload is not getting easier.

Today, like yesterday, they spend the whole day debating seats in the senate. Back on Thursday, the Canadians had proposed equal numbers of senate seats for Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces, and the Maritimers had counter-proposed more seats from themselves. The fight continues today.

But today they adjourn at 2.30. It's party time. There is a large and lavish social whirl going on around the conference, even if the delegates themselves have to miss quite a bit of it. Yesterday the Canadian government hosted a ball that went on until 3 am. Tonight there is a dinner at the Russell Hotel, hosted by the Quebec Board of Trade, in honour of the Maritime delegates.

This one runs until midnight, and the speeches, as transcribed and later published by Edward Whelan, a PEI delegate and Charlottetown newspaper owner, run to sixteen pages of text. Almost as much as they loved parliamentary procedure, they loved formal speaking, a near endless sequence of toasts and replies to toasts. I will spare you -- they do not do a lot of jokes.

Worth a look: Earle Gray's Old News

Earle Gray, historian of the oil patch and much else, maintains a lively website, Graymatter, that includes a frequent "Old News Feature." Stories he's looked at lately include public hangings, booze, public libraries, and Ned Hanlan.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #5

Friday, October 14, 1864. "Conference met at eleven a.m. and resumed the consideration of the motion respecting Legislative Council [i.e., what later was named the Senate].

"The members from the lower provinces strongly urged their contention for a larger relative representation which the Canadians opposed. Many of the members of the conference took part in the discussion of this question and many amendments were offered." --- from PEI delegate A. A. Macdonald's notes of the conference.

In other works, they had a real bunfight.

The debate on the Senate -- first the distribution of seats, then the way Senators would be chosen -- runs on two tracks. On one hand, there seems to be an underlying grasp of the fact that the Senate does not matter very much. The confederation makers are all parliamentary democrats; they accept that the locus of power is and must be in the representative House of Commons. The Senate must be secondary.

On the other hand, since they have decided on having an upper house in the federal parliament (for the provinces, it's optional), they cannot help fighting over it, just in case it matters. No one really contends for a truly powerful upper house, co-equal with the Commons, so many of the amendments put forth seem rather inconsequential, but they fight vigorously over them all.

My thought is that the long battle over the Senate is a proxy for a battle over the conference itself, now that they are beyond resolutions of principle and getting into debating institutions and powers. The Canadians have many resolutions ready-drafted for presentation, and they seem ready to drive much of the discussion. The Senate question is where the Maritimers decide tosend a message: they are not there simply to ratify automatically the Canadians' plans. The Senate debate goes on all day, and will continue tomorrow.

Blog practice: books received

This Slate story decries an American initiative intended to regulate bloggers who take money (or other considerations) for endorsements and publicity. But it seems to me it's a good idea in principle.

This blog intermittently takes note of new or interesting titles in history. Often I simply report on a title I have noticed in the media. Occasionally I may have purchased the book myself. But sometimes I have received, generally unsolicited, a review copy of the book I am noting. Not that I fear the long arm of the FTC, but I think I will start noting those cases.

Update, October 15: Reader Larry Marshall comments:

The issue of bloggers having to disclose the receipt of free product is not an issue of discloser at all. Rather, it is an issue that asks the questions of "why bloggers?" Watch any TV program that uses or reviews products. There is no disclosure of the source of those products. Similarly, magazines, many of whom have the sole purpose of reviewing products make no disclosure of product sources.
And yet the FTC targeted bloggers only. Why?

The irony of all this is that the motivation comes from the fact that if you're a magazine, reviewing products of your advertisers, you're making money and its costing the advertisers money. I know; I was an editor that sent out thousands of dollars worth of product (from manufacturers) for people to review for our magazines. But companies have figured out that they can save a lot of ad dollars by simply putting their products into the hands of people who actually use them, letting them talk about them on the Internet. This cuts into the media market revenue stream and the media market has a lot of lobbyist and lobbyist dollars to bring to bear on the issue.

THERE, is the problem that is being addressed by the FTC, the squeeky wheel. Some day you historians will probably write about such things (grin).

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #4

Thursday, October 13, 1864: The conference has its first divided vote today. It’s an odd resolution. Fisher, a Liberal from New Brunswick, seconded by Dickey, a Conservative from Nova Scotia moves:

That the constitution of the general and local governments shall be framed upon the British model so far as is consistent with our colonial condition and with a view to the perpetuation of our connection with the mother country.

It seems to be another bland expression of principle, but it provokes some disagreement. Tupper, disagreeing with Dickey, his own upper-house leader in Nova Scotia, says “it is not judicious to fetter our actions.”

In the end a new resolution is moved and passed:

That in framing a constitution for the general government, the conference with a view to the perpetuation of our connection with the mother country and to the promotion of the best interests of the people of these provinces, desire to follow the model of the British constitution so far as our circumstances will permit.

The minutes for the day are inadequate, most historians have passed over the issue, and I find myself puzzled by exactly what’s at stake here. (Amazing, how many fundamental questions of constitutional law and history remain to be investigated in detail.)

But two things stand out in the changes made. They have removed “local” – evidently provincial institutions might be quite different from the national parliament. And the allusion to “our colonial condition” has been replaced with “the best interests of the people of these provinces.” The colonial cringe historians and political scientists routinely discern in the confederation process? It is largely in their own imagination.

This resolution, still seemingly anodyne, passes 5-2, with dissenting votes from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The conflicts are developing.

Also today, another resolution launches the Senate debate. The proposal is for a bicameral federal parliament: “a general legislature for the federated provinces composed of a legislative council and legislative assembly.”

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #3

Wednesday, October 12, 1864: The "agenda" motion of yesterday is passed, after a long speech by Macdonald on general principles and not much debate.

George Brown moves a resolution:

"The system of government best adapted under existing circumstances... would be a general government charged with matters of common interest to the whole country and local governments for each of the Canadas an for the Maritime provinces charged with control of local matters in thier respective sections; provision being made for the admission into the Union on equitable terms of the North-West Territory, British Columbia and Vancouver."

Federalism. What is local, what is national? That one will keep them busy a while. Indeed this debate runs out the clock today.

But the assembled press begs consideration of its plea. “A kind of compromise between absolute secrecy and unlimited publicity is usually, we believe, observed in cases where a European Congress holds the peace of the world and the fate of nations in its hands.” They don't demand access, not even transcripts, just the release of statements of what is going on.

Seemingly without debate, the delegates instruct Secretary Bernard to draft a refusal.

Drivel watch: The Citizen on rep-by-pop

A couple of weeks ago John Ibbitson in the Globe was publishing nonsense about the re-apportionment of parliamentary seats. Now it's Andrew Potter in the Ottawa Citizen. When smart, concerned reporters like these deal in such crazy misconceptions, something is seriously wrong.

"The Fathers of Confederation recognized that the strict principle of equal representation had to be balanced against the country’s geographic, cultural, political and demographic realities," writes Potter, warming up for a diatribe against shocking inequalities in representation he sees in the current Parliament.

But the confederation makers took representation by population very seriously! Their refusal to give Prince Edward Island more House seats than its population warranted was a key reason why the island stayed out of confederation in 1864. The Senate could be unequal in representation, but the Senate was powerless, and designed to be so. In the House, the seat of legitimacy, equality prevailed. Despite Potter, it still does.

It is true that the strict principle of representation-by-population has frequently been breached since the confederation settlement in 1864 -- but mostly only at the margins. It is true that thinly-populated areas of rural Canada have long become over-represented. But we are an urban society, and the overwhelming bulk of parliamentary seats are urban. The slight tendency to shelter rural voters from the strict consequences of representation-by-population does not threaten that reality. The electoral inequalities that have been accepted have hardly given Northern Ontario and rural Saskatchewan some terrible dead hand upon our political life. (For one thing, rural MPs, like urban MPs, almost never vote according to local interests; they vote as their party tells them. Remember?) The "substantial skewing" of Parliament is imaginary.

The nefarious redistribution legislation Potter fears may be in the works is simply the logical outcome of a highly egalitarian process. Every decade, after a census, an apolitical review reallocates seats to conform to population change, and every decade Parliament passes a bill to incorporate those changes. Yes, some protection for rural voters will endure. No, it's not an evil plot.

It turns out Potter actually likes the idea of some kinds of inequality. Much less committed to the principle of rep-by-pop than the confederation-makers were, he's prepared to consider guaranteeing a permanent share of House seats to Quebec regardless of population. But Quebec's share of House seats has been slowly declining ever since confederation (Ontario's too) and catastrophe has not resulted, since Quebec's essential requirements in Confederation are reinforced less by numbers in the House than by constitutional protection and provincial powers.

Perhaps most astonishing, Potter reports "the principle of strict egalitarianism is an American import." You know, we live close to the United States, we are bathed in their media, we see their political system at work every day. Can we not see what is before our eyes? The American Senate, for instance. Unlike ours, it is a hugely powerful body, but one where Wyoming and South Dakota, with a couple of million people between them, have four senators, and California, with forty million or so, has two. Things are only different in degree in the House of Representatives. In Canada, Potter wrings his hands over a reapportionment of seats guided by a non-political commission responding to census changes. In the United States, members of congress create their own districts by a backroom process call "redistricting," the result of which is quite remarkable rates of incumbency.

Update, October 13: Andrew Potter responds. "Honestly, I've never had someone so completely misrepresent my views before. Have you lost your mind, Moore?"

Update, October 16: Andrew Potter and I have been corresponding, and he urges attention to this Institute for Research on Public Policy paper "Is Every Ballot Equal?" by Michael Pal and Sujit Choudhry, a key source for arguments that the post-confederation protections for rural voters have "substantially skewed" the rep-by-pop principle. Good idea.

Live-blogging the Quebec conference #2

Tuesday, October 11, 1864: John A. Macdonald: "I am willing provisionally to adopt the suggestion of Mr. Chandler, but I think the whole question should be carefully reconsidered at the eventual revise of the minutes.” A good deal of the second day of the Quebec conference is occupied with procedural matters like these.

Reading the minutes, one gets the very strong impression that they loved all this parliamentary procedure. It looks routine: appointing officers of the conference, working out schedules, confirming procedures. Today a similar conference would delegate a minor official, a “parliamentarian,” to handle such matters. A politician who took an interest in the rules of order would be seen as a crank or an obsessive. Stanley Knowles was admired, but admired as obsessives and eccentrics are.

But at Quebec it is the heavyweights who mix themselves into questions of parliamentary procedure. True, there is political calculation here. Who controls the minutes controls the conference, and Mr. Chandler’s idea will never be found in the final record. But these politicians do have a genuine affinity for parliamentary process. It feels to them like freedom, like power.

Most of these politicians, even those in their forties – and they are a youngish group for senior politicians – are the children of the sea-change of 1847-8, of responsible government. They knew from personal experience, or at least from that of their mentors, the era when all the important political decisions in British North America were made by appointed administrators from Britain or their staff and advisors. They knew it was parliamentary struggle and the achievement of self-governing powers in the British North American legislatures that had inaugurated the powers they now wielded. Only three of the 33 delegates had been born outside Canada – two in Scotland, one in the United States. The transfer of power from retired generals and sons of earls to these local representatives from Kingston and Vercheres and Cumberland and Saint John was intimately wrapped up with faith in legislatures and parliamentary procedures. It was not rote to these men; it was a belief system, and they never disdained to entangle themselves with procedural details. Procedure was legitimacy.

So Tuesday is largely procedural, including the appointment of Hewitt Bernard, who will keep the minutes, an agreement on voting (one vote per province except the united province of Canada East and Canada West gets two), and a decision that the conference will meet daily from eleven to four. It looks dull to us; it was meat and drink to them.

They also debate and pass one resolution moved the first day by Macdonald of Canada West and Tilley of New Brunswick, a resolution based on the principles agreed to at Charlottetown in September. Its last phrase, after “provided” defines the Quebec conference’s agenda:

That the best interests and present and future prosperity of British North America will be promoted by a federal union under the crown of Great Britain provided such union can be effected on principles just to the several provinces.

The Canadian Head of State

Just to settle a little tiff that has arisen: that's her over there, Michaelle Jean. She's the governor general. She's the Canadian head of state.

I know, there is that nice elderly lady in London. But she's not here. To do the job you have to be here. Just showing up counts for quite a bit.

Constitutionally, it's a bit like linguistic usage. If everyone says tomato instead of tomahto, tomato becomes correct. When the governor general does the job, she assumes the job.

Glad I could clear that up for you. Gee, I agree with Peter Russell!

Update, October 13: Andrew's on this too. (that's Smith, not Sullivan, you cosmopolitan blog readers). And my own longer ponderings on this subject from the LRC here.

Update: a comment from Australia. thanks Jim Belshaw.

Live-blogging the Quebec Conference 1864 #1

Monday October 10, 1864: “Conference Chamber, Parliament House, Quebec. The following gentlemen assembled at the Conference Chamber in the Parliament House, Quebec on Monday, the tenth day of October, 1864, at eleven o’clock in the forenoon.”
-- opening words of the minutes of the Quebec conference.

The conference meets in a temporary building on the cliff edge in the Upper City in Quebec. Physically, the “conference room” is small and unprepossessing. (The spectacular windows in the painting are entirely the artist’s conceit.) But politically, it’s a big room. For just five colonies, there are thirty-three delegates. Simply presenting their credentials and appointing officers for the conference will occupy most of this day's proceedings

Why so many? Each province has sent delegates from both the governing party and the principal opposition party. (Canada’s government is actually a coalition of the two main parties.). And this odd fact is the decisive detail for today’s live-blog. This is a legislative conference, not an executive one. The confederation conferences follow the principle -- then taken seriously, today mostly extinct -- that legislatures, not cabinets or first ministers, hold the key to political legitimacy, particularly in constitutional matters.

The principle of bipartisanship in constitution making proves to be smart politics as well. Even with a broad bipartisan consensus behind the Quebec conference’s terms, confederation will prove to be hotly controversial and will cause a good deal of party-splitting in the coming months. As a narrow government measure put forward in the usual partisan fashion, it could never have mustered sufficient support.

(By comparison, all the Canadian constitutional conferences of recent unhappy memory were executive conferences: first ministers and their acolytes only. Oh, about the constitutional proposals they produced? They failed.)

So here the legislators of 1864 are, presenting their credentials as delegates of the various provincial legislatures:

From Canada:
Conservatives: Etienne-Pascal Taché, co-Premier John A. Macdonald, co-Premier George-Etienne Cartier, Alexander Galt, D’Arcy McGee, Alexander Campbell, Jean Charles Chapais, Hector-Louis Langevin, James Cockburn.
Liberals: George Brown, Oliver Mowat, William McDougall.

New Brunswick:
Liberals: Premier Leonard Tilley, William Steeves, J. Mercer Johnson, Charles Fisher.
Conservatives: Peter Mitchell, E.B. Chandler, John Hamilton Gray*.

Nova Scotia:
Conservatives: Premier Charles Tupper, William Henry, R. B. Dickey
Liberals: Adams Archibald, Jonathan McCully

Prince Edward Island:
Conservatives: Premier John Hamilton Gray*, Edward Palmer, William H. Pope, T. Heath Haviland.
Liberals: George Coles, Edward Whelan, Andrew Macdonald.

Newfoundland:
Conservatives: Frederick Carter
Liberals: Ambrose Shea

* Somehow the 33 include two men with identical names.

Marketing history: more awards for The Beaver

[This post has been updated] The Beaver: Canada's History Magazine won a National Newstand Award for the effectiveness of its February 2008 special issue on Quebec's 400th anniversary. (Wait til you see the Olympics issue this winter)

My column in the current Beaver considers museums -- how the big national ones are all free in Washington and in London, but not in Canada. In the Guardian Online the other day, Ian Jack gloried in London's free museums, and even claimed them as a uniquely British accomplishment. (Forced to admit to the Smithsonian, he got a bit snarky about it: "The shining exception is the Smithsonian in Washington; but don't fall down the stairs into the expensive hands of American medicine.") His copy of The Beaver must not have arrived when he wrote, for Canada doesn't enter into his comparisons.

Jack notes a recent British experiment with fees was regarded as "a catastrophe" and rescinded forthwith. He suggests the origins of the British free-museum policy:

lies most probably in the British Museum's parliamentary foundation in the Enlightenment as a collection freely accessible "to all studious and curious persons … native and foreign born" in an age when other European assemblies of art and antiquities were kept imprisoned by kings and princes for their own pleasure. Many more public museums and 250 years later, the result is that free admission has become entwined with the idea of public ownership. According to Andrew Macdonald, acting director of The Art Fund: "People think, 'How can it be mine, if you're charging me to see it?'"

Take that attitude to your favourite Canadian museum or historic site (federal or provincial) and see how far it gets you!

New history live-blog: confederation

Given the response to the live-blogging of the siege of Quebec, I think we will liveblog the Quebec conference of 1864 next. Starting Saturday [sorry, not Friday as first posted], we will remove to Monday, October 10, 1864 and see how we get along.

History of the Obama family

There may be dull genealogists, but more and more it strikes me there are no dull genealogies. This is Michelle Robinson Obama's, by Megan Smolenyak, no dull genealogist herself, who I had the pleasure of interviewing once.

Does Red Toryism have an American future?

The short answer is no. The longer one is here.

History of Banking -- why is it federal?

One. The global financial collapse drew attention to the way Canada's banks -- few, large, and relatively-closely supervised by a national bank regulation system -- avoided many of the pitfalls that created the crisis in many other countries.

Two. Okay, when I get a new Canadian history, I sometimes look myself up in the index first. Last week, at the launch of Joe Martin's casebook in Canadian business history, Relentless Change, I found I am not in the index but deserve to be. Martin writes (page 3):

Section 91 of the British North America Act provided the federal government with powers over currency and banking as well as life insurance. This was an important provision and one that contributed significantly to Canada's development of an effective financial system. Yet an examination of general textbooks on Confederation, or Christopher Moore's 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, reveals little discussion of the matter.

It's a good point. In the confederation settlement, many aspects of business regulation became provincial powers along with "property and civil rights." One can see currency being naturally national, but why banking? Martin's quite right that there's no explanation in my book. I wonder what the answer is, or if anyone has really addressed the question.

History of the CanWest collapse -- could History Television be saved?

Few who read or write in Canada will resist a touch of schadenfreude over the ongoing collapse of CanWest, purveyor of lousy newspapers and lousy television networks they contrived to bury under mountains of debt even with semi-monopoly situations and with almost comically horrible contract terms for those still obliged to work for them:

Freelancer hereby irrevocably grants and assigns to CanWest all rights of every kind in and to the Content (including copyright), and agrees that CanWest shall have the right to exclusively use and exploit the Content in any manner and in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe, in perpetuity. For greater certainty, Freelancer shall have no right to re-sell or re-publish the Content without CanWest's express written permission. CanWest shall be entitled to edit the content, and Freelancer hereby waives in favour of CanWest and its assigns, all "moral rights" in and to the Content. Nothing herein shall obligate CanWest to use or publish the Content in any manner. The rights granted hereunder may be freely assigned or sub-licensed by CanWest to any third party.
(emphasis added -- it was that across-the-universe bit that always drew the laughter when writers gathered, though the quotation marks around moral rights were also evocative of the corporate culture.)

For the moment, CanWest's stable of specialty cable channels are not included in the bankruptcy protection filings, though the business press assumes they are likely to be disposed of.

Could we dare to dream that someone would acquire History Television who -- I don't say actually has an interest in history, that's too much to ask, but maybe someone who has a sense of the potential that a history television network could have. Probably not -- it's said to be profitable running old movies and CSI reruns. Pity.

The History Blogger's Creed

"Keep in mind this is not my area and I refuse to look things up in books when blogging."
-- Edge of the American West, September 30, 2009

History of MI5 -- free the Canadian spy history.

Doug Saunders in the Globe reviews Christopher Andrew's Defence of the Realm, the authorized history of MI5, and considers what can be learned about Canadian spy history from the work of the Brits. (Guardian review here.)

Not that long ago, I profiled Wesley Wark, intelligence historian at the University of Toronto (sorry, not yet online), and how he was hampered and handicapped by the massive secrecy required by Canadian security officials even as they gave him access to their archives. His history of Canadian spy history is written, but also classified. So Doug Saunders has to suss out clues from reading the authorized history of the British spymasters, trying to glean what he can from the Canadian corners of their work.

Saunders notes that 9000 Canadians were removed from the civil service on grounds of homosexuality. Nine thousand? Nine thousand gay civil servants with jobs important enough to be considered security threats? Think of the enormous effort to find 9000 gay civil servants in Ottawa in the 1950s and hound them out of their work. "Security" must have been the least of the motives.

(Apparently this is post #1001 since the blog went onto Blogspot. Doesn't seem so many...)

The Historical Novel -- it's in, it's out, it's in again

History Today reports it's in again.

Update, Oct 7: And now it has a Booker prize: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

Notes from the academic job market

This is a lively account of the state of the job market for new (American) history Ph.Ds., but I wouldn't have posted it except for the happy ending. It seems to me, as someone who avoided the whole scene, that the academic job market has been like this for about thirty years, and it's always being described as if it were a new phenomenon.

Writers cease working with Transcontinental publishers

More evidence why freelance journalism might not be so much simpler than doing an undergraduate essay.

In an unprecedented coalition, more than a dozen Canadian writers’ organizations are calling on the thousands of writers they represent to not write for any publications owned by Transcontinental Media, effective immediately. This act of protest is directed at the company’s new contract for freelance contributors, which these groups, including the Professional Writers Association of Canada and the Canadian Writers Group, believe to be abusive of writers’ rights.

Earlier this summer, Transcontinental Media began sending a new freelance contract – which it calls a “Master Author Agreement” – to the many writers who contribute to its stable of publications, including Canadian Living, More, Elle Canada, Homemakers, and Vancouver Magazine. When this Master Author Agreement was unveiled, respected magazine industry consultant D.B. Scott referred to it as a “take it or leave it” rights grab that, “in effect, indentures the writer and their work to Transcon.”

Writers' representatives met with Transcontinental and were rebuffed. More info here and here.

Here are a few Transcontinental publications you don't want to write for anymore: Acquizition.biz Affaires Plus Askmen.com Bel Âge Canadian Gardening Canadian Home & Country Canadian Living Commerce Constructo Coup de Pouce Courrier Laval Décormag Elle Canada Elle Québec Finance et Investissement Fleurs Plantes Jardins Good Times Homemakers Investment Executive Journal Métro L’Action La Nouvelle Union La Revue Les Affaires L’Hebdo Journal Madame Maison D’aujourd’hui Merkado.ca More Novanewsnow.com Ottawa At Home Portailconstructo.com Prince Albert Daily Herald Productions Maison Direct Progrès Saint-Léonard Publisac Québec Hebdo Québec Vert Recettes.qc.ca Recipefeast.com Séao.ca Servicevie.com Style at Home The Chronicle The Guardian The Hockey News The Telegram Trucsmaison.com TVGuide.ca Vancouver Magazine Vision Durable Vita Voir Vert Weekly Journal Western Living.

New Book Watch: Kaplan on Rand

The Osgoode Society and UTP are releasing Canadian Maverick, William Kaplan's biography of Ivan Rand, New Brunswick boy, Supreme Court justice, inventor of modern labour relations in Canada (aka the Rand formula).

Despite the title, we're pretty sure Ivan Rand is not Canada's Sarah Palin.

(Note: after I published this note, an unsoliticed review copy of this book was sent to me by University of Toronto Press)

Prize watch: Writers' Trust non-fiction

Getting in early on the fall prize season, the Writers' Trust announces the short list for its Non-fiction prize. Not much straight-up history here, but several good writers for sure (and a couple of friends of mine too)

This year's nominees:

• Brian Brett, Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, Greystone Books

• Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, House of Anansi Press

• Trevor Herriot, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds, HarperCollins Publishers: A Phyllis Bruce Book

• Erika Ritter, The Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships , Key Porter Books

• Eric Siblin, The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece , House of Anansi Press.

Winners November 24.