It's not last minute until Christmas Eve... and even then really only after lunch

If you are still in the market, The Beaver's interactive holiday history gift shop is open for business.

Canada Reads (Fiction)

Quillblog points to Douglas Hunter's earlier Globe & Mail piece on non-fiction at Canada Reads:

Canada Reads has not once in nine years included a non-fiction title. Were a celebrity participant to defend Ken McGoogan’s Lady Franklin’s Revenge or Ken Dryden’s The Game, I’d keel over in a dead faint.

Hunter seems to have uncovered a mystery about the competition's selection process. On December 14, the Canada Reads blog said Hunter just doesn't understand: CR is a "fiction contest." But on December 18 the same blog described the selection process this way:

"Here's the short answer: the panelists select the books.... Distilled to its essence, Canada Reads is really a competition for readers by readers.... The only criteria: they have to love the books they suggest and they have to feel convinced that those choices stand a chance of winning over the most hearts and minds."

The only criteria? Some 'splaining required, CR.

Wolfe versus Crerar: who would win?

Well, both, actually. The C.P. Stacey Award in Canadian military history this year is shared by biographies of the two generals.

The Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War and the Canadian Commission of Military History are pleased to announce two winners for the 2008 C.P. Stacey Award. From a substantial list of Canadian military history titles published in 2006 or 2007, the judges chose for the prize Paul Douglas Dickson’s A Thoroughly Canadian General: A Biography of General H.D.G. Crerar (2007), published by University of Toronto Press and Stephen Brumwell’s Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe (2006), from McGill-Queen’s Press. The judges, Norman Hillmer, Serge Bernier and Doug Delaney concluded that both authors made noteworthy contributions to the field – Dickson for his mass of research on a little-known, yet critical, figure of Canada’s Second World War, and Brumwell for the eloquence of his prose and his convincing re-interpretation of the controversial James Wolfe.

But on the whole, I'd put my money on Crerar. Crerar had tanks (not that he could have got them up the Anse au Foulon).

Wolfe would have less patience than Crerar, I think, for the cautious, methodical plan of attack this award has been following. Brumwell's book appeared in 2006! Good to hear that the committee hopes to announce the 2010 Award (for books published 2008 or 2009) soon. And after that it will become an annual award.

Speaking of the DCB...

As a minor contributor to and major fan of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, I've lately received the annual fundraising appeal from its General Editor, the same John English. The DCB began with a generous private donation, then blossomed with SSHRC funding, and now struggles to continue with much reduced grants. So donations are a vital part of keeping this keystone work of Canadian historical scholarship going. If you are feeling seasonal and historical, it's a worthy recipient for your giving. The DCB's very modest note about how to donate to it is here.

John English leaves CIGI

Recent note here of the travails of historians who become university presidents now has a sequel of sorts. According to a Globe and Mail story, historian John English has abruptly parted company with CIGI, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the think-tank in Waterloo, Ontario, that he was running for benefactor Jim Balsillie.

English's reputation as a historian rests on his fine biographies of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau and other works in political history. But his public policy credentials are impressive too. He was a Liberal MP, then an advisor on cultural policy and foreign policy, chair of the board of the Museum of Civ and the War Museum, and a Canadian representative on United Nations and landmines matters. Lately he has also been General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

CIGI, the largest public-policy think tank in the country, was a big mandate, and the Globe reports English left the University of Waterloo to devote himself to it. If English doesn't have what CIGI wants, well, what does CIGI want?

Regrettably the Globe story has little but speculation about causes for English's departure because most of those in the know are acting more like logrolling bureaucrats than scholars and intellectuals. As the Globe puts it:

Mr. English's departure shocked many in the academic and public service foreign policy communities, none of whom would comment on the record - and one of whom refused to comment even off the record - because their institutions either receive or are eligible to receive funds from CIGI and CIC.

Canada 150.... it's coming

There's a civil-culture organization aforming to consider how to mark the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation in 2017. They have some plans and ideas, but they seem to be open to would-be participants.

The website of the Canada150 Project is here. Paul Jones, who chaired one of the recent meetings, has been blogging about them here.

Is Geography the new History?

More Intelligent Life picks up Robert Butler's argument that all the important questions these days are geophysical ones.

I studied English as a student and could never have imagined wanting to switch to geography.... To the schoolchildren of the 1970s, geography seemed safe and slightly dull.... But that has changed.

Best and Worst

The History Today blog has been doing such a lively series on the best of British history in 2009 that we should be ashamed to be Canadians. But trust the Brits, they've also delivered a list of the worst books of the decade. Not history books, actually, but well worth your time if you have a misanthropic touch of Scrooge in you.

Robert Keyserlingk, RIP

Robert Keyserlingk, longtime Europeanist at the University of Ottawa, died recently. His widow recently reported the cause was asbestos, a product still mined and exported in Canada. In lieu of an obit, some of his works from Alibris.

Spare a thought for museum workers

Staff at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa-Hull, on strike since September 21, are calling for arbitration in their dispute with the museum. A key demand is secure employment; the union reports some of its members have been contract employees at the museum, without benefits or security of tenure, for twenty years. A union statement is here.

Historians running universities

The Globe and Mail profiles Daniel Woolf, historian turned principal of Queen's University, and the difficult situation he faces. Woolf has a pretty impressive resume as a historian of Britain and of historical writing, and I confess I've never understood why anyone who had a situation like that would voluntarily become a university administrator. But it seems to happen all the time.

How do historians do as university presidents and principals? Is there any data on that? I recall some awkward situations with historians running Canadian universities. On the other hand, Drew Gilpin Faust is an American Civil War historian and president of Harvard. (The other theory, of course, is that it doesn't really matter who runs universities, since they are ungovernable anyway.)

Update, September 15: Charles Levi, who knows university history, offers wisdom:

Do we have any criteria to evaluate how well a university president does? For anyone? What are your limits: lack of disruption of daily activities? Awards received from outside agencies during tenure as president? Honorary degrees received from other universities? Ability to get other jobs after leaving the presidency?

I don't think we have a good set of rules to evaluate this stuff. For one example, James Loudon of U of T is continually criticized as being a bad president of his University -- but in the context in which he administered, he did a pretty good job. The problem was that the context was toxic, and this did him in. Falconer, who succeeded him, gets most of the credit for initiatives Loudon began. Wilson, who preceded him, gets none of the blame for the events which he set in motion and Loudon had to clean up after.

It's a good question whether the physicist Loudon was a better president that the anthropologist Wilson or the theologian Falconer -- but without any good set of criteria for those three, judging historians in comparision just isn't possible.

Last Canadian execution

Two years ago, the inexhaustible Executed Today noted the forty-fifth anniversary of the last capital punishment sentences carried out in Canada, December 11, 1962

Memories of Paris -- no, the other Paris

Misty De Meo reports that the County of Brant Public Library in southwestern Ontario has a digital history and wiki initiative, "like an oral history project, but in a format that empowers people to contribute on their own initiative." Contributions would be welcome, if that's your corner of history, on the wiki.

The image is a lithograph view of Paris, Ontario in 1855, from their online collection -- where it is larger, I promise.

How's 100 Photos doing?

Editor Mark Reid reports:

Well, I'm very, very pleased to announce to you all today that 100 Photos that Changed Canada is currently:

• the #1 "History" book in Canada on amazon.ca
• The #5 book in the category "Literature and Fiction"
• and the #6 book on the overall Bestsellers list

Passing for Canadian

Recently we noted with approval how the Australian official opposition removed and replaced its leader by vote of the parliamentary caucus, as is proper in parliamentary democracies.

Now the same parliamentary process has made Kristina Keneally premier of Australia's largest state, New South Wales. The premier was removed from the state's Labor Party leadership by his caucus, which then chose Keneally, a cabinet minister, to replace him as party leader. She was thereupon sworn in as premier on December 4. Accountability of governments to parliamentarians is rarely a problem in parliamentary democracies -- except in ours.

Some of the buzz about Keneally has a slight "birther" tinge, based on the fact that she was born and raised in the United States. She immigrated to Australia about 1995 and only became an Australian citizen (and eligible for elective office in NSW) in 2000. She is also the niece by marriage of the writer Thomas Keneally.

Some comments on her American background has made note of another immigrant Australian politician, the flamboyant King O'Malley (1858-1953), a member of the founding national parliament of the country. O'Malley successfully claimed he was eligible for election because, having been born in Canada, he was a British subject with the same rights throughout the empire (there being no separate Canadian or Australian citizenship at the time). It was widely suspected, however, that O'Malley was actually an American (one Australian biography of him is entitled O'Malley: The American Bounder). There is no record of him in census or birth records in either Canada or the United States, so he may not even have been King O'Malley before he arrived in Auz in 1888.

One piece of evidence suggesting he was American: though Australians, like us, generally use the "ou" spelling in words like "favour" and "labour," King O'Malley established that the Australian Labor Party would drop the "u" - as it still does today.

(Thanks for Fruits and Votes's Australian thread for launching me on this.)

A shot in the arm for confederation

Journalist Chantal Hébert got her H1N1 shot in Montreal the other day. The process was easy and fast, she reports in a post on her blogue entitled "the flu, the vaccine, and the Fathers of Confederation." She muses that if the province can deliver the service, there is little basis for complaints that the confederation-makers got it all wrong when they made healthcare a provincial responsibility.

Selon une école de pensée particulièrement répandue dans le reste du Canada, les pères de la Confédération se sont trompés en attribuant aux provinces la maîtrise-d’oeuvre en matière de politique sociale.

Les uns argumentent qu’en 1867, on ne pouvait pas prévoir combien ce secteur deviendrait névralgique au Canada. D’autres encore affirment que le partage actuel des pouvoirs suscite conflits et dédoublements.

L’expérience actuelle ne va pas dans le sens de ces arguments, ni d’une plus grande centralisation des pouvoirs au niveau fédéral.

I also got a fast, easy, well-organized flu shot recently in Toronto. I hadn't thought to constutionalize the experience, but I see her point. (Chantal Hébert, whom most of us see so much at ease in English, writes just as much in what seems a rather sophisticated French, full of images and idioms that I have to guess at or look up.)

The worst of all possible senates

The Ottawa Citizen blog "The Gargoyle" reports on a Manitoba consultation that has proposed an elected senate. The Gargoyle calls it a recipe for absolute chaos, which looks about right. What Manitoba has come up seems to be almost precisely what Gordon Gibson, the BC activist who was one of the original proponents of an elected senate, has warned against as pure folly.

Stephen MacLean is already on the case in the Gargoyle's comments section.

Dock that prolixity

This is a dead-on review of a new edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage. The new edition is actually a republication of the original 1926 edition, turning its back on two revisions, one with small changes in 1965 and a substantial rewriting in 1996.

I would not say I rely on Fowler -- his is, after all, the English language of 1926, and things do change -- but he's surely my favourite read among usage texts. And I particularly admire the first words in the book, which express a thought all authors must have about their books (though who else would say it so precisely?): "I think of it as it should have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened...."

Exactly. I rarely dock a prolixity without thinking of him.

"This is how a Westminster model is supposed to work"

A leading political commentator, Andrew Coyne in Macleans', takes note of the leadership change in Australia.

Scroll down and you will see I confidently predicted this would be entirely ignored in Canada. I stand corrected -- and amazed. (In fairness, Coyne has made gestures at least in this direction in the past, though I can't actually find any in a quick search of past columns on his now inactive website.

Thanks, Dave Snow.

World War II and War of 1812

In Toronto, the Churchill Society presents the prolific British historian Andrew Roberts discussing his new book Masters and Commanders, on high command in the Second World War. Tuesday, December 8 at Trinity College, and it's free. Details here.

Also in Toronto, the Friends of Fort York (www.fortyork.ca seems to be down) note that architectural plans for a proposed new visitor centre at the city's Fort York are on view this weekend at City Hall's Members' Lounge, December 4 to 6, noon to 6 pm. Participation and comments welcomed. Mayor David Miller will speak at the opening, noon Friday.

What to read

This week the Globe & Mail's weekly feature on the best in magazines featured The Beaver and its new issue on Olympic history. Bruce Kidd, Bruce Dowbiggin, Lawrence Martin... a stellar array of contributors. So go and get one.

My own column for the issue is on First Nations athletes and their complex relationship with mainstream sports and the Olympics and all.

Parliamentary leadership in a representative democracy

In Australia as in Canada, conservative politicians are reluctant to act vigorously on climate change issues. Today, willingness to consider a climate change project cost the leader of the opposition his job.

Malcolm Turnbull, the incumbent leader of the Liberals (ie, the conservatives), was seen as being insufficiently hostile to the emissions trading scheme the Labour government is proposing. They had a leadership battle on the issue, and his caucus rival Tony Abbott is now leader.

The vote was 42-41. The battle, that is, was fought within the elected caucus of Liberal MPs. It took a couple of days, it cost nothing, and -- imagine this, Canada -- it was fought over a matter of principle and policy, not over who "looked like a leader" or which contenders could fund their supporters to buy the most votes (or "memberships," as we call them).

The Liberals now promise party unity. But having just confirmed that party leaders in Australia are accountable to MPs and not vice versa, some of the backbenchers who had followed Turnbull may decide to support the Labour government's ETS project.

Parliamentary democracy: I still think it is a great idea, worth trying in Canada.

(Amount of analysis of these events you will read in the Canadian media, popular and scholarly? Zipnada. Update, Dec 3: Except here!)