History and Haiti

Active History, now growing into a must-read, has a roundup of what historical perspectives suggest about efforts to help Haiti. And as if it were not sad enough, here's historian David Landes in The New Republic on Haiti's potential future. It was published in 1986.

History of Marriage

Who said we have not been getting many big interesting histories by Canadians lately? Well, me actually.

But here's Elizabeth Abbott's new book A History of Marriage, reviewed last weekend in the Globe and Mail. And noted in the Toronto Star. And The Women's Post on her earlier History of Mistresses.

History of laughing out loud while procrastinating

Go here and scroll down. Trust me

Ajzenstat's Browne's Documents on Confederation

I missed the publication dates last fall, but McGill-Queen's Press has released a new edition of Documents on the Confederation of British North America, which is the ur-text on the subject and really ought to be consulted by pundits before they pronounce on whether confederation was a democratic process or what the Senate was intended to be or suchlike.

The work has a pedigree. It was compiled in the 1960s by historian G.P. Browne, who built on an early publication by Joseph Pope, who built on John A. Macdonald's personal collection of manuscript materials on the subject. The new edition was the inspiration of Janet Ajzenstat, who took pity on everyone who has been struggling with the nasty little Carleton Library edition of Browne's work that has been steadily crumbling in readers' hands since 1969. Ajzenstat wrote a new introduction, and it also comes with a blurb from, ah, me.

The Documents covers mostly the official documents which record the process by which the BNA Act of 1867 was negotiated, endorsed and finally legislated into effect. It takes its place beside Ajzenstat, ed, Canada's Founding Debates, which focuses on the debates in all the British North American legislatures from Newfoundland to British Columbia as to whether they should endorse the deal. Then you can read all the 'sixties historians of confederation or, blush, this book.

Does this look like the guy on the $10 bill?

It sez here, in what may be some kind of leak in a story about something else entirely, that actor Shawn Doyle, currently in the cable series Big Love, is "returning to Toronto to play Sir John A. Macdonald in a TV movie for the CBC."

Based on Richard Gwyn's ongoing biography? Random House and Gwyn's own website don't seem to be saying.

Canadians talking about parliament everywhere

Impressive, to see a large crowd spend its Saturday afternoon crammed into a basement pub room to discuss Canadian democratic issues. This was the gathering of the Macdonald-Cartier Society I spoke to on the weekend. The Society is a curious mix of a non-partisan educational society dedicated to Canadian political institutions and processes ... and also an alliance of hard-edge young movement conservatives. This, I suspect, is a consequence of a world run by Facebook-based networks.

I couldn't help mentioning how heartening it was that we were not the only Canadians giving up that afternoon to a concern for Canadian parliamentary democracy. I noted that just a few blocks from us at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto (and in other places across the country), thousands had rallied (through another Facebook grouping) to protest the proroguing of Parliament by Prime Minister Harper. Most of my audience wanted absolutely nothing to do with that kind of democracy, but they took my teasing in good spirit, and we had a lively session. (If you follow this blog and my occasional notes on parliamentary issues, you know pretty well what I talked about). Thanks to Immanuel and the rest of his team for their invitation.

History is where you find it:

* Something cryptically called the Smiths Falls EMC has a pretty terrific piece on the intriguing life of "the father of the Canadian navy," (the navy being 100 years old this year 2010), Admiral Charles Edmund Kingsmill. It's called "remembering the father of the..." but I had never heard of him. (Thanks to Buzz of local history site www.portlandontario.ca for the link.)

* The Beaver was once again a magazine of the week in the Globe and Mail on Saturday. The Globe also made a flashy lifestyle feature by asking a bunch of glamourous people at a party I did not get asked to what they thought of the name change of The Beaver to Canada's History. Ouch.

Update: The Economist takes note of the magazine's "Scunthorpe problem."

* History of agriculture: "Even though I consider poetry one of the highest callings, I think there's something bizarrely wrong with our economy when writing poetry helps sustain traditional farming." Poet and farmer Brian Brett, in Trauma Farm: A Rebel History, which I'm currently enjoying (Brian's a friend of mine, but it's still a terrific book.)

* Is it okay to be heartened by news that the National Library, the National library and the National Museum of Haiti mostly survived the earthquake. I think so. Historian Sidney Mintz reflects on historical mistreatments of Haiti here. Links via the indispensable Cliopatra.

This month in The Beaver

The new issue of The Beaver -- the magazine soon to be known as the magazine formerly known as The Beaver -- is reaching subscribers and magazine stands this week. My column looks this month at Gordon Freeman's 2009 book Canada's Stonehenge, his story of his very much non-in-the-mainstream effort to interpret Omakh, the magnificent stone circle near Majorville in southeastern Alberta.

What China heard of Canada, 1602

In Kanata, “inhabitants are kindly and hospitable to strangers,” but “the people living in the mountains kill one another all year round and spend their time in fighting and robbery.”

“They feed exclusively on snakes, ants, spiders, and other creeping things,” he continues.

Commentary on Canada on the remarkable Sino-centric world map created in Beijing for the Chinese Emperor by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci, and currently on display at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Queen's has a model parliament. So does New Brunswick.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the Queen's Model Parliament is sitting in Ottawa. This is a student-run model parliamentary program at Queen's University in Kingston that, through the courtesy of Peter Millican, Kingston MP and Speaker of the House of Commons, gets to hold its three-day model parliamentary debates in the actual House of Commons chamber.

Three hundred and eight bright and promising young Canadians learning and practising parliamentary skills in the actual parliamentary chamber, with the support and participation of senior parliamentary officials -- what a great experience. The impact on the students is probably only slightly reduced by the realization that this year QMP could sit for six weeks and not impede in the slightest the official parliament of the country.

Meanwhile parliamentary democracy seems to be breaking out in a strikingly unCanadian fashion in New Brunswick.

Liberal premier Shawn Graham had worked out a deal to sell publicly-owned NB Hydro to Hydro Quebec -- until his cabinet and caucus told him they would not support the plan. Enough cabinet ministers and backbenchers to defeat the government told Graham they would vote against the plan in the New Brunswick legislature. The deal is now being substantially revamped to caucus's specifications.

Leave aside the matter of whether selling NB Hydro is a good idea. New Brunswick Liberals are revolting against ninety years of Canadian parliamentary practice, in which legislators have presumed they have no role in the parliamentary process and must do whatever they are told to by party leaders imposed by an extra-parliamentary process. The New Brunswick members have, of course, the most practical of motives: they are pretty certain they could never be re-elected if they voted for Graham's plan. That is just as it should be: the voters tell their representatives their wishes, and the representatives tell the executives their wishes, and the executive, being accountable to the parliamentary majority, actually bends to the will of the public.

Any chance legislators in the rest of the country could hear of what has gone on in Frederickton? Geez, next they will have the idea that caucuses should be able to review the leadership of leaders who get their parties into this kind of trouble.

They thought it worked with universities, so...

It's not about cultural policy any more, it seems. Canadian Heritage is not functioning like a cultural body. The policy is bums in seats. How do you grow a culture that way?

Malahat Review editor John Barton skewers the new Canadian Periodical Fund policy on support for magazines. Full story in the Globe & Mail begins, "Canadian literary, arts and scholarly magazines are likely going to die."

Toronto: from 'Meeting place' to 'sticks in the mud'

Via Heritage Toronto, southern Ontario archaeologist extraordinaire Ron Williamson considers the origins of the name Toronto, the evidence of age-old communication networks across southern Ontario, and the pre-contact geo-politics of the region.

(Image: Archaeological Services Inc.)

Canadian Historical Review wants you

We were reflecting that 2009 seemed a little, well, slow, in Canadian history writing and publishing and scholarship. Is the Canadian Historical Review feeling the same way? The venerable journal has put out a call for contributions:

Both the CHR editors and editorial board welcome academics at any stage of their career, from Canada and beyond, to explore any aspect or period of Canadian history. We invite a broad range of topics, perspectives, and interpretive frameworks to be examined, and encourage imagination and innovation along with the more traditional approaches used in historical research and writing. Comparative and transnational approaches to understanding Canada's past are also welcome.

Info on the CHR and about online access here.

History of Music: Kate McGarrigle 1946-2010...

... died of cancer last night. Performed at Royal Albert Hall barely a month ago, according to the band/family website.

History of the university

Slate offers a pretty interesting review of what sounds like a pretty interesting book on the history of the university.

Front Line Historians

George Chauncey, professor of history at Yale University, and Nancy Cott, professor of history at Harvard, have been expert witnesses this week in the California trial testing the constitutionality of California's referendum-based ban on same-sex marriage. Background on the case: Margaret Talbot's New Yorker story, "A Risky Proposal," which explores how the case came to be launched by George Bush's former Solicitor General against the advice of most of the leading gay-rights advocacy organizations.

It's never easy being a historian witness in a big public policy trial, as UofT's Michael Marrus has said many times about holocaust-denial trials. Good luck to Professor Chauncey and Cott, who are tasked with demonstrating that the rationales given for excluding gay couples from marriage are groundless given (in Chauncey's case) the history of anti-gay prejudice and (in Cott's) the historical evolution of the nature of marriage in American society.

To my knowledge, no historians were involved in Barbeau v. British Columbia, one of the key legal cases that established same-sex marriage in Canada, but if you are up for reading a legal judgment (very readable, if you can get through the judicial framing), the historical evolution of marriage is very lucidly outlined in Madame Justice Jo-Ann Prowse's reasons for judgment. American courts rarely consider foreign jurisprudence, but they could benefit.

Forty years on...

.. and there is still a remarkable dearth of good books on the October Crisis of 1970. But Carleton university School of Canadian Studies is planning a conference on the subject for, yes, next October. At least certain aspects of it, anyway.

Although we acknowledge that the FLQ was forged from a widely shared post-colonial perspective (at its beginning), the conference also seeks to highlight the influence/impact of the left, unions and universities, and gay and feminist liberation groups in Quebec.

Famine history

Ireland seems almost oversupplied with terrific historians. One of them, economic historian Cormac O'Grada, has moved on from revisionist analyses of the Irish Famine of the 1840s and written what looks like a terrific history of famine itself.

Douglas Hunter, historian of discoveries (and much else), draws our attention to his new newsblog, Age of Discovery News, "dedicated to scholarship, publishing, museology, archaeology, and all things exploration related."

[Just to keep things straight, Douglas Hunter is not Hunter Douglas, the blinds company.]

Wierd history watch: Who was the man who never was?

The Man Who Never Was" was a memorable British book and film from the 1950s, part of that ongoing thread that implies the Second World War was won by the clever stunts of intelligence boffins rather than by the application of large quantities of lethal weaponry. Story was that British intelligence floated a dead body onto an enemy held beach. Enemy found body, body carried (phony) plans of a massive Allied landing, enemy shifted its defences, genuine landing succeeded, Allies won war.

This summer University of Toronto historian Denis Smyth will launch a book exploring who the body was, that is, who was the poor dead guy whose corpse got the phony plans planted on it. Already he has been injected into what is apparently an ongoing minor controversy in Britain, with various dead guys vying for the credit of being the poor stiff. Smyth's Operation Mincemeat/Deathly Deception is offered as the final word.

[Just to keep things straight, Denis Smyth, intelligence historian noted here, is not Denis Smith, political scientist quoted a couple of posts below.]

Professor Weinstock asks Mr Harper to be nicer

Daniel Weinstock, who launched the letter signed by 200 academics to protest against the proroguing of parliament, was interviewed on As it Happens last night, and he alarmed me almost as much as Mr Harper does. Now this is a professor of political philosophy, a Trudeau Fellow, an Oxford Ph.D, and so on, and he has the support of most of the constitutional lawyers and political scientists in the country. But his ideas struck me as terrifyingly blinkered, derived entirely from what happens in Ottawa today rather than from any understanding of parliamentary democracy and its principles.

In a parliamentary democracy, he explained [podcast available here], there are no checks and balances as in the American system. So the working of our system of government depends on the executive being nice, on prime ministers who restrain themselves and do not use all the powers parliamentary democracy confers on him. This is Stephen Harper's failing, he told the interviewer: he's not playing nicely with the powers he has, and we need 200 professors to ask him to put some of his powers back in the desk drawer. Be friendly, Mr. Dictator.

But if that's parliamentary democracy, why would Professor Weinstock, or anyone, give it credence? If the only restraint it offers against the abuse of executive power is the executive's modesty and self-restraint? Weinstock might as well argue that communism or fascism would have been fine except that those mean guys Stalin and Mussolini failed to restrain themselves. What kind of political philosophy accepts that you can have a lousy system of government and rely on the niceness of leaders to make it acceptable?

The check and balance in parliamentary democracy is parliament itself. In parliamentary democracies all over the world, leaders who become arrogant, or who underperform, or become policy-challenged, or get caught in scandals, or just lose their charm, are regularly, routinely, and promptly reined in or redirected, or when necessary removed. Leaders are always ambitious and rarely nice, but they are surrounded by other people who are equally ambitious and perfectly able to apply their own ruthlessness against each other.

I know it is not happening in Ottawa -- but that's the problem, Professor. Don't ask Stephen Harper to be nicer, encourage this parliament to unleash its own ambitions.

(The Weinstock letter itself, now widely published in newspaper op-ed pages, is available here.)

Update, January 13: Political scientist and writer Denis Smith comments wisely:

You're quite right to point out that the Weinstock article misses the main point about where power (potentially) lies in the parliamentary system. In both this and the last parliament, the House failed to use its power most of the time: the prime minister only acts the way he does because 307 other MPs let him get away with it. But in one crucial vote in December, the House voted 145 to 143 to order release of unredacted documents to the Afghanistan committee, and the opposition indicated that it would pursue the application of that order when the House reconvenes. The government indicated that it would not obey the order. In effect, it gave notice that it would defy the House's demand. It seems to me that it is this defiance, plus the prorogation, that turned the affair into a parliamentary crisis. The House's way to resolve the crisis, obviously, is to defeat the government in a confidence vote, and it will be in a position to do so on March 3 or 4. Hardly anyone except you, in all the recent commentary, has mentioned this elementary point.

But surely Weinstock is right to insist that the system also involves conventions of mutual restraint which the prime minister has ignored. He's done that repeatedly. He should not have asked for prorogation in December 2008; he should not have asked for it in December 2009. It's important for commentators to remind him of those conventions of restraint.

And then, as you say, the House must assure that the conventions are backed up with its sanction. Maybe the commentators don't mention this because the opposition parties have been strangely silent about the House's power as well. They need to threaten defeat in a confidence vote, and carry through with the threat in March. If they want to do it without a virtually automatic request for dissolution after that vote, they need to talk to each other about an alternative government drawn from the present House (as they did in 2008).

To restore the power of the House that you encourage, there are a whole lot of steps the parties must take. It would certainly be helpful if they could begin to speak honestly about how difficult that really will be.

It's official: your job rocks

It's just as you always thought: "Historian" ranks in the top five among all possible careers in a new survey of the best and worst jobs in the world.

Two caveats: this comes from io9.com, a science fiction website. And numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 are actuary, engineer, computer systems analyst, and biologist, while author is 74. (Lumberjack? 199 of 200.)

Cliopatria Awards for historyblogs

... are announced. It's an American prize, but with a global interest, and with various categories for blog forms.

Oh well, it might have been History Canada, I guess

My friends at Canada's National History Society have decided that after 90 years as The Beaver, their magazine is going to be rebranded as "Canada's History." Canadian Magazines has the story.

(I just freelance a column for The Beaver, and glad to do so. I don't make these decisions. You would have to talk to them about this.)

Drivel watch: Ibbitson on parliament

John Ibbitson gets it right:

Canadian MPs cower at the hands of the party whips

and then thuddingly wrong:

Australian MPs and senators enjoy an ultimate weapon not practically available to their Canadian counterparts: They can replace the party leader any time they like. Last month, they did just that.

Actually the only thing preventing Canadian MPs from exercising their authority/fulfilling their obligations is the endless chorus from our journalists and commentators telling them, as here, that they cannot.

Meanwhile, more examples of how these things work in every functioning parliamentary democracy in the world. British Labour MPs last week declined to act on a call to remove and replace their leader, Prime Minister Brown. But the reminder that the power is always there convinced Brown to negotiate with his cabinet and caucus over the forthcoming budget. As The Times reported:

ministers used Mr Brown’s temporary weakness on Wednesday afternoon to warn him that he had to be more collegiate to retain their support....

Why don't Canadian party leaders find themselves negotiating policy with the people's elected representatives? Because Canadian MPs don't insist on it. And they don't because a thousand John Ibbitsons tell them they are not entitled to.

(Thanks Stephen.)

Update, January 12: Clevi comments:

"Many British MPs know that they will never make it into the cabinet, and so feel much freer to take on their own party leader."

That is what Ibbitson, means, I think, by saying Canadian MP's do not have the "practical" option of dumping their party leaders. MPs who defy the whip get the reputation of not being team players, and hence shut themselves out of possible cabinet positions and other patronage perks.

That's certainly been the go-to explanation of Canadian political scientists, back at least to C.S Franks, The Parliament of Canada. But just saying it over and over hardly proves it. In Britain and Australia and Japan and throughout the parliamentary world, it is nearly always ambitious cabinet members who lead caucus initiatives -- including removing the incumbent leader -- and they can offer perks, promotions, and policy changes at least as credibly as the incumbent can.

The real difference, I'm sure, is that in Canada the leader, not having been chosen by caucus, is understood not to be accountable to caucus, while it is accountable to him/her. That's the message we Canadians deliver constantly to MPs, and it's the reverse of how functional parliaments operate.

John A. Macdonald's birthday...

195 years ago today, in Glasgow, Scotland. At least that's the day he celebrated; some question has been raised about whether it actually was the day he was born. Anyway you still are not getting a holiday for it.

But various John A. Macdonald events were held around the country yesterday and today. Hats off to, for instance, the John A. Macdonald Society of Hamilton, Ontario, which held an event yesterday at Macdonald's statue at King and John in the heart of the city.

As long as it's friendly....?

"Canada's democracy should not be conducted solely on the basis of convenience for the governing party." Globe and Mail editorial December 31, 2009.

To its credit, the Globe despises Prime Minister Harper's thuggish, anti-parliamentary decision to prorogue the legislature out of pure political calculation. But Mr. Harper's actions have always been based on his judgment that between elections a prime minister can do what he wants and is accountable to no one. (He's not the only prime minister to make that calculation, shall we say.)

In practice, the control that is needed to prevent prime ministerial autocracy is a lively and assertive parliament. And on that subject, the Globe ain't exactly a stalwart. A couple of years ago, when Mr Harper, with thuggishness to match his current behaviour, was allowed to have MP Bill Casey removed from the Conservative caucus for doing what MPs are elected to do -- vote -- the Globe was unconcerned:

It was legitimate for Mr Casey to vote his conscience; it was legitimate for Mr Harper to kick him out of caucus for voting no-confidence in the budget. Globe and Mail editorial, October 22, 2007.

It was a Globe columnist, Jeffrey Simpson, who popularized the phrase "friendly dictatorship" to characterize prime ministerial autocracy. But sometimes it seems it is the "friendly" part and not the "dictator" part to which Canadians give importance. Like the Globe editorialists, we only object to prime ministers running roughshod over parliamentary accountability when it seems, you know, really unfriendly.

In Britain, Prime Minister Brown seems to have survived a challenge to his leadership. But as this essay illustrates, in functioning parliamentary system it is taken for granted -- even when a challenge fails -- that the party leader is always and constantly accountable to the caucus. Parliament becomes the locus of accountability, and the prime minister is never beyond control.

When Canadians are routinely complicit in autocratic leadership practices, we are unlikely to be very persuasive if we raise our hand in horror when the autocrat takes the principle to its logical, unfriendly consequences.

(Janet Ajzenstat took note of our earlier note on this subject. (Memo to Janet: don't worry about quotation - link! Links are the only literary device unique to blogs. Try 'em.)

MacDougall on Ralston Saul on William Lyon Mackenzie

Rob MacDougall at Old is the New New ponders John Ralston Saul's arguments in last year's bestselling A Fair Country -- and finds himself explicating the political thought of William Lyon Mackenzie in interesting ways.

A hundred years at the BC Court of Appeal

Today in Victoria, B.C., Chief Justice of British Columbia Lance Finch will open the 2010 sittings of the British Columbia Court of Appeal -- and will mark the one hundredth such opening, the centenary of the court.

I will not be there today, but I take a certain interest, since the Court of Appeal of British Columbia is the subject of a forthcoming book of mine, to be published by UBC Press in April. (Details in UBC Press's Spring 2010 scholarly catalogue, downloadable here.)

At the first sitting of the court, Tuesday, January 4, 1910, the Daily Colonist reported that the Supreme Court room at the Victoria court house was “crowded with members of the bar and interested citizens when their lordships entered.” After remarks by Chief Justice James A. Macdonald, there arose “the last of the old gladiators… straight as an arrow and belying his white hair by his easy carriage”: the Treasurer of the Law Society of British Columbia, Charles Edward Pooley, who had been practising in Victoria for forty-seven years. Pooley brought the congratulations of the bar and offered some reminiscences about courts and judges of the province’s frontier days. “His brother members,” he said, “looked forward to a transaction of court business without delay of justice.”

According to the Colonist, “their lordships created a very favourable impression indeed,” particularly the chief justice. “His keen logical mind, his finely-marked face, and the clearness and decision he evinced in getting at the meat of things all drew the attention of the visitors and the counsel he heard.”

BC filmmaker Meghna Haldar has made a rather terrific film about the Court and some of its memorable cases, recently shown on BC's Knowledge Network, and coming again on January 13. Info here.

Youtube Video History

I don't embed lots of video in this blog. It's a matter of browsing speed, I think. I find pictures too tedious. In the time it takes to load and begin, let alone watch all of a video link, I can scan vast reams of prose to see if it's anything I'm interested in. "Jeez, talk faster," seems to be my reaction to most Youtube links.

But billions of Youtube viewers cannot be wrong. If you are with them, The Canadian Tourism Commission has uploaded many short videos of Canadian historic places you might enjoy here.

For instance, Toronto's Distillery District, Klondike Gold, Vancouver's Chinatown, Battle Harbour, Newfoundland, and L'Anse aux Meadows.

Thanks for the links, Cameron Reed at Radar DDB (the agency that created the films).

Charles Taylor Prize

History and historians are well represented on the shortlist for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Historical biographies by John English, Daniel Poliquin, and Kenneth Whyte are listed along with Ian Brown's memoir The Boy in the Moon. Nice to see a list of just four -- a blow against shortlist inflation.

The jury is Andrew Cohen, Sheila Fischmann and last year's winner Tim Cook. Long ago I observed that the Taylor seemed to weight its juries with fiction writers and give most of the prizes to book by novelists and books that looked like fiction. Well, the prize outgrew that stage years ago -- enough that some nonfiction writers now complain that history and "information books" now dominate the list each year, to the detriment of more "literary" forms of nonfiction. The nature of the genre is contested, let us say (as is its spelling: non-fiction or nonfiction?). But this seems to me a strong jury; I'll wait on their verdict February 8.

Just to confirm that prizes matter, I've been reading Brian Brett's wise and gracefully written memoir Trauma Farm since it won the Writers' Trust nonfiction prize in November. And also Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, the historical novel that won last fall's Booker Prize -- a huge book with such narrative drive that everyone seems to devour it in a few days, me included.

Update, January 7: An example of the criticism I alluded to above, from writer and blogger Susan Olding. And here's a proposal that what book juries need is ... more profs. (Both links from David Leach at the Creative Nonfiction Writers Collective.)

Update, Jan 11. I think I missed the other big non-fiction prize shortlist. The British Columbia National Prize for Canadian Non-Fiction will be announced this Friday, January 15. Two of the four (again with the four) nominees are also on the Taylor list, two others were on the G-G list, and at least one was on the Writers' Trust shortlist, so there's some convergence among 2009/10 juries.

I bear a small reservation about the BC prize because it is presented each year by the premier, and I'm not keen on that kind of politicization of book prizes. Public support for the arts, yes, but arm's length, B.C., take it seriously.

Update, January 19: And congratulations to Ian Brown, winner for The Boy in the Moon.

Active History

... gives some love to our Quebec siege liveblog of last summer.

Neatby Award nominations

The Hilda Neatby Prize for "scholarly articles on women's history and gender history as it relates to women, in Canadian journals and books and, in the case of the French-language article, in international journals and books as well," is open for nominations until February 1, 2010. Info from the Canadian Committee for Women's History.

Who's Hilda Neatby? The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan knows, and now you can too.

Careers in history

I've always regretted how so many history students seem to accept that unless they acquire a tenure-stream position in a history department, they must put aside historical interests and attitudes. Outside of university promotional materials on "Careers in the Humanities," few of us genuinely seem able to imagine a historical education as a sound basis for being a film-maker, say, or a community developer, or (to get personal about it) a freelance writer. I have met many film-makers working on historical subjects, but never one who took an interest in history into film rather than the other way around.

Here, however, is an American prof thinking grim thoughts about career and life prospects for graduate students in the humanities, and even suggesting freelance writing is a reasonable alternative.

They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a reliable prospect — a more responsible and secure choice than, say, attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a professional athlete — and, as a result, they don't make any fallback plans until it is too late.

Update: Bloggendipity: when two blogs coincidentally take up the same subject. For example, see Andrew Smith's take on the job market. (Less than 60 applicants for a position is about the best it gets)

Update, January 6: Alasdair Cheng offers an important comment and corrective:

I wondered whether Benton was actually suggesting that freelance writing was a viable alternative to academia: my reading was that he thought academia should realistically be considered just as implausible as making a living as a freelancer – i.e. just like it’s irresponsible to have “professional athlete” as a career plan without some more hard-headed backup. I think that your own success at freelancing would probably be taken as the sort of exception that proves the rule, like a secure, well-endowed research chair’s position…

Yes, I think Benton meant these choices may be about equally risky, and I don't disagree.

"No information may remain classified indefinitely"

President Obama recently established a National Declassification Centre at the American National Archives to speed and simplify the declassification of historical sources. More detail here, but imagine the Canadian government pursuing this sort of initiative...

Natalie Zemon Davis in Toronto

Natalie Zemon Davis, the terrific American (and sometimes Torontonian) historian of most everything (but usually involving the history of women and gender-relations in some fashion) will deliver the John Edwards Lecture at the University of Toronto's Centre of Criminology on January 25, 2010 at 4.30.

Her topic (see, she is interested in everything) is "Judges, Masters, Diviners: Slaves' Experience of Criminal Justice in Colonial Suriname." Not a subject high on my priority list of topics, probably. Except I once interviewed NZD, and I have never met an historian who so truly enjoyed history and seemed to bring that zest to whatever she studied.

More info and contacts here, except it seriously needs updating.

The prorogation

This isn't where you will find an outbreak of fury about Prime Minister Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament in order to hamstring the parliamentary dissection of his government's dishonest and abusive responses to the allegations about Canadian complicity in torture.

There is lots of fury available if that's your taste. Susan Riley and Michael Behiels in the Ottawa Citizen, and the editorialists in the Globe and Mail, can give you your fill, and that's without even going to the Toronto Star. As Behiels puts it:

Harper's continued use of such bold, provocative and intimidating tactics proves that he is morally convinced that the end -- unfettered power for his Conservative party and government and the wholesale destruction of the centrist Liberal party -- justifies the means.

Behiels is absolutely right. But I can't help thinking that all prime ministers pursue their ends and are not too squeamish about the means. Politics is tough, and politicians have always pushed to see what they can get away with. The problem is not in this prime minister's perhaps-uniquely cynical and contemptuous behaviour, but in the failure of our parliament to provide the counterweights and accountability the parliamentary system usually provides more-or-less automatically. It's no good raving about Mr. Harper's meanness; good government should not depend on one politician's self-restraint.

Behiels says:

If the legislative branch is rendered powerless by Harper's executive branch, Canadians have no choice but to defend their Constitution by taking their struggle to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Behiels looks to the courts for protection. (Good luck with that one!) Advocates of electoral reform panaceas will declare that PR would solve the problem. Senate reform zealots will explain why Triple-E would save us. Direct-democracy types will call for some kind of referendum or initiative.

The problem is always in the House of Commons, and we insist on looking for solutions everywhere else. But functioning parliamentary systems are full of checks and balances. In a functioning parliamentary system, even government-side backbenchers have good reason to want parliament to be in session, for it's the one place they can attract attention and serve their own ambitions. For their own ends, they will resist and undermine a leader who seeks to marginalize their forum as part of marginalizing them.

But in Canada, where we insist that party leaders are not accountable to parliamentarians, parliament is a waste of time for government backbenchers; it is merely a place to emphasize their docile dependence and slavish obedience. They would just as soon be at home. And so the unaccountable leader gets to do what he or she wants.

There is no simple fix to this parliamentary crisis. It's a cultural one. Canadian parliamentarians are actually not as dumb and sheeplike as the Canadian legislatures makes them seem to be. They just act that way. They believe it's their duty. They ar conditioned to believe it. They act that way because we tell them constantly we want them to.

When MPs hear that they are supposed to be powerful, they are supposed to be able to represent the people, they have the right and the duty to make policy, to fire party leaders who impede their policy inclinations, and to hire better ones, they'll seize the power eagerly. They will get rid of authoritarian bullies more or less automatically, simply in the process of pursuing their own agendas.

But who will tell them to go ahead? Who ever looks to parliamentarians for solutions to the parliamentary problem?

Update: Andrew Coyne is sound and compelling on this.

Happy new year 2010

... and it's good to be back. Good to see several of my go-to history blogs kept up posting over the holidays, giving you all much to read if you were so inclined. Good also to see that several did not, making me feel not uniquely delinquent.