Book Notes: Pennington on 1891, Leith on writing English Montreal

While this blog been dabbling in election history, someone has been doing the real work.  A recent publication in Penguin's new History of Canada series -- which is now getting up to speed and promising two new books each spring and fall for several years -- is Christopher Pennington's The Destiny of Canada: Macdonald, Laurier, and the Election of 1891, a booklength study of that one campaign.

Also out in that History of Canada series this spring  is the take of Ron Graham, the veteran political journalist, on that patriation battle:  The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, The Gang of Eight and the Fight for Canada.  More information on the whole Penguin History of Canada series here.    (I have a book in the works for this series too.)

To balance two men on political history, how's about a woman on cultural history:  Linda Leith's Writing in A Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

I have been at the Blue Met this week, talking about From Then to Now, and I got the chance to hear Leith talk about this book.  She is a central figure in what she calls the Anglo Revival -- of English language writing in Montreal. She has been not only a writer and teacher but a substantial cultural entrepreneur too, involved in most of the organizations and events by which English-language writers in Quebec have forced themselves upon the attention of Quebec, Canada, and the world.  Blue Metropolis is the successful international literary festival in which both the readers and the audiences are as much French-speaking as English-speaking.  Leith was the founder and until recently director of the festival, but the book is more than a record of the festival's creation. 


Her memoir speaks from the embattled heart of Montreal's English-language literary community -- from the 1970s to today.  In Leith's telling, English-language writing in Quebec was threatened not only by Quebec nationalists who resented Anglo attempts at cross-cultural rapprochement and denied there was such a thing as English culture in Quebec, but just as much by English Canadian nationalists who more-or-less agreed.  Her fight, she argues, was as much against Toronto as against those who would exclude English from Quebec.   "If there had not been a Toronto, we would have had to invent Toronto," she writes.

This is a good cultural history, detailed, first person, parti-pris , but also abundantly sourced and referenced.  And as good cultural history should, it's a window onto many wider historical topics too.

Federal Election 41, 2011 (the post I promised not to write)

Having planned all along to dismiss the current campaign as meaningless (see yesterday's post), I find myself in the midst of what promises to be an interesting election, one in which the campaign period seems to have produced enormous changes in Canadians' voting intention.  Elections do matter, and the campaign month regularly confounds what the eve-of-dissolution polls predict.  

The actual campaign -- the ads, the signs, the relentless jetting about, the soundbiting -- remains disaffecting. It's striking that none of the parties accurately predicted what the voters might do this month, and none seems to have had strategies to shape it or to cope with it. Surely none of them (including the NDP) controlled or drove the changes.  The voters' intentions changed, that is, but it is hard to see that the parties' campaigns produced those changes  It is as if the voters and the campaigners have been moving on separate tracks throughout April.  

How would one write a history of this electoral season if the efforts of the parties themselves seem to have had so little to do with actually making that history?  Dunno.... 

Federal Election history 29-40, 1972-2008: more of the same

… then there were a whole lot more elections in which the latest leaders and their entourages of pollsters and spin doctors jetted about the country seeking photogenic backdrops for photo ops.

I knew early in this series that I was not inclined to carry it right through the elections of the most recent decades.  Not that the electoral outcomes  -- Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien, the rise of Reform, the era of the Bloc Québécois, the return of minority parliaments -- have been unimportant.  Anything but.  But the campaigns all seem to blur together,  stupid, manufactured media events increasingly despised and disregarded by the voters as turnout slowly falls. 

Or maybe it’s just that campaigns in which I have actually voted don’t seem historic enough for this blog.

I’m not saying the election is not important. It is.  Get out and vote on Monday.  Get out on vote on Monday.

Federal elections 28, 1968: Trudeaumania

Was Trudeau Diefenbaker ten years later?  Well, no, but from this distance the comparisons between the campaigns of 1958 and 1968 seem salient.

Trudeau, like Dief, began with lukewarm support from the party establishment, but established a personal rapport with the electorate that carried all before it. The election of 1968 was all about Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, his vision, his policies, his personality, his values, much as the earlier one had been about Diefenbaker's.  Result: big majority for the Liberals

But resistance to Trudeau remained greater than resistance to Dief in '58.  The Liberals took 155 of 254 seats, a solid majority but not like Dief's 208.  And they won it with 45% of the vote, against Dief's 53%.

Trudeau surely did more and better with his new authority than Dief.  Despite less parliamentary experience and little more background in administering a large organization, he was both more coherent in policy matters and better at running a government, delegating authority, and remaining flexible in the face of obstacles.  Didn't seem to help him much in 1972, but helped him stay on after.

John T. Saywell, 1921-2011

Readers of the Canadian Legal History Blog will have already seen my post on the death of Jack Saywell, but since Chris hasn't posted on it (yet) and I haven't seen it on any other history blogs (yet) I am re-posting here.

The death of John T. Saywell is very sad news for his many fans--former students, colleagues and readers of his acclaimed works on Canadian political, constitutional and legal history. Professor Saywell had a long and distinguished academic career and touched the lives of many. He will be missed.

From his obit in the Globe today:

Throughout his long and distinguished career, he took 'many roads less travelled.' In the process, he deepened Canada's knowledge and understanding of itself, from the constitution and federalism to the offices of the Lieutenant-Governor and the Governor-General. He also chronicled Canadian history, economics, politics, culture and society as Editor of the Canadian Historical Review (1957 - 1963), and as Editor of the Canadian Annual Review (1960 - 1979), reviving and revitalizing these two journals. John's ground-breaking scholarship was recognized through a number of major awards. His 1957 book, The Office of Lieutenant-Governor: A Study in Canadian Government and Politics, won the Delancey K. Jay Prize at Harvard University. Another, the 1991 'Just Call Me Mitch': The Life of Mitchell F. Hepburn, won the Floyd Chalmers Award for the best book on Ontario history. His 2002 study of the Supreme Court of Canada, entitled The Lawmakers: Judicial Power and the Shaping of Canadian Federalism, won the John W. Dafoe Prize for 'distinguished writing on Canada and/or Canada's place in the world'....

A private family cremation... was held on April 23rd. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that a donation in John's memory be made to the John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Legal History (c/o the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History (www.osgoodesociety.ca), to the Toronto East General Hospital (www.tegh.on.ca), or to a charity of choice. Friends and colleagues are invited to 'The Way It Was: Remembering Jack', a celebration of his life, to be held on Father's Day, Sunday, June 19th from 11:30 A.M. at the Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre, 6 Garamond Court (off Wynford Drive, west of the Don Valley Parkway) in North York, 416.441.2345. Condolences www.rskane.ca.

Chris adds: Thanks for this, Mary.  My review of his The Lawmakers (not online at the moment) was, ah, a tad sceptical, but I saw him make a presentation about it, and he was on fire.  We should all hope to have that kind of passion and commitment to the work.

Federal Election history 25, 26, 27, 1962, 1963, 1965: Liberal majorities built on the left

Diefenbaker eviscerated his own standing in his first majority, but with so many Conservative incumbents in the House, the party  managed to hold on to a minority, with support from a bloc of Social Credit members, after the 1962 election (116 seats of 265, and 30 Social Credit = 146).

Diefenbaker in decline survived not only from his remaining popular appeal, but also from the double standard then prevailing. Having been made leader by the extra-parliamentary convention, he was not removable by his caucus, but he also insisted he was not removable by the mass party either.  While Dalton Camp slowly led the Conservatives to the wrong solution, making the leader removable by the mass party instead of reaffirming caucus authority), the party gradually became unelectable, and the Liberals formed two minorities more or less faute de mieux.

Pearson's two minorities (129 of 265 in 1963 and 131 of 265 in 1965) are recalled as the most productive minority governments in Canadian history, the time that successfully initiated medicare, moves toward official bilingualism and biculturalism, and new ideas about immigration, social welfare, a new flag, and so on.  Pearson had the benefit of NDP support for his government, making for a strong centre-left consensus despite official minority status, and also empowering progressive Liberals against the more conservative business-Liberal faction.  Instance three of the rule that goes back to 1926: Liberal majorities require either the collapse of the CCF-NDP vote to the benefit of the Liberal Party, or else a bloc of NDP MPs willing to support a Liberal minority government.  Hmmm.

Cliopatria redux

Can't say I'm much taken yet with Cliopatria's new design and fonts, but maybe it will just take time.  Mostly I\m relieved to see that the essential history blog continues, and that the changeover only temporarily restrained Ralph Luker's almost daily delivery of invaluable historical links.

Federal election history 23 and 24, 1957 and 1958: here comes the future

John English, the biographer of Lester Pearson, has written that though Pearson and John Diefenbaker were near contemporaries, Pearson shrugged off the conventional pieties of his upbringing and accomodated himself to modernity -- a late-twentieth century guy, in effect, even though he died in 1972.

True. But John Diefenbaker, for all his small-town traditionalism and antique loyalties, had something of the future in him too.  His political career is the model that successful Canadian successors have followed more than Pearson's.

Diefenbaker was unpopular in the House of Commons, had difficulty working with others, and was not trusted by the party faithful.  Didn't matter.  Diefenbaker grasped that by building an extra-parliamentary following, he did not have to have insider support.  He took over the party leadership much the way Paul Martin would later: by locking up all the votes before anyone else got started.  And not having been supported by the party and the caucus, he was more than any of his predecessors inclined to ignore them both.

Lacking a party or parliamentary base proved to be a blessing.  Diefenbaker was among the first  national party leaders to turn campaign organizing over to professionals drawn from advertising and the media, (Hello Dalton Camp),  who soon determined that the most important thing about policy was that it had to fit the slogan.

In the election of 1957, going up against the complacent assumption of everyone that the Liberal majority was destined to last forever, Diefenbaker managed only a minority win (112 seats of 265, and with a smaller share of the popular vote than the Liberals, who had 105.

1958 was the real election of the future, when Diefenbaker remade the political landscape on a campaign wholly focussed on the leader. He won 208 of 265, with a mass of MPs who had come in on his coattails, and was free to do anything he liked for five years, free from opposition, but also free from constraint by cabinet ministers, backbenchers, party organizers... and anyone else.

It didn't work out that well for the country, the party or Diefenbaker's historical reputation.  But it is the model every aspiring prime minister since has been apprenticed to.

Twitter - Dead Prime Minister Attack Ads

So, I've recently succumb to Twitter after a couple years of stubborn resistance. One of my favourite hastags is #deadPMattackads ( http://twitter.com/#!/search/deadpmattackads )which basically has former Prime Ministers and other political leaders wage their own political battles in the 21st century Twitterverse. It's been described as the best way to get a laugh during #elxn41. Here are some my favourites:

tuppercharles Charles Tupper

@bobbyborden opposes free trade. His Unionist coalition will tax iPods & TruckNutz you buy abroad. It's just the beginning. #deadpmattackads

bobbyborden Sir Robert Borden

Ever wonder what @SirJSDThompson stands for? John SPARROW David Thompson. Can you trust a man named after a passerine bird? #DeadPMattackads

dief_thechief John Diefenbaker

@bobbyborden does not take the party system seriously. He disguised a coalition as a "Union Gov't." Backroom dealer? #deadpmattackads

P_Trudeau Pierre Trudeau

@

Well, @bobbyborden thinks the metric system.ruined Canada. A vote for him is a vote for the AMERICAN Imperial System. #deadpmattackads

JSWoodsworthCCF James S. Woodsworth

@bobbyborden CCF work to WLM King from running dictatorship. King gov. wants to work for democ ovrseas but not in Canada #DeadPMattackads

bobbyborden Sir Robert Borden

@JSwoodsworthccf Voted against supporting Empire and friends in WWII. Would have preferred Hitler run amok. #DeadPMattackads

bobbyborden Sir Robert Borden

@P_Trudeau recklessly divided our country with his metrification agenda- Canada needs a stern hand,not economic instability #DeadPMattackads

bobbyborden Sir Robert Borden

@dief_thechief : Ran for and supported Saskatchewan's first Conservative government... a reckless COALITION government. #DeadPMattackads

History and Human Rights Update

The controversy over the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its uses of history continues to boil.

The Globe & Mail reports (not in the online Globe that I can see)  that the UCCLA has declared that while it is entitled to hold strong and controversial views on European history, globally-recognized experts in European history are not allowed to express views on the same subject when it involves a Canadian museum.  

See our earlier discussion of the Canadian Human Rights Museum and the declaration of the historians that the UCCLA has been distorting history in its lobbying of the museum about Holocaust and Holodomor matters.  According to the Globe story of April 21, the UCCLA now declares it is "appalling" that non-Canadians should presume to hold views on the matter. 

In reality, the letter that it denounces as "anti-democratic stammering" is signed not only by leading European historians but by many prominent Canadians, including prominent members of the Ukrainian-Canadian community.

History of Medicare

A remarkable infographic comparing the costs of medical services and the quality of care in various countries.  The intended takeaway is: be glad you don't live in the United States, but on quality it has some disquieting stats about Canada too.

Blogger goes all national media...

Canada.com, the online presence of the CanWest-Southam-National Post media conglomerate, has been running a series called "The Real Agenda" as part of its election coverage.  Editor Derek Shelly has been inviting some Canadian bloggers to contribute pieces. Mine is up today -- and I'm already getting emails explaining just where I've gone wrong, so it must be working.  Like it?  Link it, quote it, share it.

Update:  The comments on the site range from "historian from Toronto? 'Nuff said" to "I could just tell from your photo you are a wise man."  Aw, thanks.  The one from Duff Conacher is thoughtful.

Nice to see blogging historian Matthew Hayday in the Real Agenda series too.

Federal Election History 21 and 22, 1949 and 1953

Were these the easiest federal elections in Canadian history? Only if you were a Liberal.   Louis S. St-Laurent succeeded Mackenzie King as Liberal leader in 1948.  Buoyed by postwar prosperity, the Liberal government won re-election with very substantial majorities (190 of 262 seats and 171 of 265, respectively) in 1949 and 1953.  The 50s reputation for dullness and conventionality seems confirmed.

King, of course, left politics upon his replacement -- as Canadian leaders almost invariably do upon ceasing to be premier, prime minister, or party leader. This is a Canadian oddity, actually, more typical of presidential systems than parliamentary ones.   Matthew Shugart of the electoral-systems blog Fruits and Votes crunches a few numbers  (okay, I helped provoke him to it, as you will see if you track the comments):

Canada is clearly below the average for parliamentary systems, where we found 82% (!) [of ex-prime ministers - CM] continue being legislators (compared to 20% of presidents), and that the average PM hangs around for over 7 years (compared to just over a year for the average president). As I mentioned above, this line of research would really benefit from more comparison of countries within regime types. ...  Also of interest: Only one Canadian PM during this time period has remained in the cabinet–Clark for one year–so this type of “pension” is indeed rare in Canada. For all PMs we find 26% remain in the cabinet after their executive service, compared to no presidents in pure or semi-presidential systems.

Clark had nine years in the Mulroney cabinet, I think, but the point holds.  In the Canadian variant on the parliamentary system, if you ain't the leader anymore, you are nobody.

New public history awards

The Canadian Museum Association (which is having its annual shindig in London, Ontario this week) has announced three new awards in conjunction with Canada's History Magazine, formerly known as The Beaver (I wonder how long we will need to include that explanatory aside?)

The History Alive! award (exclamation in original) 

will be presented annually by the Canadian Museums Association for programs and presentations developed by museums and art galleries across the country.

And two Community History Awards (no exclamation, alas), one French, one English,

will be offered to honour excellence in public events, activities, and programming. By publicly recognizing superior and innovative achievements, the Community History Awards serve as an inspiration to others in the field. Two awards of $2,500 each shall be presented and directed toward the project for which the award was made.

For more info, see the awards/public history page at the Canada's History website. (The Canadian Museums Association hasn't updated its awards page yet.)

Federal Election history 18, 19, 20: 1935, 1940,1945: King's Mixed Pickles

King wins majority; King wins majority; King wins majority -- doesn't sound too exciting.

The first was an easy run against R.B. Bennett's vast unpopularity. King ran against the "iron heel of ruthlessness" against Bennett's one-man show, but John Duffy notes the Liberals also focussed on their own one-strong-leader ("it's King or Chaos!") and "took to a new level the role of the leader in winning an election."

The end of the two-party system was far advanced.  Both Social Credit and the CCF took seats in 1935.  And another lasting reality grew from that: the winning party built a honkin' majority (173 of 245) from just 44% of the popular vote.

1940: wartime election, unprepared opposition leader, King's finessing of the conscription issue: an even bigger Liberal majority -- and 54% of the popular vote.

1945:  Liberal majorities are always built on the left, example two (#1? See 1926 below).  With the CCF high in the polls, King adopts a slew of progressive social and economic policies for postwar reconstruction, and he saves his majority. But just barely: 125 of 245 seats.

History and Human Rights

The debate over the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg and its treatments of the Holocaust and other genocidal campaigns has taken a new turn, with an international network of historians criticizing the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, accusing the organizations of "dishonesty" and "distortion," of failing to "confront the historical record openly and honestly," and of engaging in a "competition of suffering."  The Globe and Mail describes both organizations as  "vociferous and steadfast opponents of the plan" for the Human Rights museum on these topics.


The Globe story is here.  The story does not link to the open letter said to be sent in various European newspapers and signed by Sir Ian Kershaw, Christopher Browning and other prominent historians. My Google search failed to turn up any European newspaper publication of it, but what seems to be the same text, with an earlier list of distinguished signatories, is here, on the website of the Canadian Jewish Congress.   A UCCLA response is here.

Queering the Archives: The Collections of the CLGA #3

For the third and final post in this series on the collection of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives I'll look at the core collection of the organization; the papers of The Body Politic.

The Body Politic, a monthly gay liberation journal, began publishing in 1971 and continued until 1987. Based in Toronto and incorporated as Pink Triangle Press in 1975, it would become one of the most important voices for the gay liberation movement in Canada. It's importance in the evolution of the open LGBT community in Canada and its role in the sustaining the gay liberation movement in this country is tremendous. It would, for example, be continually brought to court over obscenity and censorship charges throughout its life. It's legacy rests in  its contributions to the legal, political, social history of the LGBT community in Canada.

Here's a radio link (clip titled 'Introducing the Body Politic') discussing the founding of The Body Politic.

The records of The Body Politic and Pink Triangle Press were to form the core of the original collection of what would become the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. It was The Body Politic collective which actually set up the CLGA.

I am about to leave Ottawa for Toronto tomorrow. Grad school calls. I took one last walk around Parliament Hill today and couldn't help but imagine the men and women who had at one time or another set foot on the political centre of this country. As I walked away from the Peace Tower I was suddenly hit with guilt. While I had thought on the likes of King, Pearson and J.S. Woodsworth I had given no thought to the first gay rights demonstration in 1971. I stood for a moment and reflected back upon Charlie Hill's words, "Gay is proud gay is good..." and I realized, in the context of the time, how powerful and courageous those words were. I pictured the small group of rain drenched gays and lesbians proudly standing under the Peace Tower. (clip titled 'The First Gay March') I find it hard to imagine how difficult that was to do. The Body Politic, of course, covered the march. The Parliament Hill March in 1971 I believe actually inspired those in Toronto to form The Body Politic. Truly, the journal is one of the most important aspects of LGBT history and I would encourage even more study on it then has already been done.

Happy Researching,

Jordan Kerr

Compare and Contrast

I had not noticed previously, but HistoryWire has been doing its own review of federal elections past, by a diverse group of historians.  Good.

Federal election history 17, 1930: the original Stephen Harper?

I'm not sure the election itself is that interesting.  Mackenzie King's government ran straight into the Great Depression, and the depression won.  In the 1930 election, the Conservative opposition won 137 of 245 seats.

The new prime minister, R.B. Bennett, was the first Conservative Party leader elected by a mass party convention rather than by support of the party caucus (as King was the first Liberal so chosen). Bennett, like King, grasped the implications.

Bennett had been a unruly backbencher and had left federal politics rather than serve someone else.  Coming to power as leader, he essentially dispensed with the party and caucus and pretty much ruled as he chose -- hence Arch Dale's cartoon at right above.

In many ways, Bennett was an innovator.  He ran as a conventional conservative, promising protectionism, balanced budgets, and small government as the panaceas for the depression.  But when that didn't work, he improvised freely, promising that the government would "blast open the markets of the world," creating new central institutions like the Bank of Canada and the CBC, and finally coming up with the "Bennett New Deal" of large-scale government intervention in the economy.

Bennett launched the Bennett New Deal, and most of his other innovations, without even consulting his cabinet (Ramsay Cook writes in The Illustrated History of Canada that they were "astounded at this conversion.") and untrammelled by what the party or the parliamentary caucus might think.  His principal advisor was his unelected brother-in-law, W.D. Herridge.  In other words, you may think Mr Harper is an autocrat who holds parliament in contempt and runs everything from the PMO. But really, our leaders have all acted that way, ever since we authorized them to do so by freeing them from review by their caucuses.

Another feature of the 1930 election and its consequences was the continued rise of third parties. The Progressives were fading, but Social Credit was rapidly taking its place in the rural west.  And a Bennett cabinet minister, H.H Stevens, who could not stand being a flunky to an autocratic leader, formed his own party, the Reconstruction Party -- which never went anywhere itself, but helped weaken the Conservative vote.  With the rise of unaccountable party leaders in Canadian political life, it became impossible for strong regional or factional politicians to remain effective within a party; they had to become toadies or leave.   Stevens was one of the first to try leaving.

As parties became vehicles for leaders, they lost their role as broad-based combinations of jockeying factions.  Here comes the future.

Donald Creighton lives

Riffing on a piece in the National Post exploring Stephen Harper's claim that "Conservatives created Canada,"  Janet Ajzenstat tears the whole idea to shreds here.

This month in Canada's History

The April-May issue of Canada's History formerly The Beaver is now on the mag racks and in subscriber mailboxes.

Ken McGoogan on northern history, Tina Loo on history and the Postash controversy....  My column considers the meaning for history of the "History Wars" series running at the Royal Ontario Museum this winter and spring.  

The ROM, indeed, has always offered lively and accessible lectures and performances by first-rate speakers and experts on everything from ancient civilizations to early 20th century couture. But when the subject is the history of Canada, the ROM, one of Canada’s leading research museums, seems to veer unerringly from seriousness and sophistication to tabloid sensation.

If you subscribed like you ought to...

Are you tired of traditional accounts of science and technology?

Aren't we all?

But mirabile dictu, the Reading Artifacts Summer Institute is presented by the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa,  August 15-19.

Here are some excerpts from the announcement:

Are you tired of traditional accounts of science and technology? Discover alternative historical perspectives and methods in the midst of Canada’slargest collection in science, medicine and technology. Our annual artifact sessions in the CSTM storage facility bring together Canadian and international scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum. Participants immerse themselves in our collections gaining renewed appreciation for artifacts and the multiple, unpredictable stories they tell....

Participants will

- investigate artifacts, trade literature and photographic collections as resources for research, teaching, and the public presentation of history
- work with leading collection scholars in a national museum setting to explore material culture methodologies and approaches
- use artifacts as the center of discussion and hands-on group examinations
- learn the basics of conservation, cataloging and developing collections in local environments  

More info here. Application form here. 

It looks like fun. Except for the gloves.

Jeffrey Williams 1920-2011 RIP military historian

A book of mine once won a Governor General's Prize in non-fiction, and it gave me an ongoing interest in the award.  The year after my good fortune I hastened to buy and read my "successor," the following year's winner, Byng of Vimy, General and Governor General, by a retired soldier named Jeffrey Williams.

The book struck me as a workmanlike but not otherwise distinguished biography, which left me a little...ambivalent, since it was pretty much the same jury that had chosen my own book the year earlier.

So I noticed the obituary the other day (paywalled in the Globe and Mail, not much available elsewhere, it seems) of Lt-Col Jeffrey Williams, Calgary-born Canadian soldier and military historian, who died at his home in Britain recently at the age of 91.

His military histories were retirement projects but, living to 91, he had a long retirement and made the most of it:  Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (1972), Byng of Vimy ­ General and Governor-General (1983 -- it won the Canadian Biography Award as well as the GG, so others must have been more attuned to its qualities than I was), The Long Left Flank (1988). First in the Field ­ Gault of the Patricia's  (1995), Polo, The Galloping Game ­ A History of Polo in the Canadian West (2001), and a Far from Home: A Memoir of a 20th Century Soldier (2003).  He was honored with the Order of Canada too, for his services to veterans.

Short History of the Economic Crisis of 2008

“There are two hours to decide. These guys tell you that things are incredibly complicated. They wear incredibly beautiful suits.  They are incredibly knowledgeable. And they are incredibly self-interested."

. -- David Warsh at Economic Principals quotes some economists who were in the room when the bankers' experts arrived.

Federal Election history 14, 15,16, 1921, 1925, 1926: modern elections

The (sadly anonymous) History of the Vote in Canada produced by Elections Canada in 1997, puts the period starting in 1920 in a chapter entitled "The Modern Franchise."  With good reason.

The Elections Act of 1920 produced a largely independent-of-government elections organization headed by the new Chief Elections Officer.  It also re-established a unified federal franchise, largely the same for all provinces, and confirmed women's right to vote throughout the country.   First Nations people remained without the vote unless they gave up aboriginal status -- in effect, there was a certain recognition that First Nations had a nation-to-nation treaty relationship with Canada and were not precisely citizens as other Canadians. Various racial exclusions first established in provincial law were also reaffirmed: a BC provincial law disenfranchising Chinese and South Asian Canadians was carried over into the federal franchise for BC.

The 1921 election contested under the new electoral rules has 3.1 million voters, up from 1.8 in the hotly-contested 1917 election.  It  had the first national party leader who was not accountable to the parliamentary party caucus: William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had been chosen by a national convention of delegates after Wilfrid Laurier's death in 1919.  (There would be no more Liberal conventions until King resigned from office in 1948, so as party leadership King was effectively accountable to no one -- certainly a hallmark of the modern era in Canadian politics.)

The 1921 election also produced the first third-party with nearly national reach and, not surprisingly, the first minority government.  The Progressives, a farmer-labour-free trade-protest amalgam, ran a broad slate of candidates and elected 58.  (First woman MP: Agnes McPhail of the Progs.)  King's Liberal formed a minority government with 116 seats in a 235 seat House, and survived for four years.

1925's election confirmed -- nota bene, 2011 --  that the party with the largest bloc of seats has no automatic right to form a govenment  The Conservatives, led by Arthur Meighen, who had succeeded Robert Borden, won the largest bloc, 116 seats in a 245 seat house. King, whose Liberals had 99 seats, concluded he could continue to govern, for he expected to support from the Progressives who had fallen to 20 seats.  But in the House the Progressives soon decided to abandon the Liberals and put the Conservatives into office.  The minority Meighen government succeeded the minority King government

Change of government without an election -- more news for 2011!  'Course the public didn't much approve, even then.  When Meighen's fragile minority government fell in 1926, King largely campaigned against Governor General Byng, who had put Meighen into office by denying King a fresh election in 1925.  Note to 2011: we still need a Governor General who is accepted as a legitimate actor in these situations where the head of state is required to determine the will of the House of Commons.

The Liberal Party in 1926 re-assembled the old Laurier coalition -- solid Quebec, farm support in western Canada, and enough of rural Ontario -- and put together a majority  (by absorbing just enough Progressives to have a semi-coalition) that would endure until 1930.  NB: Liberal majorities are always made on the left.

A short history of tuberculosis in the Canadian west

From LWON, a remarkable history of disease vectors, disease resistance, and the Canadian fur trade.

Federal election 13, 1917: a one-off

Another Conservative-led coalition government.  It's worse than that:  the coalition was formed in Parliament years after the election-- though indeed the new arrangement was put to an electoral test right away.

By 1917 it had been six years since the previous election. The Liberals had agreed to a special one-year extension of the five-year parliamentary term in 1916, but not to Borden's request for an extension to last as long as the war did.  With the breakup of the Liberals and the formation of the Union coalition government in 1917, Borden was ready to go.

The coalition was not caused by the war -- the Conservative Party had been content to rule alone from 1914 to 1917. It was conscription -- and the opportunity to rally English-Canadian Liberals to conscription and to seats in government, at the cost of isolating the Quebec Liberals.  Given the passions of the war and the profound cultural conflict it created, it's probably not safe to generalize or draw analogies from the coalition election of 1917; it was pretty much a one-off.

A few new things:  Borden's Conservatives had accepted a longstanding Liberal policy, and constituency boundaries were no longer set by gerrymandering governments but by an all-party committee -- the first step toward non--partisan electoral commissions.

1917 was the first federal election in which women voted. The provincial control of the federal franchise, re-established by Laurier in 1898, still prevailed.  So women got the federal vote province by province: in 1917 women in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario could vote in the federal election.  (There was also a temporary federal vote-rigging amendment, that gave the vote to female relatives of serving soldiers, while taking it away from conscientious objectors).

One constant emphasized by John Duffy changed in the 1917 coalition election.  Even in the big electoral sweeps of Macdonald and Laurier, total votes remained very evenly divided among the two parties: no election had ever given as much as 54% support to the winning party.  The coalition election of 1917 changed that.  The Union government got 57% of the vote and 153 seats in a 235-seat House; the remnant Liberals led by Laurier got only 40% and 82 seats.  Jeez, today you can form a government with less than 40%

Histories Separated at Birth

Noting the fifth anniversary of the Caledonia occupations, Karen Dearlove at Active History has a perceptive piece on the separate histories, just a few kilometres apart, of Brantford and the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario.

The Brant Museum and Archives is the local museum in Brantford housed in a Victorian home. The museum has been open since the 1890s, and the majority of its exhibits and artifacts reflect life in late 19th century Brantford. There is little mention of the Six Nations or the Haldimand Tract.

And just down the road:

The history presented at the Woodland Cultural Centre and the Mohawk Chapel appears to run parallel to that of the Brant Museum and Archives, what Epp calls the two solitudes of settler and aboriginal communities. Brantford is a mere 25 km from the centre of the Six Nations Reserve, but the two seem worlds apart.

Must be true of similar communities right across the country....

Federal election 11 and 12, 1908 and 1911: one big one

The 1908 federal election looks like one of the dullest on record.  Laurier ran on the snoozer slogan "Let Laurier finish his work," and got away with it, though his lead shrank (133 of 221 seats).

Not so in 1911. Both parties were in trouble, but, it turned out, the Liberals more so.  Laurier was now being successfully attacked in Quebec for being too anglophile: support for the Boer war, lack of support for French outside Quebec, willingness to surrender the Canadian navy to British control.  But the old accusation that he was too French also began to bite in English Canada, particularly over the same naval policy that was under attack in Quebec.

The Conservative leader was also in trouble.  Robert Borden had been Conservative leader since 1901, he had already lost two elections, and lots of Conservatives despaired of him.  In 1910 the Conservative caucus considered replacing him; in 1911 many Conservatives found his naval policy insufficiently pro-British, and some of them were kinda sympathetic to the new idea of free trade with the US, even though that was Laurier's policy.

In the 1911 election, however, Borden's shaky alliances held together and Laurier's collapsed.  In English Canada, the Liberal business community revolted over Laurier's reciprocity plan; they still wanted protection against American competition and a lot of the country agreed. In Quebec, Henri Bourassa had resisted making a formal political party out of his nationalist league (really Canadian nationalist rather than Quebec nationalist, though Bourassa's Canadian nationalism was much more bi-cultural and bilngual than most of English Canada was ready for).  The nationalists despised Laurier, however, so they flowed to the Conservative side in the election.  Borden swept English Canada and got 27 seats in Quebec.  Laurier's Quebec bridge had collapsed.  Borden got the numbers Laurier had had four years earlier: 133 of 221.  Suddenly the boring, unsuccessful opposition leader was the crisp, decisive leader -- we've seen that one a few times.

Museum theatre

As someone who is pretty much without creative imagination, I love it when people do way out-of-the-box things with history. Chris's live-blogging of historical events falls into the category of "I couldn't do that even if I could think of it, which I couldn't."

So does this:  Jennifer Boyes-Manseau, Artistic Director of Dramamuse, the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s Theatre Company will present "How Museum Theatre Can Address Sensitive Content and Tell Neglected Stories" as part of the Curator’s Notebook: Lunchtime Lecture Series of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa, on April 13th from noon to 1 pm (for more info email john.willis@civilisations.ca.)

Jennifer will discuss how to create outstanding museum theatre: choosing the right players, steps in the script and development process, keys to effective consultation and collaboration, and striking an effective balance between content and form, aesthetics and education. Dramamuse’s most recent play, A Trick of Truth by Steven Gin, which was developed for the exhibition Profit and Ambition, will serve as a case study.

I guess you don't get to see the play, or at least not in its entirety, but even hearing about the nuts-and-bolts of this sort of project would be fascinating.

PS Those who can only visit cyber-locations should give Road to Justice, a new public history website focussed on the legal history of Chinese Canadians, a look. Chris suggested I blog about it at the Canadian legal history blog, and I did..

What museums can do

Something called The Artnewspaper gives detailed and thoughtful coverage to the reopening of the National Museum of China.  The centrepiece of the re-opening is a huge exhibition on ... the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.  The Chinese Bourbons are busy throwing their own artists in jail right now, but maybe the museumgoing public will find another message in the museum.

Federal election history 9 and 10, 1900 and 1904

When John A Macdonald's 1885 Franchise Act gave the federal government power over the federal franchise, Wilfrid Laurier MP attacked it vigorously, declaring it demonstrated Macdonald's

well known predilection ... in favour of a legislative union.He does not admit that it is right to have seven separate communities. His opinion is that it would be right to have but one community and acting on that view he has designed the franchise which is best adapted to suit the conveniences of a single community.

Laurier evidently took this provincial-rights viewpoint seriously. In 1898 the new Laurier government returned control of the federal franchise to the provinces: whatever voting regulations existed in a particular province (on age, sex, citizenship, length of residence, and property ownership) would exist for federal voters in this province. Until 1920 provincial rules would prevail.

Laurier handily won re-election in 1900 and 1904, increasing the Liberal caucus to 132 in a 213 seat House in 1900 and 139 in a 214-seat House in 1904.

Stephen Maclean comments:

I throw my lot in with Macdonald -- quel surprise! Unlike the United States -- which must have influenced Liberal viewpoints -- the provinces were not sovereign entities prior to Confederation, unlike their American counterparts, so claims of an over-reaching ‘unitary government’ on this point alone ring hollow. Much like rep-by-pop, Canadians in one province would have expected that voting requirements were uniform across the country, wouldn’t they?

If nothing else, your post puts the lie to those in un-named organisations who purport that on political principles, Macdonald and Laurier were as two peas in a pod, and that Sir John was an exponent of ‘provincial rights’. Or do they wish to argue that in this Canadian unanimity, the left hand knew not the position of the right?

Lewis Parker historical artist 1926-2011

The distinguished Canadian historical artist Lewis Parker, who died late last month, is remembered by Parks Canada historian Ken Donovan, who collaborated with him on many of his major works on Louisbourg and other aspects of Cape Breton history.  Another appreciation here. Parker website here.

Federal Election History 7 and 8, 1891 and 1896: the football playbooks

[While doing our best to ignore the current election, we're surveying the history of past elections. Scroll down for earlier ones.]

John Duffy, a backroom politico who's also an engaging writer on political history, argues in Fights of Our Lives (HarperCollins, 2002, now out of print, it seems) that the 1896 federal election was the first really consequential one in Canadian political history, the one where the future of the country really hung on the decision.

The 1891 election, Macdonald's last, he sees as less interesting.  Duffy likes football metaphors, and he argues that in 1891 Macdonald ran the Double Tribal Whipsaw play brilliantly.  In English Canada, talk about your negative advertising, he waved the Union Jack and portrayed Wilfrid Laurier as a dangerous Frenchman. In Quebec, meanwhile, his allies portrayed Laurier as dangerously irreligious, too much a radical liberal, and too anglophile. It worked on both fronts. Macdonald eked out another win and got to die in office.

In 1896, Duffy argues, with the Manitoba Schools question enflaming all sides and the violence of 1885 still festering, both parties were in danger of fracturing into English-Protestant, French-Catholic sectarian mobs, leaving the country more or less ungovernable and strengthening the impression that two ethnicities and two religions could not co-exist in one country.

The Conservatives tried to bring off Macdonald's play again, but they were managing to alienate both sides of their coalition.  Laurier, in Duffy's view, held his coalition together and ran the Quebec Bridge play brilliantly.  It turned out Laurier was not too liberal or irreligious for Quebec; just by being a Quebecker he won Quebec's support even without standing up for French in the west.  And years of cultivating a reputation in English Canada had established Laurier as a Quebecker that Anglos could love, as did the fact that he was actually more willing to overlook anti-French actions in Manitoba than the Conservative leaders.

In 1896, when lots of people thought the country was falling apart, Laurier scored a big-enough win: 118 seats in a 213 seat House.  He had founded the Liberal hegemony of the twentieth century: solid support in Quebec, and enough across the rest of the country to secure majorities.

Small technological-innovation note: for the first time the parties used the telephone extensively to get out the vote

History repeats itself

Amazing how the daily record of what was going on in the Libyan campaign of the Second World War precisely seventy years ago mirrors current events. Around familiar names like Algedabia, Mersa Brega, and Benghazi, the battle front ebbs back and forth over hundreds of miles as one side or the other loses a skirmish, overruns a defensive position, or simply runs low on fuel.  Details here.at the WW2 Today site, which continues to drive home how vast and farflung that war really was.  

Federal election history 5 and 6, 1882 and 1887

A couple of pretty dull elections here, 'tseems, and if we are going to wrap up by May 1, we have to move along.  Both elections saw the Conservative government of Prime Minister Macdonald re-elected without great change in standings in the House of Commons.

Canadians in the Northwest Territories did have their right to vote acknowledged in time for the 1887 election, but the 1885 conflict in the Red  South Saskatchewan River valley did not greatly change the results.  The conservatives lost seats in Quebec, but most of the leading francophone cabinet ministers did fine.

More interesting, perhaps, was the corruption of election processes.  Canada had not yet started to tamper with the constitutional principle of the equality-of-votes required by the BNA's rep-by-pop provisions.  But in Elections Acts in 1882 and 1885, Macdonald ruthlessly and cynically revised consitituency boundaries to gerrymander Liberal seats out of existence and create new Conservative ones.

Also in 1885, Macdonald created federal voting standards for the first time.  Since confederation, the federal elections had followed provincial rules, different in each province, on eligibility to vote and other voting procedures.  Liberals, including Wilfrid Laurier, denounced the 1885 creation of federal rules as a betrayal of the confederation bargain and a centralist assault on provincial autonomy. When he got into power, he'd change back to the provincial rules.

At first reading of the 1885 elections act, Macdonald proposed to enfranchise women. "I can only say that personally, I am strongly convinced, and every year for many years I have become more strongly convinced, of the justice of giving women otherwise qualified the suffrage. I am strongly of that opinion, and have been for a good many years." The provision was soon written out of the bill; it seems Macdonald was not serious about it.  But it got him a lot of good press in suffragist circles, though more outside Canada than inside.