2011 in Review

Gentleman kneeling at the Reflecting Pools commemorating
the victims of 9/11 in New York, New York.
 

It's hard to look back on this year in Canadian history without an opinion or political view; what you believe to be a memorable moment will often reflect your political stance. But aside from a nation wide debate of apple and oranges we on an international scale have witness moments that showed strength, courage, destruction, reconstruction, enlightenment, commemoration and the end of a war, which I know I will remember for the rest of my life. It is not until we see visually on television or online do we realize that what we have witnessed or experienced has happened in only one year. We seen a even larger rise in the use of social media in creative ways, which allowed people to stand up for their diplomatic rights and economic needs. Peace, democracy and acceptance has been a part of our global language and assistance has been given to others that have needed it. We also witnessed great loss personally, locally, nationally and internationally. It this periods in time, such as 2011 that historians and history lovers adore. It reflects how amazing life can be and how in memory of that moment we can become better for it.
In his article on the CBC website, Ira Basen makes a good argument that there has been many great periods in time and their is still much to see as these events continue to roll on. However, in review it is clear the moments of this year will allow 2011 to be considered a memorable beginning to this decade.

How Historic was 2011? by Ira Basen

Public service announcement

The TCE blog has suggestions for historically Canadian Christmas gifts  They are broadminded: the first one is whisky.

And be reassured.  It's not last minute shopping until Christmas Eve, and then really only in the afternoon.

History of planetary motions

Dark when you get up, dark when you head home.  Even at 44 North, it's dark dark dark this time of year.  But word is that today the planet completes its leaning in one direction and is about to start rolling majestically back toward midsummer.

Y'know, if in a couple of days, somebody was watching carefully and noticed the days beginning to get longer again, wouldn't that be cause for a festival?

This blog may start observing our own seasonal festivities, so blogging may be light, unless inspiration or my co-bloggers strike.  We may do some review of historical highlights of 2011 in the new year, so feel free to email suggestions of best books and events.  

Merry Christmas to all and brighter days in 2012.

"George MacMartin's Big Canoe Trip" on CBC Radio One

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.. is my radio documentary being broadcast on CBC Radio One this Monday, December 19, at 9.00 pm.  (Also on RealAudio and Sirius Satellite Radio 159, and to be available continuously from the Ideas website.)

A few years ago, researchers came across the manuscript diary of George MacMartin of Perth, Ontario, who in 1905 knew nothing in particular about First Nations or land treaties, but had some expertise in mining and resources. He was named one of the three treaty commissioners sent to canoe across northern Ontario (I mean far northern, not the Muskoka) to make Treaty Number 9 with the Cree and Ojibwa there.

Perhaps because he knew so little, MacMartin kept a detailed record of what was said at the treaty discussions along the Albany River and the shore of James Bay.  Compared to previously-known written accounts, his record offers a new perspective -- but, some say, one that sounds a lot like what the First Nations have always said the treaty talks covered.

"George MacMartin's Big Canoe Trip" explores treaty-making a century ago and the implications today.  With RH Thomson, Colin Fox, Barry McGregor, and Nonnie Griffin reading the diaries and documents of the time.  Written and presented by Christopher Moore, produced for Ideas by Sara Wolch and Dave Field.  Commentary by historians John Long, David McNab, David Calverley, Victor Lytwyn and other scholars and commentators.

Photo from Archives of Ontario: George MacMartin, seated, centre.

Constitutional meat in the blogs

Andrew Smith, one of my regular link-tos, is shocked and saddened by the lack of attention given in Canad to the 80th anniversary of the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 as it "marked the effective end of Canada's subordination to Britain."  (Weirdly, the Canadian Navy marked the event by flying the Union Jack.   Guys....)  Andrew thinks it is a sign of Canadians' constitution ignorance.

But Janet Ajzenstat, almost simultaneously, puts forth 1848 as the significant moment that "sever[ed] the colonies' formal connection with the mother country."  By that reading, the 1931 Statute would dwindle to a formality -- the Empire's belated recognition of what had transpired a century earlier.

I lean to the Ajzenstat reading, myself.  But can't help being pleased with the stuff you can find on what CanHist blogs we have out there.

Heritage for the Holidays

Karen Black of Toronto Heritage sent me a note about all the festive holiday stuff going on in historic homes and heritage sites around Toronto this season.   And last week Ken Donovan let me know about the carol singing in the 18th century chapel at the Fortress of Louisbourg  (though it was last Sunday -- sorry Ken).

That kind of thing is happening in cities and towns all over the country.  Do some heritage for the holidays.

Keeping the GG out of politics

The extinction of the Liberal Party depends on both the Conservatives and the NDP sustaining their popularity and moving to occupy the centre.  But the NDP's crazy leadership distraction looks like a collective suicide mission. And every time Mr Harper's cabinet looks corrupt (McKay on helicopter rides), autocratic (Kenney on niqabs), extremist (Kent on Kyoto), or just calculatedly vicious (everyone, all the time), they keep opening up room in the middle.

Lately with the official opposition off on its endless extra-parliamentary intrasquad scrimmage,  Bob Rae has often looked like the only grown-up in the room.  He could be prime minister before too long.

But this is a history blog. Mostly we don't do the future.  And in the present: gotta say Rae's proposal that the Governor General should refuse assent to a bill passed in the House and Senate is pretty bizarre. Okay the government is nutso over the Wheat Board, but still....

Nothing against my new close personal friend David Johnston.  But he is appointed.  He stands outside the chain of democratic responsibility and accountability.  His authority is symbolic.  He must take the advice of his legitimate advisors or, as Dickens seasonably says, the country's done for.  If he can take independent steps, like saving the Wheat Board, then he can drop bombs or appropriate the treasury or have your head chopped off.  Let us not go there. We don't want unelected figureheads wielding real power.  In any circumstances.

The only reason for the Governor General to refuse the advice of a prime minister is if the prime minister lacks the confidence of the House.  That is, the GG is entitled to ask the prime minister to show that he has the support of the people's elected representatives.  Bob Rae doesn't want to face that test, however, because the prime minister would win it, and indeed just did on this issue.

I'm not sure if Bob Rae is genuinely a bit crazy on the constitutional niceties, or if he's being a bit crazy-smart here. After all, he knows Stephen Harper often comes out with bold constitutional nonsense of his own and gets away with it quite a bit.  Rae's advice to the GG may be piffle, but there's no danger of it happening. It looks like vigorous opposition. And he probably calculates most people will care more about the underlying issue than about his shoddy constitutional thinking.  Better to be prime minister than a master of constitutional pedantry, he do think.

The blog Parliamentum makes this argument at greater length, with more citations.

Herstory Christmas Countdown

... offers one Canadian heroine a day until Christmas, via Facebook and Merna Forster's diligent research.

Wise older historian overhead ...

... saying this is the book of the year in Canadian publishing, all unknown and obscure and neglected as it is.

 Chances you will see a notice of this in your daily paper:  pretty much zip nada, I guess.  (Prove me wrong.)

Update, December 18:  Mea culpa.  Here is a review by Brian Bethune in Macleans' -- not the daily paper, but still general interest media.

This month in Canada's History

My column in the new Canada's History contemplates the murder of D'Arcy McGee and why it has been so fashionable to suspect that the man hanged for the crime was innocent.  It's a riff on the terrific treatment of the subject in David Wilson's new volume of his McGee biography.

But don't stop with me:  war Brides, war crimes, the evolution of what's been seen as historic in Historic Sites, and Recollet missionaries in 1615, and columns from McGoogan and Paul Jones and....

Info here.

And there's their book, too  100 Days that Changed Canada, all ready for Christmas giving. (Cnn't help noticing that when I google the title, this website comes up at hit #3, behind only CBC.ca and the book's own publisher.  So do we rule as the go-to place for your history news, or is it more a symptom of how little coverage of history the rest of the Canadian media provides?

Parler Fort: Toronto built and unbuilt

Monday night's subject at the Parler Fort series held at Toronto's downtown Fort York is architecture and built (and unbuilt) environment of Toronto.  Cast is stellar: John Bentley May in conversation with Mark Osbaldeston and Phil Goodfellow, both recent authors on Toronto's architecture. More info 

History of Canadian magazines

In the late 1980s, historian Patrick Dutil was a policy advisor to the Ontario government. In the midst of the Meech Lake Accord controversies, he was appalled by the low level of discussion and commentary he found in Canadian journalism.  He had small children, a recent Ph.D, and neither knowledge nor connections in the magazine field.

But he thought something needed to be done.

The Apple Macintosh had recently appeared. Dutil took a night school desktop-publishing course from the Toronto school board, pulled together $5000, and started cold-calling people he thought might be willing to contribute to a magazine he called The Literary Review of Canada.  By then he was working for TVO, but he didn't tell them he was also becoming a magazine editor-publisher. The LRC was a nights-and-weekends avocation.  Dutil edited and published, and did everything from soliciting unpaid contributors to schlepping packaged copies down to the post office.

Fifty-five monthly issues in, Dutil had just secured his first grant for the magazine, $10,000 from the Canada Council, when Ottawa journalist and teacher Anthony Westell wrote him out of the blue: "I like what you are doing.  Do you need help?"  In the end, Dutil handed over the magazine, its subscription lists, and the $10,000 grant to Westell and some partners in Ottawa in exchange for his original $5000 investment.

I met Patrick Dutil last night at a fairly glitzy party the LRC was throwing to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.  It's still a shoestring operation, trying to run a literature-and-policy review on a subscriber base smaller than the number of people a single commuter train takes out to the suburbs every night  -- so subscribe! -- but it now has some significant angels and lots of prominente among its writers and supporters. It's back in Toronto, and it  looks strong and secure, as much as those thing exist in Canadian publishing, and there is excellent stuff in the magazine.  So there was a deserved amount of satisfaction and congratulation in the air.

Dutil and his role went largely unmentioned last night.  He chatted with friends about such issues as, well as the fact that a terrific and important work of Canadian history like his recent Canada 1911: The Decisive Election that Shaped the Country (co-written with David MacKenzie) goes unreviewed and unnoticed in the major newspapers and magazines of the country.  There's still work to be done....

Why we need more history bloggers

In the new Literary Review of Canada, Terry Cook reviews Writing History: A Professor's Life, Michael Bliss's new memoir:

An honoured historian at the University of Toronto, he disparages the majority of his colleagues as lazy and unimaginative, producing little and complaining much behind the protective walls of undeserved tenure.

Cook doesn't dwell on this, but Bliss also writes things about students, marking, and teaching in general that will annoy or offend many of his fellow professors.

But Bliss's criticisms and arguments seem destined to vanish. They will be seen by individual readers who pick up his book, but sem likely to remain largely undiscussed and undebated.  Despite the efforts of publications like the LRC, we really don't have a reviewing infrastructure in the country anymore.  Newspapers and the CBC have largely abandoned the field in order to promote prizes galas and online book-choice contests. The old venues for this kind of discussion have largely died -- and the review that the CHR may publish about 2014 is no substitute.

For historians who, you know, value discussion of ideas, who welcome controversy, and who appreciate a fresh point of view from time to time, history blogs would seem to be an ideal medium.  I wish we had twenty history professors blogging their response to Professor Bliss's attacks on their (and his) vocation.

But I'm not holding my breath.  Talk to a professor about blogging, and what they want to know is whose permission they would have to seek.

Here, however, is a Q&A with Bliss from the books blog Defining Canada.  The Bliss review is not available in the online LRC, just the print one, but there's lot else there, including an enthusiastic review of Richard Gwyn's Macdonald biography by John English.

(We can't review everything, but we  are always glad to consider volunteered reviews and comments at this blog.  Send an email.)

How's the War Going, Grandpa?

Seventy years ago, in 1941,  Rommel's PanzerArmee Afrika  is at the borders of Egypt. German armies are on the outskirts of both Moscow and Leningrad.  British and German bomber fleets hammer at each other's cities as much as they can.  Unrestricted submarine warfare rages in the North Atlantic.  Control of Malta and the Mediterranean around it continues to be contested.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June, Charles Ritchie, the Canadian diplomat and diarist stationed in London, told his diary, "This war is like a great complicated piece of music -- a great symphony in which motifs are started, then disappear and reappear in many combinations."

A new motif is about to be introduced.  The attack on Pearl Harbour is just days away.  Already Japanese fleets are positioning themselves to attack there as well as Hong Kong and Malaya.

 World War II Day by Day is on the case.  WW2DbD is hardcore ,for sure -- no photos, no oral histories, no salutes to veterans.  Just the war, day by day and combat by combat.  I really admire it.