Christopher Moore's History News

Viola Desmond stamp

2012-02-02T09:13:00.002-05:00

Canada Post's new stamp honours Viola Desmond, a Nova Scotia woman denied entrance in 1945 to the main seating area of a New Glasgow movie theatre because she was black and then prosecuted for breaking the law when she complained.

I think maybe the stamp also honours historical scholarship. To my knowledge, the Viola Desmond story was essentially unknown to the wider public before Professor Constance Backhouse, now of the University of Ottawa law school, wrote a chapter about her case in a scholarly work of legal history in 1999.

To recapitulate what I blogged a year's ago when Ms Desmond received a posthumous pardon and apology from Nova Scotia:

"The racial insult was not forgotten in the Nova Scotia black community and civil rights organizations. But the first really authoritative retelling was by Ottawa legal historian Constance Backhouse, who devoted a long and immensely detailed chapter to the event in her 1999 book Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada 1900-1950, published by UTP for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. Backhouse's chapter helped inspire a short story, "One Down," by Dionne Brand that was published in the 2001 history/fiction anthology Story of A Nation. CBC presented a radio drama, "Living in Hope." The Beaver ran a cover story by Dean Jobb in April 2009. Gradually the story just became part of the narrative. Now comes the pardon."

Now there is also a kid's book by Jody Nyasha Warner: Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged. And the stamp. Update: and then there's Sister to Courage, by Desmond's sister Wanda Robson.

(I'd completely forgotten that post from April 2010 until, starting to post about the stamp, I googled a little and came across my own story. Blogging life: file and forget.)

People of Monticello

2012-02-01T09:09:00.001-05:00

From the New York Times, an impressive review of what sounds like two impressive exhibits: one at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC, and a permanent one at Monticello, the historic-site estate of Thomas Jefferson. Both exhibits focus on the community of enslaved black people who sustained Monticello -- some 600 named individuals, over the years, not counting the anonymous ones. The exhibitions sound like superb museology, and fascinating.

The review also suggests the difficulty Americans still have with seeing Thomas Jefferson as something other than, or more than, the white-marble paragon of liberty. Where the exhibit praises Jefferson, reviewer Edward Rothstein declares "there is no idealization here of course," (my italics), but when it states what seems to be the plain fact that Jefferson's Declaration of Independence “did not extend ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’ to African-Americans, Native Americans, indentured servants, or women,” he denounces its "political boilerplate." He concludes, rather astonishingly, that Jefferson helped make global abolition of slavery possible. For Rothstein, Jefferson was an abolitionist at heart, and that's what really matters, not the 600 slaves.

I'm struck again by the truly immense achievement of historian Annette Gordon-Reed, who to my eye rises to remarkable dispassion and fairness in The Hemings of Monticello and other works on Jefferson's slave family. She would not assume that idealization of Jefferson is impossible.

Live-tweeting the Parliament fire of 1916

2012-01-31T09:22:00.001-05:00

Brilliant: Rebecca Murray, Carleton MA student in Canadian Studies, will be covering the 1916 fire that destroyed Ottawa's 1860s Parliament Building by live-tweeting (+96 years) on February 3:

You can find me by logging into Twitter, yes you will have to sign up, and search @HistoryTweetsEh. You can simply read the tweets or choose to ‘follow’ me so that the new tweets appear on your main page. This is where the magic will be happening on the evening of Friday February 3^rd, 2012 or if you prefer – Thursday February 3^rd, 1916. The terror descends after 8pm ET and lasts until the wee hours of the morning.

Go, Rebecca! (Thank to Stuart at Public History Inc for the heads-up).

Update, same day: Ted Betts emails:

As you probably know, one of the saddest consequences of that fire, aside from the loss of life, was the loss of all of Laurier's personal papers. I think that is why there are so very few biographies of him.

Actually that's news to me, Ted. The poignant loss I knew of was Robert Harris's "Fathers of Confederation" painting. Rex Woods did an imitation of it that now hangs in the Centre Block, but Harris's sketches (at the Confederation Centre, Charlottetown) make clear that Harris was an artist and Woods really an illustrator. As it happens The new Feb-March Canada's History, just out, has a cool annotated layout of Woods' "Fathers," amid much else.

How's the War of 1812 doing in the media?

2012-01-31T09:02:00.003-05:00

Pretty well, observes Toronto historian Stephen Otto in an email (that I have lightly edited and reprinted with his permission):

The pulse of interest in the War of 1812 bicentennial can be measured, I suggest, through the take-up in the press and publishing industry, not to forget the electronic media.
See the cover story for Canadian Geographic, Jan-Feb issue. It was written by the exceptionally talented and well-named Allen Abel. You might also want to check out the The Walrus magazine's cover story, March issue, which is not online yet but can be found on newsstands currently. Or the cover story in the Royal Canadian Legion's monthly magazine, Legion, for Jan-Feb, 2012.
And then there are the websites and blogs. Two of the more delightful ones, a day-by-day blog and twitter feed came to our attention Friday through Shawn Micallef. They are posted by Fernando Sousa, a Toronto lawyer with a very literary turn of mind. See also the "Top Tweets" list of posts from other sources. There someone on The Globe's editorial board says it has just finished reading Alan Taylor's book, The Civil War of 1812. This is an interesting image to conjure: the paper's editorial board sitting 'round its table being read to like a bunch of monks.

Another site worth bookmarking is maintained by Peter Twist and his colleagues at the Discerning General You may want to check out the war from a US perspective. Note there a link to the front-page article in the Wall Street Journal this week quoting Toronto's Bicentennial co-ordinator, Sandra Shaul. And the Toronto tabloid T.O. Night, is also on the story.

A good day for parliaments

2012-01-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

The Canadian parliament resumes sitting today, but that's not what I was thinking of.

Today, January 30, in 1649, Charles I of England was executed in London, after having being duly tried and convicted for war crimes against his own people and for overthrowing his obligations to the English constitution and the English parliament. Charles denied he had any such obligations. On his way to the block, he declared, "For the people I must tell you, that their liberty and freedom... is not for having a share in government. Sirs, that is nothing pertaining to them."

On this day, a parliament responded, demonstrating rather forcefully that indeed the people do have a share in government.

(h/t to James Bowden, whose blog Parliamentum has struck me as rather Monarchum lately. Image: Wikipedia)

Bytown Museum: SIX MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE URBAN FOREST

2012-01-29T20:19:00.000-05:00

Hi Everyone,

I heard about this from a friend and I was actually quite intrigued.

From the link below:

"“Six Moments in the History of an Urban Forest” is an exhibit opening in January 2012 at the Bytown Museum.

Curated by Carleton University professor Joanna Dean and graduate student Will Knight, the exhibit explores the contested place of trees in Ottawa's urban history. The exhibit explores early street tree planting, the 1920s campaign to "control" urban trees, the commemorative Centennial crab apple tree, the role of arborists in negotiating the conflicts between trees and the built environment, and the closing of Lovers Walk behind Parliament Hill.

It will include such artefacts as the cross-section of a 150-year old bur oak, arborist tools, and digital maps showing changes in Ottawa’s tree canopy since the 1920s.

The exhibit runs from January 24-May 27, 2012 and is funded by the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), a Jack Kimmell grant from the Canadian Tree Fund, and Carleton University

http://www.bytownmuseum.com/en/exhibits.html

Jordan

Is the past a funny place?

2012-01-29T10:05:00.000-05:00

History Today's caption contest seeks original captions for this scene. Details here.

Like to consult an archivist at Library and Archives Canada?

2012-01-27T09:53:00.001-05:00

... Better plan ahead. "Access to LAC experts will be available through a new reference by appointment service...." sez a new LAC information pamphlet, not yet on their website, apparently. H/t Stuart Manson.

History Wars on Tommy Douglas

2012-01-27T09:32:00.000-05:00

My observation last year, in my Canada's History column, that the Royal Ontario Museum's History Wars lecture series was fun but too present-minded and sensation-seeking for an institution of the ROM's stature (you can find the column here) produced a spectacularly furious response from series impresarios Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein in the pages of the mag.

But even then I said History Wars had potential, and this week's debate on the legacy of Tommy Douglas and the state of Canadian medicare, in which historians Michael Bliss and Gregory Marchildon took opposing sides, seemed to bear that out. History Wars is still pretty present-minded -- the ROM doesn't do Canadian history with anything like the seriousness with which it will treat the Maya or the Ming. But two skilled Canadianists on a topic of interest and importance? No complaints.

End of War; End of Publishers?

2012-01-27T09:14:00.003-05:00

Toronto writer Bill Freeman's new book The End of War argues the possibility of lasting peace:

The End of War is an examination of war and the possibility of peace. In the past empires have used war as the way to dominate and exploit others. Today the United States, the world’s sole empire and superpower, continues to use its military power to impose its will but the U.S. is meeting more and more opposition. Even though it has the most powerful military in the world, the American military cannot win guerilla wars or put down insurrections. The world is changing. Globalization, the rise of democracy, and improving living standards are creating new ways that nations relate to each other. A number of small wars continue, but major conflicts have diminished, peacemakers have developed new skills tools and the possibility of lasting peace is greater than at any time in a century. The book explores the practice of both war and peace and takes the optimistic view that we can finally achieve the dream of The End of War.

The End of War is part of that new, possibly historic, trend: established authors giving up on traditional publishing and opting to make their work available through online distribution exclusively. Website here. Hard-copy ordering information here. EBook via Kobo, Kindle, and the usual ebook sources.

Hockey hockey hockey hockey hockey -- hockey all the time.

2012-01-24T16:58:00.001-05:00

Denis Smith draws our attention to Puckstruck, a blog on the culture of hockey and vice versa with a fair share of historical sensibility.

Sample Puckstruck item, drawn from the New Yorker of November 27, 1937:

The young lady who sat behind us at last Sunday’s hockey game remained silent through the first period, evidently spellbound. Then she remarked to her escort, “I don’t know who these idiots are, but they certainly know how to skate.”

Yeah, fiction gets all the action.....

2012-01-20T13:38:00.000-05:00

Haven't spotted any historians being featured in the kinda funny CanLit is Sexy tumblr of captioned photos.

What no Bliss, no Careless Bliss even? Consider the possibilities!

History for a bleak winter morning

2012-01-20T09:16:00.001-05:00

Don't know much about the book, but I love the cover -- featured on the cover of UTP's spring catalogue.

The book is edited by three Ontario history professors: Franca Iacovetta, Valerie Korinek and Marlene Epp. Sorry, it's not available until May, but you can read the catalogue details here.

It is the duty of every Canadian historian to write a history of Canada?

2012-01-18T10:50:00.000-05:00

So sez Alan MacEachern in this paper via Active History.

I think I see what he means. You study Canadian history: you start to evolve a framework in which to put what you have studied. I think I probably do have a ghost history of Canada in my head. As to whether we all should write it down....

History of the web, world wide all over the USA

2012-01-17T15:29:00.001-05:00

The people who control Wikipedia have a quarrel with a piece of domestic legislation in the United States. To complain, they are going to shut down English Wikipedia all over the world tomorrow.

Written something for Wikipedia? (I haven't.) Believe it is an online resource written by you and created by its users? Wikipedia wants you to indulge that notion -- until it want to play in American domestic politics.

Maybe the day after you can feel like the internet belongs to you again. And all those contributors can have their content back.

Update, January 18: But apparently it's still there if you know where to look. The Internet defeats attempts to manipulate the internet.

HInt; they are likely to listen if they know you can fire 'em.

2012-01-16T13:45:00.001-05:00

Something you don't see often: sense from a parliamentarian on the problem with making party leaders accountable to no one:

The primary system would give the Liberal leader and his/her office more power over Caucus and the Party. As a recent Member of Parliament with almost 18 years of experience, I can say with first-hand knowledge, that, most of the time caucus is not considered or listened to by the leader and especially his office. There is very little accountability to caucus members. Especially during our years in opposition, we could have avoided a great deal of pain and losses if the leadership and their offices had listened and taken into consideration the expertise and advice of caucus members. Therefore, I am convinced that a Leader who is so broadly elected will feel even less accountable towards caucus let alone any accountability to the party at large.

The comment is from former Liberal MP Maria Minna. The Liberal convention did not approve the proposal to elect future leaders by mass public primary voting. Credit to Aaron Wherry's blog at Maclean's, which made Minna's letter available.

Things you find in the archives that make you smile

2012-01-16T12:16:00.001-05:00

From a 1915 memoir by John E. Farewell, a Whitby, Ontario, lawyer about his law-student days in the 1860s:

The day on which Sir John Beverley Robinson was buried, the shutters of all the stores on the principal streets were "put up." ... The members of the Law Society, the professors and students of Trinity and Toronto Universities attended the funeral, wearing their gowns. Being the junior, I had to return to the office after the funeral left St James Cathedral. Just after I got there, an old man came in and enquired whether this was Sunday or not or what.
I informed him it was not Sunday.
He asked what are all the shutters on the windows for? I informed him that they were closed out of respect for Sir John Beverley Robinson, whose funeral was that day.

He asked whether this Mr. Robinson had not been some kind of a Judge some twenty-five or six years ago. I answered his enquiry, and he replied, "Well, this Mr. Robinson made a short but very impressive speech to me one day."

I asked him what it was. Well, he said to me, the sentence of this court is that you, John Montgomery, be taken from this place to the place from whence you came, and be detained there until a certain day and that you be taken then to the place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

John Mongomery’s story can be followed in his DCB biography here.

Occupy History

2012-01-13T13:35:00.000-05:00

Is that Occupy movement like, so last November?

In case it isn't, a group of sympathetic American historians has launched an Occupy History website with discussion forums and a collection of articles by members.

A little more on the John A birthday

2012-01-13T10:40:00.002-05:00

(This post has been re-written)

As of January 16, my Maclean's essay, "What Old Tomorrow can teach us today," for the Jan 23, 2012 print edition, is now up on the Macleans's website

John A Macdonald's Birthday

2012-01-11T13:16:00.001-05:00

It’s John A’s birthday today (or some contend yesterday) – in 3 more years he’ll be 200, well, you know what I mean. Remember, parties are my thing. In Today in Canadian History they have a 2 part interview with Richard Gwyn whose 2^nd volume of his great biography on John A was released this year.

The intro to John A, before the interview with Richard Gwyn, talks of Confederation – and how boring that time was. I beg to differ there – the Confederation Conferences started in Charlottetown at the end of August beginning of September 1864 – with $13,000 worth of champagne on the Canadian’s steamship the Queen Victoria where the Fathers of Confederation had to stay because all the hotels were booked with circus goers. The Slaymaker and Nichols Olympic Circus had arrived 2 days before the Conference was to begin – and everyone was far more interested in it than in the Conference, and so no one had booked any rooms for the famous Fathers (not that they were that famous then, still - ). The weather was unusually warm and sunny, there were late lunches of Island delicacies and moonlit strolls along the north shore beaches ... Who knew that Canada started with a circus? And it was more or less the ones who drank the copious amounts of champagne on the Queen Victoria that agreed a federation of the British Provinces was a good idea. And, as Gwyn points out, quoting Joseph Pope, Macdonald ‘knew every chord of the human heart’. Macdonald’s skills along with the Confederation parties, created Canada.

(He did doodle though, so maybe some aspects were boring?)

from the LAC Fonds Sir John A. Macdonald [document textuel] (MG26-A)

And for all of you in Saskatchewan, Richard Gwyn will be reading and signing at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon, this Mon Jan 16, 2012, 7:30 pm.

And my personal favourite picture of John A. This evening there will be gin.

Ken Dewar on the multiplicity of historiographic representations

2012-01-10T09:46:00.000-05:00

Ken Dewar, emeritus historian from Mount. St. Vincent in Halifax, does a tour d'horizon on the state of history today in the current Literary Review of Canada, and concludes, y'know, it ain't that bad.

My question, then—is history in flower or is it in crisis?—poses a false dichotomy. If, instead, we accustom ourselves to thinking about the multiplicity of historiographic representations, we will become more aware of the distinctive qualities of the books we read (or write), and perhaps become better able to reflect on their relationship to their various audiences.

And what he said

2012-01-09T21:17:00.002-05:00

Stephen Maher ponders electing the Governor General

The Irish presidency is a good model. The Irish elect their presidents, who serve almost precisely the same function as our governors general, but with greater popular support, because they are elected. There has never been a power struggle between the two offices, which is something monarchists warn about here.

Cause when we abolish the monarchy, we'll have to think about it. Meanwhile, a little wisdom from Marc Garneau, a guy who's seen Canada from space:

"The Royal in Royal Canadian Navy does not make me swell with pride," he said. "I am proud to have served in the Canadian Navy."

Sorry about the odd type sizes. Blogger has fits from time to time, and we just ride em out..

What he said...

2012-01-09T11:14:00.000-05:00

National Post's Kelly McPartland on Stephen Harper's plans for a sort of reformed, sort of elected Senate:

It’s a monumentally bad idea, maybe the Tories’ worst.

How long before the rightwinger constitutionalists come around to the long-time wisdom of the NDP: if there's anything to be done to the Senate, abolition is the only feasible change?

Battlefield Tourism

2012-01-06T10:31:00.000-05:00

In the holiday rush/holiday lull, I never got around to mention a recent book sent here by the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament studies: Canadian Battlefields 1915-18.

The Centre has a series of battlefield guidebooks: for Normandy, for Northern France, and now this one by Terry Copp giving context and visitor info on all the European First World War sites that involved Canadian forces.

This one's a mashup of history text and site guide, actually. It starts with a longish survey of WWI historiography, and it does not have the kind of instant-access organization by which the best guidebooks make available site-specific info just when you want it. But if you are thinking of exploring Canadian twentieth-century military sites in Europe, don't say the material ain't available. (H/t Matt Symes of LCMSDS.)

Note also their blog, which live-blogged (+68 years) the Battle of Ortona while the rest of us were having Christmas and all.

Coyne on leadership

2012-01-05T09:34:00.001-05:00

The question for our politics is how to make the reality closer to the theory: to give Parliament generally, and Members of Parliament individually, greater powers to check the executive.

Andrew Coyne offers some sense on the Liberal Party's really nutsy plans for future
leadership selection contests.

Update: January 6: Gordon Gibson weighs in, also noting the effect of the Liberal plan would be to further separate the party leader from accountability to caucus.

Cliopatria Awards for history blogging announced

2012-01-05T09:11:00.000-05:00

The Cliopatria Awards for historical blogging have announced the best history blogs (and tweets and podcasts, too) for 2011. Winners in the various categories are mostly unknown to me but look well worth investigating. Full details here.

History of the Chief

2012-01-05T09:04:00.000-05:00

A Toronto man trying to determine if he is the son of John Diefenbaker got inconclusive results from a DNA analysis, according to Maclean's. He says he is disappointed, because the company he hired to do the analysis "is famous for getting DNA from dinosaur fossils and from lost tribes."
(Photo from Maclean's.)

The Humanities Effect: history jobs and salaries

2012-01-04T09:36:00.002-05:00

Andrew Smith starts 2012 with some provocative data on job prospects and salary prospects for Ph.D candidates in history. He starts with American data that suggests about 30% of history PhD candidates who complete their degrees within ten years go on to tenure-track jobs in academic history departments. The American author, Robert Townsend, finds this troubling. Smith suggests it may a reasonable percentage, and points to the good non-academic jobs others find. I'm not sure Townsend's data support that optimism. If I read him right, only 30% are tenure track, but nearly 70% (tenure track included) are working in and around universities and colleges, and another 11% are still working on that doctorate. What's left out of Townsend's data are career situations of the 50%+ who drop out before completing the doctorate.

Andrew then moves on to the shifting salary expectations of historians, both from the American data and his Canadian experience. Historians are suffering "the humanities effect," he suggests. Salaries for professors in the humanities tend to be relatively low, and History has been gradually migrating from the better off Social Sciences section of academia to the disfavoured Humanities.

He seems to suggest this is a matter of prestige and perspective -- reflecting the relative value society places on sciences versus humanities. But surely there is also a market factor. Scientists and even social scientists are like lawyers and engineers: their academic salaries are driven up by the fact that there are well-paid alternatives outside the university. Well-paid jobs for English and history specialists at the PhD level -- not so much, and universities know it.

Update, January 6: The Tenured Radical also had thoughts on the academic job market. She argues that history needs to give more respect and attention to "public history," since that's where the jobs -- and often the important work -- are. But she thinks of raising the prestige of public history as a way to justify all the otherwise unemployable PhDs the universities want to produce. Myself, I suspect the PhD program really does only work well at producing tenure-directed academics; public historians need a different education, one that I suspect PhD programs can never provide efficiently.

2011 in Review

2011-12-30T22:28:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-21T14:59:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-17T10:29:00.001-05:00

.. 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

2011-12-14T09:43:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-13T11:25:00.001-05:00

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

2011-12-09T17:22:00.000-05:00

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

Wise older historian overhead ...

2011-12-09T17:19:00.001-05:00

... 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

2011-12-09T17:13:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-09T16:57:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-07T08:47:00.000-05:00

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?

2011-12-05T20:59:00.000-05:00

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.

What does LCMSDS stand for, again? Oh yeah....

2011-11-30T20:20:00.001-05:00

Matt Symes of the Canadian Military History website, an initiative of LCMSDS, the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, draws our attention to the newly redesigned site, already drawing a couple of hundred hits a day, he says.

History of Hesjedal

2011-11-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

A little of Norwegian geography and social history, some immigration history, an archive from 1504: all in a 2 minute Norwegian TV profile of our boy, Tour de France cyclist Ryder Hesjedal. Cool subtitled Norwegian accents too.

Our boy in the big leagues

2011-11-30T09:06:00.000-05:00

British historian David Cannadine, asked to pick five books to explain the British Empire, includes Canadian writer-politician Roy MacLaren's 2004 book Commissions High, about the Canadian representatives in London.

One of the more interesting figures that he talks about is this remarkable man called Lord Strathcona, who is indeed a classic Scottish immigrant to Canada, who then makes a fortune via the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Bank of Montreal and a whole variety of other industries. He then comes back to Britain and is the Canadian High Commissioner to Britain. Lord Strathcona could have walked straight out of Devine’s book. And then there is this extraordinary patrician figure Vincent Massey, from a very grand Canadian family, who is the Canadian High Commissioner during World War II and chairs the trustees of the National Gallery in London and subsequently is the first Canadian Governor General of Canada.

New Zealand and proportional representation

2011-11-29T09:28:00.000-05:00

New Zealand had a national election on the weekend (one is required there every three years). Turnout was the lowest since 1887, indicating once again that declining voter turnout is a global phenomenon among mature democracies, not something to be fixed simply by adoption of proportional representation or some other panacea.

PR, which New Zealand has had since 1996, was itself on the ballot, through a referendum asking whether voters wished to keep the mixed-member proportional system or to consider alternatives. Results will not be known for a couple of weeks, but the existing system seems likely to survive. Oddly, despite a profusion of small parties, most of which seem to be mouthpieces for charismatic kooky leaders, New Zealand seems to be returning to a two-party system, in which the National (conservative) party and the Labour party share 80% of the vote. National, indeed, will hold 60 seats in a 121 seat legislature, a virtual single-party majority.

The most notable change in NZ politics since MMP has been the consolidation of power in the hands of party leaders, to the detriment of backbenchers. Under MMP, fifty-one of 121 NZ MPs are now appointed by their parties, rather than elected by constituents, and have no authority to disagree with their party's instructions. In a country that used to have a lively tradition of intra-caucus debate and frequent removal by caucus vote of unsuccessful party leaders (even prime ministers), the loss of leadership accountability and backbencher power is striking.

History of the Governor General's Awards

2011-11-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

During her tenure as governor general, Adrienne Clarkson became aware that Rideau Hall did not even have copies of the books that had received Governor General's Literary Awards over the years -- not even, presumably, her husband's book. She initiated a search that must have been quite a remarkable exercise in bookfinding. Today visitors to Rideau Hall can visit a smallish room just off the main reception rooms that hold a complete collection or something close to it of books that have received the Governor General's Literary Award since their foundation in 1936 -- seventy-five years ago.

I had the chance the other day to browse those shelves. There is a fair amount of work that is not remembered and some that may not be terrifically memorable. But all along those shelves, one spots names that adorn the canon, indeed that form the canon.

Among the historians, for instance: the shelves include works by A.R.M. Lower, C.P. Stacey, W.L. Morton, Donald Creighton, J.M.S. Careless, Frank Underhill, Marcel Trudel, Robert-Louis Séguin, Louise Dechene, Carl Berger, Fernand Ouellet, Ramsay Cook, Gerard Bouchard, and Margaret MacMillan, as well as Thomas Raddall, Josephine Phelan, Marjorie Wilkins Campbell, Pierre Berton, Sandra Gwyn, Maggie Siggins and Karolyn Smardz Frost (curious, is it, how women are much better represented among the non-academic historians than among the profs?). Fiction, poetry, whatever category you pick is as studded with distinguished names. It's quite a room.

The top photo is of a part of the shelving that includes books of the year 1982, which is of special significance to me. The lower one is part of the room itself. The exhibit is supposedly temporary, but it looks built to last.

Andrew Coyne speaks truth to parliament

2011-11-28T21:41:00.000-05:00

He's pretty sure giving prizes to good parliamentarians isn't going to fix parliament

Certainly MPs themselves seem disinclined to complain, publicly at least. Ask how they enjoy being a member of Parliament and they will burble on about the work they do in their constituencies, forwarding letters to the Immigration Department and the like. Everything but actually sitting in Parliament.
And so we get the kind of people in politics who are willing to accept a job with no meaningful responsibilities.
Over the years, I’ve proposed any number of reforms [...]. But all of these depend on someone in Parliament being willing to buck the status quo. But who among its present inmates is disposed to do that? Not the leaders, obviously. And not their obedient followers.

Glen Gould site

2011-11-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

Just hear this on CBC Radio 2 and thought I'd pass it along. I assume, however, if the people who read this blog are like me, you've just heard about the site yourself!

http://www.cbc.ca/gould/

Cheers,

Jordan

Mercy Coles sort of, with Shakespeare, the Booth brothers and the Broadway Theatre, New York City

2011-11-25T00:56:00.000-05:00

I'm finishing off the transcribing of Mercy Coles' diary from their trip through Ohio and New York back to Prince Edward Island - She writes that they went to the Broadway Theatre [owned by Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth] on November 12, 1864 and saw a 'capital' show [Salon Shanghai if I can decipher clearly].

Image from New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Central Park

Just under 2 weeks later, on November 25, 1864, the 3 Booth brothers - Edwin, John Wilkes, and Junius Brutus Booth Jr performed together for the first and only time, in a one night performance of Julius Caesar, as a fundraiser for this statue of Shakespeare in New York City.
Not only that, but less than an hour into the show, Confederates set fire to the city, including the house that adjoined the theatre. The theater was packed and the crowd were beginning to panic until Edwin Booth stepped forward to calm them. In the end the theater was saved.

Back to Mercy later this week.

New Lester B. Pearson archival materials

2011-11-22T12:07:00.000-05:00

I was recently involved (to a very small extent but involved nonetheless!) in the donation of some Lester B. Pearson materials from when he was an undergraduate student at the Victoria University in the University of Toronto prior to, during and after the First World War. They were recently in the possession of the family but have joined a number of LBP and his son Geoffrey Arthur Holland Pearson (a distinguished Canadian and diplomat in his own right) materials that have been donated to the Carleton University and University of Victoria (University of Toronto) archives. Keep an eye out for more LBP and GAHP materials from Carleton as they're eventually accessioned and made available.

The University of Victoria Archives has just digitized the donated LBP materials and have made them available online here. Hon. Landon Pearson, LBP's daughter-in-law and GAHP's wife who donated the material, made an interesting note as to why LBP's grades fell so drastically after his return to U Vic after the war.....likely suffering from shell shock - post traumatic stress disorder.

Article in fugitive slave collection a helpful synthesis of scholarship

2011-11-20T19:01:00.001-05:00

One of my pet peeves (and believe me, it's quite a menagerie) is the inadequacy of cataloguing of articles in edited collections. When oh when will bibliographic data entry catch up to the powerful engines at our disposal?

illustration from Amazon.com

To take one example, anyone doing a search for background information on the institutions and governance of Upper Canada/Canada West would probably not be directed to a recent article by Lyndsay Campbell "Governance in the Borderlands: Upper Canadian Legal Institutions" which appears in the collection edited by her with American historian Tony Freyer, Freedom's Conditions in the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands in the Age of Emancipation (Carolina Academic Press, Durham NC, 2011).

The student or scholar who is fortunate enough to find it, whether through an interest in fugitive slaves (the focus of the volume), serendipity or this post will find a terrific synthesis of up-to-date scholarship, together with a wonderful bibliography (what ever happened to those in Canadian Academic Presses?) Campbell does a terrific job of providing fundamentals along with lesser known details, framed as context for the fascinating and significant story of the Solomon Moseby riots. Since the book is aimed at an American as well as a Canadian readership, she takes care not to assume much fore-knowledge (with the exception of the occasional legal term) but does not neglect lacunae and subjects of historiographic dissensus, making the article also a great jumping off point for Canadianists who are not well-versed in this period, and a great refresher and reference for those of us who are.

The rest of the collection is well worth reading by generalists as well, a reminder that British North America then (as Canada now) can be understood as a borderland, defined to a considerable extent by the travails of its southern neighbour.

Sick Kids needs historian

2011-11-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, which dates back to 1875, seeks its historian. According to the call for proposal:

Our goal is to have a finished manuscript by 2014 with publication in 2015. The Publisher envisions a manuscript of approximately 175,000 words accompanied by photographs and other illustrative material.

The hospital is working in partnership with the University of Toronto Press, which has posted details on the project here. Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2012.

Putting major historical projects to tender seems to me an admirable process. UTP tried it previously with its history of the university, and the book, by Martin Friedland, was a triumph of both scholarship and readability. What this competition needs now is some serious proposals from historians or teams of historians.

(Personal note: I have done a number of commissioned histories, to mutual satisfaction -- and the good of historical knowledge, I think, but I will not be applying for this one. Not that I'm not interested, but I'm booked.)

Young scholars: go for it. And don't work cheap -- good history are worth it).

History of parliamentary accountability

2011-11-18T10:47:00.000-05:00

Italy's new prime minister (and finance minister) Mario Monti, who does not hold a seat in the Italian parliament, has appointed a new cabinet, and none of its members hold a seat in parliament either. It's impressive how little concern anyone seems to express over this. They are technocrats, see, they have a job to do. Democratic responsibility? Meh.

Now, in principle, anyone who holds the confidence of the legislative majority can serve in government in a parliamentary democracy. Canada has had cabinet ministers and sometimes even prime ministers without Commons seats. But the whole government? And for years to come? What is the mechanism for accountability to the legislature, to the people's elected representatives?

It's striking how little anyone seems to care. Questions like responsibility to the elected representatives of the people seem unimportant compared to staving off the wrath of the Eurobankers. Here's one brief expression of concern -- but such are hard to find. It's not a good sign, methinks.

Book Notes: The Cundill Prize

2011-11-16T19:13:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile other people win prizes too. The Cundill Prize from McGill University for the best work of English language historical non-fiction (from anywhere in the world) has been awarded to Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto for Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. More details here.

Book Notes: 100 Moments

2011-11-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

Last year the people at ~~The Beaver~~ Canada's History magazine had a big success with an elegant photo/essay collection called 100 Photos that Changed Canada. It got a great reaction, ended up under a lot of Christmas trees, and spent quite a while high on the bestseller lists.

The same team led by Mark Read (who edits both the magazine and these books), is back to see if lightening will strrike twice. This year the book is 100 Days that Changed Canada: handsome photos adjoining brief essays by a large and cleverly chosen range of contributors on 100 notable moments in Canadian history since 1867.

As a clean-up hitter/utility infielder/third-line goaile (what is the metaphor?) for Canada's History, I contributed four short essays to last year's book and three to this year -- including the first, on July 1, 1867. But that someone on your gift list would probably like it anyway. More info here.

Mercy Coles and the tour of the Canadas - Toronto, Niagara Falls and on to the US

2011-11-13T15:20:00.000-05:00

The tour to promote the idea of Confederation continued in Toronto with talks, speeches and sightseeing. The official tour ended at Niagara Falls on November 4th, 1864 - and from there Mercy and her family went on to visit her mother's relatives in America. Nov 3 to 12 is a very full week! Some highlights - including the American Election on Tues Nov 8, are included here.

Image courtesy of Susan Law http://www.osgoodehall.com/

We last left off on Thursday November 3^rd, 1864, as Mercy Coles and the delegates were to go sightseeing in Toronto

“We started off this morning to visit the Public Institutions, first we went to the Public School. All the elder boys formed a guard of honour from the gate to the entrance by the Professors. We went to the schoolroom and the head master read an address to which Col Gray PEI replied, the boys received a holiday and we started for the Lawyer’s Hall, a splendid building, the centre hall is right up to the roof stained glass in the dome. The floor is mosaic. [The Lawyer’s Hall is Osgoode Hall, on Queen Street west, and you can still see the domed ceiling of stained glass and mosaic floor.

They went on to see the University, the museum “The Butterflies were beautiful”, and the normal school “certainly the most varied institution I ever saw, it combines a Picture Gallery, a statutory Gallery, all kinds of miniature implements and nearly everything one can think of that is curious.” [This link is to Wikipedia, but is good with lots of great detail and history. The site of the Normal School, and a bit of its architecture, is where Ryerson University now is - see here]

... The men went to the Music Hall [in the Mechanics Institute at the northeast corner of Church and Adelaide, which also housed Toronto’s Free Library – which became the /Toronto Public Library]

for luncheon and Mercy and her mother joined them for “about an hour and heard Mr. Palmer, Carter, a Red River man Louis Riel and part of a speech from Mr. Brown. ...

Friday 4^th

Grand Trunk Railway

11 o’clock we started from Toronto this morning at 10 o’clock. We expect to get to Kingston (Hamilton) [I’m assuming the person who transcribed Mercy’s diary corrected the name to Hamilton] in 2 hours. We had a glorious Ball last night. I danced every dance and had several engaged when I came away. Mr. Bernard had told one of the stewards about me. He got Mr. Bridges to introduce him and then he got me partners for every dance, the ladies were dressed to death and some of them were very pretty. [What did Mr. Bernard say about her and why did Mr. Bridges get her partners??] ... I am so sorry we part from the party today at Niagara Falls. Most of them go back to Toronto. We go to Ohio. I should like to have gone home with the party but that is impossible. I have not seen John A. since he came up in the carriage with us at Cobourg. He did not appear at all yesterday. Mr. Bernard was at the station this morning to say good bye. I told him to say everything kind for me to John A. [emphasis mine – remember that John A brought her dessert in the drawing room on the last evening, Wed Oct 26 in Quebec and Mercy mysteriously wrote ‘The conundrum.’ The PEI delegates by then were fed up with Canada – they were not getting the number of seats they wanted, were not getting the money to buy out the Absentee Landlords, and yet, Macdonald was still paying attention both to Mercy and her father – was he still wooing? Did they like each other? Did Mercy feel conflicted over what she might want and what her father might think? So much is unwritten, so much speculation can be completely wrong. Of course one is free to speculate as much as they want in fiction - see To the Edge of the Sea]

Read More for Niagara Falls, the American Election and the rest of the week

Buffalo 8 o’clock

We have just arrived here from Niagara. We got to Niagara at 2 o’clock. There was a very nice luncheon given by Mr. Seveny [the writing is hard to read, I think this is the name] and the manager of the Grand Western Railway. Directly after lunch we got into carriages and drove to the falls. I can’t it is quite impossible to describe them. They far exceeded anything I expected to see. I saw them from all points. Mr. Seveny[’s] aid took me down under the falling water on Table Rock. Such fun as we had getting up and down the stairs. He painted my name on the inside of the place where we went down, it was raining the whole time but we did not mind, the water in the middle of the Great Horse Shoe was a splendid aqua marine color – and looked as if it was beautifully fluted. After we saw everything there was to be seen we drove to Mr. Streets, a gentleman who has the most beautiful grounds I ever saw – beautiful suspension bridges, little platforms right on the very edge of the rapids, it was such fun the boards were so slippery with the rain it was almost impossible to stand ... We drove back to the station, there we had to say goodbye to all the party and take the train for here. The Tuppers are gone to New York, Col Grey stays a few days at Niagara, all the rest have gone back to Toronto, perhaps we shall go back that way. We remain here at this Hotel Mansion until 12 o’clock. We then take the cars for Cleveland.

Saturday 5^th On board the cars for Cleveland. We did not go on last night. The landlord at the Hotel told Pa we could just as well go on this morning so we remained at the Hotel all night and started at 6 this morning. We expect to get to Uncles before dark. It is a splendid day. The sun is rising splendidly. I feel so lonesome this morning without the familiar g[?]. I wonder if they are thinking of me this morning. Mr. Tilley will have enough to do to take care of Mrs. Alexander.

9 o’clock, here we are stopt in the road. Something is the matter with the engine. We have been here nearly a half an hour. Such a thing did not happen before since we left home. The Grand Trunk is the line. I have not much faith in Yankee Railways. They have sent back to the Station to get another engine. We are going backwards now. I must say it is not very lively to be brought to a full stop in this way. ...

Sunday Morning – 6^th

Warren We arrived here last night at 8 o’clock, it was too late to go on to Bloomfield so we remained here all night. We start for Bloomfield this morning for Mr. [D unclear] which is 15 miles [to the north]. It is a beautiful morning.

Monday 7^th 1864

We arrived here at Uncle Dick’s yesterday at noon, it was a long drive and indeed I was very glad when the driver announced we had arrived. Aunt Elizabeth is quite an old woman. I think I should have known her by her photograph. Uncle Dick is an original, he reminds me very much of [Gr?] papa. ...

They ate crackers and cheese this morning. No servants, here they all do their own work. I am not surprised Bertie found it so different at our house where he had a half a dozen to work on him. I am so sorry he isn’t here, he has been away 2 months at Chattanooga ...

Tuesday, Nov 8^th, 1864

We drove to Uncle William’s yesterday and arrived just in time for dinner. [Many people came over, there was singing and a fun time it sounds like.] Uncle took us to his mill where he grinds corn and wheat. Ma and I were weighed. Ma [unclear]. Mine 138. Aunt Elizabeth 194. Aunt Sarah [is] as stout as Ma but she does not weigh as much. The Presidential Election came off to day. Uncle William and Pa went to the Poll. I think they were pretty much all the same way, very few seats for Mr. [George B.] McClellan. We left Uncle Williams ... ” [Emphasis mine. So much for the Election! Abraham Lincoln was re-elected, getting 212 of the 233 seats.]

Mercy talks of the various family members – including “Aunt Mary’s youngest boy is Charlie, just the size and age of our Charlie” [born about 1859 listed in George Coles’ descendents, and who married June 16, 1885 in Grenfell Saskatchewan – interesting to me as I now live in Sk]. Mercy continues with more notes on the family.

Wednesday 9^th November Warren

Mercy’s throat was bad again on Tuesday eve and her Aunt Mary brought her a little bottle of honey and her mother rubbed her throat with liniment. More merry making – “All the girls came down from Uncle William’s and we had such a jolly time.” Her Uncle William wanted her to stay with them but her parents wanted her to go with them.

“Nov 10 Thursday

Atlantic and Great Western. We left Warren at 12 o’clock. ... We went out shopping with Aunt after breakfast. We had luncheon in the eating saloon. The first I ever was in, it was rather a strange place. Uncle would have us go, so to please him we went. ... ” More notes on family – it is quite difficult to read as the handwriting is jumpy – probably written while on the train.

“We are now at Corry [Pennsylvania] the great city for oil. They are building everywhere. ... Such a splendid lot of oil they [run?] 1500 barrels of oil a day. Making money as fast as they do in California. At Meadville there was a splendid Hotel right at the Station. Pa says it is the finest he has seen in America. ...

Friday November 11^th

Ma and I had a [first?] safe sleep in the berth. ... We got up as soon as it was daylight and washed [unclear] we were first and had the clean towel [?!] ... We expect to get to New York at 1 o’clock. We have just seen the place where the train ran over a Bridge last [unclear] night and killed 5 people. [Unclear] of the cars are still there.

St. Nicolas Hotel New York ½ past 2

We arrived here about ½ an hour ago and our trunks have not yet appeared, it is no use grumbling ... We are [?] Broadway such a busy place everybody rushing about. We got into a cab when we arrived at the Station and were driven on board the Ferry boat and did not get out until we were set down at this door. Such a long tunnel we came through just before we got out of the train.

Saturday Nov 12^th

.... to be continued ...

Vote for the most self-important small island

2011-11-10T12:10:00.000-05:00

History Today's blog is running an internet competition to judge the most important history book and most important historian of the past sixty years. All but one of the historians and all but a couple of the books are British. The historians are all men, too. Still there are a few classics in there.

U of T honours LGBT activists Province celebrates pioneers of gay liberation movement

2011-11-08T11:52:00.000-05:00

I'm still around! Life has been crazy and blogging has suffered thus but while running an errand through Victoria University today my eye fell upon this article. A testament to how LGBT history is entering official public memory in tangible ways beyond Pride Week.

Jordan

Book Notes: Levine on King

2011-11-08T10:23:00.003-05:00

Allan Levine is currently touring southern Ontario in support of his new book on William Lyon Mackenzie King. Today he is in Burlington for the Different Drummer bookstore's always terrific book breakfast. Tonight he is talking about "Politics and Private Lives in 20th Century Canada" at Toronto's Spadina Museum (details here). Wednesday night he's at Laurier House in Ottawa.

It seems to be boom times for prime ministerial historical biography (after a long drought, I would say) Paul Litt's John Turner, John Boyko's recent R. B. Bennett, Andre Pratte on Laurier, and Gwyn's two volumes on John A. Macdonald. And of course Trudeau, Chretien, Harper, and other recent leaders have not lacked for biographers.

Levine's publisher notes it's been thirty years since the last King biography. Presumably that was C.P Stacey, writing in the wake of the opening up of King's private diary. Time for fresh perspectives, for sure. Levine subtitles his King bio "A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny" Not sure if that is Levine's (ironic?) phrase or King's undoubtedly sincere one.

Levine's King has been reviewed and excerpted over several days in the National Post.

Update, Nov 10: Lawrence Martin also takes note of Levine's book and King's wierdness. Martin celebrates the appearance of four big political biographies, and then grouses that no one will read them, 'cause, you know, no one cares about Canadian history 'cept you and me. Maybe sales of his Harper book were not up to his requirements.
Martin also comments, "Among the lessons King could have given the others was not to allow themselves to be challenged from within." Sad that he should think it is among the rightful powers of a prime minister not to allow himself to be challenged. (H/T Stephen MacLean)

Update, Nov 11: Allan L confirms that is King's own subtitle:

"My belief in myself leads me to hope that this will some day be realized. The public will admire me for the courage & spirit I show in sacrificing a certainty for a great uncertainty. . Lastly there is the purpose of God in all, the realization of the dream of my life, the page unfolds as by the hand of Destiny. From a child I have looked forward to this hour as that which should lead me into my life's work. I have believed my life's work lies there, and now I am led to the threshold by the Invisible Hand."-The Diary of William Lyon Mackenzie King, July 25, 1907

Book Notes: Soldiers for Sale

2011-11-07T08:36:00.000-05:00

How does a pur-laine Quebecois de souche come to have a surname like Wilhelmy? Jean-Pierre Wilhelmy, an "expressway interchange technologist" by profession, found himself wondering -- and ended up an expert on the German regiments and military companies that served with the British forces during the American revolutionary war 1776-83, and left no small number of their soldiers behind in Quebec when the war ended.

Soldiers for Sale, from Baraka Books, is a translation of the 2009 expanded edition of Wilhelmy's French-language study, first published in 1984.

Admirers of the late Marcel Trudel, who writes a preface to this book, will appreciate Wilhelmy's story of getting a reception that was "little more than polite" from academic historians until he encountered Trudel, who became "somewhat like a thesis director" over four years of studies, a research fellowship, an scholarly article, and a a publishing contract.

Mercy Coles down the Ottawa River Montreal to Ottawa to Kingston, Belleville, Coburg, Toronto

2011-11-05T16:49:00.003-04:00

Mercy and the delegates and their families continue after the Quebec conference to tour the 'Canadas' and promote the idea of Confederation. The Parliament Buildings were just under construction in Ottawa, the railways were relatively new to travel between Ottawa and Toronto (though the rail line doesn't extend quite as far as Toronto yet).

“Monday Oct 31

On board the Prince of Wales on the Ottawa River. We left Montreal this morning at seven o’clock. We came by train to Lachine then came on board this steamer. I have just seen the Rapids mentioned in the Canadian Boat Song

(click for a version of the Boat Song, thanks to my niece and her grade 5 class). ... [Sunday] We walked up to see McGill College. Such magnificent residences are in the university. We went back to the Hotel in a street car. At 3 o’clock we went through the Grand Victoria Bridge [Considered to be the ‘8^th wonder of the world’ at the time] ... We stopt in the middle and got out. We saw the [unclear ?] the Prince of Wales drove in, they opened the window and we looked down on a raft just passing under the bridge.

November 2^nd Wednesday

Aboard the Carslet-Prescott [the Prescott railway, the first rail line between Ottawa and south to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the towns along Lake Ontario’s north shore]. We have been travelling ever since 8 o’clock. Yesterday we had such a gala day. We went to see the Parliament Buildings in the morning, they are magnificent, such a splendid example of everything that is good. The Picture Gallery is the only room that is finished, fit to ---[?] and it was there we had the luncheon. We saw the model of the library which will be a most splendid building. It is made of plaster of Paris and is kept in a room to show what the library will be [I'm sure I saw a plaster of paris version of the library too when I toured the Parliament Buildings as a kid - I can't find any reference to say whether this would be the same plaster of p version?]. ... [The luncheon] was a grand affair. Mr. Henry, Mr. Johnston and Papa made speeches. John A was to have made a speech but he was tight or had a palpitation of the heart and could not go on (emphasis mine). Mr Galt got up and excused him very well. We went to the Ball in the evening ... I had to come away with a half dozen gentlemen not danced with.

½ past 2 – We have just dined at Kingston such a delicious dinner given by Mr. Bridges. ...

¼ 5 – Just arrived at Belleville. All the voluntary turned out. The Mayor presented an address. They drank the health of the mayor and started the moment after. ...

Toronto Queen’s Hotel

Thursday November 3^rd

We arrived at Mr. Cockburn’s last night at 8 o’clock. Such a beautiful place, he gave us a magnificent supper tho only pity was we had such a short time to stay. They had illuminations and all sorts of grandeur. We arrived here at 10 o’clock. Such a grand affair torch light procession. 5,000 people were in front of the hotel. Dr. Tupper, Mr Tilley and Mr. Brown made speeches from a gallery just beneath my bedroom window. We have just had breakfast and are now off sightseeing. ...”

CAUT on Library and Archives Canada

2011-11-03T11:41:00.001-04:00

CAUT, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, is taking the lead in "Save Library and Archives Canada," a campaign to address failings in the old lady at the base of Bay.

This is a new development in an ongoing multi-stakeholder concerto of concern about both the library and the archives parts of LAC, with the Canadian Historical ~~Review~~ Association, the Writers' Union, booksellers, individual researchers, and others having all chipped in previously. Good for CAUT -- better for them to invest in this than in undermining your copyrights.

One problem with the archives: as LAC head Daniel Caron recently told CAUT in a public letter, the new vision of the national archives is that "LAC’s key role extends only to the management of legal deposit and the preservation of the federal government records." This is a widespread trend in archives. Archives were once seen as largely historical institutions, often staffed by historically-trained personnel. Professional archivists (and non-archivist managers like Caron) now often focus more on their roles as the records manager for the particular institution that they serve. So a banks' archives, or a church's, is its record manager and institutional memory.

Now the federal government's archivists see themselves primarily of the managers of their employer's records. But if the national archives is agnostic about national history and only sees itself managing the papers of the civil service, then who takes on the role of the keeper and collector of the nation's records other than its civil service files?

For an eloquent backgrounder on the archives isue, see "National Archives Blues" by writer and cultural critic Susan Crean from the Literary Review of Canada.

Electoral reform in New Zealand

2011-11-02T14:14:00.000-04:00

A referendum ballot attached to the New Zealand general election on November 26 will review the 1996 decision to base elections on MMP ( mixed member proportional) representation, which has been frequently rejected in Canadian referenda but now prevails in New Zealand.

One voter who wants out of MMP writes, after listing the flaws of FPP, First Past the Post

MMP is the opposite of FPP. Instead of our MPs being accountable to individual electorates, they are accountable to parties. Instead of the MPs in the swing-seats - electorates most reflective of the "average voter" - standing up for the wishes of their community, MPs vie for high list positions.

The MPs we want standing up to the powers in political parties are those most reliant on the party bosses to be "protected" by an MMP list position. MMP discourages the vulnerable MPs from standing up for their electorate.

Poor Canada. We have FPP and all the flaws of MMP too. In New Zealand it's the law that half the MPs are not elected by voters but appointed by their parties. In Canada all our MPs are directly elected, but they all act as loyal appointees.

History of the CBC

2011-11-02T10:29:00.001-04:00

This week Ideas on CBC Radio is considering the history of the CBC in a five-part doc by Ideas stalwart David Cayley, "CBC at 75: Turning Points in Public Broadcasting." The first two parts are already done, but Ideas program can be listened to online or downloaded .

I'm currently developing a program for Ideas myself so I'm neither impartial nor dispassionate. But I find the anniversary provoking mixed feelings in people I talk to. On one hand, CBC Radio seems absolutely indispensable. On the other, people seem to wish it was .... better, and the feeling grows stronger the closer one is to it.

Last Sunday I thought I heard evidence of the problem in Sunday Morning's three hour tribute to the CBC. At one point Judy Madren, ex-announcer, now officially CBC' usage authority, was Michael Enright's guest. They read episodes from a CBC announcer's manual from the 1940s, and it struck them as hilarious. "Announcers must be men of wide culture and broad general knowledge," Madren read, and the two of them sniggered about the foolish pretentiousness of their predecessors. Yet it still seems like a good idea -- the difference between the radio hosts who know things and those who are simply pretty voices remains as stark as even. Then Madren mentioned the manual included the word "viscid" and declared forthrightly that she did not even know what the word meant.

The CBC's usage expert is too important to reach for a dictionary. I got the sense that a lot of people around CBC Radio reached their positions by seniority and now have a sense of their own authority that far outstrips the pretensions of the 1940s.

Still, I was driving a long way in the last two days, and every couple of hours I was madly running "Seek" to keep CBC Radio in range.

CBC Radio has also announced its ten finalists for the non-fiction episode of Canada Reads. Congratulations to Margaret Macmillan, whose Paris 1919 made the list despite the organizers' earlier fatwa against history books and academics. Also Chester Brown's graphic-biography Louis Riel and Ken Dryden's The Game, which counts as history for me.

Mercy Coles in Montreal

2011-10-31T13:13:00.000-04:00

“Saturday morning Oct 29

I feel quite well this morning. I went down to the Ball last night. Such a splendid affair. Mr. Crowther danced with me the first Quadrille. Sir Fenwick Williams was here looking as well as ever. ...”

Sir Fenwick Williams born in 1800 in Nova Scotia, became a military hero because of his defence of Kars, Turkey during the Crimean War. In 1861 he was sent to Canada as commander-in- chief of the British Forces in British North America. Remember, the American Civil war had just started and there were Fenian raids on Canada – all reasons to guard the border. In November 1865 he was sent to be Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia as someone who would be pro Confederation, which Britain wanted by then.

From the London Times, October 24^th, 1864

“Our colonies are rather too fond of us, and embrace us, if anything, too closely”

Saturday continued:

“ ... Ma and I have just been to the Convent Congregation Notre Dame. Mr. McDonald (stutterer) came and took Mamma and I. I have just come from Notman’s. My photograph was not good I don’t think, so I would not take it however the man said he would send me two dozen to the Island. ...”

Notman’s is William Notman’s studio, one of the most famous photographers of his day. He would colour and tint photographs and was a leader in photography techniques. He created large ‘composite photographs’ with up to 450 people and make each person clear by assembling photographs of each individual into the one scene. Sort of the Busby Berkley of still photography. See the McCord Museum of Canadian History for much more on Notman.

For a novel that explores the beginnings of photography – that history in fiction see Keith Maillard's Light in the Company of Women. It’s brilliant. Also what I found interesting, having just finished a novel that looks at the history of Canada’s confederation was Keith’s comment about writing his novel at a talk at the University of Regina a few years ago. He said an early draft was like a photography manual – and so, yes, that turning of fact into fiction and the challenges in creating fiction using history.

CBC.ca on kid's books

2011-10-29T18:04:00.000-04:00

CBC.ca journalist Susan Noakes has posted a terrific roundup of the Governor General's Award candidates in children's literature, with reviews and profiles of all the nominees, including my From Then to Now: A Short History of the World. She concludes on the strength of these noms, that Canadian children's writers are taking a turn to the global and international that is also evident in Canadian fiction and non-fiction too.

I'd say it is the best coverage, but it's about the only coverage with this much detail.

Osgoode Society book launch

2011-10-28T09:16:00.001-04:00

Down the other night to the always lively annual Toronto book launch of the remarkable legal history society, the Osgoode Society. The Society's website has details of the books -- thanks to our blogalum Mary Stokes.

Notable, maybe, is John McLaren's Dewigged, Bothered and Bewildered, an exploration of the curiously interesting ways in which colonial judges got fired by their political masters in the nineteenth century. The theme is the independence (or lack of it) in the judiciary -- and McLaren is relentlessly comparative, exploring how the process worked (often with the same judges) in Australia, Sierra Leone, and the British Caribbean as well as the British North American colonies. So much so, in fact, that the book is simultaneously being published in Australia by its relatively new Forbes Society for Australian Legal History, itself inspired by the success of the Osgoode Society here.

Saw in the crowd two Ontario appeal court judges who had been predicted for the Supreme Court of Canada vacancies: Robert Sharpe, who had a (terrific) book being launched, and Andromache Karakatsanis. Sharpe is not going to Ottawa, Karakatsanis is, and it was hard to tell which one of them looked most pleased with that outcome.

Canada 150

2011-10-28T09:04:00.000-04:00

Harry Van Bommel reports the Canada 150 plan to create a collection of Canadian family stories for the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 1917 is rolling ahead.

More info at the Canada 150 website

Mercy Coles and John A. Macdonald ...

2011-10-27T14:45:00.003-04:00

The Quebec conference is still on, though almost finished. They will leave for Montreal on Thursday, October 27 at 4:00.

“Wednesday [October 26^th, 1864]

We went for a drive today. We went through the Lower Town to see where the rock fell and crushed the people to death [on Friday Oct. 14 – see the earlier post]. ...

I went to dinner in the evening. John A. [Macdonald] sat along side of me. What an old Humbug he is. He brought me my dessert into the Drawing Room. The conundrum.”

Oh the fun of speculation and reading between the lines.

How'd Parler Fort go the other night?

2011-10-26T08:55:00.003-04:00

Don't ask me, ask the bloggers.

Litt on Turner on leadership

2011-10-24T10:57:00.001-04:00

Paul Litt’s biography of the ‘eighties Liberal leader John Turner (see earlier notice below) was written with the subject’s cooperation, and it is an admiring portrait based on shared values. (“Turner’s glorious opposition to free trade during the 1988 election offered Canadians an alternative to wholesale continental integration.”) But it remains judicial, appraising, and deeply-researched in the ways academic scholarship should. This is a very substantial biography.

But there is one part of the book where Litt’s language becomes violent, even extreme, in a way that might seem to go beyond the norms of dispassionate scholarship. He uses words like “putsch,” “mutiny,” “rebellion,” and “insurgency” and escalates to “treachery, “stab in the back,” and even “treason.” He is not talking about the fall of the Weimar republic or how Hafez al-Assad came to power in Syria. He is talking about how the elected representatives of the Canadian people who formed the parliamentary caucus of the Liberal Party of Canada handled their relations with John Turner during his leadership of the party. In Litt’s analysis of Canadian parliamentary process, disagreement can legitimately be called treason whenever it exists within a party caucus.

In this section, Litt’s prose sounds like the press releases that typically come from the office of an embattled leader shortly before the resignation. But the violence of his words comes not because Litt has abandoned all critical distance and come out as a reborn Turner flack from 1987. That’s not it at all, I think.

I think that on this matter Litt stands in the centre of the Canadian consensus. Like virtually all our scholars and commentators, he takes it as given that the elected representatives of the Canadian people have no right to hold political opinions other than those pronounced by the leader of their party. It does not occur to him that this quasi-fascist approach to political party leadership is a subject worth critical analysis, As a result, he has no reason to restrain the most violent and emotional terms in the political vocabulary to describe any MP who has doubts or differences with his or her leader. In Canadian political analysis, such words just do not seem extreme.

For an MP to disagree with John Turner on the constitutional future of Canada? Treason. To have different perspectives on Canadian-American relations? A stab in the back. It’s not that these issues were not matters of public debate, or that smart, well-educated Canadians did not have differing views. But John Turner was A LEADER. In the received standard version of Canadian political analysis, there is no place for MPs to have views, even on the most critical and pressing issues of national political life, when the leader has other views. In a Canadian political caucus, goes the consensus, only the leader has opinions; all else really is… treason.

That Litt, despite the violence of his language, holds conventional views, seemed confirmed this weekend by two leading journalists. Susan Delacourt in The Star, writing about Litt’s book, actually describes Turner as “an impassioned advocate of greater roles for backbench MPs.” She seems to means these words seriously, as if those “treasons” and “mutinies” of the 1980s had never existed.

In The Globe, meanwhile Gary Mason denounces as “perplexing” and “not what is needed” the current “mini caucus rebellion” of British Columbia Liberal MLAs. The leadership of the Palinesque Christy Clark may have been recently imposed against their unanimous opposition, but Mason too takes it for granted that the elected representatives can never have opinions as long as the leader does. I’ll give Paul Litt this: he is right in the mainstream. His language about leadership, for all its violence and lack of reflection, comes straight from the received wisdom. Indeed, his summation of Turner rests on the argument that “Turner’s leadership style reflected his accommodating personality… It involved consulting, communicating, consensus building, and compromising….” (p. 5)

Mercy Coles' diary and Balls, Parties, Banquets and Diptheria in Quebec 1864

2011-10-24T00:32:00.008-04:00

This is a continuation of Mercy Coles' diary from the Quebec Conference of October 1864. Mercy was 26, unmarried and the daughter of George Coles of PEI, one of the Fathers of Confederation. The unmarried daughters and sisters went along to Quebec as well as the wives of the delegates. Mercy wrote of the parties and balls and of the sights and other 'goings -on'.

“Monday Afternoon – 17^th

Home all alone. I have not been able to leave my bedroom since Friday [October 14, 1864]. Just as I was going to get ready for the Ball I went to comb Mamma’s hair and nearly fainted. She made me lie down. I got so nervous and excited that I [unclear] crying. Papa went off for Dr. Tupper, he came up directly. He wrote some prescriptions and sent them off to have some medicine made up for me, he saw I had a very sore throat and was very feverish, of course going to the Ball was out of the question so I very soon undressed and got into bed. ... They [her mother and father] did not start until nearly 11 o’clock and were home by 2. Dr. Tupper came in again when he came home. He saw I was very ill indeed. All day Saturday I never raised my head from the pillow, only to take the medicine or gargle my throat. Yesterday morning it broke, it still remains very sore. The Doctor has just been here and he says I shall be quite well in a few days. I hope so for there are two or three Balls and parties this week, one ‘at Home’ at Government House on Friday night and a party at Mde. Tessiers [Lady of the Speaker of the Legislature] on Wednesday. Papa and Mamma have gone out to make some visits. Mr. Crowthers has just called and left a comic newspaper with his compliments. He, Mr. Drinkwater, and Mr. Bernard call everyday to enquire for me. The Ball [The Governor’s Ball at Government House, also known as Spencer Wood, now Parc du Bois-d-Coulonge] on Friday, October 14] I believe was rather a failure as far as the delegates are concerned. The Quebec People never introduced the ladies nor gentlemen to any partners nor never seen whether they had any supper or not [emphasis mine]. The Col Grays [Col John Hamilton Gray, Premier of PEI, and John Hamilton Gray, a lawyer and former Premier of New Brunswick.] are both rather indignant at the way their daughters were treated. Miss Gray and Miss Tupper came to see me this morning. They came to the conclusion I had not missed much yet. ...”

Edward Whelan says differently though:

In his The Union of the British Provinces: A brief account of the several conferences held in the Maritime provinces and in Canada, in September and October, 1864, ... online (the book is short, the title though ...) however says “On the evening of the 14^th a very brilliant Ball was given in the Parliament Buildings, under the auspices of the Canadian Ministry. It was attended by the same classes – the same distinguished persons and society as attended the “Drawing Room” on the 11^th. [Remember Mercy thought this was quite tiresome as well.] His Excellency the Governor General [Lord Monck], His Excellency the Lieut. Governor of Nova Scotia and Lady, the Members of the Canadian Government, the Delegates from the Eastern Provinces, and about 800 others, formed a large and most agreeable party, by whom the pleasures of the dance were kept up without interruption and without an incident [?!] to mar the harmony of the occasion, until nearly 3 o’clock on the morning of the 15^th.”

I guess it depends on your perspective, and who you might be trying to impress. Whelan’s book was compiled after the conferences and the speeches were written out by the delegates after the fact.

Re the New Brunswick John Hamilton Gray, I can find no mention him being married, or having a daughter, even in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography On line . As the unmarried daughters and sisters of the delegates went along to well, get to meet the unmarried men of the rest of the country, it’s unfortunate that there is no record of what happened to them, aside from in some family histories perhaps.

It is interesting to think about what happened to these lost “Daughters of Confederation”. I won’t give away quite yet what became of Mercy Coles. If people do know what became of their great great great great(?) aunts and grandmothers who went to Quebec for the confederation conference of October 1864 perhaps they could let me know and I’ll post updates.

There are endless interesting aspects of the conference and the mixing of the social with the political agendas. To read more of the rest of the week to Friday October 21, 1864

“Tuesday Afternoon [October 18]

I am sure I shall know the shape of every shingle on the roof of the old house opposite.” Mercy was quite sick and unable to leave her room aside from a half hour here or there for some days. She kept in touch with what was going on though – seeing the “invitations from the Bachelors of Quebec to a Ball at the Provincial Building on Friday evening. We are also invited to a party tomorrow evening. I hope I shall be able to go.” [But she wasn’t. She was sick with diphtheria and was not really better until Wednesday Oct 26 – and they left Quebec City Thursday Oct 27. The weather can’t have helped.] It’s [Quebec] the most miserable place to live in one can fancy. We have not had one fine day ever since we came. It has been pouring just a few minutes ago. Such dumpy, draggled frail women they have here. I have just seen one go by with a handsome embroidered skirt over a red one. Her white one an inch thick with mud. ...

Wednesday Afternoon

In bed again the whole day. [Her throat was worse and Dr. Tupper ‘opened’ it again – this seems to mean that he cut it open. She had to hold ice in her mouth all night.] ...

Thursday Morning

In bed yet. ... They had a great Ball last night at Mde Tessiers. Papa came home with every stitch of clothes wringing wet with perspiration. He says he never had such a time. The French ladies are the very mischief for flying round. John A and he saw Mde. Duval and her daughter home. ...”

And this – tying it back to the conference goings on, is the day, the night as the delegates met till 10 that evening, that the Islanders voted against the resolution of representation by population ‘rep by pop’, which had already been more or less agreed upon in Charlottetown (from 1867 How the Fathers Made a Deal, p13 - 114). So even though Coles would likely have been upset with Macdonald, and vice versa, they were out together. Why? Because Macdonald was so charming? Because Coles hoped for better? Because - ?

HIstory War II at the Royal Ontario Museum

2011-10-23T16:09:00.000-04:00

Last winter I was obliged to be kinda critical of the trendiness and superficiality that seemed to dominate the "History Wars" debate series at the Royal Ontario Museum -- and had Bliss & Granatstein come after me hammer and tongs in the letters column of Canada's History for my pains. But even last year I reported History Wars had moments that were "lively," "stimulating," and vigorous."

And this year looks stronger. It starts on Tuesday, October 25, with Andrew Coyne and Sheila Copps debating whether Canadian prime ministers have too much power. Again, it's current events that "History" Wars offers us. But Andrew Coyne is one of the only Canadian political thinkers who understands the wisdom of having the parliamentary caucus hold party leaders accountable and if necessary fire and replace them. So there could be a teaching moment there.

I have another engagement, or I could not be kept away. Take a look at this one and the rest of the series.

Imagining Gadhaffi's fate last February

2011-10-22T17:10:00.001-04:00

This is how we imagined it back then.

Amazing, still, that he chose to go down fighting. Determination? Or simply that he never got his act together enough to get himself out while he could?

(Image source: Globe & Mail)

Fenians at Fort York

2011-10-21T17:09:00.000-04:00

Next Monday night in Toronto, Fort York's imaginative Parler Fort lecture series is doing Fenians. Peter Vronsky will be discussing his new book on the 1866 battle of Ridgeway and its consequences for Canada. And David A. Wilson will discuss the newly published second volume of his biography of D'Arcy McGee, assassinated by Fenians in Ottawas in 1868.

Moderating the evening will be: me. It's seven pm at Fort York, refreshments from the Fort York kitchens, book table courtesy of Ben McNally's Books. Come on down.

Paul Litt on John Turner

2011-10-20T10:23:00.001-04:00

I've noted once or twice lately that when you run a history blog, American publishers regularly send you offers of review copies, interview opportunities, and such, even for books that have little relation to the subjects you favour, but that Canadian publishers don't.

So: due notice to UBC Press. Yesterday we received a review copy of Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner, the big new biography of the former Liberal leader by Carleton University's Paul Litt. Entirely unsolicited, and I don't know whose idea it was, but thanks.

Is it the right time for a Turner bio? In a time when many people are predicting the death of the Liberal Party, the career of the leader who brought them to their last confrontation with that fate might be of fresh relevance.

I usually say we do notices more than book reviews here, and mostly don't need an actual copy of the book. But browsing in Litt on Turner, I'm intrigued, and may get back when I've read more .

Dan Francis on Selling Canada

2011-10-18T09:35:00.001-04:00

We're faster than the internet today. Yesterday's mail brought me a copy of Selling Canada, Daniel Francis's new book on "Three Propaganda Campaigns that Shaped the Nation." I'm impressed to see it's not yet up on the handsome webpage of the book's publisher, Stanton Atkins & Dosil of Vancouver, so it feels like we are running at promotional lightspeed here.

Dan Francis (whom, full disclosure, I have known for years) is someone to be proud of. Among "popular historians" and freelance writers on Canadian history, he's the one who most regularly takes a radical or critical stance. His most recent previous book, Seeing Reds, analyzed the suppression and delegitimization of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and earlier ones like National Dreams and The Imaginary Indian remain influential critiques of national "master narratives." This new book is a gorgeous book of remarkable images, seemingly designed for browsing and holiday giving, and yet its theme is that we Canadians are hapless dupes whose ideas about the country are mostly the product of a manipulative conspiracy by government, corporations, and public relations consultants.

The ideal version of the country was flattering to Canadians but it was a false basis on which to build a national identity.... By creating a sense of the country that was misleading and exclusive, these advertising efforts saddled Canada with a set of stereotypes that survive to this day.

I'm not entirely bought into Dan's argument. I probably take a more robust and maybe optimistic view of citizenship. I'm not convinced that, for instance, Canadians who supported the First World War did so because of the media campaign Dan explores in this book. But I'm damn glad that even our coffee-table books can challenge us with disquieting invitations to rethink national history, and that we still have public intellectuals and commercial publishers prospering in that good work.

Update, October 23: Dan Francis checks in to point out, quite rightly, that "hapless dupes" and "manipulative conspiracy" are not his words.

Women's History Month

2011-10-16T12:45:00.000-04:00

Merna Foster sends a note:

Hi Christopher, it’s time to celebrate Women’s History Month in Canada!

Did you know that Joan Bamford Fletcher, often called the heroine of Sumatra, led a daring rescue of 2,000 prisoners after the Second World War? She commanded a force of machine-gun toting Japanese soldiers in the jungles of Sumatra.
-Did you know that two teenage girls helped save Toronto when it was being threatened by armed rebels during the 1837 Rebellion?
-Did you know that Dr. Leone Farrell developed the innovative laboratory technique that enabled mass production of the polio vaccine – without which there could have been no way to develop enough of the vaccine for testing?
- Did you know that the woman behind the creation of the Alpine Club of Canada never climbed a mountain?
-Did you know that the first chief commissioner of the Girl Guides of Canada was Lady Pellatt (of Casa Loma)? She was so dedicated to the movement that she was buried in her Girl Guide uniform.
-Did you now that Fern Blodgett was the first Canadian woman to become a wireless radio operator, and the first to serve at sea with the merchant marines during the Second World War? Since females were forbidden from serving on Canadian ships, she landed a job on a Norwegian Merchant Navy vessel. It made 98 crossings of the Atlantic during the war, most of them with Fern in charge of radio communications.
- Did you know that the woman who spearheaded the building of Canada’s first mosque was Hilwie Hamdon? The Al Rashid Mosque opened its doors in Edmonton in 1938.

More in my latest book – 100 More Canadian Heroines: Famous and Forgotten Faces.
http://www.heroines.ca/about/100morecanadianheroines.html
Merna Forster
http://www.facebook.com/MernaForsterAuthor

Um, I'd have to say no to all seven, Merna.

Mercy Coles' Diary of the Quebec Conference Sat Oct 8, 1864 to Fri Oct 14, 1864

2011-10-15T16:54:00.004-04:00

More from Mercy Coles' diary, daughter of PEI delegate George Coles, at the Quebec conference – where the 72 resolutions of the BNA Act were determined.

“Friday morning [Friday October 14, 1864]

Raining again. Will it ever be fine? Sala [George Augusta Sala, British journalist – “His literary style, highly coloured, bombastic, egotistic, and full of turgid periphrases, gradually became associated by the public with their conception of the Daily Telegraph; and though the butt of the more scholarly literary world, his articles were invariably full of interesting matter and helped to make the reputation of the paper.” – from Wikipedia – but I haven’t found much else on Sala, and this link has his picture] dined with us last night. I was rather disappointed in the man, a rough new faced Englishman. Black eyes and hair and such a red nose and face. Mr. Brown sat alongside of him and introduced him to me. I had a sore throat this morning. Col Gray has given me some Homeopathic medicine. ... The Governor’s Ball is to come off tonight. They say it’s going to be such a crush. Mother and I went for a walk on Durham Terrace. While there a large piece of rock fell. When the men came in they said a baby was killed.”

-- And picking up from where we left off last Fri Oct 7, 2011 --

“Saturday Afternoon Quebec [October 8, 1864, written on the Sunday it would appear]

... How can I describe my first impression of Quebec. It was pouring rain when we landed. We were shut up in a little cab, Ma, Miss Fisher and myself. I was in dread the whole time the horse would fall down. ... [Now Sunday] We have been for a drive around Spencer Wood. It is a very pretty road. You see the valley below with the River St. Charles winding along. We saw Wolfe’s Monument on the Plains of Abraham and a monument to the brave who fell at the taking of Quebec, we did not go into the Cemetery as they do not admit carriages on Sunday and the snow was on the trees so thick it would not have been pleasant. ... The steamer [the Queen Victoria that the Canadians sent for the Maritime delegates] has not yet arrived with the rest of the party but they expect them today. Major Bernard tells me we are to have good times. There is to be a reception on Tuesday and a Public Ball on Friday. The first word almost he said was,
“I hope you brought the irresistible blue silk.” I am very glad I brought the lace. ... Mr. Galt, Mr. Carter, Mr. Cameron and a lot of other gentlemen were here at the same time. Mr. Galt gave me such a warm welcome to Canada.

Monday Morning [Oct 10 1864] – the steamer arrived last night with the rest of the delegates. Such a Babel when they came in. Miss Grey, Mrs. and Miss Tupper, Mrs and Miss Archibald are the ladies. [Other writing of going shopping, buying an opera cloak for 8 ½ dollars, sightseeing – the Seminary Chapel, Province House, the library ‘nothing very wonderful’, of who was invited to Government House for dinner – and why was Mrs. Pope not invited first?] ... Mr. Drinkwater has promised to get me a bouquet for tomorrow night. It will be rather a stupid affair tomorrow night, so they say (emphasis mine).

[And it does sound like a long affair – 800 people were presented one by one and Mercy writes of being very tired. She spent most of the evening walking about with Mr. Tilley.]

Thursday morning [Oct 13 1864]

Yesterday we went to see the falls of Lorette and the Indian Chief. It was raining and we could not walk down the gorge ... We went to the Indian Chief’s house. Not at all what I expected to see, the only sign of it being Indian was a Tomahawk and Chief’s cap which they showed us. I bought a wooden spoon to take home as a curiosity. The Old Chief is the last of the Huron Tribe. His wife, an old woman 90 years of age was sitting alongside of him, he has 2 silver armlets presented by George lV and a medal by the Prince of Wales. In the evening we dined at Government House ... Before dinner was half over he [D’Arcy McGee] got so drunk he was obliged to leave the table. I took no notice of him. Mr. Gray said I acted admirably. The sun has not shone for two hours ever since we have been here. I was never in such a place.”

(Note I used Mercy Coles' diary when writing my novel, To the Edge of the Sea, set during Confederation.You can see my comments on how I used her diary in writing the novel)

A short history of rep by pop

2011-10-14T10:10:00.000-04:00

Fears of a Quebec backlash have delayed the Harper government’s plan to give the growing parts of Canada a larger share of seats in the House of Commons.

As a result, the changes the Tories promised in the spring campaign may not be in place in time for the 2015 election, leaving millions of voters once againunderrepresented in Parliament.

(-- from the Globe & Mail today)
Meanwhile (same source):

A report from the Mowat Centre, an Ontario-issues think tank, is proposing that legislation should guarantee that Quebec’s representation in the House of Commons never falls below what its population warrants [... in order to ] reflect “Quebec’s unique place in the federation”.

And meanwhile, from the constitution:

The basis of representation in the House of Commons shall be population, as determined by the official census every ten years.

It was established in 1864 that Quebec's representation in the House had nothing to do with its" unique place in the federation." Quebec got the same representation as every other part of the country: what its population warrants.
And the constitutional obligation of the government is to allocate seats in the House according to what the census shows, not to gerrymander representation according to its calculations of political advantage.
It's worth repeating: what protects Quebec's unique situation is federalism. The vital determinates of Quebec's distinctiveness are matters of provincial responsibility, not dependent on what the House of Commons decides. The province of Quebec runs its own hospitals, schools, cultural institutions, judicial institutions because of federalism, not because of the number of MPs it has in the House of Commons.
Quebec was already hugely outnumbered in the House of Commons in 1867. If its survival had depended on representation, it could never have assented to confederation in the first place.
It's no different now.

Ottawa Archives Presents: Jack Ray's Midway Marvels! With the Help of the North American Carnival Museum and Archives!

2011-10-13T10:49:00.000-04:00

The carnival is in town! A special exhibition on Jack Ray at the City of Ottawa Archives presented by the North American Carnival Museum and Archive (NACMA) opened earlier this week, highlighting Jack Ray's art deco designs and midway plans from the 1930s. Jack Ray, a British-born Canadian became famous for his grand stage sets and unique amusement park designs. The exhibit will be open from October 11th until November 19th. A virtual exhibit is also available online called Jack Ray: Selling Glamour and Illusion.

The North American Carnival Museum and Archive, located in Stittsville, Ontario, is a self described 'diamond in the rough'. Last summer before the Ottawa Ex was closed I was fortunate enough to see one of the beautiful and rich carnival exhibits put on by NACMA. They are truly a beautiful diamond here in Canada preserving a history of the weird, wacky and exciting world of the midway culture and you can find out more about the museum and their work at NACMA.org.

The Literary Review of Canada needs you

2011-10-13T09:39:00.000-04:00

The Literary Review of Canada goes from strength to strength -- see some samples here.

Last night I went out in the rain to attend the latest of its "Big Ideas" public discussion, this one featuring former clerk of the Privy Council Alex Himelfarb arguing that somebody needs to stand up in defence of taxation, because the crusade for tax-cutting that has dominated the last few decades has brought none of the promised benefits, while increasing inequality, reducing the quality and fairness of public services, and creating unfairness, discontent and disaffection. The text will be in the Globe & Mail this weekend, apparently. It was an impressive event -- though maybe delivered to an audience that already believed -- and typical of a lot of good things the LRC does.

In its twentieth year the magazine has become a notable success... except in circulation, apparently. If you think good magazines are a good thing, don't just browse the website. Subscribe.

Prize Watch: Cundill Prize (no, I'm not on this list)

2011-10-13T09:29:00.000-04:00

The Cundill Prize, the megabucks international history prize administered by McGill University, seems to be finding its feet. Covering all the histories written in the world (well, in English anyway) must be near-impossible, but this year's look like an impressive list. This year includes a couple of books of some Canadian interest -- The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor and Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff -- plus Timothy Snyder's holocaust studies tour de force Bloodlands, and lesser known but still intriguing titles on Italian sainthood, Haitian slavery, and Renaissance identities. History is a big room. Full list here.

I actually read last year's Cundill winner, Diamaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, and it was a worthy winner. If you feel the need to engage with a terrific historian really on top of a big subject, you could do worse.

Prize watch: muffins and bagels!

2011-10-11T14:15:00.001-04:00

Governor General's Award nominations were announced this morning. I was about to mention one or two histories in the non-fiction shortlist...

... until I learned my From Then To Now is shortlisted in the Children's Literature category.

Maybe you recall the scene from West Wing when Josh Lyman, having achieved some minor triumphs, stalks the corridors proclaiming, "Bring us the finest bagels and muffins in the land!" Yes.

Meanwhile, the non-fiction nominees are:

Nathan M. Greenfield for The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45
Richard Gwyn for Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867-1891,
Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life & Times,
Andrew Nikiforuk, Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America’s Great Forests,
J.J. Lee, The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit

Nikiforuk is a past winner, Foran was nominated in the past, and previous books by Greenfield, a journalist when he's not writing history have been highly praised. Lee's book is a memoir.

Update, October 12: In the non-fiction community, the main reaction to this list has been complaint that all five nominated books are written by men, chosen by a jury of two men and a woman. Not a breath of that in the mainstream media, however.

Refighting 1812

2011-10-10T09:17:00.001-04:00

Publicity wizard David McCaughna of WNED in Buffalo has been urging me to remind you of the PBS premiere of "The War of 1812" tonight. Happy to oblige, Dave.

Meanwhile a little war over the War of 1812 has broken out among the columnists and letter-writers at The Globe & Mail. Jeffrey Simpson argues the whole war is simply too dumb to be remembered at all, and sees nasty political scheming by the Harperians behind it all. But Washington correspondent Konrad Yakabuski, without actually mentioning Simpson, bemoans collective amnesia and declares.

the bicentennial of the War of 1812 is an appropriate time to reflect, collectively, proudly, on why our forebears clung to their desire for an independent nation to the north of the United States.

In the letters column, Chris Champion gets a nice shot in, too, asking if dumb wars should be forgotten, why we still have Remembrance Day on November 11. Update, Oct 13: Champion's National Post essay on the same theme here.

Happy Thanksgiving. One day all our wars will be two hundred years in the past.

Diarist Mercy Coles and the Quebec Conference of October 1864

2011-10-07T15:44:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, October 5^th, 1864 through to Saturday Oct 8^th, 1864

Mercy Coles was the attractive and smart 26 year old unmarried daughter of George Coles, [Father of Confederation from Prince Edward Island], who kept a diary of the events and her travels to the Quebec conference in October 1864. She is one of the few people that wrote of the events at the time and certainly one of the few women. Her unpublished diary can be found in the National Archives of Canada. At the Quebec conference the delegates created the 72 resolutions that basically make up the BNA Act (British North America Act) that forms our constitution today.

A small group of Islanders left PEI on October 5^th to go to Quebec. [The majority of Maritimers came by the Canadians steamship the Queen Victoria a week later.] From Mercy Coles’ diary:

Wednesday 5^th October /64

“Left Charlottetown at 3 am. Arrived at Shediac [New Brunswick] at half past [not clear - 12?]. I was very ill it was so rough. Monk came off in a small boat and was taken on board off Summerside. Found a special train waiting for us at Shediac, arrived at St. John at 1/2 past six. Mr. Tilley [Premier of N B, Samuel Leonard Tilley] and Mr. Steeves at the Hotel to receive us ...

[Tilley is the one who made that railway between Shediac and St. John happen – there is way too much on that to put here! Tilley is also the one who suggested the name ‘The Dominion of Canada’, vs. something like ‘Kingdom’.]

]

Thursday – We had a walk before breakfast and came on board New Brunswick. I am going to share a stateroom with Miss Alexander [the sister of Thomas Haviland], arrived at Eastport at 12, went on shore and dined, left at 1 for Portland [Maine].

Friday morning. Portland Public House. We arrived here this morning after being 24 hours on board the New Brunswick. I went to bed at 6 and just got up in time this morning [she doesn’t say why – maybe anticipating or being seasick again?]. We had an awful stormy night. We leave here in the Grand Trunk Railroad at one o’clock ... [So 24 hrs travelling down the Bay of Fundy from St. John to Portland. So far I can’t find any current info on a ferry or boat trip for that journey – just the 3 hr from St. John across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, Nova Scotia. By land it is 478 km, 5hrs 23 mins driving.]

Saturday, 8^th We arrived at Island Pond last night at half past 9. We got up this morning at half past 4 .... We passed some beautiful scenery yesterday coming through New Hampshire, it was too dark to see the White Mountains. Mr. Tilley helped me admire it. It is rather a joke, he is the only beau of the party and with 5 single ladies he has something to do to keep them all in good humour. [emphasis mine – the funny thing there is Tilley is a widower of 2 ½ years, 7 children, 5 of them still young and he was 46 yrs old – and known for his good head and grasp of finances, not necessarily his charms – but maybe that is what we don’t know of him and that Mercy’s writing exposes to us?]

For more on Tilley

The Bilson Prize: When does history start?

2011-10-05T14:17:00.001-04:00

The Bilson Prize for Historical Fiction for Children, founded and first endowed by the late history professor 9and novelist) Geoffrey Bilson of Saskatchewan, was presented last night at the Children's Book Gala in Toronto. It's one of my favourite book-gala events, partly because 1) it's at the tres swish Carlu, and 2) everybody goes around saying gleefully, "We're kid's writers. What are we doing at the Carlu?" Also because they invite me, just because I was a juror a few years ago.

After a chat with some writers about who has the most iniquitous contracting practices, the CBC or Rogers Communications? (Answer: The CBC, because it should be better and still acts that way.), we all joined the presentations. Valerie Sherrard won the Bilson for The Glory Wind. Accepting the prize, she said that when they told her about the nomination, she said "Historical novel? But it's only set about ten years before I was born.... Oh."

Goodreads on the book here.

History of Federalism

2011-10-03T11:12:00.001-04:00

The litigation over Insite, the Vancouver safe drug injection site that operated under license from the BC Ministry of Health and that the federal government wished to deny its exemption from criminal prosecution, seemed like an old-fashioned federalism struggle. Which took precedence, the privincial power over health and hospitals, or the federal power over criminal prosecution?

Wel, the Supreme Court said Insite can stay open despite the feds' urgent desire to shut it down. That looks like a victory for provincial rights, no? Paul Wells argues no, no really. He argues the ruling does allow Insite to survive on the specific facts of its situation, but does not establish a freedom for any province to establish any safe drug injection site whenever it wishes and regardless of federal opposition. And he cannot resist linking to the journalists and commentators he thinks are dead wrong on this point.

From HistoryWire to TCEBlog

2011-09-30T14:33:00.000-04:00

There used to be a CanHist blog called History Wire, with a mixed group of contributors somewhat associated with the Canadian Encylopedia and the Historica-Dominion Institute. It used to mix substantial Canadian history pieces, HDI promotional pieces, and odd personal rants and prejudices. One never quite knew what to expect.

'Tseems HistoryWire is no more. In its place, as of June 30 (at least that's the earliest post found) there is TCE Blog, the blog of The Canadian Encyclopedia. At a glance it seems to have a strengthened list of contributors, a clearer purpose, and a more ambitious posting schedule. Notable right now is a series of excerpts from publisher Doug Gibson's about-to-be-published memoir of the Canadian authors he worked with, Stories about Storytellers.

CBC to historians: Drop Dead

2011-09-28T09:03:00.001-04:00

CBC Radio's Canada Reads contest has always been Canada Reads (Fiction). You could ~~nominate~~ recommend anything you liked to read, but if it was not a novel, they would not allow it in.

This year Canada Reads is looking at literary non-fiction -- but they are being as controlling as ever. Only non-fiction that, in their view, doesn't really read like non-fiction is likely to be allowed:

We want stories. Books that are page-turners with captivating narratives, memorable characters and vivid prose. Books so riveting you forget they are non-fiction. Books that introduce readers to a brand new world and bring them wholly into it. While we love the work that Canadian essayists, academics, chefs, decorators and self-help gurus do, those books aren't quite right. We want the final five to have stories that captivate the country. [emphasis added]

Elsewhere on the site they cite Margaret McMillan as a model, but last we looked she was a bona fide academic. An essayist too, maybe. Not quite the CBC's cup of tea, one might think.

Beneath the tone-deaf illiteracy -- don't they know anything about the non-fiction genre? -- is the complacent arrogance of functionaries down inside the national radio monopoly. Why cannot Canadians read what they want to read -- and say so out loud, even on the radio?

Go ahead. ~~Nominate~~ recommend some history for Canada Reads. See what they do with it. Send me a copy of your choices (cmed@sympatico.ca) and I'll note them here.

2011-09-28T01:12:00.000-04:00

Expo '67 officially opened 5 months ago today - in 1967, and will close in one month and one day on October 29, 1967. Today marked the 43rd millionth visitor and they'd been hoping for 35 million visitors. To keep this in perspective, Canada's population was 20,500,000 in 1967.

Things got a bit slowed down by the Montreal Transit strike that started this week. Listen for the - Mao poetry to Expo passports on CBC radio's daily report on Expo "Expodition".

Here listen to Expo's Gates Open to the World (clip 5) for interviews with people who'd waited in line all night to get into Expo with a countdown to 9:30 am when the gates opened to the public on April 28, 1967.

The Western Pavilion, (for Manitoba, Saskatchewan - where I live now, Alberta and British Columbia)which sounds like it was a welcome relief from the 'jungle of steel' was written up the very first day of Expo in the Ottawa Journal. What I especially remember of the Western Pavilion was the day they had flapjacks on tap.
Nary a flapjack since.

This month in Canada's History

2011-09-27T11:36:00.000-04:00

Amundsen's Inuit family, oral history, Hungarian refugee immigrants, a black Civil War veteran in Hamilton, Ontario, letters about Terry Fox -- this month's Canada's History is eclectic as ever, and never more vividly illustrated. The cover story features excerpts from the mag's new book: 100 Days That Changed Canada. just hitting bookstores around now

My own column this issue continues the magazine's ongoing participation in the Parks Canada centennial, and I get to ponder the changing ambitions of my old employer through its first century.

Ain't you subscribing yet?

Whose War of 1812?

2011-09-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

Active History and the Canadian Historical Association seek participants for a seminar on the War next June at the CHA meetings in Kitchener-Waterloo.

How did regional, cultural and linguistic differences affect experiences of the war and did they reinforce or conflict with so-called “national” narratives centred on nation building? Can we, in fact, speak of “The War of 1812”

Meanwhile columnist Rick Salutin argues that official commemorations are sure to be shaped by current politics as:

the Harper people try to reframe 1812 as part of a march toward sheer harmony with the U.S.

Prize Watch: the Writers' Trust Pize

2011-09-23T09:44:00.001-04:00

The Writers' Trust prize (now renamed and repriced as the Weston after a large commitment by Hilary Weston) has one history and one biography on its shortlist:

Mordecai: The Life and Times, Charles Foran (Knopf Canada)
Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-planting Tribe, Charlotte Gill (Greystone Books)
Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867–1891, Richard Gwyn (Random House Canada)
Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound, Grant Lawrence (Harbour Publishing)
Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live, Ray Robertson (Biblioasis)

Ottawa International Writers Festival (Get your Tickets Now)

2011-09-21T19:36:00.002-04:00

As the fall fast approaches, so does the ever anticipated International Writers Festival here in Ottawa. With tickets on sale now, I write this in reminder it is best to get your tickets ASAP. One notable event which I recommend to any history lover is the non-fiction Roundtable, October 25th at 6:30pm, headlining some of the best non-fiction writers in the capital, including Tim Cook, Charlotte Gray, Roy MacGregor, Lawrence Martin and Eric Enno Tamm. It is a wonderful festival with events scheduled from now until October 25th. To get your tickets or to learn more about the festival, please visit www. writersfestival.org.

New (to me) CanHist blog...

2011-09-21T09:08:00.000-04:00

.. is Plaid Canoe.Always glad to find another one.

John Cabot punch-up

2011-09-20T08:36:00.002-04:00

Reviewer-author exchanges have a long history, but nowaways they go on virtually in real time. On Saturday the Spanish historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, in a Wall Street Journal review, lit into a quartet of books on Christopher Columbus and other early explorers, including one by the Canadian writer Douglas Hunter, whose recent God's Mercies and Half Moon were widely noted and honoured. Within a few hours Hunter had responded with a riposte on his website, defending his credentials and the research behind his new work on Columbus and Cabot.

Readers could decide for themselves about the errors in each other's work alleged by Fernandez-Armesto and Hunter -- except that Hunter's book The Race to the New World is not yet published in Canada. It's coming from Douglas & McIntyre next spring, although it is out elsewhere this fall. The exchange has preceded the book itself. Is this a metaphor for the disconnect between the print speed of books and the electronic speed of commentary?

One of Fernandez-Armesto's claims certainly rang false to me:

Academic historians tend to welcome recruits from other ranks, like owls nurturing cuckoos, and applaud the intrusions of neophytes with a glee that physicians, say, would never show for faith-healers or snake-oil salesmen.

Physicians and snake-oil salesmen have nothing on the toxic brew of condescension and envy with which trade historians and academic historians tend to regard each other.

Samara on parliamentary disfunction

2011-09-19T09:23:00.001-04:00

Parliament reconvenes in Ottawa today, and the Samara Foundation has just released the fourth of its research reports on parliamentary disfunction based on "exit interviews" with outgoing members of Parliament. They make depressing reading. The MPs fulminate about the uselessness, impotence, and frustration they felt. Well, so far so good. But the solutions they seek and that the report recommends betray an almost total inability to grasp where the problems lie and how to seek solutions.

The MPs suggested incoming MPs avoid getting caught up in the so-called “Ottawa bubble.” Critical of the ways politics are practiced, they remembered their best work as happening around the edges of political life.

Yeah, that's really going to help fix Parliament.

MPs frequently said the heart of the problem was:

the uneasy relationship between the MPs and the management of their political parties .... MPs consistently pointed to their parties’ management practices, and the incentives and punishments the parties put in place, as significant obstacles to advancing the “real work” of Parliament.

Now we are getting somewhere. But Samara's authors declare in response, not that recalibrating the relationship between caucus members and party leaders is the solution, but that we should look outside parliament:

Political parties are organizations made up of citizens. Reforming them, therefore, requires citizen participation.

That is, Samara and the MPs agree that the problem is in parliament but we should go seeking the solution among the citizenry in general. That's a recipe for failure. The problem, as they clearly show, lie in the relationship between weakened MPs and overbearing party appartchiks. The solution -- the one solution neither the MPs nor Samara will even contemplate -- lies in a reassertion of the authority of MPs, the elected representatives of the people, against the extra-parliamentary leadership of the parties.

(Warning to serious readers: Samara's website sets up its reports in that maddeningly hip anti-intellectual online fashion. You cannot skim or search or speed-read. You are oblige to click endlessly to load each successive page, and if you try to move fast, the site will probably freeze.)

Why to do economic history, young scholar

2011-09-19T09:20:00.004-04:00

Economic Principals argues that economic historians -- seen as old-fashioned, traditional, on the sidelines -- did much better than economic theorists -- quantitative, authoritative, influential -- when it came to analyzing the economic crisis of 2008 and how to deal with its consequences:

Why does economic history get such short shrift from the profession – in undergraduate and graduate education, in policymaking and public debate? What are the chances that the relationship will shift a little, in the historians’ favor, now that the importance of their craft has been demonstrated by the way it which the argument from history trumped theory?

EP doesn't say that economic history is about as unfashionable in history departments as anywhere else, but I suspect it's true.

Update: Andrew Smith's blog makes a similar analysis to EP's, apparently quite independently