History of Ontario and of elections

The quick, early, provincial election called by Ontario Premier Ford wraps up this coming Thursday.  I don't think I have ever experienced a general election with so little engagement, so little sense of the public paying attention, and so little change in the polls.  All just as the governing party planned. The half metre of snow we have had in the past week must have the strategists thinking they have successfully rigged even the weather.

But if you do care to follow the issues at stake in Ontario, a good source is The Local, a shoestring digital-only newspaper available by free subscription (and always seeking your patronage).  The other day it put out a special election number  (funded, it says, by a lot of friends of the paper throwing in the $200 "taxpayer rebate" cheques Ontarians are receiving from the government (sometimes arriving on the same day as their voters' card.)  Here's the free link: 7 Years of Doug Ford | The Local. 

I wonder if representative government is just fading away, given the dominance everywhere of showman, performers, charlatans, and celebrities.  However, I'll get out to the polls on Thursday, voting who seems best placed against Ford's sockpuppet in our constituency.  Medical system in near collapse, education shattered, housing starts worst of any province in the country, unemployment up throughout Ford's term, cronyism and special dealing everywhere. Hope you vote too, if you are in Ontario.   

History of really bad ideas

I have been shocked, shocked, recently to see questions being asked about why King Charles has not weighed in to defend Canada against the Trumpazoid threats and insults.  The Toronto Star columnist Rosie Dimanno was recently demanding he save us.  And the usually sound Ottawa journalist Dale Smith declared it was not yet time for his intervention (and the government would have to ask him first), but it might be needed soon.

Surely any time sooner than never would be too soon. Involving the British King would only confirm American illusions about the colonial status of Canada and our "need" to be given American "freedom."  Whatever we do, we need to do this ourselves.  

We did not import any British hockey stars last night, did we?

I have no desire to change our structure of government, not much anyway. But the royal family... is foreign. Full stop. The aristocracy with the king at its centre, is part and parcel of British society and culture; the titled elite still owns half the land of Britain, is still prominent in society, business, the arts, and much else. The king and royal family make sense in that context, but in any other context. 

Nothing is more alien to Canada, nothing is more foreign. It just doesn't work here. The "Crown," meaning abstractly the federal or provincial state (as in Crown land, Crown prosecutor, Crown corporation), works well enough in Canadian parlance. But the Crowns federal and provincial are ours, are us. This gent over in Buck House.... no, just no.

History of SubStack

There are about 25 Christopher or Chris Moore SubStacks.  As far as I know none of them is mine. But recently I got an email from Substack reporting that a good friend of mine had subscribed to my SubStack.  

I asked the friend and he says he did indeed subscribe assuming it was my SubStack he would have access to, but now he thinks perhaps it isn't. But SubStack seems to have associate my email with something in order to congratulate me on my new subscriber.  Anyway, I repeat, as far as I am concerned I do not have a SubStack. 

SubStack may feel differently. If you understand what is going on here, your social media expertise would be welcomed.    

Thomas Naylor 1945-2025 RIP: economic historian

I think of R. Thomas Naylor, longtime McGill history professor who died the other day, as one of a brotherhood (mostly guys, I think) who emerged from the 'sixties to build an influential network of new left/old left/Marxist/radical historians and to enliven the Canadian historical scene for a long time with their untraditional academic styles and their challenges to the standard narratives of Canadian history.

His obit says proudly:

His analyses irked some colleagues while others lionized Tom as a direct intellectual descendant of Harold Innis. Such responses neither deterred nor encouraged him. As Tom told a McGill News interviewer in 2014, "I don't think I set out to disturb things. I think things deserve to be disturbed."

Naylor was a prolific author on many aspects of economic, financial, and business history. His best-known book may have been his two-volume History of Canadian Business from 1975.

BTW, the brotherhood endures. Bryan D. Palmer is speaking in Calgary in a few days about his new two-volume history of Canada, Colonialism and Capitalism.

Canadian Encyclopedia expands its Macdonald/Indigenous content.

Following the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the Canadian Encyclopedia is the latest standard reference work to reflect on and revise its coverage of John A. Macdonald and indigenous relations as part of the general rethinking of Macdonald that has been taking place in Canadian life and letters..  

TCE has acted cautiously. At the end of January it posted two "editorials," one an essay by Sean Carleton and Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, entitled "John A Macdonald was no Friend to Indigenous Peoples" and the other "A Few Facts Everyone Should Know about Sir John A Macdonald" by Greg Piasetzki. (The sir/no sir usage alone is indicative of the mindsets behind each.) 

I can accept this both-sidesing of the question, though surely an encyclopedia usually canvasses the best sources and makes up its mind, doesn't it? Let there be debate as we move toward a new historiography as part of the slow process called Reconciliation, and I am confident which viewpoint will have the strongest arguments and ultimately the most credibility. The Carleton/Sinclair text seems likely to become the received standard before long, anyway.

Carleton and Niigaanwewidam are both professors at the University of Manitoba. Carleton's doctorate is in history, Niigaanwewidam's in Literature, and both are prolific writers and activists on indigenous and reconcilation matters widely published on matters of public policy, history, and indigenous rights and titles.  

Piasetzki is a private practice lawyer in Toronto, whose public statements seem to have mostly been defences of Macdonald and and anti-woke declarations.  

I was fact-checking Piasetzki's "A Few Facts" by the second paragraph. ("He is widely considered to have written a majority of the terms of Confederation." suggests the low standard of what is "widely considered" about the drafting of confederation, but it is surely not a fact.)  

But read both essays and see which seems more credible and substantial to you.

Flying the flag since ... well, years ago, anyway

 

Fun to watch all the enthusiasm for flying the flag these days

Book Notes: Milligan, Averting the Digital Dark Age

In early 1996, the web was ephemeral. But by 2001, the internet was forever. How did websites transform from having a brief life to becoming long-lasting? Drawing on archival material from the Internet Archive and exclusive interviews, Ian Milligan's Averting the Digital Dark Age explores how Western society evolved from fearing a digital dark age to building the robust digital memory we rely on today.  [from the publisher's notice]

Ian Milligan at the University of Waterloo is the historian, and maybe the philosopher, of digital. If you wonder how the hell historians will ever be able to examine and find what matters in the limitless ocean of digitized source material that will survive from the 21st century, well, he's been thinking about it. 

His new book, Averting the Digital Dark Age How Archivists, Librarians, and Technologists Built the Web a Memory explores, well, just what the title says: how all that material came to be preserved in the first place.

 

Book Notes: ripping Pierre Poilievre

No cover image yet!

The Bibliophile from Biblioasis Publishing reports on how its new biography of Pierre Poilievre, called The Ripper, came about. Gradually, and then suddenly, reports publisher Dan Wells.

Partly it's that Andrew Lawton's recent biography of Poilievre "seems to border on hagiography." Not this one. The title comes from the idea that politics today is about "rippers and weavers," and that Pierre Poilievre, "the angriest man on the political stage, constantly flinging rage" is emphatically among the rippers.

Biblioasis's author is Mark Bourrie, author of the histories Bushrunner and Crosses in the Sky, but also a journalist and a lawyer very much at home in the Ottawa political world. Bourrie may be a bit of a ripper himself -- I've been amazed by the venom he can direct against reviewers who don't treat his books with unrelenting praise. He's likely to be unsparing on Pierre Poilievre.

The Ripper should be in bookstores in March. Bourrie and Wells first discussed a book last spring. Bourrie delivered a manuscript in December, and with the Christmas turmoil in Canadian politics and the election date moving up from fall of 2024 to sometime in the spring, Biblioasis sped up its processes to have books into bookstores by the end of March.  

The book could be newsy then.  Good thing we have some fast-on-their-feet Canadian publishers still.

When they came for the archivist

 (from Bluesky)

Denis Smith RIP (1932-2025), political scientist, writer, hockey star

I have not seen a published obit, but the death of political scientist and author Denis Smith is noted on the Puckstricken Instagram account of his son Stephen Smith (who produces the Puckstruck blog about the history of Canadian hockey).

Obituary now up. at the Globe and Mail.

Denis Smith, who taught for a long time at Trent University (and later at Western) was one Canadian political scientist with an interest in Canadian history, and the author of a book about the 1970 October crisis, one on Canadian foreign relations, and perhaps best known, Rogue Tory, his biography of John Diefenbaker. While a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in the 1950s he played for Oxford's hockey team (!) in international competitions.

We never met, but we corresponded a bit. He shared my view (or I his) that the leadership selection processes favoured by the Canadian political parties (i.e., reducing to spectators the MPs actually elected to represent the Canadian people) is the best and highest support of prime ministerial autocracy ever created, and needs to be done away with. Given the profound resistance to that idea among political scientists and historians (let alone politicians), we used to cheer each other on from time to time. 

Book Notes: David Thompson at the Champlain Society

Members of the Champlain Society have been receiving their annual members' book for 2024 recently. Or at least I did. (Actually, I thought my membership had lapsed, but evidently there has been a lapse in record-keeping at one end or the other, presumably at mine.) 

The essence of the Champlain Society for over a century has been that by having a membership you assist in the publication of edited volumes of essential documentary collections from Canadian history. In exchange you get a copy of the new volume each year. Nowadays they do various other things too, as documented on their website. Notable: the Witness to Yesterday podcast, which must do more interviews on historians of Canada and their new books than everybody else combined.

Anyway, this year's members' book is a big one. Even physically big: two big hardcovers in a boxed set. But significance-big as well. In 19th century Canadian literature as well as in exploration history, David Thompson's Travels and other writings have been reckoned as essential reading. And since I've never done much more than dip into them for an anecdote or two, I may actually read widely in this year's volume (not always the case, I confess). Here are the blurbs for Volume One, edited and introduced by John Warkentin (geographer and longtime pillar of the society) and William Moreau, and for Volume Two (by Moreau).

Sometimes Society books are published commercially as well.  Not this one I think, but from the links non-members can order individual copies through University of Toronto Press, the publishing partner for all the Society books.

Book notes here on recent and interesting works on Canadian history have been a bit scarce lately.  Got some catching up to, mebbe.

Rules for living (with the USA)

• Remember the 19th century statesman (or maybe it was Machiavelli, or de Gaulle, views differ) who said: Great nations do not have friends, only interests. Applied to Canada-US relations, it might better be phrased, Great nations think they have friends, but first of all they have interests. Events like the tariff threat have happened before in Canadian-American relations and will happen again. 
• Remember the argument that for small nations, "the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their boundaries." (Barrington Moore Jr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 1966.) We can boycott the orange juice but we are not actually going to close the 49th Parallel.
• Remember that the tariff question is very important to us, and somewhat important to the United States. But we and the US could survive a tariff war. The current threat that the US Constitution may not continue to operate in the United States is fundamental, and Gaza and Greenland and the 51st State hoo-hah are not. 

Update February 7:  Not that he got it from me, but Paul Krugman makes the same point in the Substack that has replaced his New York Times column: it's the coup d'etat, not the crazy stuff, that is fundamental:

No, Trump isn’t going to take over Gaza, annex Canada, try to retake the Panama Canal or seize Greenland. But Trump’s bizarre announcements are a feature, not a bug: they distract from the ongoing autogolpe. 

 [Autogolpe: Spanish for self-coup, an elected leader overthrowing the constitution under which they were elected.]