Prize Watch: The CHA Prizes for best books

The Canadian Historical Association is announcing its 2025 prizes, including this list for best scholarly book in Canadian history (in English) published in 2024.

Crystal Gail Fraser, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. University of Manitoba Press, 2024.
Gregory M.W. Kennedy, Lost in the Crowd: Acadian Soldiers of Canada’s First World War. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.
Mark G. McGowan, Finding Molly Johnson: Irish Famine Orphans in Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.
Shannon Stunden Bower, Transforming the Prairies: Agricultural Rehabilitation and Modern Canada. University of British Columbia Press, 2024.
Matthew S. Wiseman, Frontier Science: Northern Canada, Military Research, and the Cold War, 1945-1970. University of Toronto Press, 2024.

Which lets me mention that I have been reading Gregory P. Marchildon's Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada from U of T Press. It's a very big book and I have been proceeding slowly (not for lack of interest!).  I have been learning a great deal even about relatively recent events that I would have thought I was reasonably familiar with. 

So, more to say later.  But the thought had crossed my mind that this might be in the running for a prize like this one. Then -- checks copyright page) -- I find it was published this year, in 2025, so presumably not eligible for this prize this year.

Congratulations to these nominees for their 2024 books, and since I have not looked at any of the books nominated, I have no quibble with the jury's choices at all.

You can also consult the list of the four books up for the CHA's best French-language book here.  I have not read any of these either, though the New France one looks interesting.

Apparently the Congress -- where all the academic societies in the arts and social sciences, like the CHA, get together in a lollapalooza of a gathering every spring -- has been cancelled for 2026.  But that's too insiderish for me to parse.  I liked it better when it was called "the Learneds," anyway. I once had a sweatshirt that said that, with a nice pink rhododendron image. 

Book Notes: Alan Taylor on (North) American Civil Wars

What's so civil about a civil war?  Only that "civil" can mean of or pertaining to citizens or communities of citizens. Hence civil wars are wars within communities, within states.

It's a term the American historian Alan Taylor uses repeatedly and cleverly. In 2010 he published The Civil War of 1812. That's a civil war in his story because many Canadians fought on the American side, New Englanders who opposed the war struggled with western Americans who promoted it, Indigenous nations were pulled into both sides, and groups like the Irish tried to make it an aspect of their own national struggles.  It's probably the best book inspired by the War of 1812 bicentennial, offering a detailed history of the war while constantly alive to local details and discordant themes that rewrite the dominant narrative.

More recently Taylor has published American Civil Wars: A Continental History 1850-1873. It is obviously dominated by the American Civil War (indeed, it's part of a multi-book "continental history of the United States" he has been writing).  But Taylor emphasizes that at this time Mexico was also engaged in a civil war, one that included both American and French invasions, as well as a violent struggle between Mexico's conservative aristocracy and its burgeoning liberal underclass asserting the rights of poorer and even mixed race Mexicans. He is determined to bring in Canada too. There was no war over Canada, so he makes the most of Canada's need to prevent "violent division" between Francophones and Anglophones (plus the American military threat) in order to incorporate the national- building struggle of Canada into the continental story of civil strife in all three societies.

It's all very well done. Taylor is as good at seizing the broad lines and big socio-economic themes as at summarizing campaigns and battles. And he shapes it all with remarkable mini-biographies, like those of Jane McManus and Jane Cannon, two mid-century American women to whom he devotes the opening pages of this book  -- and, later in the story, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. He also takes pleasure at more than one point in pointing out repeated disproofs of the eternal American faith that Canadians are forever begging to be given "freedom" through annexation to the American colossus.

I'm well disposed to his Canadian coverage not only because he footnotes me often enough for some of his vivid details. His spotting of continent-wide themes is valuable and fresh. But really, his Canadian coverage is brief in comparison to the Mexican material, let along the American material. The bulk of his Canadian material draws on the mid-20th century histories of Creighton, Morton, and Careless, plus Richard Gwyn's Nation Maker, a well made book but one that draws most of its interpretative framework from the earlier consensus. 

I can't help but lament the thinness of the Canadian historical work compared to recent American and Mexican materials, which keeps him from giving a richer account of the issues being struggled over here. There just is not that much new political/diplomatic/military scholarship about mid-nineteenth century Canada from which he can draw. His brief notes on indigeneous policies and resistance are perceptive but very brief. On political matters, Macdonald comes out well without being hero-worshipped.   

Out and About with History

Today being the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, lest we forget, I might note that last Monday May 5 I joined a small commemoration of the Liberation of Holland, held at the (previously unknown to me) Dundas Roncesvalles Peace Garden in Toronto. The researchers of They Walked these Streets had identified more than sixty Canadian soldiers and airmen from this west Toronto neighbourhood who died in liberation of the Dutch people, and info about each of them was posted about the garden. The Dutch consulate sent cookies, daffodils blossomed, and tulip seeds were scattered.  

Wednesday I lunched (guest!) at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, where an occasional series of talks on legal history presented Ian Radforth, who told us of his recent University of Toronto book, Deadly Swindle, about 19th century ne'er do well British aristo-trash making a complete hash of killing people for their money and leaving their bodies in Woodstock's Ontario, great swamp. Beware visiting British toffs, Mark Carney! 

Then I got an email from Christopher Dummitt, inviting visits to his new YouTube history channel, provocatively titled "Well, That Didn't Suck" which promises to be "irreverent and in-your-face, very much youth focused" -- a new contribution to quite a bit of work going on in the Canadian video-history space. 

Canadian History -- still not dead yet again.  

The Murdoch case gets its minute in the Heritage Minutes

 

For a while there, it seemed all the Heritage Minutes from Historica were about either war or hockey -- a period that seemed to coincide with the life of the Harper government.

Anyway, the horizons are broadening again. But I was not expecting legal history:  the Murdoch case in less than a minute!

Prize Watch: the Shaughnessy Cohen

The Writers' Trust announces the finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. A diverse and pretty interesting list. 

Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity by Raymond B. Blake  -  a substantial political history from a history prof.

The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau by Stephen Maher  -- political biography by a journalist. 

Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada by Jane Philpott -- a substantial policy agenda by a doctor and former health minister. 

The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century by Alasdair Roberts  -- unknown to me, who wonders: "Is it in such doubt?" 

The Knowing by Tanya Talaga --  reminding that indigenous survival is political too.

Finalists were selected by a jury composed of Jennifer Ditchburn, Sara Mojtehedzadeh, and Christopher Waddell. The jurors read 34 books submitted by 22 publishing imprints.  Only 34 books submitted?

Update, May 3:  Helen comments from Auz (where they also have re-elected the non-Trumpy choice for prime minister.

Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity by Raymond Blake sounds like a suitable book for members of the British Commonwealth to be reading now. As an Australian, I always assumed that Canada shaped its national identity as a British-linked country with just a neighbourly relationship to the USA.

But what will happen to national identity if Canada is absorbed into the USA as the 52^nd state (after Greenland).

No worries, Helen.  We don't even visit that country anymore, let alone consider joining it.  But few Canadians are likely to consider us a "British-linked" country any more. It's very different here, definitely a North American nation, except for that awkwardness with the head of state we have yet to clean up.  (Like you!)

History of Population again

 

Earlier this year I was noting a New York Times article contemplating the end of world population growth and how far the human population might actually fall in the next few centuries. It seemed to me that on the whole it would be a good thing for the planet and for humanity if our numbers peacefully declined from 10 billion to say two billion.

I've come late to a February story in the New Yorker that takes a different, and mostly catastrophizing, approach to the same topic: "The End of Children" by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. 

This one is less driven by demographic projections and more inclined to bleak portraits of dying villages in south Korea inhabited only by abandoned grandmothers.  Surely that situation is more about the flight from villages than evidence of world depopulation. But Lewis-Kraus can see only gloom and loss in declining populations, and hardly gives a toss about possible benefits for our grimly ever-populated world. 

He does have an intriguing thought-experiment: about how communities that grow used to the (relative) absence or scarcity of children will become locked into no-child habits and attitudes and will be unable to change while humanity simply dwindles away. But it's mostly speculative.  Cultures do change, even if unpredictably. 

Update, May 5: Russ Chamberlayne comments

In your blog entry "History of Population again," you surmise that the world pop might go from 10 billion to two. Proportionately then, Canada's population might go from a future 45 million to 9 million.

I can just hear a 22nd century Trump taunting Canada with becoming, not a state, but a regional municipality.

Whatever future centuries have to face, I do hope Donald Trump will not be one of them! And with the United States' population having dropped just as far, surely they would have more things to deal with.  

But indeed, given the large world population drop that demographers are beginning to expect, the fate of every small cultural and linguistic group in the world would be endangered. What of the Icelanders, the Welsh, the Hungarians, the Tlingit, the Tibetans?

 

Dan Gardner on the state of Canadian historical writing

At his Substack, the Canadian/American writer Dan Gardner lauds Mark Bourrie on his way to offering cold thoughts about the state of Canadian nonfiction and history.  I'm quoting some longish excerpts from a much longer post, but reading the whole thing might be worth your while.

The Canadians among you will know that Bourrie is a Canadian author with eclectic interests. His latest is entitled Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre. So, yes, it’s political. I swore off commenting on domestic partisan politics many years ago, so I haven’t read it and won’t say another word about it. But I do want to say something about Mark and other Canadian writers like him. (I’m in a different category as I am — despite being so Canadian I recently injured myself playing hockey — essentially a rootless cosmopolitan who writes for an international audience.)

Mark and others don’t do it for money. There’s no money in writing Canadian books for Canadians. For researched non-fiction of the sort Mark writes, there isn’t even the intravenous drip of government grants to keep an impecunious writer barely fed.

[.... ]

It wasn’t always this way. Pierre Berton and Peter Newman made a damned good living selling popular histories of Canada. But Canadian publishing is now mostly branch plants of foreign giants that have no time for such eccentric little subjects. And the whole ecosystem that supported Canadian popular history has either shrivelled (newspapers and magazines) or vanished altogether (book reviews sections in newspapers and magazines).

And Canada’s political class hasn’t even noticed.

Many Canadian institutions reward and promote Canadian fiction and memoir. Close to none lift a finger for popular history.

[....]   

And yet, miraculously, some popular Canadian history continues to be published. Charlotte Gray. Tim Cook. Thomas King.

I was pleased to see someone in the comments section had added my name to the list,  But mostly I like how Gardner identifies an institutional problem -- the selloff of cultural institutions, for one -- rather than ranting about "saving" Canadian history by putting up more John A statues, ramming history down the throats of children, and resisting reconciliation and diversity. (I'm looking at you, Canadian Institute for Historical Education.)   

 

History of the Tour and North American soccer

 The blog title here promises Tour de France coverage in July, and other than that you don't get much sports commentary.  But I want to note what for me was the biggest news in sports recently: The Vancouver Whitecaps whipping Inter Miami 2-0 and 3-1 to move on to the final of the North and Latin America club championship in soccer. Final to be held late in May against one of two Mexican teams not yet determined. 

Two things:

1. You heard it here first: the Lionel Messi era is coming to an end. He's 37, and fellow high-priced imports Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba, Sergeo Busquets, are all about the same age.  They are the core of the team, but they need to score early to have a chance. Against a team with good legs and reflexes, they don't seem able to keep up or show the same finesse any more.

Last night against Vancouver, they did get the first goal, but in the second half Vancouver ran them ragged and made it look easy to score three unanswered goals.  The core of the Miami team cannot hold on much longer.  

Update:  Okay, maybe you didn't hear it here first.  The Guardian's soccer writers have also taken note, and I wouldn't argue with them,

2.  My passion for spending huge amount of July watching Tour de France seems to risen and fallen with the career of the terrific Canadian rider Ryder Hesjedal, whom I spotted as an near invisible domestique and watched through his rise to a Giro d'Italia win and a fourth place in the Tour itself.  

Tadej Pogacar is currently establishing himself as the best grand-tour cyclist in history, but somehow I'm finding it all a bit mechanical these days. You may get a little more soccer coverage when it moves me, and who know about the Tour? We'll see in Jul.  (Still love the scenery, I admit.)

And the Maple Leafs?  Oh, going all the way, for sure. He said. 

History of Basketball and Resistance

Took in this documentary, Saints and Sinners, about the remarkable history of the Skidegate Saints, perennial champions of the All Native Basketball Tournament of the British Columbia Coast.  A sports documentary, but really also the story of how basketball became a question of pride and resilience for the Haida Nation fifty years ago or more, and how basketball prowess, community-building, and political action have gone hand in hand every since. Some great B-ball footage too! 

It has been playing at the HotDocs documentary festival currently on in Toronto.  National distribution possible.  And slated for streaming on Crave next winter.

Personal notes, book notes

So as of this weekend one of our daughters has a new husband and we have a new son-in-law, and we had a very good time and experienced some fun Jewish wedding customs in the process too. So, blogging has been sparce.

Voted today, right after reading Timothy Garton Ash's opinion piece in the Guardian today, saluting Canada's front row place in the global resistance to autocracy and trumpish.

And I have been engrossed in both Mark Bourrie's Ripper and Greg Marchildon's Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada.  Good to see people are still writing good books, timely books, significant books in Canadian history and biography. Marchildon's took about 20 times longer to write than Bourrie's, but we are lucky to have them both.  More about them in time, I expect.   

The world’s leading liar on restoring truth

 

The New Yorker observes that American vice-president J.D Vance now sits on the board of the Smithsonian Institution, that country's premier collection of museums, with the assignment to remove "improper ideology" from it and particularly from the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

In late March, Trump issued an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Its diagnosis is that there has long been among professors and curators “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”  A recent tribute to baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson recently avoided mentioning his skin colour or just what he pioneered that earned the tribute

"Truth" will apparently include mandating the removal of references to slavery from the African American museum.

In Canada the Museums Act, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board Act, and similar laws give a broad autonomy to public cultural institutions, such that the government of Canada does not give direction to its museums "on cultural matters." But no doubt American legislation gives similar guarantees to the Smithsonian.

In Toronto groups such as the Canadian Institute for Historical Education and ABC Toronto fulminate against the "rewriting of history" every time someone suggests that white males from the 19th century are not the only ones for whom schools, streets, and public buildings can be named or statues raised.  (ABC hates bike lanes too -- being mostly a local politics pressure group.)  And Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre promises in the current election campaign to "defund woke nonsense" and punish universities that engage in it. So there is that.   

Book Notes: Marchildon on Tommy

I've been eager to read and take note of Greg Marchildon's Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare, published a few months ago by University of Toronto Press.  But UTP refers requests for review copies to NetGalley and NetGalley says UTP mostly doesn't supply it with titles, and not that one. And direct requests to UTP go unanswered.  

Anyway Marchildon on medicare seems big and timely and surely of interest. I hope to see it soon.  Guest reviews welcome here -- if you have managed to secure a copy faster than me.  

Update, April 22:  Blog grumbling gets results. UTP has been in touch and all has been sorted out -- (Thanks, Lucille!)  Expect some notes on Marchildon on Douglas soonish.

Obituary: John Meisel 1923-2025 (!) political scientist

Among the participants in last night's D'Arcy McGee dinner were historian Roger Hall and journalist Sandra Martin, the latter of whom mentioned to me that she had written the Globe and Mail's long Saturday obituary article on political scientist John Meisel, who for his work on the history of Canadian elections deserves note here.  

Also it's a gem of an obituary, well worth reading and not looking the least bit hasty. I didn't know John Meisel but I like him already. 

Writer to writer, Sandra grumbled a little about having to push out a long obituary article on a very tight deadline.  I said that surely for someone prominent and aged 102, as Meisel was, the Globe and Mail would have had a draft obituary prepared long ago.  

Does not happen, she told me. You gotta die to attract the attention of Canada's national newspaper, apparently.  Whodathunkit.

Happy birthday, D'Arcy McGee

He had been an Irish rebel who recanted, a patriotic American who grew disillusioned, an anti-clerical who made his peace with the Catholic church, a reformer who had gone over to John A. Macdonald, and a teetotaller given to alcoholic binges.

-- from 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal

Went down last night to the Duke of York pub in Toronto to observe the two hundredth birthday of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825-1868). Would the Pogue Mahone pub or some other Irishy place have been more appropriate? Well, they are probably a bit Fenian still over there, and McGee was a loyal subject of Queen Victoria when he was not a rebel in arms.

Anyway, the Guinness flowed, and there were toasts, speeches, poetry, a genuine McGee descendant, and an Irish jig played on an tin whistle. David Wilson read the last paragraphs of his biography, about the man who "took an uncompromising stand against militants within his own ethnoreligious community" and was shot for it. 

It was a lot of fun and some good craic. The whole thing was orchestrated by the tireless Patrice Dutil, who insists last night's small commemoration should have been matched on a grander scale everywhere in Canada. On the centenary in 1925, apparently, the GG, the PM, and the leader of the opposition all showed up to a McGee tribute which was broadcast across the nation. 

I dunno. It takes a pretty big legacy to carry on more than a century in anything like living memory, methinks.  But thanks, Patrice.