Canada Reads (fiction)

The CBC's annual book-we-all-read-palooza is called "Canada Reads" but only accepts fiction nominations. This year the Corp has reshaped the competition by pre-determining forty 21st century Canadian novels for a competition the great Canadian books novels of the new century.

An eclectic list, maybe a little skewed (as someone says in the comments at the link above) by those authors most effective in spurring on internet voting. Makes me wonder what the ten (forty seems ambitious, since we are not the CBC) essential Canadian history books -- or even nonfictions -- since 2000 might be.  Nominations gratefully received....

New legal history titles

Down last night to the annual book launch of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, the amazingly prolific little organization that has become a significant publisher of works not only in legal history narrowly defined but also on politics, crime, biography, and much else.  Last night they launched...

... a collection in labour law history edited by prolific law professor/historians Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, Work on Trial. Judy Fudge, speaking about it, said she hoped it shows that labour law is not actually dead in the law schools, but only dormant. What's up there, I wonder.

... and a new (first) book by historian Barrington Walker of Queen's University: Race on Trial on the experience of black defendants in Ontario courts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  On a quick glance, it looks to be based on quite heroic work in the newspaper and judicial archives, very impressive.





... and historian Frederick Vaughan's life of the early 20th century British Privy Council judge Viscount Haldane "the wicked step-father of the Canadian Constitution."  Must say I have never quite got this deep moral disapproval of Privy Council judges who did not share a Macdonaldian centralist interpretation of the British North America Act -- as if they not merely wrong in their legal judgments, but actually "wicked" and perverse. But maybe Vaughan is being ironic in his sub-title -- worth reading to know. (Somehow the cover image of the book at the UTP site is not reproducing -- follow the link for more detail)...

... and my own history of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, already sufficiently blurbed here.











Among the guests was my co-blogger Mary Stokes. I was delighted by another guest who said to her in mid-conversation, "Yes, I saw that post you had on that on your blog."  I like this; we need more co-bloggers here, I think.

Yet another reason to want to be in Ottawa this week

On Thursday, October 28, at 6:30 pm, UBC press and the Canadian War Museum are presenting what is styled as a 'debate' among four military historians at the Barney Danson Theatre, 1 Vimy Place, Ottawa.

Says the UBC press:

Four authors and four very different books on Canadian military history reveal how writing about the past is inevitably shaped by trends and resources in the present. What defines military history? How should it be recorded? How has it changed? What stories remain untold?

These are a few of the engaging and provocative questions moderator Michael Petrou, senior writer and foreign correspondent with Maclean’s magazine, will explore with four of Canada’s best minds in the field.

Serge Durflinger (Veterans with a Vision: Canada's War Blinded in Peace and War),

James Fergusson (Canada and the Ballistic Missile Defence, 1954-2009: Déjà vu All over Again),

Benjamin Isitt (From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917-19),

James Wood (Milita Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, 1896-1921) (pictured above)

Now there are lots of things which can be argued about, and have notoriously been argued about, in Canadian military history, as the Canadian War Museum knows to its sorrow. But I wouldn't have thought that these questions, while undoubtedly "engaging", especially to the cognoscenti, are necessarily "provocative." I would have thought that the addition of Jack Granatstein to the panel would be necessary for that. But then, I haven't read the books (though they look interesting. Especially the Wood book, but that may just be my personal bias talking.)

It doesn't sound as though the event is going to be recorded. It should be; if not for the CBC then for the museum's website. And as a further kvetch: what's up with the very uninviting design of the Canadian War Museum website?

RIP Acanademics

It's not like there are so many Canadian history blogs that we can ignore the death even of an intermittent one. Acanademics went live in June 2010, with the cryptic motto "an untenured look at Canadian history; the stakes may be small but they are worth examining." It posted irregularly (and anonymously) until a summer holiday was announced on August 9.

We were beginning to think academic holidays are even longer than one imagined. Then the site went black, sometime in the last few days. Acanademics, we hardly knew ye.

And here I've been telling everyone this blogging is an easy gig. Well, there's a niche open, and a catchy title.

Carleton University Shannon Lectures: Film Screening - 'Rex vs. Singh"

Hello Everyone,

The Carleton University History Dept. is hosting it's annual Shannon Lecture Series. I thought, as the 'informal resident queer history blogger', I'd pass this along. Thanks to Dr. John Walsh for reminding me about it as I didn't realize this lecture had a queer history theme. By the looks of it the topic has inter-woven immigration/racism history in it as well.

From the Hist. Dept. Shannon Lecture Series website:
"October 29, 2010
JOHN GREYSON, “Rex vs. Singh: Story, Truth, and Film”
1:30-3:00, Carleton University, Paterson Hall, Rm.303
Abstract:

Professor and filmmaker John Greyson will be presenting and discussing Rex vs Singh (2008), an experimental 30-minute film he co-directed with Richard Fung and Ali Kazimi.  The film tells “one” story in four different, overlapping ways.  It is based on a historical event from 1915 when undercover police in Vancouver arrested two Sikh mill-workers, Dalip Singh and Naina Singh, and accused them of sodomy.  Between 1909 and 1929, an inordinate number of men tried for sodomy in Vancouver were Sikhs and in 1914, only year before the arrest of these workers, the Komogata Maru, a ship carrying 376 potential immigrants from British India, most of whom Sikhs, was turned back after sitting in Vancouver harbour for two months without being allowed to land.

Following a screening of the film, there will be an on-stage interview with Professor Greyson and then a Question-and-Answer period with the audience to talk about the film, and about the relationships between film, storytelling, and histories of the present."

The CBC and Xtra! (one of Canada's leading LGBT community multi-city newspapers) have both written on the film. The film is the product of the Queer History Project and was shown at the 2008 Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

I'm hoping to go and I'd encourage anyone in the Ottawa area to go as well.

Best, 

Jordan Kerr
http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

Macleans on Saul on Baldwin and LaFontaine

Reviewing's pretty much dead, but Maclean's at least notices some of the shock John Ralston Saul seeks to convey in his LaFontaine and Baldwin. So does Janet Ajzenstat.

Sir John A. wasn’t Canada’s first prime minister? Maclean’s magazine professes to be astounded!

But John's more iconoclastic claim, I think, is on page 3: in 1848, "Canada had become a democracy."

Do you believe in miracles?

Medical reporter André Picard goes to town on the recent media frenzy about the medical "miracles" of Brother André, now canonized.

The media – presumably secular institutions – report these “miracles” as credible, factual events, and ... buy into pseudo-scientific twaddle, consciously or otherwise.

Meanwhile Queen's University medical historian Jacalyn Duffin is also making miracle news. A hematologist in her other life, she was asked years ago to do a blind analysis of some cancer data and, when she found the progress of the disease inexplicable, her findings became part of the dossier that made another Quebecker, Marie-Marguerite d'Youville, a saint. Duffin was not involved in the Brother André case, but the matter of miracle cures inspired her recent book Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World, published internationally last year.

I'm still quite fond of my own take on Brother André in 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal (still in print and coming soon in ebook), which works out an elaborate comparison between him and George-Etienne Cartier. (I wouldn't make a big deal about it, except at the time I kinda thought it would provoke some interest and I never saw a single word to indicate anyone even noticed, poor me.)

....From the 1840s into the 1960s, Quebec's leaders often believed their task was like Brother André's: to celebrate and safeguard traditional values in the midst of a world that was too English and too secular.

Quebec's political leaders had the harder task in this regard. If Brother André went to Parliament Hill, he went secure in his faith, seeking only to bring a blessing and take away a few alms. Secular political leaders had to bridge two worlds. French Canada's minority position in the Anglo-Protestant modern world meant its representatives had to deal as skillfully with English Canada as with their own francophone community. In the 1860s, the statesman charged with that double responsibility was George-Etienne Cartier, Quebec's pre-eminent representative in the making of confederation....

"The Social Network"

The Social Network is a very entertaining movie and very perceptive about human relationships -- among young men, in school, in business, in cyberspace, even gender. Yes, there aren't any substantial women characters, but surely that's a fair observation about the story's milieu. Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield are both terrific, the script hums, and nerds coding and litigating were never so visually engaging before. Go.

The best short summation of it I have seen is David Denby's.

The debate about the movie's accuracy has already begun, but Fincher and Sorkin, selecting from known facts and then freely interpreting them, have created a work of art. Accuracy is now a secondary issue.

That was published October 4 (in The New Yorker, and online only by password). Since then, a great deal more has been put forth to show how the film's version is in contrast to documented events. But Denby is right. It's a movie, and it ain't a documentary.

If it says something true about people, it's okay that it isn't particularly true about the people who build Facebook.

The difference is that the events depicted in this movie are so recent, so public, and so widely documented that it's easy to compare the movie version to documented events."Everyone" knows the film ain't exactly as it happened, and everyone seems okay with that.  It's a kinda sophisticated take, I think.

With historical fictions about more remote events, that kind of sophistication doesn't get engaged so much. Crude debates about "how true is it?" take over, and historians are expected to take the "not very" side. But Denby's rule applies. If they are any good in themselves, "accuracy is a secondary issue" in historical fictions.  If you want to argue about accuracy, write history. If it's fiction, the issue is if it's any good.

How is a grad student like a governess?

When Chris asked me to contribute to the blog he suggested grad school as something I could post about, along with legal history, which even a man on a galloping horse would have noticed is my go-to subject.

Maybe this is so because there is no downside to legal history. The same cannot be said of grad student life. Or should I say 'life'?

I shouldn't whine. Being a grad student is awesome in many ways. It's what I wanted, and still want. And after all, how else would I have all these interesting tidbits and links to share on this blog? But there is a darker side to it. And lots of black humour to prove it. One of my favourite sites for a rueful smile is Jeff Noakes' site. Jeff is a Canadian Historian (yay) from Carleton. But the humour is cross-disciplinary and transnational. Most of it will appeal to Humanities and Social Science types. Like this:

GET GRADUATE SCHOOL BARBIE (TM)
Graduate School Barbie
comes in two forms: Delusional Master's Barbie (tm) and Ph.D. Masochist Barbie
(tm).
Every Graduate School Barbie comes with these fun filled features guaranteed to delight and entertain for hours: Grad School Barbie comes out of the box with a big grin on her face that turns into a frown after 2 weeks or her first advisor meeting (whichever comes first). She also has adorable black circles under her delightfully bloodshot eyes.
Comes with two outfits: a grubby pair of blue jeans and 5 year old gap T-shirt, and a floppy pair of gray sweatpants with a matching "Go S***w Yourself" T-shirt. Grad School Barbie talks! Just press the button on her left hand and hear her say such upbeat grad school phrases like, "Yes, Professor, It'll be done by tomorrow", "I'd love to rewrite" and "Why didn't I just get a job, I could have been making $40,000 a year by now if I had just started working with a Bachelor's. But noooooo, Mom and Dad wanted a masters degree, I wish somebody would drop a bomb on the school so that I'd have an excuse to stop working on my degree that's sucking every last drop of life force out of my withered and degraded excuse for a soul..." (9V lithium batteries sold separately)
Grad School Barbie is anatomically correct to teach kids about the exciting changes that come with pursuing a higher education. Removable panels on Barbie's head and torso allow you to watch as her cerebellum fries to a crispy brown, her heart race 150 beats per minute, and her stomach lining gradually dissolve into nothing. Deluxe Barbie comes with specially designed eye ducts. Just add a little water, and watch Grad School Barbie burst into tears at random intervals. Fun for the whole family!
Other accessories include:
Grad School Barbie's Fun Fridge (tm) Well stocked with microwave popcorn, Coca-Cola, Healthy Choice Bologna (99% fat free!),and a small bottle of Mattel Brand Rum (tm).
Grad School Barbie's Medicine Cabinet comes in Fabulous (pepto-bismal) pink and contains Barbie sized bottles of Advil, St. Johns Wort, Zantac, and your choice of three fun anti-anxiety drugs! (Barbie Medicine Cabinet not available without a prescription).
Grad School Barbie's Computer Workstation. Comes with miniature obsolete PC (in pink of course), rickety desk, and over a dozen miniature Mountain Dew cans to decorate your workstation with (Mountain Dew deposit not included in price. Tech support sold separately).
And Grad School Barbie is not alone! Order now and you'll get two of Barbie's great friends! GRADUATE ADVISOR KEN, Barbie's mentor and advisor in her quest for knowledge, higher education and decreased self esteem.
Grad Advisor Ken (tm) comes with a supply of red pens and a permanent frown. Press the button to hear Grad Advisor Ken deliver such wisdom to Barbie as "I need an update on your progress," "I don't think you're ready to defend yet", and "This
is no where near ready for publication."
Buy 3 or more dolls, and you can have Barbie's Thesis Committee! (Palm Pilot and tenure sold separately.)
REAL JOB SKIPPER, When Barbie needs to talk, she knows that she can always
count on her good friend Real Job Skipper (tm), who got a job after getting her bachelor degree. Press the button to hear Real Job Skipper say, "Sometimes I wish I went for my masters degree" and "Work is so hard! I had to work a half an hour of overtime!" Real Job Skipper's Work Wardrobe and Savings account sold separately.
WARNING: Do not place Grad Student Barbie and Real Job Skipper too close to each other, as there have been several cases of children leaving the room and coming back to find Barbie's hands mysteriously fused to Skipper's
throat.

Now back to the question: How a governess is like a grad student? It's is not much of a riddle. Certainly not in the category of "how is a raven like a writing desk?"

A governess, at least of the Victorian archetypal variety as per a 2001 monograph by Kathryn Hughes (the cover image of which graces the beginning of this post) was notoriously neither upstairs nor downstairs. She was over-educated and underpaid. Those who are the protaganists of romantic novels had happy denouements (though count me as one who thinks Jane Eyre could have done better.)

As for graduate students, they have not been the subject of as many fictional treatments. One definitely worth a read is Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem. Plenty of downside (the protagonist marries an academic star professor, her own Mr Rochester, and misery ensues). But funny all the same.

New in Canada's History: Looking at Historic Sites

A little Louisbourg meme going. Tonight the fortress is featured on CBC-TV's "Mercer Report."  Mercer will be funny and disrespectful, and Parks Canada will (correctly) consider it good value for the publicity -- much like the politicians who get teased on the program.

A very similar photo of Louisbourg (but it's not RM wearing the costume) illustrates my column in the October-November Canada's History.  The column, "Subverting our Stories?" is a consideration of a recent book by Ian McKay and Robin Bates, In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia.

McKay and Bates declare that "tourism/history" in general, and all of Nova Scotia's historic sites in particular, form a sinkhole of fraudulence where gullible tourists are fed lies about the past:

Tourism/history poses no questions, issues no challenges, demands no recognitions, and presents no contradictions.

I am less than persuaded, let us say:

McKay and Bates see only passive consumers believing all they are told. The authors do disavow (in one paragraph) the idea of “cunning corporate villains” who “manipulate a brainwashed travelling public,” but that is pretty much what they discover throughout the “province of history.” 

Still, it's a powerful and perhaps widely-held academic view they present, one well worth engaging with. And I was glad to have an opportunity to draw CH readers' attention to Ian McKay's powerful and intriguing "liberal order framework" interpretation of Canadian history -- which has an important role here but is more effectively deployed in some of his other works.

If you subscribed like you ought to, you would already have the issue in your hands.  If not, well, it's on better newsstands everywhere.

Update, October 20: Louisbourg looked quite spectacularly beautiful as Mercer's backdrop.

Tommy Douglas & the War Measures Act

Hi everyone,

The Douglas-Coldwell Foundation has a YouTube page with videos of Tommy Douglas speeches as well as other historical and informational clips applicable to the foundation and the NDP. For example...
Speech to 50th Anniversary Convention on Health Care 

In connection, it seems, with the 40th anniversary of the October Crisis the Foundation has posted a huge amount of audio of the War Measures Act debates in Parliament, including a speech by Douglas. I'm not sure which clip the speech is in though.

Below are a few documentaries on Douglas and some clips from the CBC Archives that are a re-post from my own blog.

Tommy Douglas: Keep of the Flame - National Film Board of Canada 1986
http://www.nfb.ca/film/tommy_douglas_keeper_of_the_flame/

The Premiers: Tommy Douglas -CPAC 2009?
Steps: (because for some reason the link wasn't working)
www.cpac.ca
Select Program (drop down menu)
The Premiers
Tommy Douglas

CBC Archives: Tommy Douglas and the NDP - 1935-2001
http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/parties_leaders/topics/851/

Cheers,

Jordan Kerr
http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

Update: I believe the Douglas speech on the War Measures Act is in clips 5 through 8

History of milk-drinking

Der Spiegel offers a long story on an elaborate, problem-oriented archaeological investigation considering whether the secret weapon of the Neolithic farmers who took over Europe might have been... a big drink of warm milk.

Bleeding our digital heritage

Either we have a problem here, or some civil servant has a way with his imagery. (Bleeding. Digital. Heritage. Try putting those three words in another sentence.)

The Toronto Star reports on the failure or inability of the federal government to archive much of its digital and online communication.

The U.S. Library of Congress has declared Twitter such a valuable resource that it is keeping an archive of all messages sent since 2006..... But Library and Archives Canada, which is the official record keeper of the government, is still muddling through whether it needs to hold on to its own supply.

Okay. But here's a line to put a chill in the heart of archive users.

The institution is struggling with how to manage digital content altogether. By 2017, they will stop keeping paper records.

Uh, that's not meant exactly the way it sounds, is it?

Bob and Hippolyte and Louis and Gabriel

John Ralston Saul, impresario of the extraordinarily successful Extraordinary Canadians series of short stylish biographies, is now an author in his own series.  This one is a Siamese twin biography: Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine & Robert Baldwin.  It would be the first dual biography in the series, except it's published this month, in another twinning, along with Louis Riel & Gabriel Dumont by Joseph Boyden.


I'm a bit hmmm about dual biographies. Shouldn't extraordinary lives also be unique lives, worth attention in their own right?


Ever since Donald Creighton's long-ago crack "Are there really biographies of Baldwin, Hincks, and Laurier, or are these merely lives of Robert Responsible-Government, and Francis Responsible-Government and...?," Canadian historians have almost entirely avoided that subject and its leading protagonists. I wonder if Saul's book, twinning LaFontaine and Baldwin once again, does seem to lend credence to Creighton's still-echoing dismissal.  


But the people need attention -- and the issue that made them partners too. I'm looking forward to Saul's treatment of both men, even if at the moment I kinda sorta wish it had been in two books.

A long time ago, George Woodcock's romantic biography of Gabriel Dumont set him up as the anti-Riel, the guerrilla warrior and true spirit of the Métis defeated by the Euro-Catholic rigidities of Riel.  Interesting to see how Boyden works out that one: twins or polars?

Abbott and English: Two histories among the nonfiction GG nominees

Canada Council announces the Governor General's Award Nominees.  Full listings here. Nice to see Elizabeth Abbott, whom I profiled for Canada's History recently, and John English, surely our most honoured historian in recent years, among the nonfiction nominees.   

Elizabeth Abbott, Toronto, A History of Marriage(Penguin Group (Canada); distributed by the publisher)

Ian Brown, Toronto, The Boy in the Moon:
A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son(Random House Canada; distributed by Random House of Canada)

I 

Allan Casey, Saskatoon, Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada(Greystone Books, an imprint of D&M Publishers; distributed by HarperCollins Canada)

Karen Connelly, Toronto, Burmese Lessons: A Love Story(Random House Canada; distributed by Random House of Canada)

John English, Kitchener (Ontario), Just Watch Me:
The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000(Alfred A. Knopf Canada; distributed by Random House of Canada)

Historians as czars? Historians as celebrities?

Classicist and blogger Mary Beard condemns the appointment of historian and documentarian Simon Schama as Britain's "czar" for reforming the school history curriculum. Schools and curricula need to be reformed by educators, not celebrities, she declares. Schama, much as she likes him as a person and a writer, is not qualified to rebuild the schools. He's just famous. "This is celebrity culture at its most meretricious," she declares.

What is special about October 18?

Hint: it's not about the chair.

And yes, I know it's October 13 today, but it's not my turn to blog on October 18, so I'm giving you a head start.

Give up? October 18 is 'Persons Day' in Canada, commemorating the legal victory of the 'Famous Five,' a group of women progressives from Alberta in the 1929 decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal for Canada, overturning the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which had ruled that because women were not eligible to vote or hold public office in 1867, that the term 'persons' in the eligibility criteria set out in the BNA act for the Senate should be construed to refer to men only.

You can read all about it in a great book by Robert Sharpe and Patricia MacMahon.

So what else is special about October 18? A new archival website is being launched by the Alberta Women's Memory Project on that date.

Coincidence, I think not.

I had hoped to have a picture from the Project to illustrate this post, but they are picky--you have to ask permission and I left it too late. So the picture above left is cribbed from heroines.ca. It's a photo of a bronze statue of Emily Murphy by Barbara Paterson, one of a group of statues of the FF receiving the good news, copyright M. Forster.

Penguin's new Allen Lane Canada imprint starts with history

National Post reports on the launch of a new history of Canada series, edited by Robert Bothwell and Margaret McMillan and published in a new imprint of Penguin Canada called Allen Lane Canada.  I'm doing one of the books in this series myself, but that one won't be along for a while.

(Have you noticed that arts and culture coverage in the NP is better than in the Globe, while the political opinions are only slightly more antediluvian. Yeah, me too.)

Allen Lane invented the Penguin paperback series in Britain in the 1930s. Penguin, initially only the label for the paperbacks, has now swallowed the whole company.

The LSR and some much needed optimism...

 

Writing quickly between thanksgiving snacks, company and dinner! A re-post from my own blog from a few weeks ago. I'm doing some research on an old (1970's-1980's), but I believe still relevant topic, the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR). The LSR at one time encompassed some well known names in Canadian history who would, during and after their affiliation with the League played some key roles in Canadian politics; Frank Underhill, Escott Reid, Eugene Forsey to name just a few.

Probably the most obvious role of the LSR in Canadian history is that while, as Michiel Horn write, the ideas constituting what would come to be a 'Canadian socialism' were, "...in the air. The League's intellectuals served the important purpose of formulating these ideas clearly and systematizing them..." (The League for Social Reconstruction and the Development of a Canadian Socialism 1932-1936, Journal of Canadian Studies, V. 7.4, Nov. 1972). The ideas that they were formulating and systematizing were for the early policies and programs of the CCF in the 1930's and 1940's. Hence, while it is difficult to directly pin point the influence of the LSR on the CCF, the League most certainly played a key role in articulating the ideas and policies which were 'in the air' that would be put before the Canadian public and the federal parliament throughout the 20th century. These ideas would eventually turn into many of the welfare and social service programs we take for granted today. Regardless of the League's small though pivotal role in Canadian history their optimism about human nature and society is refreshing.

Some of the League's ideas in their original 1932 Manifesto you'll notice were implemented in Canada throughout the 20th century on the federal and provincial levels.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The re-post:

The League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) was a socialist think tank that existed in Canada between 1931 and 1942. Though incredibly idealistic their philosophy of society and human nature is nonetheless inspiring and brought out in me some much needed optimism. Some analysis and reflection on LSR philosophy is given in Michiel Horn's "The League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the Democratic Left in Canada 1930-1942." (University of Toronto Press, 1980):

"They believe that man is essentially co-operative rather than competitive; they have faith in his ultimate rationality and goodness."...At one point they write that the planned economy 'must invite allegiance' of every educated individual 'who has, in addition, a sense of social justice and has not soured in his hopes of human nature.'...Adjust the social and economic environment, and the human material will not show itself wanting." ...Sceptics will entertain the suspicion that the LSR's hopes rested on far too kindly a view of human nature...There will perhaps always be sceptics who believe such optimism to be foolish and mistaken, possibly even pernicious. The sceptics may be right. All the same, it is churlish to speak ill of those who would think well of us, who in any case think better of us than we believe ourselves to be." pp. 96-98

To end, in our increasingly secular and globalized world perhaps it would be helpful to reflect on this poem by Frank Scott, a member of the LSR, concerning this optimism.

The world is my country

The human race is my race

The spirit of man is my God

The future of man is my heaven

p. 98

Jordan Kerr
http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

History of a parliamentarian

Fascinating piece of film: Bob Rae talking frankly to a CBC camera about his life and career, reflecting on youthful depression, explaining how to succeed in question period....

Rae earned a reputation as a very effective parliamentarian, one who took instantly to the House's arcane ways and established himself as a presence there almost as soon as he arrived, age 30, in 1978.

Well, he learned fast, but he had to learn.

I happened to observe Question Period in November 1978 for what may have been Bob Rae's first question in the House. He launched in a long, convoluted question/speech, soon interrupted by shouts of "Question!" from the government side. Flustered, Rae said, "My question simply is...." only to be interrupted by "Simply? Simply?" and gales of laughter. By the time he was finished, the minister (Jack Horner, in his brief Liberal incarnation) had worked out an easy, dismissive response, and the House moved on.

I was struck then by the toughness of the House, of the ways some members command respect and some do not. Rae learned from that early experience. His comments in the interview seem to reflect the lesson.



Update, October 12: Business executive Gwyn Morgan offers a startling contrast between the expectations of politicians like Rae, who learn how to deal with criticism, and businessmen, who apparently are above that kind of thing. Morgan was so scarred by his one encounter with vigorous questioning from a parliamentary committee that he has eschewed active politics completely and returned to the sheltered workshops of Bay Street, where apparently no one asks him rude questions.

If that kind of opposition sniping ...can sustain itself, it really means that we have taken out from any kind of public service in Ottawa people who have been successful in business.

Indeed, he now believes businessmen who consider political activity deserve to be exempted from scrutiny entirely. "Business people] actually know how to run something and have shown commitment in a lot of different ways,” he says. Mr. Morgan "has faith that the Prime Minister would never again subject someone to a committee after the first experience."

Cundill Prize shortlist

McGill University announces the shortlist for this year's Cundill Prize, the world's largest non-fiction historical literature prize ($75,000. 

Juror Adam Gopnik sez, "All three books do exactly what we think history ought to do: re-open worlds lost to time, while distinguishing morality from moralism, and memory from myth.” More info here.

v GIANCARLO CASALE, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford University Press (USA))

Giancarlo Casale is Assistant Professor of the History of the Islamic World and the 2009-2011 McKnight Land Grant Professor at the University of Minnesota.

v DIARMAID MACCULLOCH, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Allen Lane)

Diarmaid MacCulloch is a fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University.

v MARLA R. MILLER, Betsy Ross and the Making of America (Henry Holt and Company)

Marla R. Miller is an Associate Professor of history and the Director of the public history program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Definitely not Emily Carr

Merna Forster reports a new quiz up at heroines.ca for Women's History Month. Sample question:

9. This artist painted some of Canada’s most well-known paintings of voyageurs. Who was she?
A. Emily Carr
B. Laura Muntz Lyall
C. Charlotte Schreiber
D. Frances Anne Hopkins

Today's Reading Assignment: History of the Canadian Encyclopedia

James Marsh, the one and only editor of The Canadian Encylopedia, has posted a history of the project from his unlikely hiring and early turf wars to the latest iterations of the online edition. Part One is here at History Wire, as are both the succeeding parts.

James, I wish I had been there.

History of Journalism

The Globe and Mail spends millions on an overhaul and millions more telling us what a fabulous transformational event this is. What is the one reader response it has had to respond to repeatedly?

The Sudoku puzzle that previously ran in Globe Life can now be found in Globe Arts. We have received strong reader feedback regarding the size of this puzzle and expect to have a solution to this by Monday.

Whither the history website

This new-ish website on the history of crime and punishment in New Brunswick by University of New Brunswick historian Greg Marquis and St. Thomas University criminologist Michael Boudreau came across my radar recently.

I love it. Legal history, and on the web. Just my cup of java.

Now I will say that Professors Marquis and Boudreau should probably not quit their day jobs to become professional web designers. But definitely solid, well-researched history gussied up with great illustrations (including photos like this oneof a spiral staircase in the St. John County Courthouse by Greg Marquis.) Fascinating case histories and well written syntheses on various topics related to the main theme of crime and punishment.

But I found it puzzling in some respects. Not a lot of meta-information about the project, for instance. I found myself wondering...who is this website for? The information is presented in a literate, sophisticated fashion, relying on the intrinsic interesting-ness of the subject to keep the reader engaged rather than the morbid sensationalism to which crime stories, however historical, tend to lend themselves. A useful general bibliography. But inconsistent footnoting, and no links to or reproductions of primary sources, except for illustrative purposes.

So what is it? It's a bit high brow and lengthy for public history, too 'secondary' to be a terribly useful teaching tool for high school or undergraduate students. Most of the linked entries are anonymous; some items, credited to Michael Boudreau, are more conventionally scholarly, as they include endnotes, but are stipulated not for citation without permission. So not as scholar-friendly as it might be, either.

The October Crisis +40

I thought about liveblogging the Quebec crisis of 1970+40. Just too demanding right now, but it would be a hell of a series, and I offer the idea to anyone willing to take a shot at it. (Better get going.)

Meanwhile here's news of a new book on the subject: Trudeau's Darkest Hour, edited by Guy Bouthillier and Edouard Cloutier. Much of what has been published on that crisis seems designed to sell the idea that the murderers of Pierre Laporte and their supporters were just misunderstood kids and the real villain was always the federal government. This one is somewhat in that vein, apparently, but it's interesting that its sovereigntist authors mostly offer English-Canadian critiques of federal government's failures in civil liberties.

And here's a review by Paul Wells of Maclean's.

Queer Ottawa #3 - The Middle Years and Conclusions 1979-1995

In this series finale following the Sept 12, 20 and 26 posts on tracing the Gays of Ottawa GO Centre (a catalyst for other gay commercial and service spaces/organizations in the city between 1971 and 1995) we shall look at the last two spaces that the centre occupied in Ottawa centretown. The centre would indeed move twice between 1979-1995, however the moves would actually be on the same street, Lisgar.


175 Lisgar St. - 1979-1985:

Moving to this space in November of 1979 required extensive renovations but it officially opened in May of 1980. Following further renovations and a long process to obtain licenses and parking variances form the city the first GO Bar found its home here when it opened as a key facet to the centre in September of 1981. The GO Bar functioned as an alternative space to the more "oppressive" (in the words of GO Info) burgeoning LGBT commercial scene. Between 1980 and 1985 there were about 6 other commercial establishments that catered to an LGBT market other than the GO Centre. In 1984 the landlord of 175 Lisgar refused to renew the lease. This was possibly due to the gentrifying of the northern end of Elgin St. in the mid and late 1980's which, I don't believe, Gays of Ottawa was a contributor to but rather a victim of. To the left is the May 1980 issues of GO Info announcing the grand opening of the Go Centre at 175 Lisgar. To the bottom left is a photograph of the GO Bar at 175 Lisgar, to the bottom right is a photograph of the entrance to the GO Centre in 1984 along with an article on the closing. Further below, centred, is the building which the GO Centre was  housed in its current state; on the opposite side of where the GO Centre was now houses Genji, a Japanese restaurant (and quite a good one actually!). The entrance was the right side door and the space was upstairs I believe. The building is just around the corner from Elgin St.

 

318 Lisgar St. - 1985-1995:

Though also in need of much renovation, licensing and parking variances a new space was found in April of 1985 on the upper floor of 318 Lisgar St., just around the corner from Bank St.. Officially opening in November of 1986 it would the groups last home before folding in 1995. The move and renovations sorely hurt the groups finances and as such the GO Bar didn't open again until February of 1987. This was a double-edged sword as the GO Bar was the centres main source of revenue. The GO Centre occupied the upper floor with a laundromat beneath. I'm not sure which door was the entrance to the Centre and which to the laundry space. Though I'm not sure what is upstairs now, the building's ground floor is currently occupied by Venus Envy.

This map roughly traces the route that Gays of Ottawa and the GO Centre took between 1971 and 1995. With the changes in the gay rights movement, commercial competition and the establishment other service organizations in the city for the LGBT community I believe the folding of Gays of Ottawa (with a changed named by this point) in 1995 was due to being squeezed out of existence after it had very much served its purposes in creating a visible LGBT community and identity in the Ottawa area.

There ends the series on the first prominent and openly visible LGBT commercial and social space in the Ottawa area. Hull had open and visible LGBT socio-commercial spaces before Ottawa but my research didn't include the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. Whether one thinks the very public face of the early gay rights movement was foolish or ingenious one must admit the unbelievable courage and will that it took for some LGBT individuals to establish and promote a public identity and space that went much against the general grain of Canadian society in the 1970's and 1980's. I do wish I still had the photograph, but alas it's in the ethereal world of lost digital data. It comes from a front cover of GO Info in the early 1970's and pictures two men kissing in front of Confederation Park directly across the street from the Lord Elgin (pictured in the background). The Lord Elgin basement bar was the space of an early tolerated gay space in the city but eventually began to find fault with its gay clientele and began a subtle program of discrimination (according to GO Info) to stop LGBT individuals from being patrons. Thus, the photograph is a defiant act against the hotel but the fact that two gay men shared a kiss in a very public place in the early 1970's (in conservative Ottawa of all places!) is an act of tremendous conviction and courage in itself. It very much captures the spirit of the early Gay Liberation Movement. I should note, I certainly don't intend to slander or condemn the Lord Elgin Hotel over my comments, these issues are in the past.

I had a wonderful time writing this series, I do hope you enjoyed it. Any comments, questions, suggestions or requests for more information can be sent to Chris Moore or as comments on my own blog.

Jordan Kerr
http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

I'm linking to: Canadian military history blog

Matt Symes of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies draws our attention to their Canadian Military History blog:

As a long time reader I know you've been advocating for more involvement from historians on the blogging front. What we've managed to do is get a commitment from a number of academics and students in the field to manage a once a week blog post....Far from a series of operational history posts, our bloggers have looked at post-war housing, the current dilemma of new technology vs. the old ways at the Archives, and the financial pressure that is putting on the archives. Because of the wide ranging interests of our associates, it has been a great addition to our site and the number of visitors has dramatically increased (6 unique visitors to 100 unique daily visitors).

Also news of upcoming events, reports on research, and straightforward history items too.

Book Prize season launched - not much history so far

The first of the literary prize shortlists reminds us it is time to start considering the notable Canadian history titles of the year. The Writers' Trust non-fiction shortlist, just announced, leans to memoir more than history, with Ross King's study of the Group of Seven looking (I ain't read any of 'em, mores the pity) like the most "historical" of the works.  G-Gs and Charles Taylor nominations yet to come.

WRITERS’ TRUST NON-FICTION PRIZE ($25,000)

The jury of Hadani Ditmars, Sid Marty, and Michael Mitchell read 84 titles submitted by 44 publishers. Each finalist for this prize receives $2,500.

• James FitzGerald for What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son’s Quest to Redeem the Past, Random House Canada
• Ross King for Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, Douglas & McIntyre/McMichael Canadian Art Collection
• Sarah Leavitt for Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me, Freehand Books
• John Theberge and Mary Theberge for The Ptarmigan’s Dilemma: An Exploration into How Life Organizes and Supports Itself, McClelland & Stewart
• Merrily Weisbord for The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das, McGill-Queen's University Press