Ramsay Cook at the Canadian Historical Review

'Ramsay Cook' by Barker Fairley (1960)

Does the readership of this blog and the readership of the Canadian Historical Review and this blog overlap much?  I'm not sure at all, but yeah, probably, some.  For a long time, I contented myself with periodically skimming the article titles and reviews in a library. The CHR was nice about my Louisbourg Portraits, but never reviewed my 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, and clearly I did not forget. Eventually I accepted an extended digital CHR subscription in exchange for an essay they wanted.

And when that expired I renewed, at my own expense. I do look at the digital editions, though I only noted Volume 100 #1, the current issue, when it had been available online over a month.

All of which leads me to say I was moved and impressed by the extensive set of appreciations of Ramsay Cook in the Spring 2019 issue. Donald Wright who is working on a biography, Gregory Kealey, Franca Iacovetta on his female students, Adele Perry who gives a perspective from a scholar of indigenous Canada, and Robert Fraser, his colleague at the Dictionary of Canadian biography.  Maybe the best CHR cover ever, too.

The articles are mostly current history but the review section has a large concentration of reviews on indigenous questions.  From it I learn that in the new edition of Skyscrapers Hide the Heaven, his now 25 year old survey of native-newcomer relations in the northern half of North America, J.R. Miller has added a fourth section.  He used to have three: Cooperation (to about 1814), Coercion (1814-1969), and Confrontation. Now he has added "Reconciliation? (c2000- present)

Worth a look.