Random notes

• The latest from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography features one of those people who weren't even well known in their own time but still deserve to be in the DCB, in this case Vénérande Robichaud, an Acadian woman who died in 1936 at the age of one hundred, in the home she had lived in all her life, leaving behind among her possessions letters from her grandmother of the same name, a survivor of the deportation of 1755. (The DCB includes her too.)

• I notice that some time recently the little counter in the right-hand column ticked over 1.6 million views since 2010. I have never taken these counts too seriously but I do appreciate all of you who really do view and read.

• April 27th was the two hundred and eighth anniversary of the American attack on what is now Toronto.  No, I had not noticed either, but Andrew Stewart had. He sent this photo of "The Approach," a new painting [only partly shown here] by marine artist Peter Rindlisbacher, depicting the approach of the American forces aboard the fleet of Commodore Isaac Chauncey. 

History of Climate change II: a role for historians?

I read recently that the authoritive history of climate change studies is The Discovery of Global Warming ("this book is a history of how scientists came to imagine [climate change]") by Spencer R. Weart, an American physicist who retrained as a historian of science.

Browsing through Weart's Discovery, I find the quotation above is very precise. Weart's book is entirely about scientists.

Briefly, Weart reports that the role of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in keeping the earth's surface warm -- and the potential of their absence to bring on glaciation -- was established by John Tyndall in 1859. But most considerations of climate change continued to look to sunspots or orbital fluctuations. The possibility of human influence was discounted until the 1950s, when some California weather scientists and geochemists began to consider the possibility of human contributions to carbon-dioxide production. Concern about a human-driven rise in global temperatures were widespread enough by the 1990s to produce the Kyoto Accords on the reduction of carbon gas emissions. But conclusive confirmation of human-caused climate change, Weart reports, had to wait until 2001, with the publication of the famous "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures over a thousand years. The first edition of his book appeared in 2003.

Weart notes that a lack of communication of scientists in different diciplines long impeded research into the subject of climate change and its causes. What strikes me is how his book lacks any suggestion of communication between scientists and historians.

Historians have long been aware that climates change. The "little ice age" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was familiar to European historians, and equivalant shifts had been observed elsewhere in the world. The French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie published "Histoire et Climat" in the journal Annales in 1959. His Times of Feast, Times of Famine: History of Climate Since the Year 1000 first appeared in French in 1967, drawing on many indicators from historical sources  (such as centuries of data on the advance and retreat of viable agriculture in the French Alps) as well as scientific sources (such as ancient tree ring analysis). 

Today environmental history thrives. Historical studies often make large speculations that climate change, including human-caused climate change, lay behind all sorts of historical changes. Did the population decline and consequent reforestation that followed the Black Death cause the Little Ice Age? Maybe. Did worsening climate doom the failed European settlement efforts in North America before 1600? Worth proposing. 

Now, Weart is probably right to assume that the scientists had to find their own way to measure global warming and its causes.  Historical studies could and did document changes in climate over time, but they did not identify causes for such changes. But a certain ambition for history was always there.  Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie was part of a generation of historians who argued that history, far from being dependent on other disciplines, should be "the federative discipline," the one that brought the work of scientists, social scientists, and other scholars together to produce greater understanding.

Weart's book, a history of science with no interest in the history of historical studies, does not give support to that argument, let us say. There is no sense that historical studies did much to provoke the scientific curiosity about the causes of climate change that developed after 1950. So is environmental history -- history generally, if you like -- "federative?" Or mostly dependent?

 

History of climate change I

The Atlantic has an eye-opening article about (yawn) the price of construction lumber. Sure, the pandemic has encouraged people stuck at home to start renovations and home-addition projects. And housebuying by the millennial (or baby-boom echo) demographic is also increasing demand. And this all comes just as timber stocks of construction timber are declining in the Pacific Northwest, particularly British Columbia. Lumber that used to cost $384 now goes for $1104.

Production troubles in the B.C. forests rose with the pine beetle invasion that killed 60 per cent of the merchandisable pine across 18 million hectares of the province in the last two decades. Pine beetles achieved that feat because warmer climates in British Columbia mean they are not killed off by winter frosts anymore. Less pine timber: prices rise.  

BC loggers have been furiously harvesting those stands of dead timber before they becomes unusable. But the massive forest fires of the last couple of seasons have been concentrated in those same vast stands of dead and pitch-soaked forests. What drove the forest fires? Mostly, climate change. So the salvage harvest is coming to an end, and a long decline in slowgrowing B.C. timber stocks is setting in. More price rises.

“There are people who say, ‘Climate change isn’t affecting me,’” Janice Cooke, a forest-industry veteran and biology professor at the University of Alberta, told me. “But they’re going to go to the hardware store and say, ‘Holy cow, the price of lumber has gone up.’”

History of climate, no wonder it's a growth field. 

Invading the Legislature, 2021 and 1849

Hadn't thought of this one. But at Borealia, Dan Horner compares the January 6 invasion of the United States Capital building in Washington, DC, to the April 25, 1849 invasion of the Parliament of the Province of Canada in Montreal (when the building was destroyed). Indeed, it works.

The actions of the Tory crowd once they reached parliament also bore a marked resemblance to those of Donald Trump’s supporters at the American capitol in January. The intentions of these Tory rioters were clear. Unable to assert themselves as victors in the democratic process, they sought to intimidate their rivals and cast doubts on the legitimacy of the colony’s political institutions. They chanted and hollered, sang and threw stones. Finding little in the way of security after their political allies in parliament had shot down calls to summon the troops from the garrison, they made their way into the building and on to the floor of the legislature, where they interrupted the business of parliament that was still in session, shouting and shuffling papers on the desks of parliamentarians.

Updated, April 26: From Wikisource, a reminiscence of the 1849 riots from Alfred Perry, the man who claimed to have led the mob to the Parliament and personally started the fire that destroyed the building.  (Thanks to Russ Chamberlayne)

Book Notes: Rough Justice

Flanker Press, Newfoundland's leading trade book press, recently sent me a copy of Keith Mercer's recent book Rough Justice: Policing, Crime, and the Origins of the Newfoundland Constabulary, 1929-1871.

Mercer's book is an institutional history commissioned and supported by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Historical Society (as the first of at least two volumes, no less). It's also a serious, from the ground-up, constable's-eye view of justice, authority, and the policing of early Newfoundland, with some serious comments to offer on Newfoundland historiography.

Take dog control. Mercer notes it has been argued that the frequency with which dog control legislation was brought down by Newfoundland authorities is evidence of the ineffectuality of law -- rule-making as a substitute for enforcement.

Mercer offers a table from a typical year,1865: 827 dogs shot by constables under the Sheep Act. 256 in St John's, 174 in Harbour Main/Brigus, 65 in Carbonear, 60 in Trinity, and so on. That's just part of one year, with not all districts reporting. The scale at which dogs were killed was astounding, Mercer writes. "In St John's Chief Magistrate Carter reported that constables shooting dogs with guns in the city was dangerous but happily no serious incidents had occurred." (Can we expect a dog's-eye view history of Newfoundland sometime?)

Mercer offers context for this unforgettable historical detail. In the 1860s efforts were being made to expand the Newfoundland economy beyond fishing to agriculture, and particularly to grazing.  An Agricultural Society reported in 1865 in the past five years no less than 4000 sheep had been killed by dogs, 1630 around Brigus alone.  Dog control in other words, was a prerequisite to development, and there was no one but the Constabulary's men to carry it out  - which they evidently did.

So Mercer makes the whole thing not a lurid anecdote (well, not only a lurid anecdote) but a window into the complications of law and policing when a handful of constables were practically the only agents of authority anyone saw.  And that kind of sharp eye for how Newfoundland society and government operated is evident all through the book.  It even explains why, in the early 19th century, anyone who was a publican, that is, held a license to sell liquor to the public, was also ex officio a constable responsible for keeping order in the neighbourhood.  The lovely strangeness of the past.

Prize Watch: The CHA Prizes

The Canadian Historical Association recently posted notice of the nominees for its historical prizes for 2021 

Shortlisted for the CHA best book prize are five books, only one of which, Heidi Bohaker's, got any notice here (but it was good notice):

Heidi Bohaker, Doodem and Council Fire, Anishinaabe Governance through Alliance (University of Toronto Press for The Osgoode Society, 2020)

Paul-André Dubois, Lire et écrire chez les Amérindiens de la Nouvelle-France (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2020)
 
Patrizia Gentile, Queen of the Maple Leaf: Beauty Contests and Settler Femininity (UBC Press, 2020)

Brittany Luby, Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory (University of Manitoba Press, 2020

Eric W. Sager, Inequality in Canada: The History and Politics of an Idea (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020)

The full lists of nominees in all categories, as well as recognition for last year's winners, are available at the website.

History of Cabinet

Here and there in the coverage of the Ontario government's flailing attempts to avoid blame for the province's new wave of Covid infections come mentions of the Ford government holding cabinet sessions that go long into the night, or cause scheduled press conferences to be delayed for hours while they wrangle.  

We tend to assume that the modern government cabinet is mostly a political irrelevance. Serious political stratagizing and decision-makers involves a leader and his or her strategists and spin-doctors, with the cabinet and caucus gettng their instructions later. 

But somehow one can imagine Doug Ford being strengthened and reassured by his cabinet, who doubtless tell him that the doctors and scientists on the pandemic advisory panels are pointy-headed theorists who don't really understand things, whereas they themselves just talked to a businessman or a town councillor back home who said blah blah blah. Ford alone with knowledgeable people might be swayed, but in cabinet it's collective ignorance that gets reinforced.

I'm generally an advocate of real parliaments, where cabinets are accountable to legislatures and caucuses and leaders are accountable to all three.  But sometimes even in our debased parliaments, I guess sometimes the worst are full of passionate conviction.  And it show.

History of best and worst at the US Supreme Court -- updated

Scotusblog, the American blog about the Supreme Court of the United States [whence "SCOTUS"] has been running a March madness-type bracket competition to determine the champion justice of that court. 

Currently John Marshall, CJ 1801-35, the first great judge of the court and effectively the one who secured for it the authority to make constitutional rulings that could not be overturned by Congress or the president, is going up against Earl Warren, CJ 1953-69, leader of the Warren Court's "constitutional revolution" in civil rights jurisprudence. 

Warren had to beat out the renowned Louis Brandeis (SC judge 1916-39), so two heavyweights for sure.  But in the semis, Marshall was up against Antonin Scalia (SC judge 1986-2016) whose death led to the debacle when the Republican Senate refused to consider the replacement nomination from President Barack Obama. I thought Scalia was mostly famous for his anti-gay and anti-black rulings, and for his way of always produced the most reactionary interpretations possible of the US constititution and calling it a legal philosophy. His "originalism" has not been taken very seriously as a theory of jurisprudence outside the United States, but there it remains significant enough to carry Scalia to the semi-finals, I guess.

As a counter-weight, the podcast 5-4 Pod, with a more lefty/critical take on the court, is running its own contest to determine the worst Supreme Court justice. Looks like Roger Taney, whose Dred Scott decision helped launch the US Civil War, will run away with it. Scalia was not listed in the opening round of sixteen.

Who might be candidates in a Supreme Court of Canada version of this?  Frankly, I fear there are too few justices of enough renown (or ill-repute) to make up a bracket, and too few scholars to vote on it.
I could see Bora Laskin going up against Beverley McLachlin in one semi-final, and Ivan Rand facing, hmm, Brian Dickson in the other. Dickson was the progenitor of the "living tree" doctrine of constitutional interpretation that has mostly prevented originalist notions in Canadian jurisprudence. Laskin the winner?

But those are about the only names I can come up with as possibilities in Canada. The competition hardly starts until 1950, when the court got out from under the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, so the pool is not large.

Any nominations? 

Update, April 16:  Alan B. McCullough asks:

Was Brian Dickson the progenitor of the "living tree" doctrine of constitutional interpretation? Is the phrase, and the doctrine, not normally attributed to Viscount Sankey of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the Persons Case of 1929? Sankey may have felt comfortable in adopting this position given the history of JCPC decisions which arguably strengthened provincial powers and undermined the idea of originalism in Canadian jurisprudence.

Yes, you are absolutely right in crediting Viscount Sankey.  

Definitely the phrase begins with Sankey and the Persons Case of 1929. To justify overthrowing a long string of judicial rulings that had declared that a piece of legislation that said "persons" obviously meant "men" and should be interpreted as such, Sankey wrote, "The British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits." That is: since the status and public role of women had evolved since the words of the constitutional text were written, interpretation of its words must reflect that changed situation."

This is beautifully set out in Robert Sharpe and Patricia J. MacMahon's 2008 book The Persons Case.

But Sharpe and MacMahon go on in that book to show that the "living tree" argument presented by Sankey in 1929 had almost no influence upon interpretations of the Canadian constitution during the next fifty years -- either at the JCPC or, after 1950, at the Supreme Court of Canada. It was Chief Justice Dickson's court that breathed life into the living tree and made it the foundation of the Supreme Court's interpretions of the constitution and the brand-new Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hence, I was speculating, Dickson's claim to be considered in a "best of" ranking.  

Sharpe, with Kent Roach this time, is also the author of a large 2003 biography of Dickson, Brian Dickson: A Judge's Journey 

 

  

History of oaths (updated)

Citizenship by Zoom

I happened recently to be reading Fire and Ashes, Michael Ignatieff's apologia for his brief career in elective Canadian politics. A future blog post may take up some of the weirdness of that career. But for the moment, I'm struck by his description, on first being elected to Parliament, of his discomfort about swearing the MPs' oath, which says nothing of an MP's duty to the constitution or to parliament or to democracy or to the Canadian people he now represented, but only requires loyalty to Elizabeth II.

And then, serendipity, I came across a recent essay by Ashok Charles at the Canadian politics blog Counterweights, about the inadequacy of the citizenship oath sworn by newcomers becoming citizens of Canada. 

Many of those who immigrate to Canada are coming from societies with conceptions of civil rights, freedoms, and responsibilities which are significantly different than our own.

When immigrants have fulfilled the requirements of citizenship, our citizenship oath represents our only opportunity to elicit a formal commitment in regards to how they will conduct themselves as full-fledged members of Canadian society.

It would be prudent to require a pledge to uphold democracy, egalitarianism, secularism and multiculturalism. Each of these principles is upheld by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, as such, they are fundamental Canadian values. We benefit when joined by newcomers who honour them.

Instead they, like our Members of Parliament, get the oath of loyalty to a foreign monarch and her heirs and successors.

Somehow, the death of Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has inspired a lot of commentary about the great value of the monarchy to Canada. We need to remember also the costs we incur everywhere in our public life. 

Update April 15, 2021: Alan B. McCullough responds:

While I happen to be a monarchist, mostly for reasons of tradition, I see some merit in the suggestion that MP’s and citizenship oaths could be revised to make some reference to upholding the constitution and democracy. 

You quote, I presume approvingly, Ashok Charles’ statement that the Charter of Rights and Freedom upholds “democracy, egalitarianism, secularism and multiculturalism.” 

Democracy, egalitarianism, and  multi-culturalism are specifically mentioned in the charter; secularism is not. On the contrary the preamble to the charter reads ” Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” Although some have argued that the preamble is a dead letter, the general rule is that a preamble is intended to establish a context in which the legislation is interpreted. Furthermore, if one regards the preamble as a dead letter, that also discards the idea that Canada is founded on the principle of the rule of law. Beyond the preamble, Section 2 of the Charter states that freedom of conscience and religion are fundamental freedoms. This can hardly be taken as meaning that the charter upholds secularism although I would argue that freedom of conscience protects a citizen’s right to be an agnostic or atheist.

Mr. Charles also raises expresses some concerns with the concept of multi-culturalism – he writes “It is fair to say that many of those who immigrate to Canada are coming from societies with conceptions of civil rights, freedoms, and responsibilities which are significantly different than our own.” Section 27 of the charter states “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” The charter does not support multi-culturalism per se; it supports a specific multicultural heritage. We may have difficulty agreeing on exactly what this heritage is but both Mr. Charles and I might agree that not all cultural practices should be protected by the charter. 

Constitutional drafting is (or should be) a subtle art, and I'm not sure I support precisely the shopping-list formula Ashok Charles has adopted here as the best way to improve the oath. As Alan McCullough says, a phrase about upholding the constitution and democracy -- maybe just the constitution? -- might well be better than risking the complications he mentions.

 

 

History of Poland, the Holocaust, and historians who write on that subject

No country suffered more than Poland in the Second World War or had more imposed on it, by Hitler's Germany and by Stalin's Soviet Union. And references to "Polish death camps," when what is meant are Nazi death camps on Polish soil, leave Poles justifiably offended.  

But the current government of Poland takes the position that Poles and Poland were only and exclusively victims in the war.  Any statement about collaboration by Polish citizens or officials in the murder of any of the three million Jews murdered on Polish soil during the war is considered by the Polish state as defamatory and subject to state prosecution. State historical agencies are now required to whitewash any hint of Polish complicity in actions against Jews during the war. Several historians have faced prosecution and other threats simply for recording incidents in which Polish citizens collaborated in murders and dispossessions.

Recently the New Yorker published a long feature on the travails of those who attempt to write accurate histories of these difficult matters. Much of it focusses on the historian Jan Grabowski who, with a colleague, has been found guilty of defaming a long-dead Polish official in a history book called Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland (so far published only in Polish). An appeal has been launched.

Night without End is one of several books Grabowski has written or co-written on the subject of the Holocaust in Poland, and during the pandemic he's been living in Poland. But as the article makes clear, he's actually a Canadianist, a University of Ottawa professor whose doctorate from the Universite de Montreal is about settler-indigenous relations in New France. Here's a line from Grabowski about his experience of Canadian historical practices, quoted by the terrific Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, who wrote the New Yorker article.

“I look at my colleagues,” he told me, “who are touching on the most, most horrible parts of Canadian history, which is the extermination of aboriginal people, the horrifying fate of aboriginal children under the Catholic Church’s guidance. These people, however, are not hunted down by the state. There is open debate,” he said. “You try to assess your heritage in the light of horrible things and wonderful things.”

I've noted Grabowski before, along with his Polish-American colleague, the noted historian of Poland Jan Gross, also targeted by the Polish authorities.  

History of pizza

Pizza: a ‘species of the most nauseating cake … covered over with slices of pomodoro or tomatoes, and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper and I know not what other ingredients, it altogether looks like a piece of bread that has been taken reeking out of the sewer.’  (some foodie visiting Naples, 1836)

Britain's History Today is saluting the pizza, from its ancient origins, to its identification with the poorest of the poor in Naples, to its renaissance as a symbol of Italian unification when Margherita the new Queen of Italy adopted the basil/mozzarella/tomato pizza (showing the colours of the new Italian flag), to its conquest of the world in the twentieth century. 

Image: from History Today

 

History of research during pandemics

 The editors of the Canadian Historical Review have posted an intriguing, disquieting, post at the UTP Journals blog. 

They keep an eye on the gender of historians submitting articles for publication at the CHR.  And the proportion of men over women among would-be contributors has risen during the Covid lockdowns of the past year. Men have long outnumbered women among those submitting to the journal. Only the "invited contributions" category has shifted the needle toward equality somewhat.  And since the vast majority of submissions are unsolicited -- what they still quaintly call "over the transom."  

But a) who'da thunk the pandemic would change these numbers? and b) isn't it obvious when you do think about it? 

There's lots of testimony that the pandemic has affected women's work experience more than men's and that women have left off work to attend to family matters more than men have. So sure, it will apply to people sitting at their desks banging out research monographs for the scholarly journals.

Kudos to the CHR editors for thinking to check on it.