I see the November Literary Review of Canada is already online and I hadn't even got to the October one yet. There's a good bit of history in it. Great cover art too: "Race to the Top?" by David Parkins.
Reviews of Jackson's Wars, Douglas Hunter's book on artist A.Y. Jackson, and Big Men Fear Me, Mark Bourrie's book on George McCullagh, confirm again that when journalists become historians, they produce. (Compare Active History's statistics on how long Ph.D students take to complete. The review of Lifesavers and Body Snatchers, Tim Cook's study of the medical side of Canada's First World War shows it isn't only ex-journos who manage to produce. Trade market history publishing in Canada may be suffering but it still ain't dead yet.
The must read of this issue, however, is a letter from Hamar Foster, west coast legal academic and scholar on indigenous history and aboriginal rights long before either of those adjectives were even much in use. Some time ago, Foster defended the pioneering B.C. judge Matthew Begbie from the accusations that led the British Columbia Law Society to cancel its various Begbie honours. This time he writes to demonstrate that, contrary to a plaque now installed at Toronto Metropolitan University, Egerton Ryerson simply was not "instrumental in the design and implementation of the Indian Residential School System" -- and indeed that he recommended that residential schools, if implemented, should be voluntary and have First Nations participation in their administration.
Foster is not opposed to the name change at TMU. But he feels one can stand up for accurate reporting on historical figures.
