This month at the Literary Review of Canada: me, actually

One of the reviewed
books

So you are sitting there digesting all that eggnog and Christmas cake, and someone else is getting out their first publication of 2022.

Which is to say that the Literary Review of Canada for January-February is now out, with "Building Worlds," my review of the 2021 Cundill History Prize nominees, included. 

Since the prize announcement was only made last December 2, you have to conclude that while the LRC may sometimes seem a little academic, its publishing timelines can be a lot faster than normal academic ones. (And so were mine, in this case anyway.) The issue also has a lengthy piece by Heather Ramsay on the British Columbia floods of November.

And much else, including a depressing review by Jeffrey Simpson declaring that Jody Wilson-Raybould's memoir shows her to have been an uppity young woman who did not have sufficient respect for her elders and betters in Ottawa. (Contrary viewpoint here.) 

From Then to Now

I love book launches. My favourite kind of party. It always floors me when I tell a non-academic friend that I'm going to a book launch and he or she makes a face. I do admit the launches I'm invited to that don't feature anyone I know or a book I'm likely to read are less appealing, though I still like to get invited. Partly because it makes me feel like a real academic--grad students have inferiority complexes. Partly because it is a great book alert system.

This week I'm thilled to be going to the book launch for Chris Moore's new children's history, From Then to Now.  I am looking forward to catching up with Chris in person, and I intended to buy the book in any case. Kids books are the best, and good kid's histories few and far between.

Though I do wish Chris had taken my advice and that he and his illustrator had done a graphic history book, which I think would be a terrific medium for introducing kids to history. When I was in high school, we used a graphic history of France in my French class one year. I think it was written for primary students in France. It had the Sun King on the cover, and I remember the pictures and the stories to this day.

The downside of the Sun King book, as I recall, was its extreme chauvinsim (in the original sense). I like the global, inclusive focus of From Then to Now:

From Hammurabi to Henry Ford, from Incan couriers to the Internet, from the Taj Mahal to the Eiffel Tower, from Marco Polo to Martin Luther King, from Cleopatra to Catherine the Great, from boiled haggis to fried tarantulas – this is no less than the story of humanity.

But just as important is the emphasis on chronology. Something the history curriculum in Ontario is sorely lacking, as well as the kind of history as story focus of the French history for little kids, is any sense of when things happen: as my friend Donna points out, kids go from the middle ages to pioneers without any sense that anything went on in between. Now I can see the curriculum designers may have wanted to stay away from linear Whiggishness, but some kind of temporal context or time-line is the essence of history. I hope there are many kids who are given copies of From Then to Now by their parents and grandparents--for their sakes as well as Chris's pocketbook.

PS:  Chris's interview with Erin Knight of OpenBook Toronto about this book is up today here.

Featherstone Osler, 'saddlebag jack-of-all-professions' in Upper Canada

My google alerts this week brought up a blog post on Featherstone Lake Osler, 'saddlebag preacher' in Upper Canada by Canadian history blogger Susanna McLeod.

McLeod writes:

...Osler dove into launching the Anglican community in Upper Canada. Establishing his own parish, he also built the family home in the village of Bond Head, 40 miles north of the southwestern edge of Lake Ontario. Osler galloped throughout the territory holding services and encouraging the raising of churches. Visiting distant settlements and parishes on horseback and braving the capricious weather of the four seasons, Osler was known as a “saddlebag preacher,” a designation most often given to the Methodist ministers in Upper Canada. To enhance his important mission, Osler opened a school to train “Bush Clergymen” in the skills required for pioneer religious duties.

( picture of Featherstone Osler, from the William Osler Photo Collection at McGill University Digital Library.)

It caught my eye because I had just been reading about Osler's wearing of several other hats.

As part of my new gig, I have been re-reading Christopher Moore's excellent book, The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers, 1797-1997 (yes, I'm a suck-up, but it's really a model of professional/institutional history, comprehensive and very readable.) This is what Chris has to say about Osler:

Most of the farmers of Canada West [Upper Canada after the Union of 1841] simply got along without lawyers, doing what is today considered lawyers' work by themselves or with lay help. they sought advice on legal and other matters from those who had some education and who kept a shelf of books for reference. The sons of Anglican missionary Featherstone Osler became renowned doctors and lawyers, but their father, as the only educated man in his district....was 'general will drawer' to the community and its doctor and dentist as well. (p.103)

So added to his activities as a preacher and teacher referred to above, is Osler the winner of the title of Ontarian jack-of-most-professions? Does he one-up William Warren Baldwin, the doctor-teacher-lawyer-politician? The Canadian Dictionary of Biography also includes militia officer, judge, JP and businessman in the latter's c.v. But I would have to give Osler points for his willingness to get his feet (or his horse's hooves) dirty, something that his fellow C of E clergymen were notoriously loath to do.