Happy birthday, D'Arcy McGee

He had been an Irish rebel who recanted, a patriotic American who grew disillusioned, an anti-clerical who made his peace with the Catholic church, a reformer who had gone over to John A. Macdonald, and a teetotaller given to alcoholic binges.

-- from 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal

Went down last night to the Duke of York pub in Toronto to observe the two hundredth birthday of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825-1868). Would the Pogue Mahone pub or some other Irishy place have been more appropriate? Well, they are probably a bit Fenian still over there, and McGee was a loyal subject of Queen Victoria when he was not a rebel in arms.

Anyway, the Guinness flowed, and there were toasts, speeches, poetry, a genuine McGee descendant, and an Irish jig played on an tin whistle. David Wilson read the last paragraphs of his biography, about the man who "took an uncompromising stand against militants within his own ethnoreligious community" and was shot for it. 

It was a lot of fun and some good craic. The whole thing was orchestrated by the tireless Patrice Dutil, who insists last night's small commemoration should have been matched on a grander scale everywhere in Canada. On the centenary in 1925, apparently, the GG, the PM, and the leader of the opposition all showed up to a McGee tribute which was broadcast across the nation. 

I dunno. It takes a pretty big legacy to carry on more than a century in anything like living memory, methinks.  But thanks, Patrice.

History of Celsius

Happy New Year.

It has been fifty years since Canada began the transition to the metric system, with the adoption of Celsius for temperature leading the way. 

The story in that link above refers to the Tory MP goofuses who opened their own "freedom to measure" gas station when gas prices went metric, soon after the change in the weather reporting.  Was "everyone can have their own measuring system" the beginning of the right-wing movement that led to vaccines being optional and Daylight Savings proposed to become a matter of personal choice.

Probably not.  When Britain caught up to the Gregorian calendar reforms in the early 18th century 1752, there were rioters out demanding "give us back our eleven days!"

When gas prices went metric in 1975, the price of a gallon of gas was just reaching $1.00.  Many gas stations signs only had room for three digits for the cents per gallon (.ie, 99.9).  Some had to put up a big cardboard "$1" at the left of their sign, so it would read, for example, $1.025.  The switch to metric at about 0.22 cents a litre solved that problem.  

22 cents is worth about $1.30 today, apparently, so gas prices have not gone up nearly as much as they should have, given the carbon price that ought to have been factored in.

It's all another reason why the US would be better off as the eleventh province rather than us being "the 51st state."  Not only health care, rights for women, and gun laws, but fewer obsolete measuring systems as well.  (But do you know your metric height and weight?)

History of the Writers' Union of Canada

Today, November 3, 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Writers' Union of Canada. It may not be quite as lively as it used to be but remains a redoubtable force in Canadian culture.  I was not there at the founding, but I've been a member for a good part of that time, and at one point chaired the organization.

They sent us each an elegantly decorated cookie to celebrate the day. That's it sitting atop my little oral history of the Union's beginnings. I plan to eat it at some point today. 

The Union from the very start introduced itself to the Canada Council, to the Ontario Arts Council, and they responded to us as professionals. We haven't always won what we'd like to win, but we've had an eye on the whole thing.  

What we really were concerned about was -- how to say -- managing the professionalism. Managing how writers were being treated by publishers, by governments, and establishing a sense of authority for the profession.

         -- Graeme Gibson, from Founding the Writers' Union of Canada: An Oral History 

 

Happy Bloomsday, and for Canada happy fortieth (million)

This year Bloomsday is also a special day in Canada.  Canada's population is estimated to be hitting forty million sometime today. Right now StatsCan has a neat little population clock, that needed a net increase of fewer than 500 people when I checked it before noon Eastern Time today. 

When I was a school child, every school child knew that Canada's population was twenty million. We've come a long way.  And last night, watching a big win for Canada's men's national soccer team and all its first-generation Canadian superstars, I couldn't help thinking we've got a lot of benefits out of those who have come here, currently at a pace of about a million a year.

History of Acadians

Today is the Acadian National Day. In towns throughout Acadie, they have doubtless been making le tintamarre, wearing and waving a great deal of blue and yellow and employing a lot of noise-makers.

Bonne fête, mes amis.

History of the Macdonald anniversary

Monday, January 11, marks the 206th birthday of John A. Macdonald. It's not the event it was a few years ago, that's for sure. The National Post is marking it with a series of essays, mostly on the themes, it seems, of, well, he was not as bad as people are saying, and presentism is dangerous. 

An impressive roster of historians has contributed already: Pierre Anctil, Frédéric Bastien, Patrice Dutil, Barbara Messamore, J.R. Miller, Donald B. Smith. I have not read far in them, but you may find them worth grappling with.

 

HIroshima at 75

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. History News Network has complied an extensive reading list -- "Hiroshima: What People Think Now" -- on scholarly and journalist opinion about the necessity and the strategic effectiveness (and hence, to some extent, the morality) of the bombing. No consensus, let us say.

It's pretty clear, I think, that the simple "Hiroshima = Japanese Surrender" equation does not stand up well.  But the argument that, well, Japan might have surrendered even without the atomic bomb, is not very satisfying either, and hardly takes seriously the dilemma of those who made the atomic decisions. 

I find myself kind of sympathetic to an American blogger Kevin Drum, who wrote yesterday:

In some sense, the real answer here is probably unknowable. Two events happened at nearly the same time, and they were closely followed by a third. Figuring out conclusively what caused what may simply not be possible.

Something not often drawn into this discussion is the long-term impact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In August 1945, there was still some sense, even in the Japanese high command, that the destruction of Hiroshima was not much different in kind that the destruction of Dresden or Tokyo by conventional bombing. It took, maybe, gradual understanding of and empathy for the actual horrors of nuclear warfare, and the experience of the Japanese cities and their survivors, to create a global reluctance to actually use nuclear weapons again -- a reluctance that has lasted 75 years so far.

Assume no atom bombing and a quick Japanese surrender ending the war.  Without the image of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how much greater the likelihood that some Cold War Strangelove would have gone ahead with use of tactical nuclear weaponry, or the hydrogen bomb, or the Doomsday Machine?

Is it acceptable to think that the destruction of those cities spared the rest of us from unknowable horrors? Deep waters.

History of the HBC: approaching 350

The Bay's former flagship store in Winnipeg

May 2, 2020 will mark the 350th anniversary of the chartering of the Hudson Bay Company, now long established among North America's oldest company.  

Canada's History has been working up an issue to mark the anniversary, which subscribers will be receiving soon. Recently the Toronto Star also noted the looming anniversary, juxtaposing it against the modern retail giant's current struggles (and the now ever-looming possibility that the HBC's survival is in doubt) and the ambiguities of its history.

For the Indigenous trappers HBC relied on, the trade was “a mixed blessing,” says Arthur Ray, professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia. Along with the guns, pots, foodstuffs and the now-iconic point blankets, which were bartered for furs at HBC trading posts, came “smallpox, measles, whooping cough and all sorts of diseases they hadn’t had to deal,” Ray notes.

As part of its coverage of the anniversary, Canada's History is soliciting readers' memories and images of their own interaction with The Bay. 

Some obscure anniversaries

Who knew that January 29th was the 200th anniversary of the death of British King George III? Or cared, you say.

But Arthur Burns and Liam Fitzgerald of the Georgian Papers Programme are on the case. They note that Britain's Royal Mint has actually produced a coin for the event, and explain why that is a particularly Georgian tribute:

Medallic art and culture had reached its zenith by the beginning of the nineteenth century. At this time medals were being issued at a variety of social levels, both to celebrate significant figures, and as prizes awarded by societies for innovations in farming, industry and commerce, as well as discoveries in the natural sciences. The ubiquity of the medal derived from the fact that it held a dual function. In one sense, medals were devices that conferred social distinction, converting the recipient into a physical embodiment of achievement for others to emulate. On the other hand, unlike other honorary prizes, medals also had a monetary value based on the metal from which they were made, and so could be also exchanged for financial reward. Therefore, from the Royal Society of Arts to the local improvement club, by the end of the eighteenth century medals had become a byword for achievement and prestige.

Meanwhile, Le Devoir notes the centenary of the founding of the Archives Nationales de Quebec in 2020, inspired by the politician Athanase David and first led by Pierre-Georges Roy. The staff union notes in the article that despite all the new expectations put upon archives, particularly in the digital realm, 2019 marked the first time in many years that there were no actual cuts in staffing.

Photo credit: Le Devoir.

Trick or treat: creepy Hallowe'en history

[This post first appeared on this blog October 31, 2006. It has been reposted from time to time :  a.Hallowe'en tradition.]

On Saturday, October 31, 1885, the Toronto Globe published a special Hallowe’en story on the pranks often committed by rowdy medical students, who went around in a gang, turning off the new gas street lights.

That night, Toronto and the Globe got more than they bargained for. The Monday edition reported breathlessly that police constable Jenkinson, making his rounds at Parliament and Gerrard late Hallowe'en night, had discovered a nude female body hanging from a meat hook outside a butcher shop. 

“Great ghosts!” the Globe reports him as saying.

The Globe writers, on behalf of Victorian decency, seems to have been genuinely horrified. “Suppose a delicate lady had to pass an exhibition of this kind. The result would have been terrible.” 

In the story, a good deal of disgust was directed toward the Trinity College medical students. They denied all culpability, though the body -- and two others found outside the school building -- had indeed been stolen from its morgue.

Police arrested an assistant at the butcher shop and some of his cronies. But on November 19, city police court magistrate Denison freed them, saying, “I’m afraid we haven’t got the right persons. I wish we had."

"Who perpetrated the Hallowe’en Outrage?" asked the Globe.

Just the candy this year, please, just the candy.

[Re the history of grave-robbing for medical research:  last week Katie Daubs of the Toronto Star had a long story on the subject.}

The end of the First World War?

I'm glad the war is over.  Meaning no disrespect, but I found the Remembrance Day that marked the end of four years of the First World War centenary a bit of a relief. Canada's centenary observances since 2014 have been impressive and often moving, and they probably reached wider than I might have guessed four years ago. But I think we are getting ready to let the First World War pass into history, to become like the Napoleonic Wars or some other distant conflict: interesting, full of drama and event and historical significance, but capable of being considered a bit less personally now.

The First World War did leave an enormous shadow over the 20th century. And new media and the digitalization of old sources have recently made it possible for almost anyone to immerse themselves in the specific details of the life and service of practically any soldier of the Great War, and even his or her family and community too.

But it should be growing remote. The Civil War remains a live issue in the United States after more than 150 years, but that's because its driving issue, race, remains alive. Some Serbians, I hear, continue to obsess about some medieval battle their ancestors lost in what is now Kosovo. But what issue of the First World War remains live today? Grief alone seems not enough any more. The orphans of the war are now few, the loss and devastation becoming distant, the grief less personal. Maybe we can start to let it go.

I happened to be reading Toby's Room, a recent novel by British Booker Prize winning novelist Pat Barker, much of whose writing concerns the First World War.  And I began to find the endless fascination with the war dead of 1914-18... just maybe a bit much. Toby has been dead a long time.

Can we start to leave the First World War to its historians?

Update, November 13:  Pushback from Helen Webberley in Auz:

Au contraire. I think the lessons of the War To End All Wars are
probably more relevant now than at any time since 1933-45. Today
we have national leaders using the same language of hate and racism
as they did in 1914 - Jair Bolsonaro in Brasil, Donald Trump in
the USA, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Matteo Salvini in
Italy (currently Interior Minister), Viktor Orbán in Hungary etc etc.

And Alan B. McCollough:

I have attended most Remembrance Day ceremonies at the War Memorial in Ottawa since the mid-70s. During the 1980s and 1990s there were often anti-war protestors there; sometimes they were noisy but generally the crowd accepted their presence without showing much support. Since 9-11 I have not seen protestors and the numbers in attendance have, in my opinion, grown. The crowd this year was as large as any I remember.

I have no close link to the war although my mother had a cousin who was killed in France in the first war and my father was in the air force in the second war. I attend partly as a matter of respect and partly as a sort of civic duty like voting in election even when I don’t care for any of the candidates. Attending is an act of solidarity.

The protesters in the 1980s saw the ceremony as a glorification of war. For some it may have been but increasingly the emphasis has been on remembering the human costs of the war and strengthening the sentiment “Never Again.”

You ask “But what issue of the First World War remains live today?” In the recent ceremonies in Paris President Macron spoke of the rise of nationalism in Europe as the reawakening of old demons. The European Union was, and is, an attempt to neutralize the effects of nationalism and prevent general European wars. So far it has been successful but allowing the memory of the war to drop out of the public consciousness does not seem likely to strengthen the EU or to reduce the dangers of chauvinistic nationalism.

I won’t leave the war to historians just yet.

Fair enough. But I think of the Second World War as being better "for thinking with" when it comes to these issues.  Was not the First World War mostly about loyalties to monarchies and empires, often transnational?  I know, its's complicated.

George Brown bicentennial: I

Birthday boy

Don Smith of Calgary reminds me: George Brown, journalist, controversialist, statesman, confederation-maker, is approaching his two-hundredth birthday, November 29, 2018.

Brown does not have the press-agent John A. had for his 200th in 2015 -- but then John A has his own troubles these days.

How to mark Brown's bicentennial?

If you have a George Brown achievement, anecdote, quotation or image to share, I'd be glad to receive your suggestions.

I'll try to add a few of my own between now and then.

Shakespeare's Birthday/World Book Day/Getting Names Right(ish)

It's Shakespeare's birthday.  Also World Book and Copyright Day.

And speaking of words: Tsilhqot'in or Chilcotin? First Nation or indigenous or Indigenous? Cindy Blackstock recommends the Indigenous Peoples Glossary, Second Edition, for sorting out these issues of respect and accuracy.

Nobody loves you when you are 203

For a couple of years before 2015, the John A. Macdonald birthday parties on January 11 were lively events. (Unless he was actually born January 10, which remains a possibility.) They were history nerdfests more than Macdonald hagiographies, with a certain amount of political contestation encouraged.
By the 199th in 2014, it was getting a little too "official" and worshipful for my taste, and we passed on the 200th.

Now any kind of Macdonald commemoration would be intensely controversial. Indeed the bicentenary attention may have helped provoked the reassessment -- another sign of the consequences of anniversaries on historical memory. Even the pub located in Macdonald's old office building in Kingston has changed its name.  The 203rd does not seem to be prominent in the Canadian calendar today

This year the commemoration has apparently shifted from Canada to Highclere Castle in Britain, where they seem to be promoting the legend that the Canadian constitution was written there!

Highclere Castle was at the very centre of the discussions surrounding the British North American Bill and its drafting.

They must have an odd notion of what went on at aristocratic country house parties in the mid 19th centuries.

Disasters

It had not much registered with me before this year that December 6, being noted today as the hundredth anniversary of the Halifax explosion, is also the anniversary of the Polytechnique shooting, 28 years ago in Montreal.

As centenaries do, the Halifax disaster has provoked quite a bit of new research and new publishing, from surveys of the whole event, like Ken Cuthbertson's (at right) to studies of recovery policies, eg, David Sutherland's.  It's the featured story on CBC Radio's The Current this morning.

I guess it's not a "major" anniversary in Montreal, by the calendar, but it will be remembered too.  I wrote this about that event ten years ago, and it stays with me:

This is also the 18th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique murders in Montreal. I was giving a university exam the morning after, and the visceral moan or growl or something that arose from the class when I raised the subject remains with me. Then I had a 3 month old daughter. This week she sits in a university building doing exams herself.

Anniversaries thick and fast

One would not have predicted it fifty years ago, but in the historical significance stakes, the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther's launching of the Protestant Reformation in the fall of 1617 seems to be killing the one-hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917. Luther is still here; where did the Soviet Union go?  (But don't miss the film of "The Death of Stalin" when it comes to general release soon.)

Meanwhile in the disambiguation category, be it known that the Balfour Declaration issued one hundred years ago today, November 2, 1917, in which the British government recognized the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, is not the same thing as the Balfour Declaration of 1926, in which the British government recognized that Britain and the, ah, "white dominions" were

autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs.

Always seemed to me that that was a declaration that any post-1867 Canadian government could have made and made stick, but I acknowledge that is not the consensus view.

The Canadian engagement in the Battle of Passchendaele, or Third Ypres, was near its peak a hundred years ago.  The other day I heard Passchendaele described as another Canadian victory of 1917, but I prefer Prime Minister Borden's view, as delivered to British Prime Minister Lloyd George:

Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you that, if there is a repetition of the battle of Passchendaele, not a Canadian soldier will leave the shores of Canada so long as the Canadian people entrust the government of their country to my hands.

history of Passchendaele 1917

British and Belgian royalty mark the Passchendaele anniversary

The Vimy commemorations of last April are being reprised this week, at Passchendaele, where the Third Battle of Ypres began a hundred years ago.

The Canadian Corps was not brought into the Passchendaele battle until November -- having been fully engaged at Hill 70 during the summer of 1917.  Passchendaele gets less attention in Canadian military memory than Vimy, but in fact the Canadian casualties were much larger at Passchendaele, and the experience, if possible, even worse.

Book Notes: Cuthbertson on Halifax Explosion

Another anniversary for 2017:  December 6 will mark the centenary of the Halifax Explosion, when the munitions freighter Mont Blanc exploded in the Halifax narrows after a collision, producing a blast that levelled much of north-end Halifax and killed over 2000 people.

Marking the occasion, Patrick Crean Editions at HarperCollins Canada will publish Ken Cuthbertson's The Halifax Explosion in November.

Update, 1 August:  Mark Reynolds draws my attention to Yvette D'Entremont's article on a new doc about the experience of the Halifax School for the Deaf on Gottingen Street in the North End during and after the 1917 explosion.  It also notes a thing called MSL -- Maritime Sign Language -- that is now gradually disappearing as American Sign Language becomes dominant.

Also, I'm reminded that the annual volume of the Champlain Society for 2017 will also be a Halifax explosion book:  "We harbour no evil design," David Sutherland's collection of documents on rehab efforts post-explosion.

Radio150

Early Canada Day, I had a little (pre-recorded) part in Chris Hall's Confederation documentary, broadcast on CBC Radio One's "The House." The whole thing is available here.

Late Canada Day, I chatted with Dotun Adebayo of BBC Radio 5's "Up All Night." This was really up all night: we did it live at 11 pm Toronto time, when it was 4 am July 2 in London. To the faint background of firework explosions coming in my window, we chatted about what went on in Canada during Canada Day 150, and why 150, too, a little. Through the usual digital miracles, that's available too. You go about 3 hours and 6 minutes in to find the Canadiana, which is Justin Trudeau, followed by me, followed by Mohawk artist and activist Ashley Bomberry -- who struggles heroically with much more uncomprehending questions from Dotun that I did.

Why I'm celebrating Canada150 tomorrow

Have a Tic Tac, at least

1.  Because my parents brought my brothers and me to this country when we were too young to have done it for ourselves. Tomorrow I'll consider my gratitude to them and to the country.

2.  Because to our most pressing moral and political obligation, the constitution that came into force a hundred and fifty years ago is not the problem, it is the solution.

The politicians who shaped the British North America Act, 1867, assumed they were entitled to pass the Indian Act, develop the residential schools system, and cause death and dispossession across the prairies (and elsewhere). They assumed the indigenous peoples were to be assimilated entirely or become extinct, and they were comfortable with either or both.

But they did not constitutionalize those assumptions. The one line in the 1867 constitution concerning First Nations, (s.91.24, "Indians, and lands relating to the Indians") in fact binds Canada into the pre-existing treaty relationship. The constitution establishes that relations between the new nation and the First Nations must be negotiated through treaty discussions between independent partners.

The problem is not the constitution. It's Canadians. When Canadian accept the treaty obligation in the constitution, and the treaty relationship in general, that is when Reconciliation truly starts. July 2, 2017 would not be too soon.