History of honours and titles UPDATED

History and historians are well represented in the February 2025 Literary Review of Canada: e.g., Jack Granatstein and Donald Wright (reviewing), Tim Cook and Richard White (reviewed). My fave is Patrice Dutil's lively review of David Roberts' Boosters and Barkers (a book noted here last March, may I say). It's a study of how Canada financed its immense First World War expenditures -- especially by inventing the concept of war bonds, not addressed to banks and financial houses but to the great Canadian public as a patriotic duty.  

They were an enormous success. To the surprise of the bonds' inventors, Canada raised some $2.5 billion during the war (when a billion still meant something) from hundreds of thousands of individual Canadians.

Thomas White

Dutil admits reports that the book is an important study but not an "easy read." He focusses on the life and career of  one of its central figures, Thomas White, the Canadian finance minister during the war and the architect of the War Bonds -- and later of the income tax. Dutil, one historian who is unashamedly interested in Canadian politics and politicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, observes that White is little known or remembered, and he uses the review to plunge into his life and its oddities: a Liberal and an Empire devotee who became a Conservative but could not stem the rising tide of Canada's ties to the United States. 

I liked it. If you don't read the book, read the review.

A peripheral thought: the article did get me thinking again about retrospective foreign honours. Should Canadian historians routinely note titles held by Canadians that they would not now receive? 

Dutil notes that White received a knighthood in 1916. No doubt White deserved recognition for his accomplishments as wartime Finance Minister, and "Sir Thomas White" makes the man seem dignified, and important. But by 1916 knighthoods and other titles had become controversial, even scandalous, in Canada. Joseph Flavelle, a non- politician made a baronet and then dubbed "the bacon baron," was pilloried for accepting the honour. The great corruption that too often surrounded the granting of titles would provoke the 1917-19 Nickle resolution against titles for Canadians, moved by one of White's fellow Conservative MPs.  

Long before then, it had become customary that most Canadian Liberal politicians declined knighthoods, while many minor Conservative luminaries continued to accept them. When historians juxtapose Sir Thomas White (knighted Conservative finance minister) against William Fielding (never knighted Liberal finance minister), are we putting a thumb on the scale by suggesting the former, by accepting a controversial title, was more worthy, more distinguished, than the latter who (according to his DCB biography) declined all such offers? 

Update, January 20: Charles Levi responds (and I thought I was the only one who might consider this an issue!)

Saw your post about "Sir Thomas White" and the telling comment "are we putting a thumb on the scale by suggesting the former, by accepting a controversial title, was more worthy, more distinguished, than the latter who declined all such offers?"

Yes, we are, and the problem continues to plague the history of the University of Toronto. I've spoken about this before, but this thing has added to the problems of James Loudon, the under-rated first President of the University of Toronto (and third president of University College). He's sandwiched between "Sir Daniel Wilson" and "Sir Robert Falconer", both of whom received late 20th century full biographies and also was highly criticized by Baron Flavelle, so all three of those biographies (by Bliss, Greenlee and a committee) just piled on Loudon while privileging and minimizing the serious errors of all three of the nobles. So Loudon (who had real flaws, to be sure) has not been treated fairly or in context.

James Loudon apparently was never offered a knighthood, so he could not decline it. As far as I recall, neither Sir Daniel or Sir Robert was knighted BECAUSE they were U of T Presidents, but for other reasons. Still, the knighthoods seem to count in their favour and against Loudon.

Historians at the Royal Society of Canada

RSC crest

On Twittex, Alan MacEachern salutes historians newly appointed (elected?) to the Royal Society of Canada:  Clio Carstairs, Cynthia Comacchio, David Howes, Mark McGowan, Jim Phillips, Lisa Rankin, Jonathan Livernois, and Heidi Tworek. I might add the writer Lawrence Hill. 

It occurs to me I  know hardly anything about the Royal Society of Canada or what it does these days. It been around for 150 years or so, and it used to publish some notable scholarly journals -- might it still? It gives quite a few prizes, apparently, none of which I seem to have followed in my Prize Watch items here. 

In these name-changing times, could they not come up with a less cringy name for it? It makes me think of another honour I recently heard mention of, about which I am really dubious: The King Charles III Coronation Medal of Canada. I would think Conrad Black would be about the only appropriate "Canadian" honoree for that one.  

But some of these historians now entitled to style themselves FRSC are friends of mine and I recognize most of the others.  They seem like historians worthy of honours -- so congratulations to them.  

Historians and Writers at the Order of Canada

Compared to the squalid abuse of the "King's/Queen's Counsel" honour I noted here, I think the Order of Canada has honoured the truly honorable among Canadians -- and without the outdated monarchical associations, though regrettably the monarch remains technically the source of the Order. So I'm happy to note some historians and writers recently appointed to the Order of Canada.

Among historians I note: 

• Sarah Carter of the University of Alberta, a giant of women's history and of indigenous/settler history, particularly in western Canada  (Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and much else), 
• and Robert Sharpe, a renowned judge who has also been a prolific legal historian (The Persons Case, The Last Battle and many other works, and also a leader of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, to say nothing of his judisprudential achievements. 

Among writers and "book people":  indigenous novelist Jeannette Armstrong, kid's writer and poet Sheree Fitch, humorist and essayist Charles Gordon, novelist Susan Swan, and (a clever one) Holly and Paul McNally, indy booksellers and supporters of Canadian writing and publishing. 
  

Another reason to abolish the monarchy - UPDATED

In Ontario the corrupt and incompetent Ford government announced (quietly, as the holiday weekend started) that "in honour of the coronation of" that British guy at Buckingham Palace, it was reinstating the honour of "King's Counsel," abandoned here forty years ago as a sinkhole of patronage. 

The surprise announcement included a long list of lawyers newly appointed as KCs, included cabinet minister Caroline Mulroney, who has never been qualified to practise law in Ontario, other cabinet ministers, a long list of party hacks and friends-of-Doug, and one or two respected counsel for cover.

Former premier David Peterson, whose government abandoned the granting of QC's in the 1980s, said

he was “shocked by the effrontery” of the Tories’ decision, saying his government had scrapped the designation because it had become “corrupted.

“It lost all meaning, and so any principled approach would have been to stop them,” said Peterson, a K.C. himself, who now serves as chair of Torstar, the Toronto Star’s parent company.

“I just think it’s unbelievable that they would reinstitute this.”

It's impossible not to notice how the scraps and tags of monarchical honours that survive in Canada are so often used for political manipulations like this. The Queen's Counsel designation originated in Canada in the 1840s, simultaneously with the achievement of responsible government, which empowered politicians to act in the name of the Crown -- and the QC was being denounced for being mostly about patronage and favoritism at least as early as 1867.  

Note: I searched this Toronto Star news item on Google and it came up no problem, despite all the news about Google blocking all Canadian news feeds. 

Update, July 5:  News reports inform us that the Ford government amended the Barristers Act to require the Law Society of Ontario to call to the bar former attorneys-general of Ontario without examination or payment of fees.  In the case of Caroline Mulroney, the law society complied three days before the Ford government awarded her the designation of King's Counsel.

I know when you decline an honour it seems a bit self-serving to honour oneself for having done so, but in this case it would be useful if someone could publish a list of all the genuinely distinguished lawyers who declined to be part of the Ford scam.   

History of knights

Something you don't see very often in this country: a knight in the obits. This was a Canadian who died in Toronto recently, but one who made a good chunk of his career in Britain, including as an advisor to the Crown, and had received the customary honour that country gives for that kind of service. 

It reminded me of something I noted in Ted Glenn's A Very Canadian Coup. It often seemed as if Glenn's entire cast, the Conservative Party around Mackenzie Bowell (Sir Mackenzie Bowell, KCMG, if you prefer), consisted of knights: Sir Frank Smith, Sir Auguste-Réal Angers, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, Sir Adolphe-Philippe Caron, Sir John Carling, and so on.

Which raises the question: is it appropriate for historians faithfully to bestow "Sir Tom," "Sir Dick," or "Sir Harry" when they mention a nineteenth or early twentieth century Canadian who had accepted a knighthood? 

The honour was very much skewed towards Conservatives even in the 1800s. Robert Baldwin, George Brown, Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie, and Edward Blake were among prominent Liberals and Reform leader who chose not to be knights. Almost the only knighted Liberal in 1896 was Richard Cartwright, who had accepted the honour when he was a Conservative and was constantly teased as "the gallant knight" after he joined the Liberals.  

Is it appropriate then, for historical narratives to go putting Sir John A., Sir George-Etienne, Sir Robert, and the rest against Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Brown, Mr Mackenzie King, and so on? 

It does seem to imply that those who had been busy giving each other knighthoods were more prominent, more successful, and more dignified that their counterparts who believed as we do, that knighthoods are inappropriate for Canadians. 

Since we mostly don't recognized foreign honours in Canadian public life any more, perhaps historians should adopt Canadian usage and write of John A. rather than Sir John, Bowell rather than Sir Mackenzie, and Prime Ministers Borden and Laurier rather than Sir Robert and Sir Wilfrid.

I would give a partial pass, perhaps, to the francophone knights, at least in the nineteenth century. Anglophone progressives then were fairly consistent in declining titles, but their francophone leaders had fought hard to be accepted as full equals in Canada and the British world, and probably judged that claiming the dignities available to them was a mark of respect to their people as much as to themselves. There is a book called La Petite Loterie by Stephane Kelly that argues the opposite -- i.e., that the titled Quebeckers were being honoured for betraying their nation -- but it's a remarkably thin argument from a good historian.

But even Wilfrid Laurier felt he had accepted his knighthood almost under duress in 1897 and later offered to return it. 

  

  

Honours Watch: historians and writers at the Order of Canada

Just the other day, I was noting Ted Barris among the surviving, still producing, trade-market nonfiction historians of Canada. The Order of Canada people must have been reading, because yesterday Ted was on the New Year's list of new members. Congratulations, Ted.

Haven't scrutinized the whole list, but Ted may be the only historian, or indeed writer of any kind, on it this time. Is that more evidence of the fall of CanLit?

Update, January 5, 2023:  From an interview on CBC-Radio, I hear of Armand Doucet,  Moncton high school history teacher, Governor-General's History Award winner 2020, etc, among the honorees.

Honours watch: Order of Canada recipients

Not a lot of historians on the Canada Day list of Order of Canada appointments.  Most notable, perhaps, is Germaine Warkentin, who is a professor of English, I believe, but has written and edited a great deal of exploration literature and other historical materials over many decades.  

Also Peter Russell, notable political scientist, advisor to Governors-General, and recently author of a vast historical survey, Canada's Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests.  ("Based on what?" I said at first, but came to admire it a lot.)

Among writers, notons David Waltner-Toews, poet and writer, expert on ecology and health too, and children's writer Jan Zwicky. 

Speaking of Canada, I'm inclined to honour Canada Day tomorrow. Not everyone will, but Canada exists as a vehicle in which we can strive for better things.Wear red.  Barbeque something.  Take the day off. 

Honours watch: Historians at the Order of Canada

Pretty good run of historians among the new inductees to the Order of Canada.   

Friesen CM

I note Max Eisen the Holocaust memorist, the Manitoba and prairie historian Gerry Friesen, baseball historian Bill Humber, Frances Henry the scholar of the Caribbean experience in Ontario, Yvon Lambert the collector of Quebec song traditions, Gregory Marchildon the medicare historian, historical podcaster, and Saskatchewan public servant, and Niagara heritage champion Pamela Minns. Congratulations to all.

Update, December 31: Worldwide acclaim for prairie historian! Helen Webberley comments from Melbourne, Australia:

When my maternal family left Russia, half came to Melbourne and half went to Winnipeg. When the family reunions started every four years, alternating in those two cities, I am not sure I could have accurately placed Winnipeg on the map. So I had to quickly start reading, and mum’s cousins recommended I start with Gerry Friesen. He well deserves his Order of Canada.

 

Historical Ethics

In 2017 the Law Society of British Columbia removed all the honours and distinctions it had previously given to Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, appointed in 1858 as the first and for a long time only judge in the new colony of British Columbia. Statues were taken down, etc. The Society was acting on a report that condemned Begbie for disregarding indigenous law, putting to death warriors of the Chilcotin war of 1864, and having "negative" and racist views.  

A group of B.C. lawyers, many of them long active in indigenous legal matters and legal history, put it to the Society that, while it was appropriate that Begbie no longer be considered the symbol of justice in British Columbia, the report was inaccurate and misleading and unworthy of the Society. They presented evidence that Begbie, among other things, threw out the anti-potlatch law as unenforceable, denounced British Columbia's racially-based anti-Chinese legislation, encouraged First Nations in the exercise of "customary jurisdiction" over their own societies, and was singled out by the great B.C. First Nations leader George Manuel as one colonist who had actually advanced the cause of First Nations.  He did not even put anyone to death. (As lawyers should know, Begbie conducted the trial and gave the sentence, but the Chilcoten warriors were indicted by the Crown, convicted of a capital crime by a jury, and denied clemency and executed by the government.)  

The group got no response from the Law Society. I hear, however, that last week they took their case to the (virtual) annual general meeting of the Law Society, put forward their case as a motion -- and got it passed.  It may have been an odd coalition of highly woke indigenous-law specialists and hidebound old traditionalists, but still....  Again, the point was not to re-sanctify Justice Begbie but to argue in favour of nuanced history, even in difficult cases.  Actual consequences? Doubtful.

But, on the vexed questions of memory, commemoration and statuary, where few seem ready to stand up for any challenged historical reputation, I think these west coast scholars and lawyers have done exemplary service.

In Ontario, I think, Egerton Ryerson is one entitled to a similar defence. Not the perfect symbol of what we want Canada, or education, to be in the twenty-first century, perhaps, but hardly the monster he has lately been made out to be.

T'other hand, a Toronto Star story today on how Library and Archive Canada's website and Parks Canada plaque handle John A., Wilfrid Laurier, and others.

Update, October 18:  Jared Milne comments:

This is an example of a bigger problem in historical debate today, where it seems like a figure like Begbie can only be seen as entirely good or entirely bad. It doesn't matter what else the figure's legacy might include-one thing is enough to permanently mark them as irredeemable. That's why discussions like those in Canada's History about John A. Macdonald are so valuable-they show the need for nuanced history, as you point out.

Thanks. Just to be clear, nuanced history is precisely what the lawyers and legal historians in B.C. were advocating,  Sometimes these debates can be an opportunity instead of a problem. 

    

Honours Watch: historians at the Order of Canada

Pretty thin on the ground for writers and historians in the end of year Order of Canada announcements.  

I noticed Brian Osborne, Kingston-based historian-geographer and authority on place, community and heritage, and also Hal Philip Klepak, longtime Royal Military College history and strategic studies professor and authority on Latin American history. Stretch the historian definition a bit, and we can add Mel Watkins, noted advocate of Canadian nationalism and progressive politics since the late 1960s.  

Among writers, I noted only the happy inclusion of my friend, the novelist Katherine Govier.

Historians at the Order of Canada

Good to see Arthur J. Ray, Skip to his friends, on the list of new appointments to the Order of Canada. He has been honoured for his long list of groundbreaking works on fur trade history and indigenous-settler relations, and also for his long record of providing expert witness in land claims and aboriginal title court cases (about which he also wrote a book, Telling It To The Judge. He's also my co-author on the Illustrated History of Canada.  Skip joins the order at the "officer" level.
Also appointed: Marie Battiste, Mik'maw scholar and education prof at the University of Saskatchewan for her scholarship and activism on indigenous education and her many publications in the field.

Honours watch: Dumont and Vaugeois, CM

Not a stellar showing for historians, at least those writing in English, in the recent Order of Canada appointments. But Micheline Dumont, professor and scholar honoured for her work in women's and educational history, was appointed. And Denis Vaugeois, honoured for promoting history and making it more accessible.

That's him right there.

Vaugeois may be best remembered as a passionate cabinet minister in René Lévesque's PQ government in 1970s Quebec. But he was a historian before that, one of the founders in the 1960s of Boreal-Express, a lively and sensationally successful "newspaper" treating events of New France and early Quebec history as if they were news stories. And a historian after that, too, with unlimited interests and enthusiasms and a long list of publications.

One of his enthusiasms was promoting Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.  The United States had produced a dollar coin featuring Sacagawea, famed in the US as guide to Lewis and Clark. Vaugeois delighted in pointing out that the child Sacagewea was carrying on the coin's portrait of her was in fact young Jean-Baptiste, a Quebecker and the son of a fur trader -- the only Canadian ever to appear on American money, he enjoyed saying.

Champlain Society

John Warkentin

Went down to the annual meeting of the Champlain Society the other day, always a gathering of the tribe for Torontonians interested in published Canadiana.

The Society  discovered in recent decades that its century-old model -- members pay a hundred bucks a year, get a handsomely published book of carefully edited Canadian documents on a chosen subject, and thereby subsidize the dissemination of accessible documentary knowledge  -- just was not working anymore.  Library building among Canadians is not such a big thing anymore, 'tseems.  Proof: plunging membership, plunging revenue, looming collapse.

That was a decade ago. This AGM demonstrated that the Society has successfully been re-orienting itself away from dependency on membership dues and into other sources of revenue, along with other vehicles for disseminating historical knowledge.

One of those new vehicles is the Society's very active and ambitious podcast Witness to Yesterday.  Listeners in its founding year, 2017: 686. Listeners in 2018 (first nine months only): 6452.  Listeners in 2019: another ten-fold increase?

The Society's more than a hundred year backlist of published volumes is already available digitally, but the annual published volume in the red jacket continues to appear. This year's volume, published in conjunction with the Hudson's Bay Records Society, is Life and Death by the Frozen Sea, the 1714-17 York Factory journals of James Knight, edited by Arthur J. "Skip" Ray.

The Society also honoured some of the volunteers who keep the society running, including noted historical geographer John Warkentin, who has been serving the Champlain Society, for fifty years, and also literary scholar Germaine Warkentin, active for 20.

Society President Michel Beaulieu took me by surprise by making time to mention another recently launched partnership: cross-publication on the CS website of blog posts from (he said, not me) Canada's leading historical blogger, Christopher Moore, who occasionally takes note of Society achievements.  Thanks! -- it seems to be working.

If you were a member, you could have known this already.

Update, October 31:  Allan Williams comments:

Thanks for the tip in your “leading” blog on the Champlain Society podcasts – I listened to the one on Donald Creighton and the one with Peter Russell last night and will explore further when I have some more time.

 
    

Historians at the Order of Canada: Robert Bothwell

I've been meaning to note that the late June announcement of appointments to the Order of Canada included Robert Bothwell, the prolific history professor at the University of Toronto -- and my editor in the Canadian history series he edited with Margaret Macmillan that includes my Three Weeks in Quebec City (not that that's the reason for the honour!) 

Here's Bothwell's career from the Canadian Encyclopedia.  Congratulations!

Photo credit:  Monk Centre, U of Toronto.

Historians at the Order of Canada

The recent list of Order of Canada appointments include Norman Hillmer  ("a leading historian of Canadian foreign policy...committed to increasing public knowledge of our nation’s past, and was one of the major players behind the creation of the Canadian Encyclopedia.") and Gregory Kealey ("has contributed to a better understanding of Canadian working-class history. A leading social historian,...  In addition, he is an award-winning author and co-founder of the respected academic journal Labour/Le Travail, which he edited for more than 20 years.)

Kealey was also on the June 2017 list of appointments, so something is unclear there, but congratulations to both.

Among writers, there's children's writer and storyteller Jan Andrews of Ottawa (sadly posthumous, as she died suddenly last summer.), And among cultural and heritage activists, Gloria Cranmer Webster, "founding director and curator of the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, which preserves and promotes the cultural heritage of the Kwakwaka’wakw and houses a collection repatriated from the Canadian Museum of History," and publisher Linda McKnight.

Historians at the Order of Canada

The Canada Day list of appointments to the Order of Canada is generous to historians. Greg Kealey of Fredericton for contributions to labour history and academic administration; Chad Gaffield of Ottawa (at the officer level) for contributions to digital history and academic administration; and Bill Waiser of Saskatoon for his contributions to Saskatchewan history. Congratulations all around. Complete list here.

They also gave an OC to Prince Charles. I think this is kind of an honorary thing, but doesn't it kind of validate Lord Black of Crossharbour's position about foreign honours being okay?

Norman Hillmer OC

On the new year's list of new appointments to the Order of Canada, the only historian I noticed was Norman Hillmer, the prolific scholar of foreign affairs, diplomacy, and politics at External Affairs (now Global Affairs) and Carleton University "for his contributions to the study of Canada’s foreign policy and international relations in the 20th century."  Congratulations.

Cleese and cringe

CBC News actually showed this odd little "before the interview started" exchange between Peter Mansbridge and John Cleese.  I wonder if they asked Mansbridge first. Mansbridge seems to say some silly Canadian government "in an independent streak" took away his chance to be Sir Peter, so he had to settle for the Order of Canada. Cleese then sensibly says he, personally, woudn't tolerate being a Commander of Empire or such nonsense.