Scandals? We got scandals

Can't get enough of Prime Minister Harper's difficulties?  Allan Levine, in the Winnipeg Free Press, relates some of the great Canadian political scandals of the past.

History of scandalous Toronto mayors

... Torontoist's Histoicist is on the story, though this one is more than a century old and has more sex than drugs.

For plain old financial scandal, there is always the Ten Thousand Pounds Job from even further back.

History of Bronze

First you start a blog. Then people start reading it. Then you are expected to have views on things. Merna Forster writes:

Christopher, just wondered what you thought of the recent controversy re the proposed Nellie McClung statue?

I had barely registered the controversy. But I think I am okay with the statue.

As this column argues, if we toppled all the statues of people who have held objectionable and even hateful opinions, we would not have many statues at all. Emily Murphy, prime mover of the Persons Case, had some horrific views about "Orientals" and others, but is part of the Famous Five statue on Parliament Hill -- and rightfully so, I think. A statue ought to be read as an argument for someone's significance, not the proof of it; we should not have to "agree" with every statue we see any more than with every newspaper we read.

I'm reminded of the controversy in the early 1990s over Clara Brett Martin. Martin fought a skillful and successful campaign to become (in 1897) the first woman admitted to the practice of law in Ontario, indeed, anywhere in the British Empire (as we used to say). Martin was more or less rediscovered in the 1980s by Constance Backhouse and other legal historians and became suddenly fashionable. There was an academic lectureship in her honour, and other tributes, and the Ontario government was about to name the new offices of the Attorney General's Department in Toronto after her.

Then the historian Peter Sibenik came across the records of Martin's dealing in nasty stereotypes about Jewish lawyers... and she became more or less an unperson. For years you could see the shadow of her name where the actual letters had been removed from the entrance to the AG's office on Bay Street. (Now the building is named McMurtry-Scott, in honour of two male attorneys-general.) The Martin issue was aired in several articles in The Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (Vol. 5, #2, 1992). The controversy pretty much killed the tributes to her, but one should not have to airbrush Martin's flaws in order to note her achievements (or vice versa). I think it's the same for McClung.

PS. What do you think about this yourself, Merna?  This.

Photo of McClung as wise mother from BC Archives via Google Images.

Junk Historian Gavin Menzies

..., author of 1421 and now 1434, profiled rather sympathetically in the (British) Telegraph online.

It's striking how strong is the will to "debunk" history, to insist that there is an "official" version and that it is necessarily false. What follows from that is a tremendous willingness to be gulled, even from people who would not normally swallow nonsense on other subjects. The Telegraph writer labels informed criticism of Menzies as "apoplexy" and so on.

The part I really liked: "the usual advance for a history book is between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds."

Something fresh on Conrad B

Just as the sentencing in Chicago monopolizes the news, The Literary Review of Canada offers an "online original," a thoughtful reappraisal of the historical writings of Conrad Black by writer George Galt.

The House Committee on Mulroney/Schreiber

The press has abundant criticism of the work of the House Committee that is questioning Karlheintz Schreiber. With justification. But the hearings have, as they say, the great merit of existing.

We Canadians are so accustomed -- and the MPs themselves are so accustomed -- to parliamentarians being useless excrescences cluttering up the Parliament Buildings, so irrelevant and devoid of influence or opinion that they could just as well sit all year on a beach in Florida and fax in their "Yes" or "No" when their bosses told them to.

The sight of MPs in parliamentary committee actually wielding authority, actually speaking their minds, actually struggling as representatives of the people to investigate a scandal that has touched the reputation of the place where the people are represented -- that's inspiring. They may not do it very well, after all these years of supine inactivity, but now at least they are asserting their authority. A parliament full of parliamentarians; it's a great idea. Too bad we lost sight of it.

MPs with influence could be an appetite that grows with eating. I hope these MPs are discovering an ambition to do things more effectively so they can do things more often. Instead of carping that they are exercising the authority vested in them clumsily, we should say it's good they actually are doing it at all, and they should work out how to do it right.

More Rewriting History

National Capital Committee put up some signage recently to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Ottawa being chosen as the capital in 1857. (Yeah, I missed the memo on that one.) The signs noted Ottawa was initially the capital of the union of Canada West (Ontario) and Canada East (Quebec), a union proposed by Lord Durham in his report of 1841.

Now the NCC has removed the signs for... purification. A pressure group called Imperitif francais does not like Lord Durham. It complained. Bam, Lord Durham has ceased to exist, at least on the NCC historical plaquing. Depressing details here.

And, to change the subject, it's Last Spike day. 122 years ago, Craigellachie, B.C.

Governor General Lansdowne wanted to drive the last spike himself, and he hung about the west for weeks that fall, hoping for the chance. But in the end he was needed in Ottawa -- mostly in case there was a last minute commutation of the death sentence on Louis Riel -- and he had to head back. So it was mostly executives of the railroad company that got to be there.

New Library and Archives Scandal

Fresh from alienating the research community with its plans to cut research hours at the library and archives to the bone, Library and Archives Canada has now extended its attack to Canadian artists and creators.

Canadian Artists Representation (CARFAC) and its collective licensing agency CARCC are distributing warnings about LAC's recent efforts:

"Library and Archives Canada is presently contacting a large number of visual artists with the goal of having them sign a contract in which they are asked to cede their copyright to the Canadian government in perpetuity.

"The pretext for this is the supposed need, for a specific project, to provide Library and Archives Canada, free of charge, with the right to make certain works that are in their collections available to students, researchers and the general public. The letter asks these artists to sign the contract and to return it as soon as possible - for some, the deadline is October 8th.

"WE DO NOT ADVISE YOU TO SIGN THIS CONTRACT, since it allows the federal government to strip you of what rightfully belongs to you.

"In fact, by signing this contract, not only are you signing away your copyright ownership on these works to the Canadian government and even renouncing part of your moral rights, but you will receive no financial compensation..... [B]y signing this contract, you would authorize the government to reproduce your works in any context they see fit, to exhibit them in public, or to present them on the Internet without paying you copyright royalties. In addition, by renouncing part of your moral rights, as is being requested, you would expose yourself to the possibility of seeing your works modified, distorted or mutilated, depending on the whim of a graphic designer employed by the federal government or a communications agency under contract with the government."

The Writers' Union and other artists' organizations gave significant support to academic scholars in their campaign to restore research hours. It would be good to see that support reciprocated here. But I'm not holding my breath.

Further information: carcc@carcc.ca

War Museum: Morton MacMillan v Bercuson Bernier

The turning point that led to a commitment to rewrite a Canadian War Museum plaque to appease certain veterans -- the Wikipedification of the War Museum, it's being called -- seems to have been a Senate subcommittee report in June. The Senators were actually reluctant to meddle with the museum's text, but they did suggest the museum should consider alternatives. That seems to have spurred a reshuffling at the Museum's board, with advocates of surrender taking charge. Frederik Eaton became chair. Joe Guerts promptly resigned as executive director of the War Museum (see my earlier blog on Guerts below).

Part of the process that influenced the Senate subcommittee's recommendation was a commission to four historians to assess and report on the disputed text. The Senate report says the historians split two-two, all agreeing it was accurate but two feeling it should be changed due to "tone."

I'm always concerned by historians who profer expert advice and expect to remain secret. Every time a CBC historical program comes under attack and the CBC brass decide to fold up like a cheap suitcase, they declare they have consulted an expert historian, never named, to justify their surrender to pressure. The filmmakers never get a change to see or debate the opinion. (See my labels "Prairie Giant.")

If historical advice is expert, the expert should be prepared to stand on his or her expertise. Secret opinions, untestable, are not credible historical judgments.

So it's worth noting that the Senate report here identifies the four historians who examined the War Museum text: Serge Bernier (Department of National Defence), Desmond Morton (McGill), Margaret MacMillan (Oxford University) and David Bercuson (University of Calgary). Indeed, that is four experienced and credentialled historians, one actually working in a public museum.

Margaret MacMillan has been very public in condemning the change to the museum's text. I understand Desmond Morton has also publicly defended the integrity of the text as it stands. That would suggest the two experts who endorsed making the change were David Bercuson and Serge Bernier.

Census destroyed

Small news item (here's the Toronto Star version) reveals the full extent of the vandalism Statistics Canada has achieved with its 2006 census.

For the first time ever, Canadians were asked if they wanted census data to be available to researchers a century from now. Only 56% ticked yes. So Statistics Canada will now be free to destroy 44% of the personal data on the 2006 census, making the census perfectly useless to future Canadians. Given their pigheaded stupidity on this matter for most of a decade now, the StatsCan censors surely do the purge the moment they can.

The bloody bureaucrats even have the audacity to uptalk it: hey, more than half of Canadians want to make their data available, is how they released the news.

Canadian Television Fund

When Jim Shaw and the other cable barons began announcing they would no longer make their mandatory contributions to the Canadian Television Fund, I thought, no problem. If they don’ t want the aggravation, they can hand in their cable licenses. Surely someone else could be found to take up the burden.

So it was satisfying to see Konrad von Finkelstein, new head of the CRTC, say pretty much that: there are conditions, they are mandatory, and they must be met.

But in the Globe & Mail yesterday, business reporter Konrad Yakabuski suggests the fix is in and the Television Fund is out. He points out that when Heritage Minister Bev Oda was a CRTC governor, she was against the Fund. He suspects with a bit of fiddling, the cable barons will be able to spend the money on themselves.

We have cultural expression in this country because we take care of it. We have Canadian music, Canadian writing, a Canadian academic tradition, Canadian museums, because we lay the groundwork for them. If we don't have much of a Canadian film tradition, it's because we have not done that work. It's the same in television. We give these monopolists these incredibly valuable money-printing machines called cable licenses; we're entitled to ensure the community gets some good back from their callous management and exorbitant fees.

(Crossposted from the Creators Copyright Coalition website