Welcome back to our monthly series, “Upcoming Publications in Canadian History,” where I’ve compiled information on all the upcoming releases for the following month in the field of Canadian history from every Canadian academic press, all in one place. This includes releases in both English and French. To see March’s releases, click here.
***Please note that the cover images and book blurbs are used with permission from the publishers.***
N.B. This list only includes new releases, not rereleases in different formats.
March 28
*These were not listed in the previous month, and there are comflicting dates between the publishers and Amazon. So I’m including them here for the sake of completeness.
Anne Whitelaw, Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada, 1912-1990. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
When the Edmonton Museum of Arts opened in 1924 it was only the second art gallery in Canada west of Toronto. Spaces and Places for Art tells the story of the financial and ideological struggles that community groups and artist societies in booming frontier cities and towns faced in establishing spaces for the cultivation of artistic taste. Mapping the development of art institutions in western Canada from the founding of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1912 to the 1990s heyday of art museums in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, Anne Whitelaw provides a glimpse into the production, circulation, and consumption of art in Canada throughout the twentieth century. Initially dependent on paintings loaned from the National Gallery of Canada, art galleries across the western part of the country gradually built their own collections and exhibitions and formed organizations that made them less reliant on institutions and government agencies in Ottawa. Tracing the impact of major national arts initiatives such as the Massey Commission, the funding programs of the Canada Council, and the policies of the National Museums Corporation, Whitelaw sheds light on the complex relationships between western Canada and Ottawa surrounding art. Building on extensive archival research and in-depth analysis of government involvement, Spaces and Places for Art is an invaluable explanation of the roles of cultural institutions and cultural policy in the emergence of artistic practice in Canada.
Formats available: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/spaces-and-places-for-art-products-9780773550322.php
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Spaces-Places-Art-Institutions-1912-1990/dp/0773550321/ref=sr_1_48?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489628244&sr=1-48
Richard Holt, Filing the Ranks: Manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1918. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
Manpower is the lifeblood of armies regardless of time or place. In the First World War, much of Canada’s military effort went toward sustaining the Canadian Expeditionary Force, especially in France and Belgium. The job was not easy. The government and Department of Militia and Defence were tasked with recruiting and training hundreds of thousands of men, shipping them to England, and creating organizations on the continent meant to forward these men to their units. The first book to explore the issue of manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Filling the Ranks examines the administrative and organizational changes that fostered efficiency and sustained the army. Richard Holt describes national civilian and military recruitment policies and criteria both inside and outside of Canada; efforts to recruit women, convicts, and members of First Nations, African Canadian, Asian, and Slavic communities; the conduct of entry-level training; and the development of a coherent reinforcement structure. Canada’s ability to fill the ranks with trained soldiers ultimately helped make the Corps an elite formation within the British Expeditionary Force. Based on extensive research in British and Canadian archives, Filling the Ranks provides a wealth of new information on Canada”s role in the Great War.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/filling-the-ranks-products-9780773548770.php?page_id=73&
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Filling-Ranks-Manpower-Expeditionary-1914-1918/dp/0773548777/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489628141&sr=1-1&keywords=filling+the+ranks
April – No Date Specified
Jennifer Anderson, Propaganda and Persuasion: The Cold War and the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017)
*The publisher’s website says this is out in April, but Amazon says May.
During the early Cold War, thousands of Canadians attended events organized by the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society and subscribed to its publications. The CSFS aimed its message at progressive Canadians, hoping to convince them that the USSR was an egalitarian and enlightened state. Attempting to soften, define, and redirect the antagonistic narratives of the day, Propaganda and Persuasion is the story of the CSFS in Cold War Canada.
Formats available: Paperback
Publisher’s link: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/propaganda-and-persuasion
Timothy P. Foran, Defining Métis: Catholic Missionaries and the Idea of Civilization in Northwestern Saskatchewan, 1845-1898. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017).
*The publisher’s website says this is out in April, but Amazon says May.
“Defining Métis” examines categories used in the latter half of the nineteenth century by Catholic missionaries to describe Indigenous people in what is now northwestern Saskatchewan. It argues that the construction and evolution of these categories reflected missionaries’changing interests and agendas.
“Defining Métis” sheds light on the earliest phases of Catholic missionary work among Indigenous peoples in western and northern Canada. It examines various interrelated aspects of this work, including the beginnings of residential schooling, transportation and communications, and relations between the Church, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the federal government.
While focusing on the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and their central mission at Île-à-la-Crosse, this study illuminates broad processes that informed Catholic missionary perceptions and impelled their evolution over a fifty-three-year period. In particular, this study illuminates processes that shaped Oblate conceptions of sauvage and métis. It does this through a qualitative analysis of documents that were produced within the Oblates’ institutional apparatus – official correspondence, mission journals, registers, and published reports.
Foran challenges the orthodox notion that Oblate commentators simply discovered and described a singular, empirically existing, and readily identifiable Métis population. Rather, he contends that Oblates played an important role in the conceptual production of les métis.
Formats available: Paperback
Publisher’s link: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/defining-metis
April 1
Michael Molloy, Kurt Jensen, Peter Duschinsky, and Robert J. Shalka eds., Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975-1980 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2017).
The fall of Saigon in April 1975 resulted in the largest and most ambitious refugee resettlement effort in Canada’s history. Running on Empty presents the challenges and successes of this bold refugee resettlement program. It traces the actions of a few dozen men and women who travelled to seventy remote refugee camps, worked long days in humid conditions, subsisted on dried noodles and green tea, and sometimes slept on their worktables while rats scurried around them – all in order to resettle thousands displaced by war and oppression.
After initially accepting 7,000 refugees from camps in Guam, Hong Kong, and military bases in the US in 1975, Canada passed the 1976 Immigration Act to establish new refugee procedures and introduce private refugee sponsorship. In July of 1979, the federal government under Prime Minister Joe Clark announced that Canada would accept an unprecedented 50,000 refugees – later increased to 60,000 – refugees, more than half of whom would be sponsored by ordinary Canadians. Running on Empty presents gripping first-hand accounts of the government officials tasked with selecting refugees from eight different countries, receiving and matching them with sponsors and helping churches, civic organizations and groups of neighbours to receive and integrate the newcomers in cities, towns, and rural communities across Canada.
Timely and inspiring, Running on Empty offers essential lessons for governments, organizations, and individuals trying to come to grips with refugee crises in the twenty-first century.
Formats available: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/running-on-empty-products-9780773548817.php
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Running-Empty-Indochinese-Refugees-1975-1980/dp/0773548815/ref=sr_1_44?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489628244&sr=1-44
April 12
John Willis, ed., Tu sais, mon vieux Jean-Pierre: Essays on the Archaeology and History of New France and Canadian Culture in Honour of Jean-Pierre Chrestien (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2017).
Tu sais, mon vieux Jean-Pierre is inspired by the work of archaeologist Jean-Pierre Chrestien (1949–2007), who worked hand-in-glove with a generation of researchers in helping to unearth unexpected and always interesting aspects of New France.
Contributions focus first upon the door to New France in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland and Acadia. A second set of essays move further up the St. Lawrence and into the heartland of the continent.
The final section examines aspects of Canadian culture: popular art, religion and communication. The essays share a curiosity for material culture, a careful regard for detail and nuance that forms the grain of New France studies, and sensitivity to the overall context that is part and parcel of how history
proceeds on the local or regional scale.
Happily we can now dispense with old-fashioned and facile generalizations about the allegedly absent bourgeoisie, the purportedly deficient commercial ethic of the habitants and the so-called underlying military character of the colony and get down the business of understanding real people and their possessions in context.
Formats available: Paperback
Publisher’s link: https://press.uottawa.ca/tu-sais-mon-vieux-jean-pierre.html
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/sais-mon-vieux-Jean-Pierre-Archaeology/dp/0776624571/ref=sr_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489628648&sr=1-22
April 15
Jeremy Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-80 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017).
Going postal. We think of the rogue employee who snaps. But in Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Jeremy Milloy demonstrates that workplace violence never occurs in isolation. Using violence as a lens, he provides fresh and original insights into the everyday workings of capitalism, class conflict, race, and gender in the United States and Canada of the late twentieth century, bringing historical perspective to contemporary debates about North American violence.
Blood, Sweat, and Fear is the first full-length historical exploration of the origins and effects of individual violence in the automotive industry. Milloy’s gripping analysis spans 1960 to 1980, when North American auto plants were routinely the sites of fights, assaults, and even murders. He argues that the high levels of violence were primarily the result of workplace conditions – including on-the-job exploitation, racial tension, bureaucratization, and hypermasculinity – that made fear and loathing a shop-floor reality long before mass shootings attracted media attention in the 1980s.
Workplace violence is typically the domain of management studies and psychology, but while we pass legislation and adopt best practices, the problem continues. Milloy’s explosive book reveals that workplace violence has been a constant aspect of class conflict – and that our understanding needs to go deeper.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/blood-sweat-and-fear
Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017).
If one seeks to understand Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) history, one must consider the history of Haudenosaunee land. For countless generations prior to European contact, land and territory informed Haudenosaunee thought and philosophy, and was a primary determinant of Haudenosaunee identity.
In The Clay We Are Made Of, Susan M. Hill presents a revolutionary retelling of the history of the Grand River Haudenosaunee from their Creation Story, through European contact, to contemporary land claims negotiations. She incorporates Indigenous theory, Fourth world post-colonialism, and Amerindian autohistory, along with Haudenosaunee languages, oral records, and wampum strings to provide a comprehensive account of the Haudenosaunee relationship
to their land.
Hill outlines the basic principles and historical knowledge contained within four key epics passed down through Haudenosaunee history. She highlights the political role of women in land negotiations and dispels their misrepresentation in the scholarly canon. She guides the reader through treaty relationships with Dutch, French, and British settler nations—including the Kaswentha/ Two-Row Wampum (the precursor to all future Haudenosaunee-European treaties), the Covenant Chain, the Nanfan Treaty, and the Haldimand Proclamation—and details outstanding land claims. Hill’s study concludes with a discussion of the current problematic relationship between the Grand River Haudenosaunee and the Canadian government, and reflects on the meaning and possibility of reconciliation.
Formats available: Paperback, Hardcover
Publisher’s link: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/the-clay-we-are-made-of
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Clay-We-Are-Made-Haudenosaunee/dp/0887557171/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489627908&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Clay+We+Are+Made+Of
April 19
Robert Vipond, Making a Global City: How One Toronto School Embraced Diversity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).
Half of Toronto’s population is born outside of Canada and over 140 languages are spoken on the city’s streets and in its homes. How to build community amidst such diversity is one of the global challenges that Canada – and many other western nations – has to face head on.
Making a Global City critically examines the themes of diversity and community in a single primary school, the Clinton Street Public School in Toronto, between 1920 and 1990. From the swift and seismic shift from a Jewish to southern European demographic in the 1950s to the gradual globalized community starting in the 1970s, Vipond eloquently and clearly highlights the challenges posed by multicultural citizenship in a city that was dominated by Anglo-Protestants. Contrary to recent well-documented anti-immigrant rhetoric in the media, Making a Global City celebrates one of the world’s most multicultural cities while stressing the fact that public schools are a vital tool in integrating and accepting immigrants and children in liberal democracies.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.utppublishing.com/Making-a-Global-City-How-One-Toronto-School-Embraced-Diversity.html
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Making-Global-City-Embraced-Diversity/dp/1442631953/ref=sr_1_70?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489629215&sr=1-70
April 29
Kathleen Carlisle, Fiery Joe: The Maverick Who Lit Up the West (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2017).
As one of the architects of Saskatchewan’s socialist revolution, Joseph Lee Phelps earned both respect and disdain from his peers. Colourful and charismatic, he virtually “lit up” the province as a Minister in the Douglas government, not only by establishing the groundwork for rural electrification, but also by igniting a multitude of entrepreneurial experiments.
A man ahead of his time, Phelps spoke on behalf of women’s issues, the environment, and advocated for First Nations rights. But his unrelenting push for change alienated many and Phelps had only one term in government. He was not asked to run again.
Fiery Joe celebrates the achievements of a remarkable man whose energy drive for innovation ultimately outstripped the system he wished to change.
Formats available: Paperback
Publisher’s link: https://uofrpress.ca/Books/F/Fiery-Joe
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Fiery-Joe-Maverick-Who-West/dp/0889774854/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489628926&sr=1-14
April 30
Jennifer S.H. Brown, An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2017).
In 1670, the ancient homeland of the Cree and Ojibwe people of Hudson Bay became known to the English entrepreneurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company as Rupert’s Land, after the founder and absentee landlord, Prince Rupert. For four decades, Jennifer S. H. Brown has examined the complex relationships that developed among the newcomers and the Algonquian communities—who hosted and tolerated the fur traders—and later, the missionaries, anthropologists, and others who found their way into Indigenous lives and territories. The eighteen essays gathered in this book explore Brown’s investigations into the surprising range of interactions among Indigenous people and newcomers as they met or observed one another from a distance, and as they competed, compromised, and rejected or adapted to change.
While diverse in their subject matter, the essays have thematic unity in their focus on the old HBC territory and its peoples from the 1600s to the present. More than an anthology, the chapters of An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land provide examples of Brown’s exceptional skill in the close study of texts, including oral documents, images, artifacts, and other cultural expressions. The volume as a whole represents the scholarly evolution of one of the leading ethnohistorians in Canada and the United States.
Formats available: Paperback, PDF, ePub
Publisher’s link: http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120267
That’s all for this month! Are there any books in particular that you are looking forward to? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below! If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. Don’t forget to check back on Sunday for the regular Canadian history roundup! See you then!
Just discovered this blog, it’s great for those of us tracking publishing in Canadian history!
Thank you! Glad to hear it! 🙂