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 the releases from last month, 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.
February 1
David Calverly, Who Controls the Hunt? First Nations, Treaty Rights, and Wildlife Conservation in Ontario, 1783-1939 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018)
As the nineteenth century ended, Ontario wildlife became increasingly valuable. Tourists and sport hunters spent growing amounts of money in their search for game, and the government began to extend and exert its regulatory powers in this arena.
Who Controls the Hunt? examines how Ontario’s emerging wildlife conservation laws reconciled – or failed to reconcile – First Nations treaty rights and the power of the state. David Calverley traces the political and legal arguments prompted by the interplay of treaty rights, provincial and dominion government interests, and the corporate concerns of the Hudson’s Bay Company. As the Ontario government imposed new restrictions on hunting and trapping, it developed an at times contentious relationship with the Department of Indian Affairs. And it completely ignored the Ojibwa hunting rights set out in the Robinson Treaties of 1850.
Indigenous resource use remains a politically and legally significant topic in Canada. Some aspects of First Nations hunting rights have been settled, but questions about species conservation and environmental protection continue to arise. While Who Controls the Hunt? has a regional focus, this nuanced examination of the resource issues at stake, the constitutional questions, the impact of conservation paradigms, and historical factors particular to First Nations has national relevance.
This book will find an audience among scholars, students, and lawyers with an interest in Canadian Indigenous history, Canadian law, Indigenous policy, and environmental history.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/who-controls-the-hunt
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Who-Controls-Hunt-Conservation-1783-1939/dp/0774831332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516215515&sr=8-1&keywords=who+controls+the+hunt
February 13
Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, Voyage de Rameau de Saint-Père en Acadie (Quebec: Septentrion , 2018)
En 1859, cent ans exactement après la bataille des plaines d’Abraham, l’historien français François-Edme Rameau de Saint-Père publie un ouvrage portant sur l’Acadie et le Québec. Dès l’année suivante, il part sur les traces des descendants des Français établis en Amérique, un voyage qui le mène au Québec, en Acadie et en Louisiane en 1860 et 1861.
De son passage en Acadie, il a laissé de nombreuses notes manuscrites qui sont présentées ici sous forme de journal de voyage annoté et illustré. Rameau nous y livre un regard très intime et personnel sur la communauté acadienne du milieu du XIXe siècle.
Éditions Disponibles: Brochée
Lien du publicateur: https://www.septentrion.qc.ca/catalogue/voyage-de-rameau-de-saint-pere-en-acadie-le
Achetez-le sur Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Voyage-Rameau-Saint-P%C3%A8re-en-Acadie/dp/2894489404/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516322721&sr=8-1&keywords=Voyage+de+Rameau+de+Saint-P%C3%A8re+en+Acadie
February 15
Sheila Batacharya & Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, eds. Sharing Breath: 
n. (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2018).
Treating bodies as more than discursive in social research can feel out of place in academia. As a result, embodiment studies remain on the outside of academic knowledge construction and critical scholarship. However, embodiment scholars suggest that investigations into the profound division created by privileging the mind-intellect over the body-spirit are integral to the project of decolonization.
The field of embodiment theorizes bodies as knowledgeable in ways that include but are not solely cognitive. The contributors to this collection suggest developing embodied ways of teaching, learning, and knowing through embodied experiences such as yoga, mindfulness, illness, and trauma. Although the contributors challenge Western educational frameworks from within and beyond academic settings, they also acknowledge and draw attention to the incommensurability between decolonization and aspects of social justice projects in education. By addressing this tension ethically and deliberately, the contributors engage thoughtfully with decolonization and make a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.
Formats Available: Paperback, PDF, ePub.
Publisher’s Link: http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120269
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Sharing+Breath%3A+Embodied+Learning+and+Decolonization
Kenton Storey, Settler Anxiety at the Outposts of Empire: Colonial Relations, Humanitarian Discourses, and the Imperial Press (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018)
Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, fear of Indigenous uprisings spread across the British Empire and nibbled at the edges of settler societies. Publicly admitting to this anxiety, however, would have gone counter to Victorian notions of racial superiority. This posed a distinct problem for journalists tasked with reporting on events of the day.
In this fascinating examination of British imperial communication networks, Kenton Storey compares newspaper coverage in New Zealand and on Vancouver Island during the 1850s and 1860s. Challenging the notion that there was a decline in the popularity of humanitarianism in the mid-nineteenth century, he demonstrates how the local colonial press adopted humanitarian language – hitherto used by Christian evangelists to promote Indigenous rights – to justify the expansion of settlers’ access to land, promote racial segregation, and allay fears of Indigenous violence, all while insisting on the “protection” of Indigenous peoples.
Settler Anxiety at the Outposts of Empire offers fresh perspectives on the history of race relations in British colonies, while it deftly explores the intersections between settler anxiety, the perceived threat of Indigenous violence, and the public use of humanitarian language. By locating New Zealand and Vancouver Island within networks of imperial communication, it also illustrates how the press worked to connect distant parts of the British Empire.
This innovative look at settler colonialism will be of interest to students and scholars of British Empire, Canadian and New Zealand history, print culture, comparative studies of colonialism, and Indigenous studies.
Formats Available: Hardcover, Paperback, PDF, ePub.
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/settler-anxiety-at-the-outposts-of-empire
February 28
Daniel Heath Justice, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018)
Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today. In considering the connections between literature and lived experience, this book contemplates four key questions at the heart of Indigenous kinship traditions: How do we learn to be human? How do we become good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? Blending personal narrative and broader historical and cultural analysis with close readings of key creative and critical texts, Justice argues that Indigenous writers engage with these questions in part to challenge settler-colonial policies and practices that have targeted Indigenous connections to land, history, family, and self. More importantly, Indigenous writers imaginatively engage the many ways that communities and individuals have sought to nurture these relationships and project them into the future.
This provocative volume challenges readers to critically consider and rethink their assumptions about Indigenous literature, history, and politics while never forgetting the emotional connections of our shared humanity and the power of story to effect personal and social change. Written with a generalist reader firmly in mind, but addressing issues of interest to specialists in the field, this book welcomes new audiences to Indigenous literary studies while offering more seasoned readers a renewed appreciation for these transformative literary traditions.
Formats Available: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/W/Why-Indigenous-Literatures-Matter
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Indigenous-Literatures-Matter-Daniel-Justice/dp/1771121769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516217926&sr=8-1&keywords=Why+Indigenous+Literatures+Matter
Dany Fougères & Roderick MacLeod (eds), Montreal: The History of a North American City (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018)
Surrounded by water and located at the heart of a fertile plain, the Island of Montreal has been a crossroads for Indigenous peoples, European settlers, and today’s citizens, and an inland port city for the movement of people and goods into and out of North America. Commemorating the city’s 375th anniversary, Montreal: The History of a North American City is the definitive, two-volume account of this fascinating metropolis and its storied hinterland.
This comprehensive collection of essays, filled with hundreds of illustrations, photographs, and maps, draws on human geography and environmental history to show that while certain distinctive features remain unchanged – Mount Royal, the Lachine Rapids of the Saint Lawrence River – human intervention and urban evolution mean that over time Montrealers have had drastically different experiences and historical understandings. Significant issues such as religion, government, social conditions, the economy, labour, transportation, culture and entertainment, and scientific and technological innovation are treated thematically in innovative and diverse chapters to illuminate how people’s lives changed along with the transformation of Montreal. This history of a city in motion presents an entire picture of the changes that have marked the region as it spread from the old city of Ville-Marie into parishes, autonomous towns, boroughs, and suburbs on and off the island.
The first volume encompasses the city up to 1930, vividly depicting the lives of First Nations prior to the arrival of Europeans, colonization by the French, and the beginning of British Rule. The crucial roles of waterways, portaging, paths, and trails as the primary means of travelling and trade are first examined before delving into the construction of canals, railways, and the first major roads. The nineteenth century was a period of near-total change in Montreal: the population grew from 20,000 to over one million and it became Canada’s leading industrial city.
The second volume treats the history of Montreal since 1930, the year that the Jacques Cartier Bridge was opened and allowed for the outward expansion of a region, which before had been confined to the island. From the Great Depression and Montreal’s role as a munitions manufacturing centre during the Second World War to major cultural events like Expo 67, the twentieth century saw Montreal grow into one of the continent’s largest cities, requiring stringent management of infrastructure, public utilities, and transportation. This volume also extensively studies the kinds of political debate with which the region and country still grapple regarding language, nationalism, federalism, and self-determination.
Formats Available: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Montreal-History-North-American-City/dp/077355128X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1516386285&sr=1-2
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Montreal-History-North-American-City/dp/077355128X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1516386285&sr=1-2
That’s all for this month! I hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice! Are there any books in particular that you are looking forward to? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below! And don’t get to check back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian history roundup! See you then!
I look forward to Unwritten Histories.
I am the librarian for Johnson County (Kansas) Genealogical Society, and I am looking for books we can add to our collection to help with Canadian research. I would certainly appreciate suggestions.
Happy to help! Are there any types of history you are interested in specifically? And would you prefer academic books, or books aimed at a general public?