Image of a balcony in a library, with brown wooden shelves, packed with colourful books.

Because, let’s face it – who has time to catch up on all the journal articles published in Canadian history?

 

Welcome back to the Best New Articles series, where each month, I post a list of my favourite new articles! Don’t forget to also check out my favourites from previous months, which you can access by clicking here.

This month I read articles from:

Here are my favourites:

 

Caroline D’Amours, “Idéalistes, pragmatiques, et les autres: Profil des volontaires du Régiment de la Chaudière, 1939-1945,” Histoire Sociale 51, no. 103 (May 2018): 125-147.

Link: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/699101

What it’s about: This piece is a profile of volunteer soldiers who fought in the Régiment de la Chaudière during WW2, and who died during the conflict. The Régiment was one of four French-Canadian infantry battalions raised in Quebec towards the beginning of the war. Based to a large extent on a sample of personnel files, D’Amours shows that Quebecois Francophones enlisted for many of the same reasons as Anglophones from across the country did, including environmental, event-related, and economic factors. In doing so, she complicates our current understanding of how Quebec responded to WW2.

What I loved: Ok, I realize that this article may sound basic, in the sense that D’Amours finds that Francophone soldiers from Quebec enlisted for many of the same reasons as Anglophones from across Canada. But as D’Amours explains in her piece, this is actually quite a new revelation. Previous research going back decades (when it exists at all) on the French-Canadian experience of WW2, particularly in Quebec, focuses on opposition to conscription and that is basically it. What’s more, her analysis of the data in personnel files is just superb, and shows how important quantitative history can be for social historians.

Favourite quote: “[Ces questions]permettront l’analyse du Québec dans son entier, dans toutes ses nuances, pour saisir l’attitude de ses citoyens face à l’effort de guerre. Non pas pour célébrer la guerre, mais plutôt pour saisir les profonds bouleversements qui traversent la société canadienne-française à cette époque et dont plusieurs effets se font encore sentir de nos jours. À terme, ce programme permettra de mieux comprendre l’expérience canadienne-française de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.” P. 147

Suggested uses: This article would be fantastic in a course on WW2 or on Quebec, and will be of interest to scholars in both areas!

 

Laura Ishiguro, “’A Dreadful Little Glutton Always Telling You About Food’: The Epistolary Everyday and the Making of Settler Colonial British Columbia,” Canadian Historical Review 99, no. 2 (June 2018): 258-283.

Link: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/696204

What it’s about: Focusing on letters written between 1858 and 1914 from early settlers in British Columbia to British family members, this article uses mentions and descriptions of food to examine how these settlers made their lives understandable to individuals who had never visited BC, while reaffirming their place in the larger trans-imperial world and extended family networks. Food in this case is simply one of the ways in which the settler colonial project manifested, reproduced, and was embedded within the everyday lives of settlers.

What I loved: This is a fascinating article that is both highly-entertaining to read (see quote below) and also features fine-grained and exceptionally nuanced analysis. Ishiguro is a master of weaving together discursive conversations taking place at multiple levels and across vast distances, from the British imperial world to the dinner table. I also particularly appreciated how she addresses the silence around Indigenous peoples within these letters, as acts of power enabling settlers to close their eyes to the damage done by colonialism, and how this, in turn, shaped the common-sense knowledge of BC in other parts of the empire. But what really made this article stand out for me is that Ishiguro makes the extremely important point that settler colonialism is insidious because of the ways it permeates all aspects of our lives. What’s more, the power and privilege of settlers allows them to ignore this reality, while Indigenous peoples cannot. These are important lessons, to my mind, in this age of reconciliation.

Favourite quote: “Anglican minister David Pringle complained extensively about the inedible foods that he could acquire in Hope in the 1860s, including in one case, ‘bacon (with 3 inches of fat and ½ inch of meat).’ ‘I cannot stomach it and if it were not for a glass of porter in the day (3/a bottle) or some toddy at night I should be fit for nothing,’ he wrote to his father. P. 271-272.

Suggested uses: This article will be of particular interest to scholars of BC history, the trans-imperial world, settler colonialism, family history, and the list goes on. It would also be fabulous in an upper level course on any of these subjects.

 

Blair Stein, ‘’One-Day-Wide’ Canada: History, Geography, and Aerial Views at TransCanada Air Lines, 1945-1955,” Scientia Canadensis 40, no. 1 (2018): 19-43.

Author’s Twitter: @BlairStein9

Link: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/scientia/2018-v40-n1-scientia03810/1048924ar/

What it’s about: Canadian nationalism is centred to a large extent around geographical representations, and how technology has made these vast distances conquerable. From CPR advertisements about the railway connecting the country together to Pierre Trudeau’s canoe, travel, technology, and environment have been inextricably connected. This is at the heart of Stein’s piece, which focuses on public-facing publicity material produced by TransCanada Air Lines (now called Air Canada) in which it utilized these same dynamics to position itself as a specifically Canadian company. TransCanada Air Lines reshaped the image of the Canadian landscape to its own ends in three ways: first, by connecting aviation to a long tradition of Canadian ‘exploration’; second, it relied on existing narratives about the geographic grandeur of Canada with assertions that the only way to truly appreciate the vastness of the country was from the air; and, finally, by making time and distance interchangeable.

What I loved: There was a high probability that I was going to love this article, since I have a particular fondness for 1950s era graphic design. But that’s not the reason why I love this article, though it didn’t hurt! What particularly impressed me was the way in which Stein is able to make her point, while also pointing out how this was simply one example of the anxieties facing Canadians as they moved into a new postwar world. But on the graphic images note: one particular aspect that I loved about this piece was Stein’s analysis of graphic images. I’ve mentioned before in previous Best New Articles that I really appreciate scholars who take the time to include images in their analysis, and Stein’s work is a great example of how important this is. I will say that at times this article is difficult to read, though this may be because I don’t have much of a background in envirotechnical history. However, I do think that it is still very much worth reading this piece.

Favourite quote: “One even asked, tongue-in-cheek, for ‘deck chairs on the wings. Of course, tied down.’” P. 35

Suggested uses: I don’t think that this article is very well-suited for undergraduates, but graduate students of postwar Canada and the environmental history of Canada may benefit from reading it. And it will certainly interest many scholars in these fields.

 

Also Recommended:

 

I’m almost all caught up! In early October I’ll do Best New Articles for August and September together, and then resume my normal schedule. Thank god. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the latest edition of Best New Articles! If you did, please consider sharing this blog post on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back Friday for Stephanie’s review of upcoming publications for the next month.

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