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.
April 1
Steve Marti & William John Pratt, eds. Fighting with the Empire: Canada, Britain, and Global Conflict, 1867–1947 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Canadians often characterize their military history as a march toward nationhood, but in the first eighty years of Confederation they were fighting for the British Empire.
From 1867 to 1947, war or threat of war forced Canadians to consider what bound them as a nation and entangled them in a string of overseas conflicts. The contribution of Canadian lives and resources to imperial warfare supported a constitutional transition from colony to nation, but it also disrupted the comfortable logic of national imperialism and fundamentally transformed popular perceptions of Canada’s relationship to the Empire. As French Canadians, Indigenous peoples, and those with roots in Continental Europe and beyond mobilized in support of war and to protect their rights as British subjects, their participation challenged the imagined homogeneity of Canada as a British nation.
From soldiers overseas to workers and volunteers on the home front – and from the cultural ties of imperial pageantry to the social bonds of race and class – Fighting with the Empire examines the paradox of a national contribution to an imperial war effort. This insightful collection of connected case studies explores the middle ground between narratives that celebrate the emergence of a nation through warfare and those that equate Canadian nationalism with British imperialism.
This book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students of Canadian history and military history, particularly those engaged in questions of national and imperial identity and the experience of world wars.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: https://www.ubcpress.ca/fighting-with-the-empire
Geoffrey Jackson, The Empire on the Western Front: The British 62nd and Canadian 4th Divisions in Battle (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
When Great Britain and its dominions declared war on Germany in August 1914, they were faced with the formidable challenge of transforming masses of untrained citizen-soldiers at home and abroad into competent, coordinated fighting divisions.
The Empire on the Western Front focuses on the development of two units, Britain’s 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division and the Canadian 4th Division, to show how the British Expeditionary Force rose to this challenge. Geoffrey Jackson follows their development, from their respective geneses through to the end of the war, and all aspects of the division-building process – from leadership and training to discipline and morale. What influence did the senior leadership and the fighting doctrine that shaped training have on the divisions’ performance in France? How did internal operations and the divisions’ role within the larger corps and armies influence their effectiveness in battle? Did the division-building process differ in Britain and the dominions?
In answering these questions, The Empire on the Western Front examines army formation and operations at the divisional level and ultimately calls into question existing accounts that emphasize the differences between the imperial and dominion armies.
This book will appeal to those interested in the development and operations of the dominion armies and the British Expeditionary Force during the Great War.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/the-empire-on-the-western-front
Valentina Capurri, Not Good Enough for Canada: Canadian Public Discourse around Issues of Inadmissibility for Potential Immigrants with Diseases and/or Disabilities, 1902–2002 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
Not Good Enough for Canada investigates the development of Canadian immigration policy with respect to persons with a disease or disability throughout the twentieth century. With an emphasis on social history, this book examines the way the state operates through legislation to achieve its goals of self-preservation even when such legislation contradicts state commitments to equality rights.
Looking at the ways federal politicians, mainstream media, and the judicial system have perceived persons with disabilities, specifically immigrant applicants with disabilities, this book reveals how Canadian immigration policy has systematically omitted any reference to this group, rendering them socially invisible.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/not-good-enough-for-canada-4
April 15
Graham D. Taylor, Imperial Standard: Imperial Oil, Exxon, and the Canadian Oil Industry from 1880 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2019)
For over 130 years, Imperial Oil dominated Canada’s oil industry. From Petrolia to Turner Valley, Imperial was always nearby and ready to take charge. Their 1947 discovery of crude oil in Leduc, Alberta transformed the industry and the country. But from 1899 onwards, two-thirds of the company was owned by an American giant, making Imperial Oil one of the largest foreign-controlled multinationals in Canada.
Imperial Standard is the first full-scale history of Imperial Oil. It illuminates Imperial’s longstanding connections to Standard Oil of New Jersey, also known as Exxon Mobil. Although this relationship was often beneficial to Imperial, allowing them access to technology and capital, it also came at a cost. During the energy crises of the 1970s and 80s, Imperial was assailed as the embodiment of foreign control of Canada’s natural resources, and in the 1990s it followed Exxon’s lead in resisting charges that the oil industry contributes to climate change.
Graham D. Taylor draws on an extensive collection of primary sources, including both the Imperial Oil and Exxon Mobil archives, to explore the complex relationship between the two companies. This groundbreaking history provides unprecedented insight into one of Canada’s most influential oil companies as well as the industry itself.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781773850351
April 19
Alexa Conradi (translated by Catherine Browne), Fear, Love, and Liberation in Contemporary Quebec: A Feminist Reflection (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2019)
In response to rapid and unsettling social, economic, and climate changes, fearmongering now features as a main component of public life. Right-wing nationalist populism has become a hallmark of politics around the world. No less so in Quebec.
Alexa Conradi has made it her life’s work to understand and to generate thoughtful debate about this worrisome trend. As the first President of Québec solidaire and the president of Canada’s largest feminist organisation, the Fédération des femmes du Québec, Conradi refused to shy away from difficult issues: the Charter of Quebec Values, religion and Islam, sovereignty, rape culture and violence against women, extractive industries and the treatment of Indigenous women, austerity policy and the growing gap between rich and poor. This determination to address uncomfortable subjects has made Conradi—an anglo-Montrealer—a sometimes controversial leader.
In Fear, Love, and Liberation in Contemporary Quebec, Conradi invites us to take off our rose-coloured glasses and to examine Quebec’s treatment of women with more honesty. Through her personal reflections on Quebec politics and culture, she dispels the myth that gender equality has been achieved and paves the way for a more critical understanding of what remains to be done.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://btlbooks.com/book/fear-love-and-liberation-in-contemporary-quebec
April 30
Maxime Dagenais & Julien Mauduit, eds. Revolutions across Borders: Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Starting in 1837, rebels in Upper and Lower Canada revolted against British rule in an attempt to reform a colonial government that they believed was unjust. While this uprising is often perceived as a small-scale, localized event, Revolutions across Borders demonstrates that the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38 was a major continental crisis with dramatic transnational consequences.
In this groundbreaking study, contributors analyze the extent of the Canadian Rebellion beyond British North America and the turbulent Jacksonian period’s influence on rebel leaders and the course of the rebellion. Exploring the rebellion’s social and economic dimensions, its impact on American politics, policy-making, and the philosophy of manifest destiny, and the significant changes south of the border that influenced this Canadian uprising, the essays in this volume show just how malleable borderland relations were. Chapters investigate how Americans frustrated with the young republic considered an “alternative republic” in Canada, the new monetary system that the rebels planned to establish, how the rebellion played a major role in Martin Van Buren’s defeat in the 1840 presidential election, and how America’s changing economic alliances doomed the Canadian Rebellion before it even started.
Reevaluating the implications of this transnational conflict, Revolutions across Borders brings new life and understanding to this turning point in the history of North America.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/revolutions-across-borders-products-9780773556652.php?page_id=73&#!prettyPhoto
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Revolutions-across-Borders-Jacksonian-Rebellion/dp/0773556656/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=revolution+across+borders&qid=1554394882&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr
Peter Graham & Ian McKay, Radical Ambition: The New Left in Toronto (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2019)
(No cover image available)
Writing for Maclean’s magazine in 1965, Peter Gzowski saw something different about the new generation of the left. They were not the agrarian radicals of old. They did not meet in union halls. Nor were they like the Beatniks that Gzowski had rubbed shoulders with in college. “The radicals of the New Left, the young men and women … differ from their predecessors not only in the degree of their protest but in its kind. They are a new breed.”
Members of the new left–this new breed of radicals–placed the ideals of self-determination and community at the core of their politics. As with all leftists, they sought to transcend capitalism. But in contrast to older formations, new leftists emphasized solidarity with national liberation movements challenging imperialism around the world. They took up organizational forms that anticipated – “prefigured,” some said – in their direct, grassroots, community-based democracy, the liberated world of the future.
Radical Ambition is the first book to explore the history of this dynamic movement and reveal the substantial social changes it won for the people of Toronto.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://btlbooks.com/book/radical-ambition
Asa McKercher & Philip Van Huizen, eds. Undiplomatic History: The New Study of Canada and the World (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
When the field of Canadian history underwent major shifts in the 1990s, international history became marginalized and the focus turned away from foreign affairs. Over the past decade, however, the study of Canada and the world has been revitalized.
Undiplomatic History charts these changes, bringing together leading and emerging historians of Canadian international and transnational relations to take stock of recent developments and to outline the course of future research. Following global trends in the wider historiography, contributors explore new lenses of historical analysis – such as race, gender, political economy, identity, religion, and the environment – and emphasize the relevance of non-state actors, including scientists, athletes, students, and activists. The essays in this volume challenge old ways of thinking and showcase how an exciting new generation of historians are asking novel questions about Canadians’ interactions with people and places beyond the country’s borders.
From human rights to the environment, and from medical internationalism to transnational feminism, Undiplomatic History maps out a path toward a vibrant and inclusive understanding of what constitutes Canadian foreign policy in an age of global connectivity.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/undiplomatic-history-products-9780773556959.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Undiplomatic-History-Study-Canada-Rethinking-ebook/dp/B07PMTNSBK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1554394959&sr=1-1
Terry Copp and Matt Baker, Canadian Battlefields of the Second World War: Dieppe, D-Day, and the Battle of Normandy (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019)
This guidebook offers an introduction to the strategic, operational and tactical aspects of the Dieppe Raid and the Normandy campaign plus information on accommodation, museums, memorials and other points of interest. The battlefields of the Second World War have long played an important part in the collective memory and imagination of Canadians. This guide is intended to encourage a new generation to set out on their own journey not just to the iconic landing beaches, memorials and museums but to the villages and fields where young Canadians fought to free France from the yoke of Nazi tyranny.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/C/Canadian-Battlefields-of-the-Second-World-War
May 1
Laura Ishiguro, Nothing to Write Home About: British Family Correspondence and the Settler Colonial Everyday in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
In the context of surging interests in reconciliation and decolonization, settler colonialism increasingly occupies political, public, and academic conversations. Turning from the emphasis on Indigenous-settler relations and state policy, Nothing to Write Home About uncovers the colonial significance of trans-imperial families, the everyday, and silence in British family correspondence sent between the United Kingdom and British Columbia between 1858 and 1914.
Drawing on thousands of letters, Nothing to Write Home About is a detailed study offering insights into epistolary topics including intimacy and conflict, boredom and food, and what correspondents chose not to write about. Analyzing both the letters’ content and their loaded silences, Laura Ishiguro traces how Britons used the post to navigate the family separations integral to their migration and understand British Columbia as an uncontested settler home. This book argues that these letters and their writers played a critical role in laying the foundations of a powerful, personal settler colonial order that continues to structure the province today.
Nothing to Write Home About is the first substantial study of family correspondence and settler colonialism. By underscoring the entwined significance of family and the everyday in a formative period in British Columbia, it offers a timely new lens into the global and local dynamics of settler colonialism.
Scholars of history, post-colonial studies, literary studies, biography writing, space and cultural geography, Canadian Studies, British Studies, and in the burgeoning field of settler colonial studies will find this book to be of interest.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: https://www.ubcpress.ca/nothing-to-write-home-about
Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn, eds. The Nature of Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Snow-capped mountains. Pristine lakes. Crystalline glaciers. Big-sky sunsets. “Canada” is synonymous with nature, and throughout history people have been drawn to it for its bounty – from fish and furs to gold, wheat, and lumber.
Intended to delight and provoke, these short, beautifully crafted essays, enlivened with photos and illustrations, explore how humans have engaged with Canadian nature and what those interactions say about the nature of Canada.
Tracing a path from the Ice Age to the Anthropocene, some of the foremost stars in the field of environmental history reflect on how we, as a nation, have idolized and found inspiration in nature even as fishers, fur traders, farmers, foresters, miners, and city planners have commodified it and tried to tame it. They also travel lesser-known routes, revealing how Indigenous people listened to glaciers and what they have to tell us; how the weather is not what we must endure but what we make of it; and how even the nature we can’t see – the smallest of pathogens – has served the interests of some while threatening the very existence of others.
The Nature of Canada will make you think differently not only about Canada and its past but quite possibly about Canada and its future. Its insights are just what we need as Canada attempts to reconcile the opposing goals of prosperity and preservation.
Enthralling and engaging, The Nature of Canada will appeal to anyone interested in Canadian history, national identity, and the future of the Canadian environment.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/the-nature-of-canada
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Kent McNeil, Flawed Precedent: The St. Catherine’s Case and Aboriginal Title (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
In 1888, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London ruled in St. Catherine’s Milling and Lumber Company v. The Queen, a case involving the Saulteaux people’s land rights in Ontario. This precedent-setting case would define the legal contours of Aboriginal title in Canada for almost a hundred years, despite the racist assumptions about Indigenous peoples at the heart of the case.
In Flawed Precedent, preeminent legal scholar Kent McNeil thoroughly investigates this contentious case. He begins by delving into the historical and ideological context of the 1880s. He then examines the trial in detail, demonstrating how prejudicial attitudes towards Indigenous peoples and their use of the land influenced the decision. He also discusses the effects that St. Catherine’s had on Canadian law and policy until the 1970s when its authority was finally questioned by the Supreme Court in Calder, then in Delgamuukw, Marshall/Bernard, Tsilhqot’in, and other key rulings.
McNeil has written a compelling and illuminating account of a landmark case that influenced law and policy on Indigenous land rights for almost a century. He also provides an informative analysis of the current judicial understanding of Aboriginal title in Canada, now driven by evidence of Indigenous law and land use rather than by the discarded prejudicial assumptions of a bygone era.
This book is vital reading for everyone involved in Aboriginal law or title, legal historians and scholars, and anyone interested in Indigenous rights in Canada.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/flawed-precedent
Tina Loo, Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
“Why don’t they just move?” This reductive question is asked whenever reports surface of the all-too-common lack of social services and economic opportunities in Canada’s rural and urban communities. But why are certain people and places vulnerable? Who is responsible for remedying the situation? And what is fair?
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Canadian government relocated people, often against their will, in order to improve their lives. Moved by the State offers a completely new interpretation of this undertaking, seeing it as part of a larger project of economic development and poverty alleviation. This finely crafted history therefore focuses on the bureaucrats and academics who designed, implemented, and monitored the forced relocations, rather than on the experience of those who were uprooted.
Tina Loo explores the contradiction between intention and consequence as resettlement played out among Inuit in the central Arctic, fishing families in Newfoundland’s outports, farmers and loggers in Quebec’s Gaspé region, Black residents of Halifax’s Africville, and Chinese Canadians in Vancouver’s East Side. In the process, she reveals the optimistic belief underpinning postwar relocations: the power of the interventionist state to do good.
This book invites the attention of scholars and students of Canadian social and political history, and will also appeal to general readers interested in postwar Canada, the welfare state, and community, regional, and international development.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/moved-by-the-state
Sylvia Bashevkin, ed. Doing Politics Differently? Women Premiers in Canada’s Provinces and Territories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Women have reached the highest levels of political office in Canada’s provinces and territories, but what difference – if any – has their rise to the top made? Have they changed the content, tone, or style of political debate? What role has gender played in their triumph and defeat?
In Doing Politics Differently? leading researchers from across the country assess the track records of eleven premiers, including their impact on policies of particular interest to women and their influence on the tenor of legislative debate and the recruitment of other women as party candidates, cabinet ministers, and senior bureaucrats.
From Catherine Callbeck in Prince Edward Island to Christy Clark in British Columbia to Eva Aariak in Nunavut, Canada stands out for the variety and number of women who have reached the top. By comparing the performance of women premiers across the country and by evaluating their records in light of the men who preceded and succeeded them, this innovative volume asks how important demographic diversity is to government decision making.
This book will appeal to both students and scholars of Canadian politics, history, and gender studies, and is an accessible read for anyone interested in women’s political and social status.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: www.ubcpress.ca/doing-politics-differently
Kelly Saunders & Janique Dubois, Métis Politics and Governance in Canada (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2019)
At a time when the Métis are becoming increasingly visible on Canada’s political scene, Métis Politics and Governance in Canada offers a novel and practical guide to understand who the Métis are, how they govern themselves, and the challenges they face on the path to self-government.
The Métis have always been a political people. With the culmination of the North-West Resistance in 1885 and the hanging of their spiritual and political leader, Louis Riel, the Métis continued to take political action to give life to Riel’s vision of a self-governing Métis Nation in Canada.
Drawing on interviews with Elders, leaders, and community members, Kelly Saunders and Janique Dubois reveal how the Métis have adapted their governance structures in accordance with their way of life as a distinct, rights-bearing Indigenous people. They look to the Métis language – Michif – to identify Métis principles of governance that emerged during the fur trade era and that continue to shape Métis governance structures. Both then and now, the Métis continue to negotiate their place alongside federal and provincial partners in Confederation.
As Canada engages in nation-to-nation relationships to advance reconciliation, this book provides timely insight into the Métis Nation’s ongoing struggle to remain a free and self-governing Indigenous people.
This book will appeal to anyone interested in the Métis Nation and Indigenous self-government, including scholars in Political Science, Indigenous Studies, and Public Policy as well as government officials and the general public.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/metis-politics-and-governance-in-canada
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Taryn Sirove, Ruling Out Art: Media Art Meets Law in Ontario’s Censor Wars (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
In the 1980s, the Ontario government engaged in a series of legal skirmishes with media arts communities. Its Board of Censors – responsible for the classification and approval of all film and video exhibited in the province – began to subject artists’ work to the same cuts, bans, and warning labels as commercial film.
Ruling Out Art reveals what happens when art and law intersect, when artists, arts exhibitors, and their anti-censorship allies enter courts of law as appellants, defendants, or expert witnesses. Taryn Sirove argues that the administration of culture during Ontario’s censor wars was not a simple top-down exercise. Members of arts communities mounted grassroots protests and engaged the province in court cases, ultimately influencing how the province interpreted freedom of expression, a fundamental and far-reaching legal right. The language of the law in turn shaped the way artists conceived of their own practices.
By exploring how art practices and provincial legislation intertwined during Ontario’s censor wars, this innovative book documents an important moment in the history of contemporary art and cultural activism in Canada, one that helped artists secure their constitutional rights under the law.
This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in the social history of art, film, media studies, censorship, and law.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/ruling-out-art
May 3
Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue (Author), Elizabeth Yeoman (Editor), Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019)
Labrador Innu cultural and environmental activist Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue is well-known both within and far beyond the Innu Nation. The recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award and an honorary doctorate from Memorial University, she has been a subject of documentary films, books, and numerous articles. She led the Innu campaign against NATO’s low-level flying and bomb testing on Innu land during the 1980s and ’90s, and was a key respondent in a landmark legal case in which the judge held that the Innu had the “colour of right” to occupy the Canadian Forces base in Goose Bay, Labrador. Over the past twenty years she has led walks and canoe trips in nutshimit, “on the land,” to teach people about Innu culture and knowledge.
Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive began as a diary written in Innu-aimun, in which Tshaukuesh recorded day-to-day experiences, court appearances, and interviews with reporters. Tshaukuesh has always had a strong sense of the importance of documenting what was happening to the Innu and their land. She also found keeping a diary therapeutic, and her writing evolved from brief notes into a detailed account of her own life and reflections on Innu land, culture, politics, and history.
Beautifully illustrated, this work contains numerous images by professional photographers and journalists as well as archival photographs and others from Tshaukuesh’s own collection.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/nitinikiau-innusi
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May 4
Nancy Janovicek & Carmen Nielson, eds. Reading Canadian Women’s and Gender History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
Inspired by the question of “what’s next?” in the field of Canadian women’s and gender history, this broadly historiographical volume represents a conversation among established and emerging scholars who share a commitment to understanding the past from intersectional feminist perspectives. It includes original essays on Quebecois, Indigenous, Black, and immigrant women’s histories and tackles such diverse topics as colonialism, religion, labour, warfare, sexuality, and reproductive labour and justice. Intended as a regenerative retrospective of a critically important field, this collection both engages analytically with the current state of women’s and gender historiography in Canada and draws on its rich past to generate new knowledge and areas for inquiry.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/reading-canadian-women-x2019-s-and-gender-history-2
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Reading-Canadian-Womens-Gender-History/dp/1442629711/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1554391390&sr=1-1
May 8
Jane Griffith, Words Have a Past: The English Language, Colonialism, and the Newspapers of Indian Boarding Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
For nearly 100 years, Indian boarding schools in Canada and the US produced newspapers read by white settlers, government officials, and Indigenous parents. These newspapers were used as a settler colonial tool, yet within these tightly controlled narratives there also existed sites of resistance. This book traces colonial narratives of language, time, and place from the nineteenth-century to the present day, post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/words-have-a-past-4
May 15
Roy MacLaren, Mackenzie King in the Age of the Dictators: Canada’s Imperial and Foreign Policies (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Until the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, Mackenzie King prided himself on never publicly saying anything derogatory about Hitler or Mussolini, unequivocally supporting the appeasement policies of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and regarding Hitler as a benign fellow mystic. In Mackenzie King in the Age of the Dictators Roy MacLaren leads readers through the political labyrinth that led to Canada’s involvement in the Second World War and its awakening as a forceful nation on the world stage.
Prime Minister King’s fascination with foreign affairs extended from helping President Theodore Roosevelt exclude “little yellow men” from North America in 1908 to his conviction that appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini should be the cornerstone of Canada’s foreign and imperial policies in the 1930s. If war could be avoided, King thought, national unity could be preserved. MacLaren draws extensively from King’s diaries and letters and contemporary sources from Britain, the United States, and Canada to describe how King strove to reconcile French Canadian isolationism with English Canadians’ commitment to the British Commonwealth. King, MacLaren explains, was convinced by the controversies of the First World War that another such conflagration would be disruptive to Canada. When King finally had to recognize that the Liberals’ electoral fortunes depended on English Canada having greater voting power than French Canada, he did not reflect on whether a higher morality and intellectual integrity should transcend his anxieties about national unity.
A focused view of an important period in Canadian history, replete with insightful stories, vignettes, and anecdotes, Mackenzie King in the Age of the Dictators shows Canada flexing its foreign policy under King’s cautious eye and ultimately ineffective guiding hand.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/mackenzie-king-in-the-age-of-the-dictators-products-9780773557147.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Mackenzie-King-Age-Dictators-Imperial/dp/0773557148/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?keywords=mackenzie+king+roy+mclaren&qid=1551369755&s=books&sr=1-2-fkmr0
May 16
Andrea Benoit, Viva M.A.C: AIDS, Fashion, and the Philanthropic Practices of M•A•C Cosmetics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
The first cultural history of the iconic brand M·A·C Cosmetics, VIVA M·A·C charts the evolution of M·A·C’s revolutionary corporate philanthropy around HIV/AIDS awareness. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with M·A·C co-founder Frank Toskan, key journalists, and fashion insiders, Andrea Benoit tells the fascinating story of how M·A·C’s unique style of corporate social responsibility emerged from specific cultural practices, rather than being part of a strategic marketing plan.
Benoit delves into the history of the M·A·C AIDS Fund and its signature VIVA GLAM fundraising lipstick, which featured drag performer RuPaul and singer k.d. lang in its first advertising campaigns. This lively chronicle reveals how M·A·C managed to not only defy the stigma associated with AIDS that alarmed many other corporations, but to engage in highly successful AIDS advocacy while maintaining its creative and fashionable authority.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/viva-m-a-c-4
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May 22
Philippe Volpé & Julien Massicotte, Au temps de la « révolution acadienne »: Les marxistes-léninistes en Acadie (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2019)
This book is published in French.
The 1970s were a particularly agitated time in the history of social, political and cultural mobilisations in Acadia. Following reforms introduced under Louis J. Robichaud in New Brunswick and the modernisation of Acadian institutions during the 1960s, the 1970s saw the rise of ideologies and engagements that furthered the activism of the previous decade. Enter the Parti acadien, the magazine L’Acayen and numerous feminist, student and labour organizations and associations. We see the emergence, during this period, of the first small groups claiming their origins directly with Marx, Lenin and Mao, or from communism in general.
The authors aim to give an account of this forgotten chapter of recent Acadian history. At the very core of various social events and phenomena, from poverty to economic conflicts, cultural and generational, to unionism and a multitude of protests, but also in more indirect ways, the Marxist-Leninist presence was felt in the Maritime Provinces. This is the story presented to us by Philippe Volpé and Julien Massicotte in a fascinating and well-researched study of far-left socio-economic movements in Acadia.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://press.uottawa.ca/au-temps-de-la-r%C3%A9volution-acadienne.html
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Au-temps-r%C3%A9volution-acadienne-marxistes-l%C3%A9ninistes/dp/276032821X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Au+temps+de+la+%C2%AB+r%C3%A9volution+acadienne+%C2%BB&qid=1551370872&s=books&sr=1-1-spell
May 29
Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim, & Scott W. See, eds. Violence, Order, and Unrest: A History of British North America, 1749–1876 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
This edited collection offers a broad reinterpretation of the origins of Canada. Drawing on cutting-edge research in a number of fields, Violence, Order, and Unrest explores the development of British North America from the mid-eighteenth century through the aftermath of Confederation. The chapters cover an ambitious range of topics, from Indigenous culture to municipal politics, public executions to runaway slave advertisements. Cumulatively, this book examines the diversity of Indigenous and colonial experiences across northern North America and provides fresh perspectives on the crucial roles of violence and unrest in attempts to establish British authority in Indigenous territories.
Drawing on specific case studies of law and state formation in English and French Canada, Violence, Order, and Unrest brings together innovative research in different fields to reconsider the ideology, governance, and political culture that underpinned British North America. The contributors offer a unique take on Canadian culture and history, demonstrating that we cannot understand Canada today without considering its origins as a colonial project.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/violence-order-and-unrest-4
Better Late than Never
Chris Chapman & A.J. Withers, A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economies of Social Working (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. Chris Chapman and A.J. Withers explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work’s violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical.
The authors document many histories usually left out of social work discourse, including communities of Black social workers (who, among other things, never removed children from their homes involuntarily), the role of early social workers in advancing eugenics and mass confinement, and the resonant emergence of colonial education, psychiatry, and the penitentiary in the same decade. Ultimately, A Violent History of Benevolence aims to invite contemporary social workers and others to reflect on the complex nature of contemporary social work, and specifically on the present-day structural violences that social work enacts in the name of benevolence.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/a-violent-history-of-benevolence-2
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Violent-History-Benevolence-Interlocking-Oppression/dp/1442637315/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544110876&sr=8-1&keywords=a+violent+history+of+benevolence
Ian Milligan, History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Believe it or not, the 1990s are history. As historians turn to study this period and beyond, they will encounter a historical record that is radically different from what has ever existed before. Old websites, social media, blogs, photographs, and videos are all part of the massive quantities of digital information that technologists, librarians, archivists, and organizations such as the Internet Archive have been collecting for the past three decades.
In History in the Age of Abundance? Ian Milligan argues that web-based historical sources and their archives present extraordinary opportunities as well as daunting technical and ethical challenges for historians. Through case studies, he outlines the approaches, methods, tools, and search functions that can help a historian turn web documents into historical sources. He also considers the implications of the size and scale of digital sources, which amount to more information than historians have ever had at their fingertips, and many of which are by and about people who have traditionally been absent from the historical record. Scrutinizing the concept of the web and the mechanics of its archives, Milligan explains how these new media challenge, reshape, and enrich both the historical profession and the historical record.
A wake-up call for historians of the twenty-first century, History in the Age of Abundance? is an essential introduction to the way web archives work, what possibilities they open up, what risks they entail, and what the shift to digital information means for historians, their professional training and organization, and society as a whole.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/history-in-the-age-of-abundance–products-9780773556973.php?page_id=73&#!prettyPhoto
Dave Corriveau, l’Histoire des p’tits gâteaux Vachon, 1923-1999: De sucre et d’audace (Québec: Septentrion, 2019)
Qui ne connaît pas les petits gâteaux Vachon? Qui n’a jamais goûté un Jos Louis, un Ah Caramel ! ou une 1/2 lune? Ces gâteries sucrées rappellent de doux souvenirs à de nombreuses personnes. Mais que sait-on de la pâtisserie Vachon, cette entreprise qui a connu une montée fulgurante pendant le XXe siècle?
Dans cet ouvrage, Dave Corriveau présente les pionniers de la célèbre entreprise beauceronne et explique comment une petite boulangerie de village s’est développée au point de devenir un fleuron de l’entrepreneuriat québécois.
Ce livre invite à un voyage dans le temps, de 1923 à 1999, pour revisiter l’épopée de cette pâtisserie résolument ancrée dans l’histoire et le patrimoine gourmand du Québec moderne.
Available Formats: Paperback, PDF
Publisher’s Link: https://www.septentrion.qc.ca/catalogue/histoire-des-p-tits-gateaux-vachon-1923-1999-l
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Histoire-ptits-g%C3%A2teaux-Vachon-1923-1999/dp/2897910798/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=histoire+vachon&qid=1554408226&s=books&sr=1-4
Ann Hui, Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants (Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019)
In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included—her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn’t yet know, set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how, after generations living in a poverty-stricken area of Guangdong, China, her family had somehow wound up in Canada.
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurantsweaves together Hui’s own family history—from her grandfather’s decision to leave behind a wife and newborn son for a new life, to her father’s path from cooking in rural China to running some of the largest “Western” kitchens in Vancouver, to the unravelling of a closely guarded family secret—with the stories of dozens of Chinese restaurant owners from coast to coast. Along her trip, she meets a Chinese-restaurant owner/small-town mayor, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a Thunder Bay curling rink, and the woman who runs a restaurant alone, 365 days a year, on the very remote Fogo Island. Hui also explores the fascinating history behind “chop suey” cuisine, detailing the invention of classics like “ginger beef” and “Newfoundland chow mein,” and other uniquely Canadian fare like the “Chinese pierogies” of Alberta.
Hui, who grew up in authenticity-obsessed Vancouver, begins her journey with a somewhat disparaging view of small-town “fake Chinese” food. But by the end, she comes to appreciate the essentially Chinese values that drive these restaurants—perseverance, entrepreneurialism and deep love for family. Using her own family’s story as a touchstone, she explores the importance of these restaurants in the country’s history and makes the case for why chop suey cuisine should be recognized as quintessentially Canadian.
Available Formats: Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: http://www.douglas-mcintyre.com/book/chop-suey-nation?fbclid=IwAR3OfqbZdsbnD5wPtGZ2qA2muFfS_Loo-UPo2YbLGiMGawHeQXLy7xsm3Pc
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Chop-Suey-Nation-Stories-Restaurants/dp/1771622229/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2R4B77EB93Q4M&keywords=chop+suey+nation&qid=1554408494&s=books&sprefix=chop+suey%2Cstripbooks%2C165&sr=1-1-catcorr
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!
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