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 last month’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.
May 1
Ben Bradley, British Columbia by the Road: Car Culture and the Making of a Modern Landscape, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017).
In British Columbia by the Road, Ben Bradley takes readers on an unprecedented journey through the history of roads, highways, and motoring in British Columbia’s Interior, a remote landscape composed of plateaus and interlocking valleys, soaring mountains and treacherous passes.
Challenging the idea that the automobile offered travellers the freedom of the road and a view of unadulterated nature, Bradley shows that an array of interested parties — boosters, businessmen, conservationists, and public servants — manipulated what drivers and passengers could and should view from the road.
When it came to roads and highways, planners and builders had two concerns: grading or paving a way through “the wilderness” and opening pathways to new parks and historic sites. They understood that the development of a modern road network would lead to new ways of perceiving BC and its environment. Although cars and roads promised freedom, they offered drivers a curated view of the landscape that shaped the province’s image in the eyes of residents and visitors alike.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/british-columbia-by-the-road
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/British-Columbia-Road-Culture-Landscape/dp/0774834188/ref=sr_1_36?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492061289&sr=1-36
Linda J. Quiney, This Small Army of Women: Canadian Volunteer Nurses and the First World War, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017).
With her linen head scarf and white apron emblazoned with a red cross, the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, or VAD, has become a romantic emblem of the Great War. This book tells the story of the nearly 2,000 women from Canada and Newfoundland who volunteered to “do their bit” overseas and at home. Well-educated and middle-class but largely untrained, VADs were excluded from Canadian military hospitals overseas (the realm of the professional nurse) but helped solve Britain’s nursing deficit. Their struggle to secure a place at their brothers’ bedsides reveals much about the tensions surrounding amateur and professional nurses and women’s evolving role outside the home.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/this-small-army-of-women
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/This-Small-Army-Women-Volunteer/dp/0774830719/ref=sr_1_32?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492061317&sr=1-32
Jeffrey Vacante, National Manhood and the Creation of Modern Quebec, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017).
This perceptive intellectual history explores the role of manhood in French Canadian culture and nationalism. In the late nineteenth century, Quebec was still an agrarian society and masculinity was rooted in the land and the family and informed by Catholic principles of piety and self-restraint. As the industrial era took hold, a new model of manhood was forged, built on the values of secularism and individualism. Vacante’s analysis reveals how French Canadian intellectuals defined masculinity in response to imperialist English Canadian ideals. This “national manhood” enabled French Canadian men to participate in a modern, industrial economy while asserting their cultural authority.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/national-manhood-and-the-creation-of-modern-quebec
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/National-Manhood-Creation-Modern-Quebec/dp/0774834633/ref=sr_1_30?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492061317&sr=1-30
Claudie Massicotte, Trance Speakers: Femininity and Authorship in Spiritual Séances, 1850-1930, (Montreal: MQUP, 2017).
Few people know that Susanna Moodie participated in spiritual séances with her husband, Dunbar, and her sister, Catharine Parr Traill. Moodie, like many other women, found in her communications with the departed an important space to question her commitment to authorship and her understanding of femininity.
Retracing the history of possession and mediumship among women following the emergence of spiritualism in mid-nineteenth-century Canada – and unearthing a vast collection of archival documents and photographs from séances – Claudie Massicotte pinpoints spiritualism as a site of conflict and gender struggle and redefines modern understandings of female agency. Trance Speakers offers a new feminist and psychoanalytical approach to the religious and creative practice of trance, arguing that by providing women with a voice for their conscious and unconscious desires, this phenomenon helped them resolve their inner struggles in a society that sought to confine their lives. Drawing attention to the fascinating history of spiritualism and its persistent appeal to women, Massicotte makes a strong case for moving this practice out of the margins of the past.
A compelling new reading of spiritual possession as a response to conflicting interpretations of authorship, agency, and gender, Trance Speakers shines a much-needed light on women’s religious practices and on the history of spiritualist traditions and travels across North America and Europe.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/trance-speakers-products-9780773549920.php?page_id=73&
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Trance-Speakers-Femininity-Authorship-Spiritual/dp/0773549927/ref=sr_1_46?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492062583&sr=1-46
Christopher Dummitt, Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life, (Montreal: MQUP, 2017).
When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King’s death, the public was bombarded with stories about “Weird Willie,” the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King’s character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives.
Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King’s diary and details the specific decisions of King’s literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King’s diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King’s diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation.
Presenting extensive archival research in a captivating narrative, Unbuttoned traces the rise of a political culture that privileged the individual as the ultimate source of truth, and made Canadians rethink what they wanted to know about politicians.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/unbuttoned-products-9780773548763.php?page_id=73&
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Unbuttoned-History-Mackenzie-King-s-Secret/dp/0773548769/ref=sr_1_42?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492062583&sr=1-42
Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell, eds., L.M. Montgomery and the War, (Montreal: MQUP, 2017).
War marked L.M. Montgomery’s personal life and writing. As an eleven-year-old, she experienced the suspense of waiting months for news about her father, who fought during the North-West Resistance of 1885. During the First World War, she actively led women’s war efforts in her community, while suffering anguish at the horrors taking place overseas. Through her novels, Montgomery engages directly with the global conflicts of her time, from the North-West Resistance to the Second World War. Given the influence of her wartime writing on Canada’s cultural memories, L.M. Montgomery and War restores Montgomery to her rightful place as a major war writer.
Reassessing Montgomery’s position in the canon of war literature, contributors to this volume explore three central themes in their essays: her writing in the context of contemporaneous Canadian novelists, artists, and poets; questions about her conceptions of gender identity, war work, and nationalism across enemy lines; and the themes of hurt and healing in her interwar works.
Drawing on new perspectives from war studies, literary studies, historical studies, gender studies, and visual art, L.M. Montgomery and War explores new ways to consider the iconic Canadian writer and her work.
Formats available: Hardcover, Paperback, E-book
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/l-m–montgomery-and-war-products-9780773549814.php?page_id=73&
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/L-M-Montgomery-War-Andrea-McKenzie/dp/0773549803/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1492062583&sr=1-41
Adam Montgomery, Invisible Injured: Psychological Trauma in the Canadian Military from the First World War to Afghanistan, (Montreal: MQUP, 2017).
Canadian soldiers returning home have always been changed by war and peacekeeping, frequently in harmful but unseen ways. The Invisible Injured explores the Canadian military’s continuous battle with psychological trauma from 1914 to 2014 to show that while public understanding and sympathy toward affected soldiers has increased, myths and stigmas have remained constant.
Whether afflicted with shell shock, battle exhaustion, or post-traumatic stress disorder, Canadian troops were at the mercy of a military culture that promoted stoic and manly behavior while shunning weakness and vulnerability. Those who admitted to mental difficulties were often ostracized, released from the military, and denied a pension. Through interviews with veterans and close examination of accounts and records on the First World War, the Second World War, and post-Cold War peacekeeping missions, Adam Montgomery outlines the intimate links between the military, psychiatrists, politicians, and the Canadian public. He demonstrates that Canadians’ views of trauma developed alongside the nation’s changing role on the international stage – from warrior nation to peacekeeper. While Canadians took pride in their military’s accomplishments around the globe, soldiers who came back haunted by their experiences were often ignored.
Utilizing a wide range of historical sources and a frank approach, The Invisible Injured is the first book-length history of trauma in the Canadian military over the past century. It is a timely and provocative study that points to past mistakes and outlines new ideas of courage and determination.
Formats available: Hardcover, E-book
Publisher’s link: http://www.mqup.ca/invisible-injured–the-products-9780773549951.php?page_id=73&
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Invisible-Injured-Psychological-Afghanistan-McGill-Queens-ebook/dp/B06XYVPJB9/ref=sr_1_40?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492062583&sr=1-40
May 3
Pierrick Labbé, Au coeur du « miracle canadien »: La fabrication de munitions durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2017)
Durant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, le gouvernement canadien versa des centaines de millions de dollars pour mobiliser l’industrie canadienne, changeant par la même occasion le visage du pays.
Ce livre porte une attention particulière aux politiques à l’origine de l’industrie de cartouches. Le secteur des cartouches, qui au maximum de la production employa plus de 103 300 personnes dans 180 usines, représente une part non négligeable de cette mobilisation.
Cette approche sert de vecteur pour comprendre les politiques gouvernementales régulant la participation industrielle du Canada. La participation matérielle s’est avérée à la fois un élément de changement économique et de continuité.
Le gouvernement a déployé son effort de mobilisation avec la conviction que l’unification des forces sociales et leur cohésion vers un objectif commun assureraient l’effort maximal du pays. La mobilisation économique est demeurée soumise à la défense des intérêts traditionnels, c’est-à-dire un contrôle rigoureux des finances publiques, le développement des marchés internationaux, un renforcement du secteur privé et le maintien des libertés individuelles.
Au terme du conflit, le Canada s’est positionné sur la scène internationale et a contribué à la reconstruction mondiale. Cette participation matérielle du Canada à la Seconde Guerre mondiale a transformé la société canadienne, sa politique et son économie, et a marqué un point tournant dans l’émergence d’un Canada moderne.
Formats available: Paperback
Publisher’s link: https://press.uottawa.ca/au-coeur-du-miracle-canadien-pb.html
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/coeur-miracle-canadien-fabrication-munitions/dp/2760324788/ref=sr_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492063335&sr=1-21
May 12
Meaghan Beaton, The Centennial Cure: Commemoration, Identity, and Cultural Capital in Nova Scotia During Canada’s 1967 Centennial, (Toronto: UTP, 2017).
In The Centennial Cure, the second volume in the Studies in Atlantic Canada History series, Meaghan Elizabeth Beaton critically examines the intersection of state policy, cultural development, and commemoration in Nova Scotia during Canada’s centennial celebrations.
Beaton’s engaging and insightful analysis of four case studies– the establishment of the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum, the construction of Halifax’s Centennial Swimming Pool, the Community Improvement Program, and the 1967 Nova Scotia Highland Games and Folk Festival–reveals the province’s attempts to reimagine and renew public spaces. Through these case studies Beaton illuminates the myriad ways in which Nova Scotians saw themselves, in the context of modernity and ethnic identity, during the post-war years. The successes and failures of these infrastructure and cultural projects, intended to foster and develop cultural capital, reflected the socio-economic realities and dreams of local communities. The Centennial Cure shifts our focus away from the dominant studies on Expo’67 to provide a nuanced and tension filled account of how Canada’s 1967 centennial celebrations were experienced in other parts of Canada.
Formats available: Hardcover, Paperback
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Centennial-Cure-Commemoration-Identity-Celebrations/dp/148750151X/ref=sr_1_142?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492113828&sr=1-142
May 15
Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, David Meren, eds., Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017)
How has race shaped Canada’s international encounters and its role in the world? How have the actions of politicians, diplomats, citizens, and nongovernmental organizations reflected and reinforced racial power structures in Canada? In this book, leading scholars grapple with these complex questions, destabilizing conventional understandings of Canada in the world.
Dominion of Race exposes how race-thinking — normalizing racial differences and perpetuating them through words and actions that legitimize a discriminatory system of beliefs — has informed priorities and policies, positioned Canada in the international community, and contributed to a global order rooted in racial beliefs. Four themes develop throughout the volume: the relationship between empire, identity, and liberal internationalism; the tensions between individual, structure, theory, and practice; the mutual constitution of domestic and international spheres; and the notion of marginalized terrain and space. While the contributors reconsider familiar topics, including the Paris Peace Conference and Canada’s involvement with the United Nations, they also enlarge the scope of Canada’s international history by subject, geography, and methodology.
By demonstrating that race is a fundamental component of Canada and its international history, this important book calls for reengagement with the histories of those marginalized in, or excluded from, the historical record.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/dominion-of-race
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Dominion-Race-Rethinking-Canadas-International/dp/0774834439/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492061273&sr=1-1
Matthew Barlow, Griffintown: Identity and Memory in an Irish Diaspora Neighbourhood, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017)
This vibrant biography of Griffintown, an inner-city Montreal neighbourhood, brings to life the history of Irish identity in the legendary enclave. As Irish immigration dwindled in the early twentieth century, Irish culture in the city became diasporic, reflecting an imagined homeland. Focusing on the power of memory to shape community, Matthew Barlow finds that, despite sociopolitical pressures and a declining population, the spirit of this ethnic quarter was nurtured by the men and women who grew up there. Today, as Griffintown attracts renewed interest from artists, scholars, and tourists, this textured analysis reveals how public memory defines our urban centres.
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/griffintown
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Griffintown-Identity-Memory-Diaspora-Neighbourhood/dp/0774834331/ref=sr_1_31?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492061317&sr=1-31
Mark R. Leeming, In Defence of Home Places: Environmental Activism in Nova Scotia, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017).
As environmental deterioration became a major social and political issue near the end of the twentieth century, activists in Nova Scotia stood together to defend the places they called home. Political radicals and conservatives alike worked to achieve legislative and social success, even as they disagreed over fundamental principles. In Defence of Home Places examines the diversity of this movement, its early accomplishments, and the disagreements that caused its eventual weakening and division. It places Nova Scotian environmental activism within national and international contexts and explores the choices and tactics that brought about its greatest
Formats available: Hardcover
Publisher’s link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/in-defence-of-home-places
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Defence-Home-Places-Environmental-Activism/dp/0774833394/ref=sr_1_37?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492061289&sr=1-37
May 25
Dennis Molinaro, An Exceptional Law: Section 98 and the Emergency State, 1919-1936, (Toronto: UTP, 2017).
During periods of intense conflict, either at home or abroad, governments enact emergency powers in order to exercise greater control over the society that they govern. The expectation though is that once the conflict is over, these emergency powers will be lifted.
An Exceptional Law showcases how the emergency law used to repress labour activism during the First World War became normalized with the creation of Section 98 of the Criminal Code, following the Winnipeg General Strike. Dennis G. Molinaro argues that the institutionalization of emergency law became intricately tied to constructing a national identity. Following a mass deportation campaign in the 1930s, Section 98 was repealed in 1936 and contributed to the formation of Canada’s first civil rights movement. Portions of it were used during the October Crisis and recently in the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015. Building on the theoretical framework of Agamben, Molinaro advances our understanding of security as ideology and reveals the intricate and codependent relationship between state-formation, the construction of liberal society, and exclusionary practices.
Formats available: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s link: http://www.utppublishing.com/An-Exceptional-Law-Section-98-and-the-Emergency-State-1919-1936.html
Buy it on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Exceptional-Law-Section-Emergency-1919-1936/dp/1442629584/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1492113894&sr=1-104
May 26
Jeffers Lennox, Homelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in North Eastern North America, 1690-1763, (Toronto: UTP, 2017).
The period from 1690 to 1763 was a time of intense territorial competition during which Indigenous peoples remained a dominant force. British Nova Scotia and French Acadia were imaginary places that administrators hoped to graft over the ancestral homelands of the Mi’kmaq, Wulstukwiuk, Passamaquoddy, and Abenaki peoples.
Homelands and Empires is the inaugural volume in the University of Toronto Press’s Studies in Atlantic Canada History. In this deeply researched and engagingly argued work, Jeffers Lennox reconfigures our general understanding of how Indigenous peoples, imperial forces, and settlers competed for space in northeastern North America before the British conquest in 1763. Lennox’s judicious investigation of official correspondence, treaties, newspapers and magazines, diaries, and maps reveals a locally developed system of accommodation that promoted peaceful interactions but enabled violent reprisals when agreements were broken. This outstanding contribution to scholarship on early North America questions the nature and practice of imperial expansion in the face of Indigenous territorial strength.
Formats available: Hardcover, Paperback
Better Late Than Never
February 24, 2017
Gregory S. Kealey, Spying on Canadians: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and the Origins of the Long Cold War, (Toronto: UTP, 2016)
Award winning author Gregory S. Kealey’s study of Canada’s security and intelligence community before the end of World War II depicts a nation caught up in the Red Scare in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and tangled up with the imperial interests of first the United Kingdom and then the United States.
Spying on Canadians brings together over twenty five years of research and writing about political policing in Canada. Through itse use of the Dominion Police and later the RCMP, Canada repressed the labour movement and the political left in defense of capital. The collection focuses on three themes; the nineteenth-century roots of political policing in Canada, the development of a national security system in the twentieth-century, and the ongoing challenges associated with research in this area owing to state secrecy and the inadequacies of access to information legislation. This timely collection alerts all Canadians to the need for the vigilant defence of civil liberties and human rights in the face of the ever increasing intrusion of the state into our private lives in the name of countersubversion and counterterrorism.
Formats Available: Hardcover, Paperback, E-Book
Publisher’s Link: http://www.utppublishing.com/Spying-on-Canadians-The-Royal-Canadian-Mounted-Police-Security-Service-and-the-Origins-of-the-Long-Cold-War.html
Buy in on Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B06XTYT3N8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
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 liked this post, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice or supporting the blog using the link below. And don’t forget to check back on Sunday for our regular Canadian History Roundup! See you then!
Some how my new book from UTP, Spying on Canadians, got missed, It came out late Feb – early March ahead of original schedule. I assumed you would catch it but I don’t think you have.
Thanks for letting me know! I remember seeing it, but you’re right, there was some confusion about the publication dates. Amazon and the publishers don’t always agree, and sometimes things come out early or late and I miss them. I’ve added it into this month’s lists, and will let everyone known on social media! Thanks again, and so sorry I missed it!