Canadian Historical Review, Volume 96, Issue 2 / June 2015

Volume 96, Issue 2 / June 2015

 

As recent scholarship has recognized, kinship is at the heart of Indigenous visions of law and alliance. This article explores an important shift in the kin metaphors used in intercultural alliances and treaty making in seventeenth-century eastern Canada. At the beginning of this period, Indigenous peoples and French colonizers described their relationship as an alliance of brothers. By the end of the century, the governor in Quebec was ritually addressed as a father by First Nations allied to the French. This new metaphor would outlive the French regime and endure for another two centuries as a key symbol in British-Indigenous relations. Scholars have generally attributed the paternal status of French (and, later, British) royal representatives in the alliance to the insistence of patriarchally minded Europeans, but, in fact, the notion of French fatherhood originated with Mohawk and Onondaga leaders as early as the 1640s as a corollary of their efforts to establish an alliance with the French. Only later was the new kin metaphor embraced by King Louis XIV's colonial representatives as an expression of absolutist power, subject to the approval of Indigenous nations who held their own opinions about the obligations of fathers toward their children. Continue Reading...

 

In 1924, the government of British Columbia submitted to the British authorities a proposal that aimed to resettle what it hoped would be thousands of Scottish crofters from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland to work in its fisheries, taking advantage of funding made available by the recently passed Empire Settlement Act (ESA) of 1922. Ostensibly, the province endeavoured to provide a better life for a loyal, yet long-suffering, "British" population, to improve the filial imperial ties that were starting to fray following the First World War, to provide the fishing industry with "white" "British" workers to displace its largely Asian workforce, and to introduce a "martial race" to defend its shores. Yet, this scheme was abandoned in late 1925. In private, officials in Canada doubted that the Hebrideans could ever be rehabilitated, as the scheme and the ESA envisioned. Employers saw the Hebrideans as effete and lazy rather than as ready-made militiamen and continued to employ the Asians who they saw as superior workers. Labourers feared that the Hebrideans would undercut their wages and lower their elevated status as "white" and "British," one that they and the province had carefully cultivated since its foundation. Lastly, the liminal status of the Hebridean Scots reflected and was part of the broader ambivalence of Canada's place in the evolving British Empire/Commonwealth of the 1920s, one that embraced the imperial tie yet also oftentimes sought greater autonomy from it. Continue Reading...   

 

Branding "the Bay/la Baie": Corporate Identity, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Burden of History in the 1960s 

In 1965, the Hudson's Bay Company (hbc) unveiled "the Bay/la Baie" as the primary corporate identifier for its urban retail stores in Canada. At the same time, the company was also preparing to celebrate its 300th anniversary in 1970. Rather than viewing the "modern" Bay in opposition to the historical name, this article argues that competing regional historical sensibilities were central to the redesign of the company's corporate image. Following the company's merger with the Montreal-based Morgan's department stores in 1960, the hbc found itself navigating the historical attachments of its western base, the nationalist aspirations of Quebec, and the indifference of metropolitan Ontario. By drawing together corporate discussions around design, typeface, marketing, historical displays, and a commemorative film produced by Christopher Chapman, this article explores the image worlds assembled by the hbc to bridge multiple identities. It also analyzes how historical consciousness itself became an object of study for the company in trying to understand and predict consumer behaviour. The tensions and debates around corporate identity and the 1970 tercentenary point to the significance of visual aesthetics in the evocation and erasure of particular histories in the 1960s. Continue Reading...    

Janet Ajzenstat, Discovering Confederation: A Canadian's Story, reviewed by Ged Martin.

Timothy J. Pearson, Becoming Holy in Early Canada, reviewed by Mary Dunn.

William R. Nester, The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France, reviewed by Robert Englebert.

Angela Byrne, Geographies of the Romantic North: Science, Antiquarianism, and Travel, 1790-1830, reviewed by Bill Moreau.

Thomas G.W. Telfer, Ruin and Redemption: The Struggle for a Canadian Bankruptcy Law, 1867-1919, reviewed by Daniel Simeone.

Hans V. Hansen, Riel's Defence: Perspectives on His Speeches, reviewed by Kelly Saunders.

 

Alison K. Brown, First Nations, Museums, Narrations: Stories of the 1929 Franklin Motor Expedition to the Canadian Prairies, reviewed by Robert Coutts.

Shannon Stunden Bower, Wet Prairie: People, Land, and Water in Agricultural Manitoba, reviewed by Matthew Hatvany

Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin, Historical GIS Research in Canada, reviewed by Ken Sylvester.

Gordon Darroch,The Dawn of Canada's Century: Hidden Histories, reviewed by Jean-Guy Prévost

Nina Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 1868-1967, reviewed by Barrington Walker.

 

Christopher J. Greig, Prayers, Petitions, and Protests: The Catholic Church and the Ontario Schools Crisis in the Windsor Border Region, 1910-1928, reviewed by Chad Gaffield.

Gordon L. Heath, Canadian Churches and the First World War, reviewed by Alana McCord.

Ian Milligan, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New Leftists in English Canada, reviewed by Gregory S. Kealey.

Recent Publications Relating to Canada 

Brian Gettler