Advanced SearchThis is Prof. John English, the author of a recent best-selling biography of Trudeau. Prof. English will be participating in the forthcoming Canadian history and globalization workshop.
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Scotland's Flag
The British business and economic historian Kevin Tennent has published some thoughts about whether an independent Scotland would be a viable economic unit. On Monday, Scotland’s first minister announced that the country would soon be holding a referendum on independence. Monday was, of course, St Andrew’s day, the national day of Scotland– and the day of your humble narrator’s patron saint!
Tennent’s blog post draws on his extensive knowledge of Scottish, British, and global economic history. He begins his analysis with a discussion of the Darien scheme of 1690, the abortive attempt by Scotland to establish a colony in Panama. His blog post also pays attention to more recent developments. Dr Tennent writes:
“The collapse of Iceland’s banking system forced it to seek a £6bn emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund; unfortunately much of this will end up being spent recompensing savers abroad. Had Scotland been independent during the present crisis, then with RBS alone loosing around £24bn in 2008 the country would also have been driven to seek aid from the IMF; the whole of Scotland’s GDP was £86bn in 2006 (although this excludes oil and gas revenue). To cover this loss alone Scotland would have been forced to spend a more than a quarter of its GDP.”
This post should interest Canadians for two reasons. First, there is an obvious parallel between the question of Scottish independence and the separatist movement in Quebec. Would Quebec, which lacks North Sea oil, be a viable state? Second, there is the less obvious but even more important parallels between Scotland’s relationship with England and Canada’s relationship with its wealthy and populous southern neighbour. Most English-speaking Canadians would be in favour of Canada remaining independent of the USA. If they had an opinion on Scottish independence, it would probably be that Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom. Canadians are conservative in the deepest sense of the word and generally prefer to keep things as they are. But we need to ask ourselves why, if independence is a good thing for Canada, would it be a bad thing for Quebec and Scotland? What’s good for the goose may also be good for the gander.
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Skidegate Inlet, British Columbia
The Canadian historian Daniel Francis is working on a new history of coastal BC. He is the process of posting chapters from the book on his blog. The introduction and chapter one are now online.
Here is Francis’s announcement re the blog:
“For some time I’ve been working on a new history of coastal BC, a narrative account synthesizing for the general reader the vast amount of information that’s been published about this part of the world. Eventually the history will be published as a book. In the meantime, a brave new world of digital publishing seems to have arrived. Thinking to be part of it, I’ve decided to serialize my history (titled Where Mountains Meet the Sea: a history of coastal British Columbia) online on the blog.
I launched the project on Sunday (Nov.15) by posting the book’s Introduction. Every Sunday from now until completion I will post several hundred more words. Like all the other blog entries at KnowBC, Where Mountains Meet the Sea will be fully searchable, interactive and open to everyone without passwords or credit cards. I look forward to reading your comments.
Please accept this invitation to visit us and become a regular reader as the history of the BC coast unfolds.”
You can read more about Francis here and here.
This is an Indian news report on the concept of a Tobin Tax.
Here is another news story on the Tobin Tax, this time from AFP.
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My department hosted an interesting speaker last night. The 2009 Angus Gilbert Lecture was given by Minnijean Brown Trickey, a veteran civil rights campaigner from the southern United States.
Brown Trickey was one of the Little Rock Nine, the black high school students who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. While the world watched, the students were turned away from the all-white school, first by the Arkansas National Guard and then by an angry white mob. Days later, in a seminal moment in US history, the students entered the school accompanied by 1200 armed US troops. For the remainder of the school year, soldiers escorted the students to and from school. You can read more about her dramatic story here.
Brown Trickey has devoted her life to the causes of peace, the environment, and human rights. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Native Human Services from Laurentian University and a master’s degree from Carleton University. In 2007, Laurentian conferred upon her an honorary doctorate of laws. In the administration of President Bill Clinton, she served in the Department of the Interior as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diversity. She is a recipient of the US Congressional Medal.
Entitled “Little Rock Revisited,” Brown Trickey’s lecture re-examined this seminal moment in the history of education and civil rights.
For more information, contact Professor Stephen Azzi, Department of History, at 675-1151, extension 4190.
Le mercredi 25 novembre, Minnijean Brown Trickey, qui fait campagne depuis longtemps pour le mouvement des droits de la personne aux États-Unis, a prononcé une communication à l’Université Laurentienne.
Brown Trickey faisait partie du « Little Rock Nine », le groupe d’élèves noirs de l’école secondaire qui, en 1957, a déségrégationné la Central High School à Little Rock, en Arkansas. Sous le regard du monde entier, on avait interdit à ces élèves d’entrer dans une école réservée aux Blancs, d’abord la Garde nationale d’Arkansas et ensuite, une bande d’émeutiers blancs. Plusieurs jours plus tard, lors d’un moment marquant de l’histoire américaine, ces élèves sont entrés dans l’école sous escorte de 1 200 soldats américains armés et pendant toute l’année scolaire, des soldats ont dû accompagner ces jeunes avant et après l’école. Pour plus de renseignements sur la vie de Madame Trickey, cliquez ici.
Ayant dévoué sa vie aux causes de la paix, de l’environnement et des droits de la personne, Minnijean Brown Trickey est titulaire d’un baccalauréat en services sociaux pour les Autochtones de l’Université Laurentienne ainsi que d’une maîtrise de l’Université Carleton. En 2007, la Laurentienne lui a conféré un doctorat honorifique en droit. En qualité de membre de l’administration du Président Clinton, elle a été secrétaire adjointe déléguée à la diversité au ministère de l’Intérieur. Elle est aussi lauréate d’une médaille d’honneur du Congrès américain.
La communication de Minnijean Brown Trickey, intitulée « Little Rock Revisited », a examiné à nouveau ce point saillant de l’histoire de l’éducation et des droits de la personne.
Pour obtenir plus de renseignements, communiquez avec le professeur Stephen Azzi du Département d’histoire, au 675-1151, poste 4190.
La Conférence commémorative Angus-Gilbert est présentée annuellement afin de rendre hommage à M. Angus Gilbert, professeur au Département d’histoire, qui a perdu son combat contre le cancer en 1993, après une longue et brillante carrière à la Laurentienne. Il était un universitaire reconnu, un professeur populaire et un collègue hautement respecté pour les services qu’il a rendus à l’Université.
This blog was announced today on H-Business.
“The blog is called “In the Service of Clio” and is an extended discussion about career management issues early in your scholarly career as a historian. The individual running the website is Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, a professor of strategy at the Naval War College. The blog often features guest contributions from other historians. Previous essays have focused on the admissions process into grad school, strategies on how to get published, and what makes for a good dissertation. The blog is currently running a series of essays from history Ph.D.s who are using their degrees outside of the normal history department where everyone expects to find employment immediately after grad school. These essays have include topics like: teaching at the service academies, working at community colleges, and being a historian for the U.S. government, just to name a few. The blog is intended for grad students and newly minted Ph.D.s but I highly recommend it for all.”
Benjamin West's Death of General Wolfe
Last week, I posted about an upcoming debate in Toronto on the consequences of the British conquest of New France. A podcast of the debate is now available online. The debaters with Bernard Landry and J.L. Granatstein.
Bernard Landry is a Quebec lawyer, teacher and politician. He served as Premier of Quebec (2001-2003), leader of the Opposition (2003-2005) and leader of the Parti Québécois (2001-2005). In 2008 he was appointed Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec, the highest civilian honor in Quebec.
Jack Granatstein is a Canadian historian who specializes in political and military history. He is the Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus at York University and the author of more than 60 books. In 1992 the Royal Society of Canada awarded him the J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal and in 1997 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Desmond Morton is a historian who specializes in Canadian military history. Morton is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 1996 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is also the Hiram Mills professor of History at McGill University.” He published an article on the Plains of Abraham in the National Post on 10 November 2009.
Thanks to the PR staff at the ROM for alerting me that the podcast was now online!
In my Canadian history survey course, I spoke about the Canadian West before 1864 in Monday’s lecture. I talked about the First Nations, the fur trade, and the origins of the Métis population. I discussed how and why the border was drawn along the 49th parallel. I said a little bit about Oregon, “54-40 or fight”, and the creation of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. I used the life of Sir James Douglas to draw many of these different threads together. On Wednesday, I spoke about Manitoulin Treaty of 1862, a treaty between First Nations and the Crown. The students are doing an assignment on the Manitoulin Treaty that involves answering four questions about the treaty. I designed this assignment because there are appropriate sources and it’s a topic that seemed likely to interest my students. Manitoulin Island is not far from Sudbury, so many of my students are familiar with the geography. It’s also a good topic because it deals with some really important national themes. A great case study for my students.
In my honours seminar on Canada in the Confederation period, our focus was on crime, crowds, disorder, and social control. One of the methodological themes I wanted to deal with in the seminar was the relative strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative approaches to social history. The students conclude that both types of social history have merit and that the best research will combine quantitative data (e.g., store records or census material) with contemporary books, poetry, etc. Our readings were: Douglas McCalla, “Upper Canadians and Their Guns: an Exploration via Country Store Accounts, 1808-1861” Ontario History 97 (2005): 121-37; Willeen Keough, “‘Now you vagabond [w]hore I have you’: Plebeian Women, Assault Cases, and Gender and Class Relations on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860,” in Two Islands: The Legal Histories of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, ed. Christopher English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press with the Osgoode Society, 2006): 237-71; Bryan Palmer, “Discordant Music: Charivaris and Whitecapping in Nineteenth-Century North America” Labour/Le Travailleur, 3 (1978), 5–62. The reading by McCalla seemed to be the favourite of the male students, perhaps because it dealt with guns and hunting! The article by Keough was popular with the female students. As one student put it, “there were some crazy chicks discussed in that article.” The students also liked the article by Palmer. Several students noted how the article could be related to Ian McKay’s Liberal Order Framework, which we read about a few weeks back.
We also read and discussed Hereward Senior’s piece on Ogle Robert Gowan in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Gowan was Grand Master of the Orange Lodge in British North America. This generated a discussion of the Orange Lodge. To give student a sense of Orange parades were like, I showed some video clips in class. One concerns the annual marching season in Ulster, where Orangeism is very much alive and well.
The second clip was of a recent Orange parade in Hamilton, Ontario. I told the students that I was astounded that the Orange Lodge still existed in Ontario. One student said that it was active in her home town. So I learned something in the class!
The Past Speaks 