Christopher Moore's Canadian History

How bad for UK Labor? They are comparing it to Canada

2008-07-25T09:13:00.006-04:00

Gordon Brown's Labor Party lost another safe seat in a by-election yesterday, and the party is so scared it's raising an "arcane" comparison: the annihilation of Brian Mulroney's Conservatives in 1992.

Mostly Britain has had the remedy for this. Britain is a parliamentary democracy. So when a leader becomes as unpopular as Gordon Brown, the backbenchers simply remove the leader and choose someone more electable (sorry, Margaret Thatcher, it was good while it lasted, but...).

But UK Labor has gone far toward adopting the once uniquely-Canadian perversion of parliamentary accountability. Rather than being constantly accountable to the caucus of MPs actually elected by the people, British Labor leaders can now invoke their leadership convention endorsement by a mob of people who purchased the right to vote for ten bucks or so. Since the convention dissolved as soon as it chose the leader, there's no awkward problem of accountability. A leader (Mulroney, Tony Blair, Chretien) can pretty much stay on as long as they like.

Maybe Gordon Brown will regain popularity. Maybe he will simply go quietly. Most likely he'll stay on; leaders always stay too long. For having surrendered their right to make and unmake parliamentary leaders, a lot of Labor MPs will end up not just out of power but out of Parliament all together.

Late update: union leader tells Labor MPs they can "back him or sack him." Why don't Canadians give their MPs that kind of assignment?

The Nation Wonders: who is this Ryder Hesjedal?

2008-07-24T08:50:00.007-04:00

Is Ryder Hesjedal going to get any coverage from Globe & Mail Sports? Or CBC Sports? Or even CanWest?

Ryder Hesjedal is the lone Canadian (and first in a decade) on the Tour de France. Through the big climbs in the Alps, he has become the most reliable support rider of the Garmin-Chipotle team (one of the few strongly anti-drug teams on the Tour). He's the team's leading rider behind top-ten competitor Christian Vande Velde, and he's moving up steadily in the standings.

Outdoor Life Network, which broadcasts the Tour in Canada, gets its coverage from the American Versus network, which reports every 145th place American but does nothing for its Canadian viewers. The Globe picks up AP wire copy.

Will he will have to go to Beijing (he's selected for the Canadian Olympic team) to get any attention from Canadian media?

Photo from the Garmin Chipotle team website: Hesjedal leading Vande Velde (at left) in the Alps.

The Genealogy Market

2008-07-23T09:31:00.004-04:00

Writing in The Beaver last winter about the genealogy boom (story here), I talked with Erin O'Reilly at www.ancestry.ca about Ancestry's web-based databases and search services.

Yesterday Ancestry announced a new feature: the 1891 Canadian census.

Now the 1891 census is a public document, available from Library and Archives Canada for many years: microfilm, online, the works. What Ancestry is offering, for its fees, is an indexed, searchable, easy-to-use version of the public document.

It's a bit like bottling tap water and then charging for the convenience -- a very successful business in recent years. Convenience value added, fee charged -- that's how genealogy is being organized and commercialized for the rest of us who don't expect to put in the time in the archives in pursuit of our ancestors

Ancestry has lot of other services like this too. I wonder what the response is like.

Newfoundland votes

2008-07-22T08:45:00.003-04:00

In his thoughtful blog from the Rock, "The Bond Papers," St John's political consultant Edward G. Hollett notes today is the sixtieth anniversary of the referendum vote in which Newfoundlanders and Labradorians chose Confederation -- and reflects on the significance too.

(Credit: Opinions Canada for this link -- and many others.)

Vive Le Roy (Ladurie)

2008-07-21T11:57:00.007-04:00

Happy 79th birthday, Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, historian of the world's climate a generation before the subject became fashionable. By counting the harvest dates of vineyards and tallying records of Alpine monasteries confronted by glaciers that came and went over the centuries, he laid down persuasive evidence that climate, like all else, has a history. His climate history was more Eurocentric than global, sure, but the message was there.

His doctoral dissertation, The Peasants of Languedoc, is as good a regional history as has been written. And his Montaillou, the history of an Pyreneen village from 1294-1324... well, if it's not the best history book of the twentieth century, I don't know what is.

Ladurie's father was a Petainist minister in Vichy France turned resistance worker. Ladurie himself was a youthful communist turned democrat. He once described his childhood in rural Normandy as so traditional as to have been "almost Quebecois."

I met him once, and he was full of interest in the genealogies of these Toronto Canadians he was meeting. I said my own Canadian heritage was short, but my wife's family had come from Ireland around 1845. Ah, he said, la famine des patates!" delighted at finding a new historical story before him.

Tom Axworthy on John A. Macdonald

2008-07-21T09:42:00.003-04:00

Liberal apparatchik and Historica foundation majordomo Tom Axworthy lauds John A. Macdonald in a recent Toronto Star article here, in connection with the Archives new digital display of Macdonaldiana. When it comes to the first prime minister, either we get "he was a drunk and a racist," or we get this kind of hero-worshipping and uncritical tribute. But coverage is coverage.

What's up in Fredericton?

2008-07-21T09:17:00.002-04:00

Well, the York Sunbury Museum, an ambitious non-profit local museum in a handsome heritage military building right downtown, has a couple of impressive (I hear) recent exhibits that speak to the two faces of New Brunswick's identity. The Acadians of Fredericton, curated by historian Shiela Andrew. And Fredericton's Loyalists , curated by historian Robert L. Dallison.

Great Canadian Elections

2008-07-21T09:06:00.004-04:00

The blogger called Calgary Grit -- who now posts from Toronto, which is wierd -- has been running an multi-round elimination voting contest to determine the greatest elections in Canadian history, both federal and provincial.

Think Dave Barrett's 1972 win over WAC Bennett in B.C. was bigger than Tommy Douglas's first CCF win in Saskatchewan? Then this is a contest for you (tho' that's not one of the choices he offers). The results so far are at Calgary Grit's website here. Voting still going on.

History online

2008-07-18T09:30:00.002-04:00

Digital History, a website from the University of Nebraska, aims to be a clearinghouse for information, tools, reviews, interviews, talks and papers in the constantly expanding field. Some Canadian content.

There goes the neighbourhood.

2008-07-16T09:46:00.007-04:00

Canada Post is moving to "Distance Related Pricing" for bulk mailings of things like magazines. Sounds dull and innocuous.

But Masthead, the house magazine of the magazine industry, reports that the consequence is that The Beaver, as a national magazine not printed in Ontario but with much of its subscription base there, is going to publish less of and pay less to, well, writers like me.

“The first thing that’s going to go is we’re not going to pay writers as much and maybe not hire as many people to write,” says my good friend Deborah the publisher. And then they may move the printing to Ontario.

Masthead has hints on how to respond if you are interested.

Also in Masthead, how to succeed on the web by dumbing down.

History of the new Depression

2008-07-14T08:57:00.003-04:00

David Warsh, perceptive economic journalist and innovative blogger at Economic Principals, says today "It is becoming clear that the US is indeed facing its most serious economic crisis since 1932." That's gotta make you ponder economic history.

Personally, I blame Ronald Reagan. The housing crisis this year, and the ABCP crisis last year, and the Enron crisis a few years ago, and the savings-and-loan crisis of the Reagan era are all consequences of the policies of deregulation, lax regulation, and complicit regulation, for which Reagan was the great symbol and advocate. The wounds being suffered by the US economy are largely self-inflicted.

Warsh, ever balanced, notes that "for a quarter of a century, growth-oriented policies of deregulation, restructuring and openness have legitimately gained ground because most people have preferred being richer to being more fair." But the price the US pays for this devil-take-the hindmost race for personal enrichment is all these economic crises created by regulatory failure. it's hugely counter-productive.

Public Intellectuals and internet voting

2008-07-11T09:05:00.003-04:00

Back in May I noted an international poll on the world's leading public intellectuals, mostly to muse about the scarcity of historians on the list.

The poll generated some news coverage. In the blogosphere, I saw several complaints that the nominees were all "lefties." There were calls to write in... wait for it... Mark Steyn.

Now the poll is complete, and all the top ten votegetters are Muslims, mostly Muslims almost unknown in the west. But don't jump to conclusions. Mostly the most voted-for candidates are liberal Muslims at odds with civil and religious authorities in their own lands.

It proves once again that Internet polling is mostly about who votes the most -- but who votes the most and why can be fascinating in itself. Prospect magazine, which ran the poll along with Foreign Policy, here explains what went on. Here are the results of the poll.

Canadians Charles Taylor and Michael Ignatieff and semi-Canadian Malcolm Gladwell stayed in the top 100. No sign of Mark Steyn.

History links for the summer doldrums

2008-07-10T08:56:00.007-04:00

Library and Archives Canada opens an online exhibit of John A. Macdonaldiana.

Historica commemorates the birth of cartoonist Joe Shuster. It's Alice Munro's birthday too, and I have yet not read her recent story in The New Yorker.

Wikipedia notes the Allied invasion of Sicily, today in 1943. Coverage of Canadian participation links to this Canadians in Sicily website.

I discover the Sympatico portal's "Today in Canada" is compiled for them by the hardworking historians at Canada Channel aka Ottawa Researchers.

How's the Seven Years War Going, 250 years ago?

2008-07-08T20:19:00.005-04:00

Not badly for the French. It's been going on since 1754, and New France still holds most of its territory. Louisbourg at the eastern approaches has been under siege since early June 1758, but as yet British progress has been limited. Fort Duquesne on the Ohio, the western gate, remains securely in French hands. Given the resources and men Britain has committed to North American, these defensive achievements constitute a substantial success. That indeed was France's North American strategy: try to avoid losing until the British taxpayers ran out of patience. In 1758, it still seemed like a pretty good bet.

Today in 1758, Louis de Montcalm won his greatest victory, smashing the British regulars sent against his defences at Carillon, the southern gate on the Richelieu-Lake Champlain route between New York and Montreal.

Update: Here's an eyewitness account of last week's battle reenactment.

Jimmy Gardiner's Lemberg debate, 2008

2008-07-07T09:31:00.004-04:00

Jimmy Gardiner, totemic figure of Prairie liberalism, former premier of Saskatchewan, and former Canadian Minister of Agriculture, has been dead since 1962, but he became controversial again when his friends and descendents objected to the fictional "Jimmy Gardiner" in the television drama Prairie Giant in 2006.

My advice then was that those who didn't like Prairie Giant's take on Jimmy Gardiner should put forth their own interpretations, rather than trying to ban or rewrite the movie. My essay based on interviews with several Jimmy Gardiner scholars, published in The Beaver, is available here.

In that line, the Rural History and Culture Association of Saskatchewan did great work this weekend by recreating the pivotal 1928 debate between Premier Gardiner and R.H. Hawkins of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1928 the Klan was looking to exploit anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment to rebuild rightwing strength in Saskatchewan. Even thought the Conservatives did take power in Saskatchewan during the depression, Gardiner's courageous stand against the Klan is credited with preventing the implantation of that nativist and bigoted strain in Saskatchewan politics.

Both the 1928 original and the 2008 recreation were held in Gardiner's home town of Lemberg. This weekend a thousand people (!) came to hear the recreation. Media attention was extensive. And look at the list of sponsors and supporters for the event on that link. Well done, Rural History and Culture Association.

Hmmm, what other great Canadian debates could be recreated so successfully? Now if there were to be a Harper-Dion debate on climate change and carbon taxation.....

Meanwhile, Saskatchewanians are recreating John Diefenbaker's speeches too.

History of the Fourth

2008-07-04T13:39:00.003-04:00

Americans get a natural long weekend for their Fourth this year -- and for the next three, I guess. In honour of the day, American Heritage magazine's website has a nice explanation of how the Fourth of July replaced John Adams's preference, the Second of July, and what the second Fourth looked like in Philadelphia. Official celebrations could be contentious even then; Philadelphia was concerned about what the loyalists might do, or indeed what the patriots might do to the loyalists.

History of Monopoly

2008-07-03T08:44:00.003-04:00

iPhone lust seems to be one of those get it/don't get it things. Since I don't, I'm not instinctively sympathetic to those who are complaining that Rogers is going to charge too much to the trend-seekers and coolhunters who just have to have one. They sound like the same people who think they are entitled to other people's copyrights without paying for the value they receive. If they must have all that bandwidth, fine, but why should the rest of us pay for it?

But I've been browsing in a most goddamn wonderful book (I'm told that's what Hemingway said of Joyce's Ulysses), Robert Caro's Master of the Senate. It's a study of one small part of Lyndon B. Johnson's life that is (against all my expectations going in) among the best books on politics and history I know; very readable too.

In Johnson's early career, he crusaded against private power monopolies that priced electrical power at such high prices that hardly anyone in Johnson's rural Texas could afford electricity. When legislative action obliged the power companies to provide electricity at regulated (and low) prices, so many people subscribed that not only was there a tremendous burst in productivity and economic development, to say nothing of quality of life, but power delivery actually became more profitable than in the old high-price low-volume days of unregulated monopoly. Hello Rogers Telecom?

Remember how deregulating telephone service was supposed to make telephone service cheaper and more efficient through competition? Are you paying less for your telephone services than you were twenty years before? Neither am I. The fact is, telephone service is a natural monopoly, and it would benefit from more regulation, not less.

I don't really believe the iPhone is the 21st century equivalent of rural electrification. But abusive monopolies and the need for public regulation -- that doesn't change so much.

(Johnson soon learned there was more money and more power to be found on the side of the big guys. By the time he was in the Senate, he was undermining the regulations he had helped create, and being handsomely rewarded by Texas oil barons as a result. But that's another story -- happily, it's one that is well set out in Caro's book.)

Party like it's 1608

2008-07-03T08:37:00.003-04:00

Today, July 3, is the 400th anniversary of... well, of Samuel de Champlain and a handful of men getting out of a small boat at the foot of Cap Diamant and preparing to stay. The whole thing rather grew in significance as time went on, you might say. To get the whole story, this is the little book you really need.

The petty squabbling generated by sovereigntists offended that Canada might be mentioned in the course of the celebrations actually has some historical precedent. Shortly after setting up at Quebec, Champlain had one of his workers, Jean Duval, executed and his head stuck on a post at the still-abuilding Habitation. Canadian politics was a rough sport even then.

Late update: Great to chat on the radio today with my new friend Rob Snow of CFRA in Ottawa, who came to Champlain and me not via my Champlain biography, but from reading The Illustrated History of Canada, where I wrote the chapter on New France -- and began with Champlain's death at Quebec in 1635.

Archaeobotany at Cap-Rouge

2008-07-02T10:19:00.005-04:00

Not what you would expect in a CanWest newspaper: a substantial and well-written story about archaeology. This one is about work going on at the 1530s-era outpost of the Cartier-Roberval exploration of the St. Lawrence. [Thanx to John Grubber for the link]

Late update: That's 1540s-era (1541-43), as I should have known even without re-reading the story. And speaking of CanWest, apparently its shares are in a death spiral. Maybe there really are consequences to publishing lousy newspapers!

101 Things About Canada

2008-07-02T09:55:00.004-04:00

The Dominion Institute's Canada Day initiative this year is a new poll asking Canadians about the 101 things every Canadian should know about Canada. Seriously quirky, worth pondering. And they are still taking votes. If you had not thought Maple Leaf, Vimy Ridge, Hockey, Queen Elizabeth, and Canadian Flag were numbers 1 through 5 of what we all must know, you can click to vote.

Full disclosure: there is to be a follow-up publication to this, and I'm a (paid) commentator in it.

Late Update: There may some kind of monarchist coup in process here. In the Ipsos-Reid poll of 3000+ Canadians that started this process (link at the main 101 Things site), Queen Elizabeth ranked 87th. Her Majesty's ascent to the top 5 comes with just a few hundred votes tallied from online voting at the website.

Historians on the Order of Canada

2008-07-02T08:55:00.004-04:00

I was delighted to see Marcel Trudel, the great historian of New France (and an old prof of mine), promoted to Companion, the highest rank of the Order of Canada, in the July first honours list. It was good to see Michael Marrus, the internationally recognized historian of Vichy France and anti-semitism, named to the order. Both those are honours for senior and established scholars. The recognition of a rising star comes with the naming of Constance Backhouse. The quality and quantity of her work at the intersection of women's history, discrimination issues, and legal history is increasingly being recognized -- recently by a Killam prize and now with the Order of Canada. Congratulations, Connie.

Belated Canada Day Greetings

2008-07-02T08:39:00.005-04:00

The Globe & Mail's big Canada Day story was by staff writer John Allemang, who began a discussion with journalists Michael Valpy and Evan Solomon and Jennifer Welsh of Oxford University by declaring Canada Day "corny and synthetic." The others largely agreed, and the discussion mostly turned on which of them could declare the most ennui over the whole idea of Canada.

Both the National Post and the Globe ran pieces on John A Macdonald, and both of them imagined him simply as a drunk and a bigot and took for granted that he could never have comprehended Canada today. I could not help thinking he would have comprehended it rather better than the Globe and the Post comprehend him.

Why are we so badly served by our newspapers? Why are they so unable to hold a sense of this country? I've often observed how TV journalists and senior newspaper writers get their educations elsewhere and tend for the rest of their lives to holiday at a villa in Tuscany or hiking up Macchu Picchu. It's the rest of us who know Canada and care about it and see what a great place it can be.

I had the privilege of spending Canada Day on a lake in the woods, in beautiful weather, with family and friends who appreciated how fortunate we are, with fireworks and people making an effort to find a red T-shirt. Belated Happy Canada Day to all who felt similarly.

Late Update: Back in the Life section, Judith Timson's essay, both sensible and touching, makes up for the drivel elsewhere.

The Brighter Side of the Black Death

2008-06-26T14:11:00.001-04:00

John Hatcher's new book reviewed here.

Youth movement at Dominion Institute!

2008-06-26T12:49:00.004-04:00

I've told before how when I was first contacted by one Rudyard Griffiths at something called the Dominion Institute, I imagined someone and something tweedy and hoary with age. Well, they proved not to be so.

I've been an admirer ever since of the Institute's seriousness about ideas and savvy about media and promotion, a hip/serious mix pretty much unknown in cultural policy, let alone historical organizations.

At yesterday's July 1 party at the Peter Pan on Queen West in Toronto, the DI introduced Rudyard's successor as executive director. Marc Chalifoux, politically connected, a recent LSE grad in politics and communications, and under thirty, looks - dare we say it - like a young Rudyard Griffiths. Good luck to the DI and also to Rudyard, who is not likely to vanish, I would say.

Linkage

2008-06-24T09:05:00.004-04:00

Congratulations to Laurie Block and Prairie Fire magazine, who won the best article gold medal that my Beaver magazine essay on 'Expo 67, um, didn't. Western Canada Magazines Awards has all the details.

Speaking of mags, the online daily Slate has essays on how to take kids to a museum and "how to write history in the absence of evidence." The second one is not quite as helpful as I wanted it to be, but hope springs eternal.