LRC Highlights

There are some great articles in this month's edition of the Literary Review of Canada.

There is Suanne Kelman's masterful review of the memoir of Peter Stursberg, former head of English programming for CBC. Kelman lands perhaps the best literary KO ending I've seen in a long time: '... if you want to create a network with mass appeal, you really need some yourself.' Ouch!

An excerpt from John Price's book Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific, makes for horrific and compelling reading, telling of the way Canadian soldiers who fought in Korea and committed atrocious crimes, essentially got off lightly because of the endemic racism in National Defence in the era. If the rest of the book is written as well as the excerpt, it should be an excellent read.

Andrew Potter continues his thoughtful critique of the power of 'authenticity' in the 20th century in a review of Modris Eksteins's Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age.

Former Speaker of the House of Commons gives a positive review of Helen Forsey's book on her father, Eugene Forsey: Canada's Maverick Sage.

And Christopher Moore is always good to read, especially here as he takes on one of my (and Forsey's) favourite topics, parliamentary democracy.

Only some of the reviews are online, but the LRC subscription isn't too much.

And if you subscribe, you can even read my review of Yves Engler's unbalanced, megaphone-like book on Lester Pearson which is also in this issue.

See the LRC website here

Academic Regalia

I spent several house yesterday morning suffering under the weight of academic tradition. It was convocation. I did my duty, donned the heavy robes and joined the procession of academic 'dignitaries' as we marched across Trent's campus, all to the soundtrack of overly loud classical music. Then we sat in the sun, hot and smiling, through a ceremony, that was probably meaningful for those who came to get degrees.

As the faculty strolled in our wandering way through the crowds of parents and friends, I couldn't help wondering what they thought of the bizarre scene in front of them. Was it a bit of colourful pageantry? Did they try to pick out who had given their sons and daughter As or Ds or, more likely, C+s and B-s?

Or did it all seem like some bizarre relic of an ancient hierarchical system that is now so out of touch with the egalitarian, no-one-knows-better-than-me, or anyone else for that matter, world in which we live? How dare we set ourselves apart, the learned, by our dress and our traditions? And why is this taking so long?

At least it was soon over, and the ceremony began, everyone waiting as each took their turn to receive degrees 'at the hands' of the chancellor. To be photographed, to be cheered, to be deemed worthy. What a mixture of the medieval Christian and the modern. What a bizarre institution the modern, and not so modern, university is.

War of 1812 (plus 200)

The War of 1812 is coming online for the duration.

A team of students led by Canadian historian Andrew Smith (who teaches at Coventry University in the UK, and who blogs at The Past Speaks,  here) is going to bring us the War of 1812 day by day as it happened, but two hundred years later. (see here for details about the twitter feed @Warof1812Live)

The technique has been done to much success elsewhere, notably for the Second World War (see here).



The series of tweets will not only take us through the key events and personalities of the war but will also direct us to the digitized primary documents of the war so that we can follow the work in as detailed a fashion as we want.

So first read Alan Taylor's recent history of the war (and go back to Pierre Berton's two volumes if you want) then read on and on... and enjoy.

Phillip Buckner puts Gwyn's Macdonald in his place

If you've been following the journalistic gravy train that has trailed behind Richard Gwyn's much talked about two volume biography of John A Macdonald, then you should read a great new review of the books.

I say 'great' but I doubt Gwyn would see it this way. In his exquisitely precise review, Phillip Buckner explains exactly why Gwyn's volume is really not, as the publicity people have it, a volume for our times. It's a painful but delicious read,the kind of review that doesn't just criticize; it teaches.

See it here.

The CHA joins the blogosphere

The Canadian Historical Association has officially joined the blogosphere. Inspired (or really dismayed) by the cuts to Library and Archives Canada, the CHA has started up a blog called Vox Historicus. See it at  http://voxhistoricus.tumblr.com/

Update!

 Oh, how the mighty historical profession has fallen ...

Looks like I was too quick of the mark. After doing some latin rethinking, they decided to quickly rename it Vox Historica. You can see it at: http://voxhistorica.tumblr.com/

The War of 1812 Commemoration Caravan rolls on...

If you are looking for an intelligent analysis of why Canada has been invaded by a cultural caravan of War of 1812 commemoration junkies (and even if you weren't looking, but now are just curious), then you can find it in a great post over on the activehistory blog. Ian McKay and Jamie Swift offer the best contextualization yet of the phenomenon. See it here.
And then look for their book in the fall with Between the Lines (for details see here).

Forsey on the filibuster

What can the past tell us about the current controversy over the Conservative government's massive budget bill which is much more than a budget bill?

Here is Eugene Forsey writing in 1982. A Mr Westell had complained in the Ottawa Citizen about the 'constant warfare' in the House of Commons. Westell was saying what one finds some saying today, about the need for more decorum in the house, about the terrible partisanship of political debate.

Nonsense, said Forsey, in a letter to the editor of the Citizen. He suggests that perhaps Westell wasn't old enough to recall Laurier or Borden or Meighen or even King or Bennett, but that parliament was just as divided in their day. Forsey recalled fondly watching 'Arthur Meighen, from 1922 to 1925, day after day, week after week, disembowelling Mackenzie King and his Government....' And surely Diefenbaker, between 1963 and 1967 didn't sit 'in the House with his lips bottoned, or opening them only to utter buttered platitudes or twittering remonstrances..'



So on the practice of filibustering, here is Forsey again: 'Mr. Westell's idea of what Parliament should do between elections is nonsense, and subversive nonsense. It would give the Government almost carte blanche between elections. It would substitute plebiscitary democracy for parliamentary democracy. Parliament, between elections, has not simply the right, as Mr. Westell concedes to "scrutinize" and "criticize" administration and legislation, it has the duty to fight to the limit of the possible and the proper, any legislation which, in its judgement, calls for such action. This duty, of course, falls chiefly to the Opposition, and it can involve, on rare an dextraodinary occasins, obstructions, filibustering.'

In other words, 1) don't construct false and nostalgic ideas about the better days of politics, and 2) recognize that parliamentary government is all about debate and argument.

Canadians elect a parliament, not a government. We don't tell the MPs who aren't with the party in the majority to just go home - better luck next time. We'll see you again in 4 or 5 years, and in the meantime, we'll just call on you when we need to speed up our application for a passport. There's a little more to parliamentary democracy than that.