The most interesting archive website ever?

A few questions you'll find answered on the McGill University Archives website:

Did a McGill student accidentally kill Harry Houdini?

Did 'Jack the Ripper' attend McGill University?

Am I a descendent of James McGill?

These questions are all answered at the website (here) on the very short list of FAQs. It makes for quite a change from the usual list of questions archives staff they think they might have to answer (ie how much does it cost to make a photocopy?). But maybe they really were/are frequently asked!

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre on Jewish wartime refugees

A fascinating story on the CBC the other night tells of a new exhibit at Vancouver's Holocaust Education Centre about a little known group of wartime Jewish refugees. For more details see here

You can listen to the CBC radio story about the exhibit  here

The first interview is very interesting but I must confess I was a little blown away by the second interview, of Rabbi Erwin Schild, who survived Dachau and is the author of The Very Narrow Bridge: A Memoir of an Uncertain Passage .

The interviewer asked him what he no doubt thought was a basic and obvious question, 'What was it like in Dachau?' How the hell do you even begin to answer something like that?! Perhaps the journalist is working on other seemingly reasonable questions like 'What was it like when they killed your parents?' or 'What was it like at residential schools?'

But to his credit, Schill didn't hesitate and began (oh where to begin?) to answer the question.

Norman Bethune and the Canadian frontier

An amusing story in yesterday's Globe just got better.

Yesterday the Globe reported (here) on the oddity of the Conservative government funding the building of a historic centre devoted to the Canadian communist Norman Bethune. Bethune has, of course, been seen in China as a relatively significant figure, and it seems the Conservatives want to both cash in on tourist dollars and perhaps win favour with some in the Canadian Chinese community.

But today historian Larry Hannant writes in to offer something of a correction. While the journalist had talked about the abrupt break of Bethune's 'transition from comfortable Gravenhurst to wartime China' Hannant clarifies: 'In 1890, when Bethune was born, Gravenhurst was the frontier, a rough timber-milling town on the front lines of the historic assault on the massive Ontario forests. Bethune's capaity to rough it and innovate in harsh conditions was nurtured there - and in Blind River, Aylmer, Sault Ste Marie and several other northern Ontario towns he called home in his first two decades.'

My own favourite sort-of account of Bethune is the portrait that is said to be of Bethune in Hugh MacLennan's great novel, The Watch That Ends the Night.

Canada's Maverick Sage

An amusing anecdote from the archives about someone who refused to listen:

In a letter from Eugene Forsey to Arthur Meighen in 1949, Forsey tells Meighen about a visit he made in the midst of the 1945 election to the journalist Charles A Bowman. I'll let Forsey tell the story:

'In the 1945 election, Walter Mann (CCF Federal candidate) and I went to interview him [Bowman], in the hope of getting favourable publicity. Walter, who knew the old boy before, gave him a short outline of our views. When he'd finished, Bowman bleated at him: "It's such a pity the CCF doesn't propose to do anything about the banks." Walter replied, "Well, Mr. Bowman, as I've told you many times, the CCF proposes to nationalize the banks." "Yes. It's such a pity the CCF doesn't propose to do anything about the banks." Walter repeated what he had just said. "Yes. It's such a pity the CCF doesn't propose to do anything about the banks." After this had happened four or five times, Walter just looked at me and gave up.'

Forsey is, as I've said before, a delight.

Incidentally, for a longer and stronger dose, do look to his daughter, Helen Forsey's new book Eugene Forsey: Canada's Maverick Sage from Dundurn. See here

The Glorious Promise of Transnational History

Who would want to be a Canadian historian these days? It's a question that comes to mind in looking at recent trends in academia today. It's not enough anymore to want to study the nation's past. Job ads for university professors frequently now call for someone who teaches Canadian history from a 'global perspective' or someone how is a 'transnational' Canadian historian. That is if universities will hire any Canadian historian, even of this modified form.

This only follows up on intellectual trends (with the emphasis here on trends) about the glories of studying  anywhere (but especially little Canada) from a transnational perspective. The nation is so very 20th century. I have even been blamed for jumping aboard this bandwagon because a book that I co-edited contained a number of essays celebrating just this thing - the glorious de-parochialization of Canadian history. That an editor could disagree with the some of the essays in the collection (and could still consent to publishing them) doesn't seem to have occurred to a few reviewers.

But where will this all lead?

One example is in the June issue of the Canadian Historical Review where we find an article by Geoff Read and Todd Webb titled ' "The Catholic Mahdi of the North West": Louis Riel and the Metis Resistance in Transatlantic and Imperial Context.'

Read and Webb take that very familiar figure of Canadian history, Louis Riel, and give him an up-to-date transnational spin. (for background see the DCB entry here) The article essentially looks at Riel's second uprising in 1885 and asks what international newspapers had to say about it. It's a potentially interesting question, and might provide a new angle. But, of course, in typical academic fashion, that's not how it's sold. Instead we're told from the outset that previous scholars have 'neglected' this international aspect, that it has 'passed largely unnoticed'. It's always polite in academic articles to set yourself up this way - set out the sins of the past that you will now correct.

But what does this internationalizing of Riel tell us? Does it give us some dramatic new telling of Riel and the Metis? After all, if previous historians have neglected the international Riel, they must have missed something significant. Does this article force us to rethink what we thought we already knew? Well, no.

We are told that 'For Canadians, and especially Metis Canadians, it is surely of interest that Louis Riel was a media sensation in the the transatlantic world.' This reminds me of the time when a prime time US television show made a Newfie joke on air. Upright politicians righteously demanded how on earth this could ever have happened. But then This Hour Has 22 Minutes did a skit which showed several Newfoundlanders sitting around watching TV. When they heard the joke, far from being offended, they leapt up into the air, celebrating the fact that someone had just mentioned Newfoundland on American TV. It seems that when we internationalize Canadian history, parochialism can't be entirely done away with...

We're also told that because Riel was discussed in international papers or, as the authors have it, 'That he operated within North Atlantic and imperial contexts' means that historians should 'if not necessarily rethink their interpretation of Riel the man, revise their view of his significance.' Ok, then, more of what was already stated above. 'Hey, they mentioned our guy in London, and in Paris! Now, I really know Riel is important!'

Then we're told that other countries made what they wanted with him, that they interpreted Riel and the uprising along the lines of political conflict in their own countries. This can perhaps be shelved under the heading 'No need for research to discover this.'

And then, finally, we learn that neither the Metis or Riel ever really got to speak for themselves in the international press. This is certainly notable, but hardly surprising.

Why should I pick on these two historians? They are probably decent blokes who have done and could still do great work.

But the wider implications are disturbing. We are told again and again that we need to reimagine Canada in an international context (as if no one did this before). This, it would seem, is theoretical sophistication. This is the kind of thing that SSHRC evaulators are looking for. And yet, here is one of the places it leads - to an article that crosses all the trendy "t's" and dots the transnational "i's" and yet, even by its own authors' admission, tells us essentially nothing that should make us change our interpretation of the main events in our nation's past.

Politicians of the past

A good review in the Ottawa Citizen of Peter Waite's biography of R B Benett. (see it here.)

In the review William Watson wonders how politicians got on better in days gone past.

He's partly right, though he is commenting here on Mackenzie King and R B Bennett. Choose a different combination - perhaps King and Meighen - and you get a very different chemical reaction!

A Genuine Holiday

I've decided to give myself a genuine holiday this summer. So not only will I not be going into the office, I also won't be doing the additional bits of work that cling to the fringes of my days. This means, alas, that the blog will be quiet over the next couple of weeks.

Perhaps you can check out some of the other fine blogs that I'm linking to next door....