randomosity

Mar­vin McIn­nis chal­lenges the widely held belief that Cana­dian agri­cul­ture was adversely affected by the First World War. His talk at the Uni­ver­sity of Guelph Rural Roundtable yes­ter­day, presen­ted a nuanced and revi­sion­ary look at the com­mon story that war­time demand drove Cana­dian farm­ers to double acre­age devoted to wheat and unwit­tingly cre­ate a dan­ger­ous mono­cul­ture. A situ­ation that led to a massive col­lapse in GNP when the price of wheat col­lapsed after the war. McIn­nis’ earlier paper “Cana­dian Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment in the Wheat Boom Era” sets an appro­pri­ate stage for this fur­ther dis­cus­sion. In this paper, McIn­nis ques­tions the con­clu­sion that Canada’s rapid eco­nomic growth dur­ing the first dec­ade and a half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury res­ted on west­ern set­tle­ment and the ‘wheat boom.’ This has been a per­sist­ent and widely accep­ted view until more recent re-examination has ques­tioned the role of wheat in this growth and determ­in­a­tion that other factors were of greater con­sequence to this growth. This story though has sup­por­ted the con­sequent one that envi­sions war­time demand and response to it as greatly affect­ing Canada’s agri­cul­tural economy.

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The latest addi­tions to The Great Unsolved Mys­ter­ies in Cana­dian His­tory Pro­ject were pub­lished today. When I took a look at the three new mys­ter­ies I was reminded what a power­ful addi­tion to the teach­ing of Cana­dian his­tory that this col­lec­tion is. The new mys­ter­ies: “The Red­path Man­sion Mys­tery”, “Death on Painted Lake: The Tom Thom­son Tragedy,” and “Death of a Dip­lo­mat: Her­bert Nor­man and the Cold War” keep rais­ing the bar of how to effect­ively present mater­ial using the web. The pro­ject is a col­la­bour­at­ive effort amongst Cana­dian his­tor­i­ans to provide enga­ging and fun teach­ing tools dir­ec­ted towards high school and uni­ver­sity level stu­dents. The mys­ter­ies are presen­ted as self-contained web­sites, each one with its own theme and approach. Typ­ic­ally they provide com­pel­ling nar­rat­ive and also offer a wealth of primary doc­u­ments and other source mater­ial to aid in learn­ing about Cana­dian His­tory and his­tor­ical meth­ods. With the addi­tion of these new mod­ules, the breadth of the site is reach­ing a point of crit­ical mass and offer a nicely diverse col­lec­tion from through­out time and geo­graphic area.

I was enter­ing some dummy cita­tions into a social net­worked text shar­ing pro­ject on the week­end.
Serendip­it­ously I chose the genre of his­tor­ical fic­tion and ended up reflect­ing on some of the more mem­or­able books I have enjoyed. At the top of that list is the mem­oirs of Bartho­lomew Wolfe Bandy by Don­ald Jack. This multi-volume series was very deservedly awar­ded the Stephen Lea­cock Award for humour on three occa­sions. This is all the more appro­pri­ate given the very Lea­cockian style of the Bandy papers them­selves.
If you have not ever been exposed to Bandy, I can not recom­mend these books enough. They are superb examples of the comedic novelist’s art down the line of P.G Wode­house, Evelyn Waugh and George Mac­don­ald Fraser. Set in early twen­ti­eth cen­tury Ontario, B.W. Bandy, the hero is an Ott­awa val­ley farm boy who heads off to fight in the First World War. He meets real life not­ables along the way, enjoys some of the most bril­liantly told adven­tures and des­pite the comedic deliv­ery actu­ally teaches much about Cana­dian his­tory. These nov­els demon­strate the close con­nec­tion between lit­er­at­ure and his­tory — the endur­ing import­ance and beauty of a tale well told.

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The Wilson Centre for Cana­dian His­tory was priv­ileged to have John H Thompson speak today on “Man­aging in the Bush Leagues: The Canada-US Rela­tion­ship since 2001.” Thompson’s lively talk was marked by his per­sonal reflec­tions on what it’s like to be an advising Cana­dian, one who has moved per­man­ently to the US and on his per­spect­ive as a stu­dent of United States — Cana­dian rela­tions from one liv­ing in the heart of the beast.
His pithy present­a­tion was enfra­granced with a num­ber of well chosen edit­or­ial car­toons from both Cana­dian and Amer­ican papers and by a couple of rather loaded quo­ta­tions. His talk was loosely framed by an explor­a­tion of the rela­tion­ship between coun­tries dur­ing the pres­id­ency of George W Bush, and intro­duced by a short ret­ro­spect­ive of rela­tions between Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ters and Pres­id­ents from Mack­en­zie King.
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The Wilson Centre in Cana­dian His­tory offi­cially launched an awe­some new learn­ing tool destined for the classrooms of local schools last night. The People and the the Bay is an his­tor­ical envir­on­mental doc­u­ment­ary cre­ated by Nancy Bouch­ier, Ken Cruikshank and the wiz­ards from Pixel Dust Stu­dios This stun­ning pro­duc­tion brings a viva­city, zest, and prob­ing depth to explore the unique rela­tion­ship between the Hamilton har­bour and the lives of people in the area and the city itself. The occa­sion was cel­eb­rated at the Canada Mar­ine Dis­cov­ery Centre, a uniquely appro­pri­ate site for present­ing this pro­duc­tion. The centre sits on the har­bour and is an inter­pret­at­ive museum ded­ic­ated to Canada’s rich aquatic her­it­age.
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I atten­ded a SRO lec­ture by Alan Taylor last week. He delivered a won­der­ful nar­rat­ive on the life of Joseph Brant couched in the cur­rently con­ten­tious dis­cus­sion over nat­ive land rights in the Grand River basin. Taylor is the author of a vari­ety of books, the most per­tin­ent being The Divided Ground: Indi­ans, Set­tlers, and the North­ern Bor­der­land of the Amer­ican Revolu­tion. Fol­low­ing a con­cise, if rather softly spoken, brief on the vari­ous parties play­ing in the story, he moved to the meat of the mat­ter. The key ele­ment that Taylor seemed to want the audi­ence to appre­ci­ate was that the Six Nations them­selves were by no means homo­gen­eous. Addi­tion­ally, the area into which they moved was by no means dom­in­ated by one party or another and was a pop­u­lated by a col­lec­tion of diverse groups already: pre-existing nat­ives such as the Mis­sissauga, recent set­tlers from either the US or from the Brit­ish Isles and sig­ni­fic­antly, a small, but vocal cadre of Brit­ish mil­it­ary forces. The res­ult is an inter­mixed cul­tur­ally diverse people in this area.
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The 2007–2008 Wilson series of lec­tures in Cana­dian His­tory kicked off at McMas­ter Uni­ver­sity today. John Weaver, the act­ing Wilson Chair in Cana­dian His­tory, has attrac­ted an excit­ing list of speak­ers for the com­ing year. Lou Pauly spoke on ’Glob­al­iz­a­tion, Polit­ical Author­ity and the Pre­ven­tion of Sys­temic Fin­an­cial Crises.’ He fol­lowed Angela Gra­ham who, less than 24 hours prior to her doc­toral defense, provided an enga­ging look at Cana­dian For­eign Policy towards the People’s Repub­lic China between the Second World War and recog­ni­tion in 1970.

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Appar­ently, when the going gets tough, Cana­dians turn to law­yers. I have semi-arbitrarily qual­i­fied the two world wars as national crises (yes, we could argue over what other crises may well have faced the nation, but for sake of simple con­jec­ture I will use these), and examined what occu­pa­tions emerge amongst our elec­ted rep­res­ent­at­ives. Dur­ing both world wars, mem­bers of the legal pro­fes­sion end up as the dom­in­ant non-Parliamentary career in the House of Com­mons. There is only one other point at which they are the dom­in­ant occu­pa­tional group…
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In an earlier post, I pondered the occu­pa­tional com­pos­i­tion of the House of Com­mons and its implic­a­tions on policy mak­ing. This posts casts an his­tor­ical gaze on the occu­pa­tions of MPs at Con­fed­er­a­tion com­par­ing the struc­ture with the cur­rent and hypo­thes­iz­ing about the evol­u­tion over the past 160 years.
As I men­tioned earlier, I had a sense that law­yers were a more dom­in­ant force in earlier times and that busi­ness men and women pos­sibly have a more decis­ive role in policy mak­ing today than earlier. This chart:

shows the occu­pa­tional com­pos­i­tion of the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment in 1867.
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A col­league and I were dis­cuss­ing an anec­dotal per­cep­tion that there has been a shift from rely­ing on law­yers to craft policy and laws in Canada towards reli­ance on busi­ness. This post pon­ders how our elec­ted rep­res­ent­at­ives self-identify them­selves and what effect their prior occu­pa­tion might have on their policy mak­ing.
This tree chart shows the com­pos­i­tion of the cur­rent House of Com­mons by occu­pa­tional classification:

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