randomosity

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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Perhaps there is an inner historian within me. The latest spate of reviews featuring the iPhone versus this challenger and that has me thinking that at the pace that we move today we don’t take enough time to reach a little further back to consider our forward progress. This case in point, everyone evaluating the iPhone or the iPod Touch (hereafter ITouch - as I am sure Apple would have rather called it) seems to be pitching it against the Nokia N95, HTC Kaiser, or the latest Blackberry. All appropriate for being the current flavour of the market - and when it comes to cell phones, they have such a limited shelf life. How long does the average phone remain current these days? Despite Apple’s slight revamp of the iPhone, I will go out on a limb and suggest that it may have greater longevity than most. However, not because for technical prowess, but to Apple’s marketing panache. Nonetheless, as I look at the comparisons, I am struck that we might best be able to gauge how much of a technical marvel it is by comparing a little further back.
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I was finally was able to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age today and was not disappointed. This a movie worth seeing at the theatre. The settings are sumptuous, superbly shot and Cate Blanchett seems to be able to do no wrong. She is Elizabeth.
I am staying away from historical commentary here. This is a story for the screen and I appreciate it as such. However, I will say that I enjoyed the first installment ten years ago more. The two installments shared the lavish settings that set Shekhar Kapur apart, but the web of intrigue in the first was much more taut and tense. In the second installment, there is far less of tension. Where tension exists, it seems weary or puerile. Relationships that may have been mined and explored such as that between Elizabeth and her cousin Mary Stuart are left docile and tepid. Mary, who I expected to speak with at least a French accent is unimposing and a mere dupe (certainly a faint shadow of Fanny Ardant’s Marie de Guise in the first). Although this fits in well with her role vis-a-vis Philip of Spain’s intrigue, this political and fratricidal battle between ‘princes who are female’ could have been mined and illuminated the ongoing struggle between free-thinkers and Roman Catholics. Kapur’s Mary is a stupid, unthreatening victim, and this doesn’t work well - far too simple.
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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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I attended a lively and effervescent talk by Marianne P. Fedunkiw at the History of health and Medicine Unit. Dr. Fedunkiw presented her work with the diary/scrapbook of Dr. Dorothea Maude, a rather atypical English medical doctor during the early twentieth century. Dr. Maude was active in the Balkan Wars of 1912-14 and then during the First World War in this same area. The talk today was on the topic of the challenges that arise from using diaries as a historical source.

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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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Last weekend Toronto dedicated a starkly breathtaking park/memorial to the Irish Famine immigrants of 1847. Ireland Park was opened by Mary McAleese, President of Ireland and features a rather striking memorial wall made up of glass bricks commemorating those who died during the exodus and also those who died trying to help them. The aim of this park is to commemorate this historic tragedy and also to remind us of similar events occur today.
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I attended a great talk by Steven Bednarski of St. Jerome’s University today. His CV lists UQAM, York, Toronto as places of experience. His framing question today: How does a social historian make use of a research database?
Bednarski explains that he was trained in the French school and considers himself a storyteller by practise. The leads to a valuable reminder for me: the quantitative historian makes good use of his tools and may carry out exquisite analysis of datasets through many means (statistical, spatial, SNA, etc) but what this allows him to do is construct the model and then use narrative to illustrate it through anecdotal evidence.
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I vaguely remember some mention that many of the work from the Champlain Society are now available online in a digital format. I could not find mention of how many of the works are now available in this format. I did a couple cursory searches and determined that Read and Stagg’s Rebellion in Upper Canada is not, although Alexander Begg’s Journal is. Both works were on our Canadian history major field reading list and the 1837 work was annoyingly stored in the archives at Mac so to read it we had to venture into a space that was only opened for a portion of the day, request the book (it’s not fragile, but since its in th archives its treated with kidd gloves) and we were permitted to sit at a controlled space and ’savour’ the prose. Yes, it was inconvenient and awkward simply beacause this work was from a limited printing run. Its in the stacks at most any other institution, but i guess we got the bonus experience of appreciating the way in which books in general were jealously protected from readers 200 years ago or more. Ooops…I guess that was a rant.

What I wanted to really focus on here was that its great that some of the Champlain Society works are available online and I am sure more will be in the future. Its a wonderful collection of seminal works in Canadian history and encouraging access to these pieces is great and worthy initiative.