Welcome back to our monthly series, “Upcoming Publications in Canadian History,” where I’ve compiled information on all the upcoming releases for the following month in the field of Canadian history from every Canadian academic press, all in one place. This includes releases in both English and French. To see the releases from last month, click here.
***Please note that the cover images and book blurbs are used with permission from the publishers.***
N.B. This list only includes new releases, not rereleases in different formats.
February 13
Adriana Craciun and Mary Terrall, eds. Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
With contributions from historians, literary critics, and geographers, Curious Encounters uncovers a rich history of global voyaging, collecting, and scientific exploration in the long eighteenth century. Leaving behind grand narratives of discovery, these essays collectively restore a degree of symmetry and contingency to our understanding of encounters between European and Indigenous people. To do this the essays consider diverse agents of historical change, both human and inanimate: commodities, curiosities, texts, animals, and specimens moved through their own global circuits of knowledge and power. The voyages and collections rediscovered here do not move from a European center to a distant periphery, nor do they position European authorities as the central agents of this early era of globalization. Long distance voyagers from Greenland to the Ottoman Empire crossed paths with French, British, Polynesian, and Spanish travelers across the world, trading objects and knowledge for diverse ends. The dynamic contact zones of these curious encounters include the ice floes of the Arctic, the sociable spaces of the tea table, the hybrid material texts and objects in imperial archives, and the collections belonging to key figures of the Enlightenment, including Sir Hans Sloane and James Petiver.
Available Formats: Hardcover, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/curious-encounters-2
February 15
Francesca Scala, Delivering Policy: The Contested Politics of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Are assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) such as in vitro fertilization a medical issue or a matter of public policy, subject to restrictions? In Delivering Policy, Francesca Scala employs the concept of boundary work to explain the prolonged debates that ensued when the Canadian government appointed a royal commission in 1989 to draw up a blueprint for legislative action.
From the birth of the first “test tube baby” in 1978 to the passage of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act in 2004, Scala reveals how policy makers, civil society actors, and members of the medical-scientific community attempted to define assisted reproductive technologies from within the realms of science or politics. They challenged, defended, or blurred the divisions between the two fields of knowledge to secure their position as the authoritative voice not only on the issue of ARTs but also on the governance of science more broadly.
Delivering Policy delineates in vivid detail the people, institutions, and processes – from royal commissions and public consultations to parliamentary politics – that influenced ARTs policy in Canada. This compelling account contributes to our understanding of the interaction between science and politics, the exercise of social control over science and technology, and the politics of expertise in policy making.
This book will appeal to anyone interested in the role of science in politics and policy making, including students and scholars in the fields of policy studies, Canadian politics, science and technology studies, sociology, and policy analysis.
Available Formats: Hardcover, ePub, PDF
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/delivering-policy
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Delivering-Policy-Contested-Reproductive-Technologies/dp/077486009X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=delivering+policy&qid=1551393890&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Paul T. Phillips, Truth, Morality, and Meaning in History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
In this important new book, Paul T. Phillips argues that most professional historians – aside from a relatively small number devoted to theory and methodology – have concerned themselves with particular, specialized areas of research, thereby ignoring the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning. This is less so in the thriving general community of history enthusiasts beyond academia, and may explain, in part at least, history’s sharp decline as a subject of choice by students in recent years.
Phillips sees great dangers resulting from the thinking of extreme relativists and postmodernists on the futility of attaining historical truth, especially in the age of “post-truth.” He also believes that moral judgment and the search for meaning in history should be considered part of the discipline’s mandate. In each section of this study, Phillips outlines the nature of individual issues and past efforts to address them, including approaches derived from other disciplines. This book is a call to action for all those engaged in the study of history to direct more attention to the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/truth-morality-and-meaning-in-history-4
February 20
Marie-Pier Bouchard, Vivre au cœur de ” paroisses de femmes ” dans la région de Charlevoix, 1940-1980 (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2019)
Dans cet ouvrage, il est question non pas des hommes qui partent, mais des femmes qui restent. S’appuyant sur la richesse des paroles de femmes qui ont vécu cette situation, l’auteure souhaite exposer les multiples déclinaisons des expériences féminines de l’absence maritale et ainsi mettre en lumière l’histoire de ces femmes jusqu’ici occultée. Fortes d’une autonomie qu’elles affermirent et affirmèrent, alors qu’elles devaient savoir se débrouiller seules, et soutenues par des réseaux de sociabilité très forts, où la famille occupait une place prépondérante, les femmes s’enracinèrent dans ce territoire de solitude, mais aussi de solidarité.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://www.pulaval.com/produit/vivre-au-coeur-de-paroisses-de-femmes-dans-la-region-de-charlevoix-1940-1980
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Vivre-coeur-paroisses-femmes-r%C3%A9gion/dp/2763741975/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Vivre+au+c%C5%93ur+de+%22+paroisses+de+femmes+%22&qid=1551394476&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmrnull
March 1
Ted McCoy, Four Unruly Women: Stories of Incarceration and Resistance from Canada’s Most Notorious Prison (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Bridget Donnelly. Charlotte Reveille. Kate Slattery. Emily Boyle. Until now, these were nothing but names marked down in the admittance registers and punishment reports of Kingston Penitentiary, Canada’s most notorious prison.
In this shocking and heartbreaking book, Ted McCoy tells these women’s stories of incarceration and resistance in poignant detail. Locked away from male prisoners in dark basement wards, these women experienced isolation and segregation, along with the worst elements of prison life – starvation, corporal punishment, sexual abuse, and neglect. Yet they met these challenges with resistance and resilience.
Although the four women served sentences at different times over a century, they shared experiences that illuminate how the most marginalized elements in society – the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged – reckoned with poverty and crime and grappled with the constraints placed on them by shifting notions of punishment and reform.
The inhumanity suffered by these four women stands as profoundly disturbing evidence of the hidden costs of isolation, punishment, and mass incarceration.
This book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of crime and punishment or the history of women.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/four-unruly-women
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Four-Unruly-Women-Incarceration-Resistance/dp/0774838884/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YY429RUW57FY&keywords=four+unruly+women&qid=1551395295&s=books&sprefix=four+un%2Cstripbooks%2C163&sr=1-1-catcorr
Denyse Baillargeon (Translated by Käthe Roth), To Be Equals in Our Own Country: Women and the Vote in Quebec (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
“When the history of suffrage is written, the role played by our politicians will cut a sad figure beside that of the women they insulted.” Speaking in 1935, feminist Idola Saint-Jean captured the bitter nature of Quebec women’s fight for enfranchisement, as religious authorities weighed what they stood to gain or lose and politicians showed open disdain during debates in the Legislative Assembly.
Most Canadian women had gained the right to vote by the end of the First World War, but women in Quebec had to wait until 1940 or longer to cast a ballot in their own province. This passionate yet even-handed account retraces the journey from the infancy of democracy in Lower Canada to the Women’s Suffrage Act in 1940 and beyond. It examines the influence of the Quebec national question on women’s struggle for the right to vote, and looks beyond national borders to compare their efforts with those in Europe and the United States.
This astute exploration of resistance and momentum toward women’s suffrage in Quebec treats enfranchisement – and the legal, social, and economic rights that stem from it – as a fundamental question of human rights.
To Be Equals in Our Own Country is the third volume in a seven-part series on the history of the vote in Canada. The Women’s Suffrage and the Struggle for Democracy series serves as a timely reminder not to take political rights for granted.
As the first overview of developments leading to Quebec women’s suffrage, this book will have broad appeal to Canadian readers interested in their own history, as well as to students and scholars of women’s history and political history.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/to-be-equals-in-our-own-country
March 4
Thierry Nootens, Genre, patrimoine et droit civil: Les femmes mariées de la bourgeoisie québécoise en procès, 1900-1930 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Belles résidences, domestiques, voyages… la vie des dames de la bourgeoisie, au début du 20e siècle, n’avait rien à voir avec le quotidien des ménagères de milieu populaire. Ces femmes n’étaient pas totalement à l’abri, néanmoins. Dans Genre, patrimoine et droit civil, Thierry Nootens examine les épreuves traversées par plusieurs dizaines d’entre elles. Faillites, malversations du mari ou ruptures pouvaient menacer leur aisance. Quelle a été la réponse des tribunaux de la province de Québec aux difficultés financières et aux disputes domestiques auxquelles elles durent faire face? De quels savoirs juridiques et pratiques disposaient-elles au moment de se défendre, de faire valoir leurs droits, leurs besoins et ceux de leurs enfants?
L’analyse combinée de rapports de jurisprudence et de dossiers judiciaires originaux met en lumière la profonde vulnérabilité de ces épouses pourtant protégées, en théorie, par un contrat de mariage avantageux et par leur appartenance aux classes possédantes. Cette forme particulière de fragilité – fragilité sociale et genrée – n’avait pas encore été explorée systématiquement en histoire canadienne, tout comme la manière dont les juges régulaient les obligations, émotions et rapports de domination au cœur de l’existence des ménages bourgeois.
Pour l’appareil judiciaire, il ne s’agissait pas seulement d’affaires privées. La morale du mariage, socle de l’ordre social dans la province de Québec, était en jeu. Épouses oublieuses de leurs devoirs, maris escrocs ou indignes ont donc vu s’abattre sur eux le courroux de la magistrature.
Available Formats: Hardcover, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/genre–patrimoine-et-droit-civil-products-9780773554603.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Genre-patrimoine-droit-civil-bourgeoisie/dp/0773554602/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544109478&sr=1-1&keywords=genre,+patrimoine,+et+droit+civile
March 5
Jonathan Clapperton & Liza Piper, eds. Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small Green and Indigenous Organizing (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2019)
Environmental Activism on the Ground draws upon a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship to examine small scale, local environmental activism, paying particular attention to Indigenous experiences. It illuminates the questions that are central to the ongoing evolution of the environmental movement while reappraising the history and character of late twentieth and early twenty-first environmentalism in Canada, the United States, and beyond.
This collection considers the different ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists have worked to achieve significant change. It examines attempts to resist exploitative and damaging resource developments, and the establishment of parks, heritage sites, and protected areas that recognize the indivisibility of cultural and natural resources. It pays special attention to the thriving environmentalism of the 1960s through the 1980s, an era which saw the rise of major organizations such as Greenpeace along with the flourishing of local and community-based environmental activism.
Environmental Activism on the Ground emphasizes the effects of local and Indigenous activism, offering lessons and directions from the ground up. It demonstrates that the modern environmental movement has been as much a small-scale, ordinary activity as a large-scale, elite one.
Available Formats: Paperback, ePub, PDF
Publisher’s Link: https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781773850047
March 15
Arthur Ross, Communal Solidarity: Immigration, Settlement, and Social Welfare in Winnipeg’s Jewish Community, 1882–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
Between 1882 and 1930 approximately 9,800 Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settled in Winnipeg. Newly arrived Jewish immigrants began to establish secular mutual aid societies, organizations based on egalitarian principles of communal solidarity that dealt with the pervasive problem of economic insecurity by providing financial relief to their members. The organization of mutual aid societies accelerated the development of a vibrant secular public sphere in Winnipeg’s Jewish community in which decisions about the provision of social welfare were decided democratically based on the authority and participation of the people.
Communal Solidarity: Immigration, Settlement, and Social Welfare in Winnipeg’s Jewish Community, 1882–1930 looks at the development of Winnipeg’s Jewish community and the network of institutions and organizations they established to provide income assistance, health care, institutional care for children and the elderly, and immigrant aid to reunite families. Communal solidarity enabled the Jewish community to establish and sustain a system of social welfare that assisted thousands of immigrants to adjust to an often inhospitable city and build new lives in Canada.
Arthur Ross’s study of the formation of Winnipeg’s Jewish community is not only the first history of the societies, institutions, and organizations Jewish immigrants created, it reveals how communal solidarity shaped their understanding of community life and the way decisions should be made about their collective future.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/communal-solidarity
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Communal-Solidarity-Immigration-Settlement-Winnipegs/dp/0887558372/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=communal+solidarity&qid=1551396527&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick, Implicating the System: Judicial Discourses in the Sentencing of Indigenous Women (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019)
Indigenous women continue to be overrepresented in Canadian prisons; research demonstrates how their overincarceration and often extensive experiences of victimization are interconnected with and through ongoing processes of colonization. Implicating the System: Judicial Discourses in the Sentencing of Indigenous Women explores how judges navigate these issues in sentencing by examining related discourses in selected judgments from a review of 175 decisions.
The feminist theory of the victimization-criminalization continuum informs Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick’s work. She examines its overlap with the Gladue analysis, foregrounding decisions that effectively integrate gendered understandings of Indigenous women’s victimization histories, and problematizing those with less contextualized reasoning. Ultimately, she contends that judicial use of the victimization-criminalization continuum deepens the Gladue analysis and augments its capacity to further its objectives of alternatives to incarceration.
Kaiser-Derrick discusses how judicial discourses about victimization intersect with those about rehabilitation and treatment, and suggests associated problems, particularly where prison is characterized as a place of healing. Finally, she shows how recent incursions into judicial discretion, through legislative changes to the conditional sentencing regime that restrict the availability of alternatives to incarceration, are particularly concerning for Indigenous women in the system.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/implicating-the-system
March 16
Raymond B. Blake & Melvin Baker. Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland’s Rocky Road towards Confederation (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2019)
Where Once They Stood challenges popular notions that those who voted against Confederation in 1869 and for union in 1948 were uninformed and gullible. Raymond Blake and Melvin Baker demonstrate that voters fully understood the issues at stake in both cases, and women became instrumental in determining the final outcome, voting for Canada in 1948, believing it provided the best opportunities for their children.
“A lively history of Newfoundland politics from the 1860s to the 1940s, with vigorous and persuasive arguments as to why Newfoundlanders were right to reject Confederation in 1869, and right to embrace it in 1949.” —Christopher Moore, author of 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal
“Blake and Baker vigorously bring the exciting fight of ideas in Newfoundland to life. We forget how great the stakes were–nothing less than the survival, security, belonging and recognition of a people. Readers will discover how Newfoundlanders debated for four generations whether Canada was a beau risque.” —Patrice Dutil, author of Prime Ministerial Power in Canada
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: https://uofrpress.ca/Books/W/Where-Once-They-Stood
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Where-Once-They-Stood-Newfoundlands/dp/0889776199/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=where+once+they+stood&qid=1551396870&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
March 30
Jean Barman, Iroquois in the West (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Two centuries ago, many hundreds of Iroquois – principally from what is now Kahnawà:ke – left home without leaving behind their ways of life. Recruited to man the large canoes that transported trade goods and animal pelts from and to Montreal, some Iroquois soon returned, while others were enticed ever further west by the rapidly expanding fur trade.
Recounting stories of Indigenous self-determination and self-sufficiency, Iroquois in the West tracks four clusters of travellers across time, place, and generations: a band that settled in Montana, another ranging across the American West, others opting for British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, and a group in Alberta who were evicted when their longtime home became Jasper National Park. Reclaiming slivers of Iroquois knowledge, anecdotes, and memories from the shadows of the past, Jean Barman draws on sources that range from descendants’ recollections to fur-trade and government records to travellers’ accounts. What becomes clear is that, no matter the places or the circumstances, the Iroquois never abandoned their senses of self.
Opening up new ways of thinking about Indigenous peoples through time, Iroquois in the West shares the fascinating adventures of a people who have waited over two hundred years to be heard.
Available Formats: Cloth, Paperback, eBook
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/iroquois-in-the-west-products-9780773556256.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Iroquois-West-McGill-Queens-Native-Northern-ebook/dp/B07NJ9MMJ3/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=iroquois+in+the+west&qid=1551369820&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr
Alexandre Dumas, l’Église et la politique québécoise, de Taschereau à Duplessis (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Si l’on en croit l’historien Denis Vaugeois, les gens inventent des histoires depuis soixante ans à propos du gouvernement de Maurice Duplessis. Dans le domaine de la politique, l’image généralement acceptée du Québec d’avant la Révolution tranquille est celle d’une société écrasée par une Église catholique omniprésente, avec la complicité d’un gouvernement de l’Union nationale corrompu. L’arrivée au pouvoir du Parti libéral de Jean Lesage en 1960 devait mettre un terme à cette puissante alliance et permettre ainsi au Québec d’entrer dans l’ère moderne. Se peut-il que les tendances politiques du clergé catholique se démarquaient alors de cette idée populaire et l’avaient toujours fait?
L’Église et la politique québécoise, de Taschereau à Duplessis jette un nouveau regard sur des préjugés concernant le rôle historique joué par l’Église catholique dans la politique du Québec. Le soutien électoral du clergé à l’Union nationale, la ferme opposition de l’Église au droit de vote des femmes, l’origine cléricale de la Loi du cadenas et le soutien accordé par l’archevêque de Montréal au dirigeant fasciste Adrien Arcand sont toutes des notions qui ont reçu l’aval inconditionnel des historiens – des idées remises en question dans cet ouvrage. En ce qui a trait à la relation entre l’Église et l’État, Maurice Duplessis s’inscrivait dans la continuité de ses homologues libéraux.
Après avoir consulté des archives jusqu’ici inaccessibles, Alexandre Dumas en vient à la conclusion surprenante que l’Église catholique était peut-être plus sympathique à la cause du Parti libéral qu’à celle de l’Union nationale.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/–glise-et-la-politique-qu–b–coise–de-taschereau—-duplessis–l–products-9780773556713.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/L%C3%89glise-politique-qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9coise-Taschereau-Duplessis/dp/0773556710/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=l%27eglise+et+la+politique+quebecoise&qid=1551370274&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmrnull
That’s all for this month! I hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice! Are there any books in particular that you are looking forward to? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below! And don’t get to check back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian history roundup! See you then!
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