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.
January 15
Beatrice Craig, Les femmes et le monde d’affaires depuis 1500 (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2019)
Le but de cet ouvrage est de rendre visibles les femmes d’affaires du passé. Il examine le rôle que les femmes ont joué dans divers types d’entreprises en tant que propriétaires, copropriétaires et gestionnaires de décisions dans les sociétés européennes et nord-américaines depuis le xvie siècle. Il décrit les facteurs économiques, sociaux, juridiques et culturels qui ont facilité ou restreint la participation des femmes dans les affaires, la manière dont ceux-ci ont évolué dans le temps et varié dans l’espace et, en particulier, la façon dont l’expérience des femmes a différé de celle des hommes.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://www.pulaval.com/produit/les-femmes-et-le-monde-des-affaires-depuis-1500
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/femmes-monde-affaires-depuis-1500/dp/2763733271/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548342704&sr=1-1&keywords=Les+femmes+et+le+monde+des+affaires+depuis+1500
Clay Chattaway & Warren Elofson, Rocking P Ranch and the Second Cattle Frontier in Western Canada (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2019)
The Rocking P Ranch was one of the most ambitious family ranches in Southern Alberta. Founded in 1900 by Roderick Riddle Macleay, the Rocking P flourished during the Second Cattle Frontier as open-range Texas System ranches failed.
Beginning in 1923, Maxine and Dorothy Macleay edited, reported, and published The Rocking P Gazette, a monthly newspaper grounded in the daily life of the Rocking P Ranch. With an audience of their parents and relatives, cowpunchers, teachers, and cooks, the 12- and 14-year-old sisters set out to create a family newspaper that reflected as closely as possible the commercial publications of the time. With sections for local news, advertisements, riddles, poetry, and contributions from Macleay ranch hands, The Rocking P Gazette brings the family ranch to life.
Clay Chattaway and Warren Elofson draw upon this remarkable resource to explore the Second Cattle Frontier and to tell the story of the Rocking P Ranch. Through the lens of The Rocking P Gazette, Chattaway and Elofson detail not only a system of agricultural production, but a way of life that continues to this day.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781773850108
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Rocking-Second-Cattle-Frontier-Western/dp/1773850105/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544109011&sr=1-1&keywords=rocking+p+ranch
January 22
The Graphic History Collective & David Lester, 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019)
In May and June 1919, more than 30,000 workers walked off the job in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They struck for a variety of reasons—higher wages, collective bargaining rights, and more power for working people. The strikers made national and international headlines, and they inspired workers to mount sympathy strikes in many other Canadian cities. Although the strike lasted for six weeks, it ultimately ended in defeat. The strike was violently crushed by police, in collusion with state officials and Winnipeg’s business elites.
One hundred years later, the Winnipeg General Strike remains one of the most significant events in Canadian history. This comic book revisits the strike to introduce new generations to its many lessons, including the power of class struggle and solidarity and the brutal tactics that governments and bosses use to crush workers’ movements. The Winnipeg General Strike is a stark reminder that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common, and the state is not afraid to bloody its hands to protect the interests of capital. In response, working people must rely on each other and work together to create a new, more just world in the shell of the old.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://btlbooks.com/book/winnipeg-general-strike
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/1919-Graphic-History-Winnipeg-Strike/dp/1771134208/ref=sr_1_47?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548339709&sr=1-47&refinements=p_29%3Acanadian+history%2Cp_45%3A1%2Cp_46%3Aduring%2Cp_47%3A2019
Graphic History Collective, Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019)
Art has always played a significant role in the history of the labour movement. Songs, stories, poems, pamphlets, and comics, have inspired workers to take action against greedy bosses and helped shape ideas of a more equal world. They also help fan the flames of discontent. Radical social change doesn’t come without radical art. It would be impossible to think about labour unrest without its iconic songs like “Solidarity Forever” or its cartoons like Ernest Riebe’s creation, Mr. Block.
In this vein, The Graphic History Collective has created an illustrated chronicle of the strike—the organized withdrawal of labour power—in Canada. For centuries, workers in Canada—Indigenous and non-Indigenous, union and non-union, men and women—have used the strike as a powerful tool, not just for better wages, but also for growing working-class power. This lively comic book will inspire new generations to learn more about labour and working-class history and the power of solidarity.
Available formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://btlbooks.com/book/direct-action-gets-the-goods
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Direct-Action-Gets-Goods-Graphic/dp/1771134178/ref=sr_1_49?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548339818&sr=1-49&refinements=p_29%3Acanadian+history%2Cp_45%3A1%2Cp_46%3Aduring%2Cp_47%3A2019
January 30
Guillaume Teasdale, Fruits of Perseverance: The French Presence in the Detroit River Region, 1701-1815 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Founded by French military entrepreneur Antoine Laumet de Lamothe Cadillac in 1701, colonial Detroit was occupied by thousands of French settlers who established deep roots on both sides of the river. The city’s unmistakable French past, however, has been long neglected in the historiography of New France and French North America.
Exploring the French colonial presence in Detroit, from its establishment to its dissolution in the early nineteenth century, Fruits of Perseverance explains how a society similar to the rural settlements of the Saint Lawrence valley developed in an isolated place and how it survived well beyond the fall of New France. As Guillaume Teasdale describes, between the 1730s and 1750s, French authorities played a significant role in promoting land occupation along the Detroit River by encouraging settlers to plant orchards and build farms and windmills. After New France’s defeat in 1763, these settlers found themselves living under the British flag in an Aboriginal world shortly before the newly independent United States began its expansion west.
Fruits of Perseverance offers a window into the development of a French community in the borderlands of New France, whose heritage is still celebrated today by tens of thousands of residents of southwest Ontario and southeast Michigan.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/fruits-of-perseverance-products-9780773555013.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Fruits-Perseverance-Presence-Detroit-1701-1815/dp/0773555005/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544109576&sr=1-1&keywords=fruits+of+perseverance
February 15
Sarah A. Nickel, Assembling Unity: Indigenous Politics, Gender, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Established narratives interpret the drive for Indigenous unity solely as a phenomenon that emerged in response to the political agenda of the settler state. But the evolving and multifaceted concept of unity has long shaped the modern Indigenous political movement.
Through a detailed history of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), one of Canada’s leading Indigenous political organizations, Assembling Unity explores the relationship between pan-Indigenous politics in British Columbia and global political ideologies. Situating Indigenous perspectives on governance firmly in the foreground of her study, Sarah Nickel demonstrates that while unity has been an enduring goal for BC Indigenous peoples, its articulation was heavily negotiated between UBCIC members, grassroots constituents, and Indigenous women’s organizations. She draws on oral interviews, newspaper articles, government documents, and UBCIC records to expose the uniquely gendered nature of political work, as well as the economic and emotional sacrifices that activists make.
Assembling Unity offers new insights into the evolution of political movements, the concept of unity in politics, and gendered political expressions. In the process, this incisive work unsettles dominant Western and patriarchal political ideals that cast Indigenous men as reactive and Indigenous women as invisible and apolitical.
This book will appeal to scholars and students of history, BC studies, and Indigenous studies, particularly those with an interest in gender and politics. It will also find an audience among Indigenous communities, activists, and political leaders.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: https://www.ubcpress.ca/assembling-unity
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Assembling-Unity-Indigenous-Politics-Gender/dp/0774837985/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548340270&sr=1-18
Jennifer Tunnicliffe, Resisting Rights: Canada and the International Bill of Rights, 1947-76 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
From 1948 to 1966, the United Nations worked to create an international bill of rights that would provide a common standard for human rights protection around the globe. Canadians celebrate their country’s central role in this endeavour every Human Rights Day. Yet a detailed study of government policies toward these early UN documents tells a different story.
Resisting Rights analyzes the Canadian government’s initial opposition to the development of international human rights law, exploring how and why this position changed from the 1940s to the 1970s. Jennifer Tunnicliffe takes both international and domestic developments into account to explain how shifting cultural understandings of rights influenced policy, and to underline the key role of Canadian rights activists in this process.
In light of the erosion of Canada’s traditional reputation as a leader in developing human rights standards at the United Nations, this is a timely study. Tunnicliffe situates current policies within their historical context to reveal that Canadian reluctance to be bound by international human rights law is not a recent trend, and asks why governments have found it important to foster the myth that Canada has been at the forefront of international human rights policy since its inception.
Resisting Rights will appeal to students and scholars of the development of domestic and international human rights, and more generally of Canadian history, politics, diplomacy, and foreign policy, particularly at the United Nations. It will also find an audience among individuals or organizations interested in Canada’s human rights history.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/resisting-rights
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Resisting-Rights-Canada-International-1947-76/dp/0774838183/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548347527&sr=1-1&keywords=resisting+rights
Jamie Benidickson, Levelling the Lake: Transboudary Resource Management in the Lake of the Woods Watershed (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019)
Stretching across parts of Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota, the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake basin spans boundaries and jurisdictions. Levelling the Lake explores a century and a half of social, economic, and legal arrangements through which the resources and environment of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake watershed have been both harnessed and harmed.
Jamie Benidickson traces the environmental consequences of logging, mining, forest industries, commercial fishing, hydro-electricity production, and recreation on the natural environment and the often unanticipated impacts of these activities on water flows and quality as well as on local residents, including Indigenous communities, which encouraged new legal and institutional responses. Assessing the transition from primary resource extraction toward sustainable development at a watershed level with a focus on law and governance, Levelling the Lake also shows how interjurisdictional and transboundary issues – many involving the Canada-US International Joint Commission – continue to play a significant role throughout the region.
Levelling the Lake features historical examples offering hard lessons and successful experiments that provide encouragement for the effective management of ecosystems such as the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake basin.
Levelling the Lake will interest students and scholars of environmental history, resource management, legal history, historical geography, and Indigenous studies. Those who work in US-Canada environmental relations and water management will also find this book highly relevant, as will residents of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake region.
Available Formats: Hardcover
Publisher’s Link: http://www.ubcpress.ca/levelling-the-lake
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Levelling-Lake-Transboundary-Management-Watershed/dp/0774835486/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548347836&sr=1-1&keywords=levelling+the+lake
February 16
Sheldon Krasowski, No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2019)
Between 1869 and 1877 the government of Canada negotiated Treaties One through Seven with the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Many historians argue that the negotiations suffered from cultural misunderstandings between the treaty commissioners and Indigenous chiefs, but newly uncovered eyewitness accounts show that the Canadian government had a strategic plan to deceive over the “surrender clause” and land sharing.
According to Sheldon Krasowski’s research, Canada understood that the Cree, Anishnabeg, Saulteaux, Assiniboine, Siksika, Piikani, Kainaa, Stoney and Tsuu T’ina nations wanted to share the land with newcomers—with conditions—but were misled over governance, reserved lands, and resource sharing. Exposing the government chicanery at the heart of the negotiations, No Surrender demonstrates that the land remains Indigenous.
Available Formats: Paperback
Publisher’s Link: https://uofrpress.ca/Books/N/No-Surrender
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/No-Surrender-Land-Remains-Indigenous/dp/0889776067/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548340111&sr=1-13
February 24
Earle H. Waugh, Shirley Schipper, & Shelley Ross (eds.) Female Doctors in Canada: Experience and Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
Female Doctors in Canada is an accessible collection of articles by experienced physicians and researchers exploring how systems, practices, and individuals must change as medicine becomes an increasingly female-dominated profession. As the ratio of practicing physicians’ shifts from predominately male to predominately female, issues such as work hours, caregiving, and doctor-patient relationships will all be affected.
Canada’s medical education is based on a system that has always been designed by and for men; this is also true of our healthcare systems, influencing how women practice, what type of medicine they choose to practice, and how they wish to balance their personal lives with their work. With the intent to open a larger conversation, Female Doctors in Canada reconsiders medical education, health systems, and expectations, in light of the changing face of medicine.
Highlighting the particular experience of women working in the medical profession, editors trace the history of female practitioners, while also providing a perspective on the contemporary struggles women face as they navigate a system that was tailored to the male experience, and is yet to be modified.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://utorontopress.com/ca/female-doctors-in-canada-2
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Female-Doctors-Canada-Experience-Culture/dp/148752322X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544110832&sr=8-1&keywords=female+doctors+in+canada
February 28
Lucas Richert, Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Drugs take strange journeys from the black market to the doctor’s black bag. Changing marijuana laws in the United States and Canada, the opioid crisis, and the rising costs of pharmaceuticals have sharpened the public’s awareness of drugs and their regulation. Government, industry, and the medical profession, however, have a mixed record when it comes to framing policies and generating knowledge to address drug use and misuse.
In Strange Trips Lucas Richert investigates the myths, meanings, and boundaries of recreational drugs, palliative care drugs, and pharmaceuticals as well as struggles over product innovation, consumer protection, and freedom of choice in the medical marketplace. Scrutinizing how we have conceptualized and regulated drugs amid the pressing and competing interests of state regulatory bodies, pharmaceutical and for-profit companies, scientific researchers, and medical professionals, Richert asks how perceptions of a product shift – from dangerous substance to medical breakthrough, or vice versa. Through close examination of archival materials, accounts, and records, he brings substances into conversation with each other and demonstrates the contentious relationship between scientific knowledge, cultural assumptions, and social concerns.
Weaving together stories of consumer resistance and government control, Strange Trips offers timely recommendations for the future of drug regulation.
Available Formats: Hardcover, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/strange-trips-products-9780773556379.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/Strange-Trips-Regulation-McGill-Queens-Associated-ebook/dp/B07MCMYPZN/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548341067&sr=1-2&keywords=strange+trip
J. I. Little, At the Wilderness Edge: The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada’s West Coast (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019)
Vancouver prides itself on being a green city, and the west coast is known for its active environmental protest culture. But the roots of this mentality reach far beyond the founding of organizations such as Greenpeace. Small campaigns led by local community groups from the 1960s onward left a lasting impact on the region.
At the Wilderness Edge examines five antidevelopment campaigns in and around Vancouver that reflected a dramatic decline in public support for large-scale commercial and industrial projects. J.I. Little describes the highly effective protests that were instrumental in preserving threatened green spaces on Coal Harbour, Hollyburn Ridge, Bowen Island, Gambier Island, and the Squamish estuary, keeping these important British Columbia landmarks from becoming a high-rise development project, a downhill ski resort, a suburban housing tract, an open-pit copper mine, and a major coal port, respectively. Through detailed analysis of development proposals and protests, government studies, and community responses, Little argues that it was not the usual suspects – 1960s radicalism and anti-establishment youth culture – that initiated and carried out these protests, but rather middle-aged, middle-class, politically engaged citizens, many of whom were women.
An engaging study of grassroots politics in action, At the Wilderness Edge sheds new light on the rise of environmental consciousness, a pivotal era in the history of British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada.
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, ePub
Publisher’s Link: https://www.mqup.ca/at-the-wilderness-edge-products-9780773556409.php?page_id=73&
Buy it from Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/At-Wilderness-Edge-Antidevelopment-Movement/dp/0773556303/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1548341157&sr=1-1
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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