What can be said about one hundred years of historical writing in the journals of the Canadian Historical Association, as they have evolved from the Report of the Annual Meeting|Rapport de l’assemblée annuelle (1922-1965, the journal only took on a bilingual name in 1951) to Historical Papers|Communications historiques (1966-1989) and then to the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association|Revue de la Société historique du Canada (1990-present)?

Each of these essays begins with the words “A Canadian is . . .”. Each one is very different, producing a fascinating book for all thinking Canadians.Irvin Studin is an idealistic young Canadian who wanted to do something extraordinary for his country. So he decided to approach leading Canadians — he calls them “sages” — to tell us what they believe defines us. The people who responded eagerly, to produce an essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words, are, in his words, “all distinguished Canad...

John A. Dickinson and Brian Young bring a refreshing perspective to the history of Quebec, focusing on the social and economic development of the region as well as the identity issues of its diverse peoples. This revised fourth edition covers Quebec's recent political history and includes an updated bibliography and chronology and new illustrations. A Canadian classic, A Short History of Quebec now takes into account such issues as the 1995 referendum, recent ideological shifts and societa...

In a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place Mills pulls back the curtain on the decades activists and intellectuals showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonization to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex race and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-i...

Both lionized and vilified, Claire L’Heureux-Dubé has shaped the Canadian legal landscape – and in particular its highest court. The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the first from Quebec, she was known as “the great dissenter” on the bench, making judgments that were applauded and criticized in turn.L’Heureux-Dubé’s innovative legal approach was anchored in the social, economic, and political context of her cases. Constance Backhouse employs a similar tac...

How the history of a word sheds new light on capitalism and modern politicsWhat exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what’s at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it? In Capitalism, Michael Sonenscher examines the history behind the concept and pieces together the range of subjects bound up with the word. Sonenscher shows that many of our received ideas fail to pick up the work that the idea of capit...

This book emerges from the papers, panels, and discussion of the conference "Where the Past Meets the Future - the Place of Alternative Unions in the Canadian Labour Movement," held to commemorate the first one hundred years of the history of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union. The union, which began in 1893 as the Western Federation of Miners and grew to a membership of over one hundred thousand in fifty locals throughout Canada during the 1950s, had shrunk to a single local of sixt...

This companion volume to Revisiting 1759 examines how the Conquest of Canada has been remembered, commemorated, interpreted, and reinterpreted by groups in Canada, France, Great Britain, the United States, and most of all, in Quebec. It focuses particularly on how the public memory of the Conquest has been used for a variety of cultural, political, and intellectual purposes.The essays contained in this volume investigate topics such as the legacy of 1759 in twentieth-centu...

“Postcolonial theory” has become one of the key issues of scholarly debates worldwide; debates, so the author argues, which have become rather sterile and are characterized by a repetitive reworking of old hackneyed issues, focussing on cultural questions of language and identity in particular. Gradually, a gulf has emerged between Anglophone and Francophone thinking in this area. The author investigates the causes for the apparent stagnation that has overtaken much of the current debate a...

Nancy L. Green offers a critical and lively look at New York’s Seventh Avenue and the Parisian Sentier in this first comparative study of the two historical centers of the women’s garment industry. Torn between mass production and "art," this industry is one of the few manufactauring sectors left in the service-centered cities of today. Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work tells the story of urban growth, the politics of labor, and the relationships among the many immigrant groups who ...

As a nineteenth-century think tank that sought answers to France’s pressing “social question,” the Musée Social reached across political lines to forge a reformist alliance founded on an optimistic faith in social science. In A Social Laboratory for Modern France Janet R. Horne presents the story of this institution, offering a nuanced explanation of how, despite centuries of deep ideological division, the French came to agree on the basic premises of their welfare state.Ho...

The year 1968 in Canada was an extraordinary one, unlike any other in its frenetic pace of activities and their consequences for the development of a new national consciousness among Canadians.It was a year when decisions and actions, both in Canada and outside its borders, were thick and contentious, and whose effects were momentous and far-reaching. It saw the rise of Trudeaumania and the birth of the Parti Québécois; the articulation of the new nationalism in English Canada and ...