Glasstry news

The University of Toronto Press Fall-Winter Catalogue list some intriguing new works in Canadian history. Carl Benn presents A Mohawk Memoir from the War of 1812 , based on the 1815-16 memoir of Teyoninhokarawen, or John Norton, who participated in most of the major and many minor engagements of the Upper Canadian War of 1812.  (November) Peter Price offers  Questions of Order: Confederation and the Making of Modern Canada , which from the description emphasizes how confederation changed ideas of the British Empire and Canada's place in it. (November) Jim Phillips, Philip Girard and Blake Brown are bringing out the first volume of their ambitious History of Law in Canada . This one is Beginnings to 1866  (October) Legal historian Robert Sharpe moonlights as a judge of the Ontario Court of Appeal, and his new book Good Judgment: Making Judicial Decisions (October) is an inside look at how judges judge. Tyler Wentzall's Not For King and Country is a biography of Edward C...

Ontario raised the minimum hourly wage to $14 in January 2018, with a raise to $15 scheduled for January 2019.  David Olive in the Toronto Star notes that most economic forecasters predicted the sky would fall . In one of the more embarrassing incidents in recent Canadian economic history, the 2017 consensus of economic forecasters was that Ontario would suffer major job loss from the $14 Ontario minimum wage that went into effect Jan. 1, 2018. To cite only a handful of the alarmists, the Bank of Canada, TD Bank, National Bank Financial and the Financial Accountability Office (FAO), the Ontario government watchdog, all predicted that Ontario would lose between 50,000 and 140,000 jobs because of the new $14 minimum wage. As it happens, though, Ontario has gained so many jobs since Jan. 1 that by August, the Ontario jobless rate had dropped to an 18-year low, of 5.4 per cent, second-lowest in the country after B.C. But Ontario elected a Conservative government this summer and it can...

Britain's History Today magazine recently announced that Emily Jones has won its annual book prize for her  Edmund Burke & the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830-1914: An Intellectual History. Here is the whole shortlist . They are from a mix of academic and trade presses. A pretty impressive range of titles, not that I have read (or indeed previously hear of) any of them. What silos we live in. James Delbourgo, Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane Tera W. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century Emily Jones, Edmund Burke & the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830-1914: An Intellectual History Tom Lambert, Law & Order in Anglo-Saxon England Chris Renwick, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State Zo� Waxman, Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History

I like politics this much (M. Turnbull) They are having a spill in Australian politics again, and I kind of admire it. "Spill" is what Australians call a leadership challenge. The right wing government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has (with coalition support) a narrow majority, but the even-more right wing anti-immigrant demagogue Peter Dutton has resigned from cabinet and challenged Turnbull's leadership of the Liberal Party. �This is a fight for the heart and the soul of the Liberal party,� says one moderate MP. �These people surrounding Dutton � these people are not Liberals, they are not conservatives, they are fucking reactionaries, and I have nothing but contempt for them.� In Auz constituencies elect (or defeat) MPs and MPs elect (and when  necessary remove) their party leaders; it would only take 43 Liberal MPs to bring on a leadership vote within the caucus. This whole notion of accountability makes most Canadian commentators flutter and go pale and talk a...

Cupids Heritage Centre There must be some buzz in Newfoundland historic, archaeological, and heritage circles over The Globe and Mail' s weekend story by Jessica Leeper about disputes in Cupids, Newfoundland .  Millions in heritage funding has unwritten an excavation and reconstruction of John Guy's 1610 settlement, the first enduring European one on the island -- only to produce charges not only of maladministration of the money, but also that the true site of Guy's community lies 18 km south of modern Cupids.  Given the thinness of historical records on most such early settlements, it's not completely implausible at first glance. But none of it is simple. One of those making the charges has a home threatened with expropriation for the historical project.  On the other hand anyone who has visited the thriving tourist sites at Trinity to the west of Cupids and Ferryland to the east can see how tempting it would be for any Newfoundland community to seize on the possibili...

The Globe and Mail today has the death notice for McGill law professor and legal historian Blaine Baker, who died last month. I first encountered Blaine Baker's work through a lively "exchange" he and Paul Romney had in the 1980s, in Ontario History and other journals, The subject was the Upper Canadian "types riot" of 1836, and broadly the whole subject of legal and constitutional ideologies in Upper Canada during the early 19th century.  I was working on early 19th century lawyers at the time, a new field for me then, and found the whole debate pretty impressive about a whole field I'd never before contemplated. I got the impression from the articles that Blaine Baker (well, Romney too) was a fierce combattant in historical debates; it read like a rather personal exchange. Then I met him, indeed met him many times, mostly under the auspices of the Osgoode Society for Legal History, and was struck mostly by his courtesy, his supportive mentoring personali...

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has recently released online its biography of Sir Henry Mill Pellatt , the Toronto businessman and society figure of the early 20th century, most famous for having built the folly-castle Casa Loma shortly before losing all his money and having to move to an apartment. Pellatt is a figure familiar in Toronto history and heritage, but I don't think there has been an authoritative biography of him before this. It is a long biography, with rich detail on the development of the Toronto business class in the late 19th century, as well as on Pellatt's extensive militia career and his relentless search for honours, titles, and prestige.  The biography is by David Roberts, longtime staff member of the DCB in Toronto, and it's a credit to him and to the DCB . The DCB also has published a nice tribute to the recently deceased Huguette Filteau , stalwart of the DCB 's Quebec City office for many years -- and widow (who knew?) of the late histo...

Under the heading of cool academic conferences, I note (courtesy of H-Canada ) next month's  Knekk Tepaw , a two-day exploration at Cape Breton University/Unama'ki College in Sydney, Nova Scotia, focussing on connections between Mi'kmaq and other indigenous North Americans with Basques from southwestern Europe .  From Cabot's time to Champlain's (roughly 1500-1600 CE), most European engagements with eastern North America were driven by Basque whalers and fishers., and the whole period and its cultural effects remain fairly obscure, despite some notable historical and archeological projects. This conference seems a little more, ah, edgy, than that, with a predominance of papers addressing paleo-history (43,000 BCE being among the dates mentioned) and hints of speculation about a Basque-area "refugia" during the glaciation of Europe, and possible migrations across the Atlantic in deep pre-history. Well, hmmm. By the conference's second day, and particula...

The July-August issue of The Literary Review of Canada is out , with among much else, my review of Ken Whyte's 2017 biography of Herbert Hoover, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times . The else includes Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser reviewing a new French-language account of the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission of the 1960s, Allan Levine on Toronto urban archaeology, Carleigh Baker on Richard Wagamese, and Charles Foran interviewing American journalist Chris Hedges about "the death of America."  Only the Foran-Hedges piece is available online; the rest is pay walled, unless you subscribe. Hoover ? It's a 700 page book and a thousand word review, you should read the whole thing.  One paragraph: During his rapid ascent, Hoover had acquired a wife. Lou Henry was the hunting, shooting, tree-climbing "daughter of a banker who had given her a single name of a single syllable and raised her as a son." They met in a Stanford ...

The rejection by the Senate of Argentina of an abortion bill commanding much popular support generated news in recent days , and much criticism of the old white male senators and of the Roman Catholic hierarchy who combined to impose their will on the population, and on women, once again. But it's worth noting the role of upper houses. Argentina, like the United States, has a powerful upper house, the Senate, in which each province has equal representation. It's the American model: Americans tend not to make much of the undemocratic characteristics of an upper house in which a cluster of small states (just 17% of the American population, in the US case, fewer in Argentina) can muster a majority of votes. Argentina is said to have the most mal-apportioned upper house in the world, though it differs only in degree from the American one. Argentina has 24 provinces and federal territories, each with 3 senators. Buenos Aires City, Buenos Aires Province, and one other, with just 9 se...

Seen some of these around Canada? Victoria will remove a statue of John A. Macdonald from the steps of its city hall.  I've never been too keen on the desire to create a Canadian Father of His Country to mimic George Washington's role in Americn hagiography -- that has produced a proliferation of bronze Macdonalds across the country. But just putting a statue in the warehouse and saying "Let's not talk about John A. Macdonald" does not seem like a fruitful way to talk about reconciliation or about history. In Montreal the Bank of Montreal has decided, after 25 years of discussions, to seek a rewriting of a plaque that currently celebrates how Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, founder of the colonial settlement of Montreal, killed a Haudenosaunee chief "with his own hands" on the site of the city's Place d'Armes in 1644. But Michael Rice, a Mohawk who teaches in Montreal's public school system and who initiated debate about the plaque, is dis...

Yours for under $800K -- historical value optional Toronto Star has a story today about how you can buy a handsome mid-19th century heritage property in Halifax for less than a modest condo in Toronto would cost you -- and the house has the added allure of being the home of  Nova Scotian lawyer, journalist, and statesman Jonathan McCully, a "Father of Confederation" who was a vigorous advocate for confederation in the successful campaign to have the province of Nova Scotia ratify union in 1867. But then, there is the viewpoint of a former owner of the property, filmmaker Paul Donovan, who does not see the historical allure of McCully: Donovan said he was not drawn to the house because of its connections to Confederation. In fact, he doesn�t like McCully or Confederation very much. Nova Scotia�s entry into Canada brought an end to natural free trade and harmed its economy, Donovan said. �I�ve always thought Confederation was a bad idea, though it�s a little late to undo it,� ...

A soldier of the Great War, RIP August 8, 1918 Tomorrow, August 8, marks the centenary of the start of the "Hundred Days Campaign," which also means it is just one hundred days from the end of the four year long centenary of the First World War itself. The Hundred Days Campaign began with the Battle of Amiens. Canadian troops were closely engaged.  Indeed they remained closely engaged in what were (for the First World War) rapid advances that continued to the end of the war -- and suffered a substantial proportion of all Canadian wartime casualties, too. Canadian historians tend to point to the Hundred Days to affirm the vital role of the Canadians on the western front and in the final campaign in particular.  British, French and American accounts often manage to cover the same period without much attention to the Canadian contribution.  There's truth to both positions: the Canadian performance was very much right up at the sharp end, but in total numbers of troops engage...