Canadian Culture & Identity

Structural Vulnerability and HealtH among SeaSonal agricultural Workers in Canada. This article explains how migrant Mexican agricultural workers experience situations of risk that make them structurally vulnerable in the area of health. Although managed systems of migration, such as the canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (Programa de Trabajadores Agrícolas Temporales) have diverse advantages – legality, benefits, formal wages and safer travel conditions – it is argued that the controlling nature of these pro- grams also generates vulnerabilities.

While the boundary between Canada and the United States has rhetorically been dubbed ‘the longest undefended border in the world’, Canadian narratives have vigorously sought to defend the border in symbolic terms. In 1972, Margaret Atwood suggested this nationalist project to withstand American cultural hegemony reflected the recurring theme of survival in Canadian fiction. Similarly, theorists of Canadian television have found that discerning Canadian identity, separate from that of its southern neighbour, is a frequent (and anxious) theme in its programming. This chapter examines this symbolic border-defending through a discursive analysis of two successful English Canadian television shows, Due South and The Border, with particular emphasis on the ways in which they differentiate Canadian and American styles of justice. Although the shows represent different genres, occupy different settings, and take place in different time periods, both articulate Canadian national pride in terms of law enforcement. Both plots devote a substantial amount of time dramatising the tension, and often the conflict, between Canadian and American approaches to justice...
As will become evident, the events of September 11th serve as a significant landmark that divides the imaginaries of the two shows. I argue that a comparison of the televised shift from ‘self-othering’ a Canadian against an American backdrop in Due South, to ‘othering’ an American against a Canadian backdrop in The Border, reflects both the political climate of the day, and a strengthening sense of self in the Canadian imaginary. Amidst America’s ‘war on terror’, and in relation to international protest against
American foreign policy, many episodes of The Border depict Canada as a mature and progressive nation that strikes a better balance between security and rights. No longer needing to just survive, Canadian policing identity appears robust and confident.

The paper addresses questions concerning the place and role of Canadian sociology in the larger global context. In what ways can
Canadian sociology complementglobal sociology? What challenges face Canadian sociology in universities today? The authors review trajectories and paradigms of Canadian sociology, its history, and recent developments. The institutional structures of Canadian sociology are observed in the framework of 'sociology as a scientific and academic discipline' (SaSAD). The article provides a brief historical account to the Anglo/French division in Canadian sociology, examines its relationship with the country's legacy and complex interplay between social movements, political parties and social science. The case of Canada helps to address principal questions concerning the place of sociology as a scientific and academic discipline in the contemporary university.

Author: Herb Wyile
This article revisits Jane Urquhart's 2001 novel The Stone Carvers in light of the Conservative Party of Canada's reframing of national identity, particularly its emphasis on Canada's military and its privileging of Vimy Ridge as a hallowed site of national identity formation. Rereading The Stone Carvers in light of a number of aspects of the Conservative Party's rebranding of Canadian identity, including the prospective building of a companion memorial to the Vimy Memorial that figures so prominently in The Stone Carvers, the article offers a reassessment of Urquhart's portrayal of the battle of Vimy Ridge and of the Vimy Memorial and its architect, Walter Allward.

Helmcken Falls is a 141 m (463 ft) waterfall on the Murtle River within Wells Gray Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada. The protection of Helmcken Falls was one of the reasons for the creation of Wells Gray Provincial Park in 1939.

-Gray/Grey- ref.note.

Helmcken Falls is the fourth highest waterfall in Canada, measured by total straight drop without a break. Higher Canadian waterfalls are Hunlen Falls in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, Takakkaw Falls in Yoho National Park, and Della Falls in Strathcona Provincial Park, all in British Columbia.

There are six other waterfalls on the Murtle River, upstream from Helmcken Falls. The others are The Mushbowl, Dawson Falls, Majerus Falls, Horseshoe Falls, Meadow Falls and McDougall Falls.

The Canadian Pacific Railway surveyors in the 1870s passed to the north and made no mention of seeing the falls. Credit for discovering Helmcken Falls goes to Robert Henry Lee (1859–1935), a land surveyor working for the British Columbia government. In 1911, Lee was awarded a four-year contract to survey lands in the North Thompson and Clearwater Valleys. By 1913, he was working south of the Murtle River laying out lots for homesteaders. On July 24, 1913, he walked west along the Murtle River from his remote camp and reached the top of the waterfall.
He was so impressed that he wrote a letter to Sir Richard McBride, Premier of British Columbia, requesting that the falls be named "McBride Falls".
Three weeks later, Lee received a reply from the Premier stating that the waterfall was instead to be called Helmcken Falls.
This name honoured John Sebastian Helmcken, a physician with the Hudson's Bay Company who arrived in Victoria in 1850. He helped bring British Columbia into Canadian Confederation in 1871.

Dr. Helmcken died in 1920 at the age of 95, but never actually saw the falls himself.

The first comprehensive historical biography of Bishop Nykyta Budka. an important figure in Ukrainian, Canadian, and Catholic history.  His appointment on 15 July 1912, was the first time the Apostolic See of Rome named an Eastern Catholic bishop will full jurisdiction outside of the old continents of Europe and Asia.  From an early age he became an educator of the Ukrainian people and supported their political and cultural freedom. He was one among hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian immigrants and he encouraged Ukrainian immigration to Canada throughout his life. His mission was to sustain Canadian Ukrainian Greek-Catholics in their faith. Budka achieved government recognition of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada as a legal entity. Facing the reality of assimilation he encouraged his flock to become good Canadians but also dedicated himself to preserving Ukrainian religious and cultural identity. Bishop Budka’s story is one of endurance.  For fifteen years he traveled unceasingly, visiting the Ukrainian settlements scattered across Canada, celebrating the sacraments, teaching, preaching and comforting the faithful.  He invited many Ukrainian priests from Europe and ordained local recruits to serve as missionaries in Canada. He relied upon religious sisters, brothers, and priests to promote Catholic and bilingual education. He sponsored lay people in higher education so that they would become conscientious and self-sacrificing community leaders. He was a poor administrator but a fantastic missionary. He did not receive sufficient financial support from his flock and was forced to rely on grants from Roman Catholic clergy and organizations. He faced bankruptcy on several occasions. In a climate of intense proselytism he battled with many political and religious opponents, who sought to draw his flock away from their Catholic Faith. Overwork, stress, and harsh conditions destroyed his delicate health.  After requesting an assistant bishop several times, he was finally asked to resign. For the next seventeen years he provided moral support and spiritual ministry to Ukrainians under oppressive Polish, Nazi and Soviet regimes. Together with his fellow Ukrainian Catholic bishops, clergy, religious, and laity, he was arrested, tried, and condemned by Soviet authorities.  He died in a prison camp in far-away Kazakhstan. The Catholic Church now numbers him among the heavenly martyrs and confessors of the Faith. His story can be described as a life of obedience, work, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ and God’s pilgrim people..

L’œil du maître interroge le mythe du maître chez nous qui définit les luttes souverainistes au Québec, la relation au territoire et aux Premières Nations. Contre la conquête, la domination, la surveil-lance, Dalie Giroux revendique une autre idée de l’indépendance, à rebours de la violence fondatrice de l’État. Elle évoque le rendez-vous manqué avec un passé-futur décolonial du Québec et la possibilité d’une chaîne de solidarités qui mobiliseraient les forces vives de la pensée autochtone, des luttes antiracistes, écologiques et féministes afin d’habiter ensemble le territoire. Autrement. Ici. Maintenant.

Er(r)go…,
Kanada. Ale Kanada już nie jako mit dalekiego Edenu – ,,kraina żywicą pachnąca" – lecz jako laboratorium wielokulturowości, politycznie usankcjonowany eksperyment wzajemnego wszczepiania tkanki Innego i Tożsamego; a zatem Kanada – czy raczej TransKanada – jako kontrowersja: nie wokół banalnego politycznie problemu dwukulturowości (angielska Kanada jako Brytania Północy, a Quebec jako Nowa Francja), ale istotnego dla cywilizacji nie tylko zachodniej zjawiska współistnienia wielości kultur. Kanada jako ogromna przestrzeń: fizyczna – niezmierzone lasy, Góry Skaliste, jeziora – ale też jako przestrzeń kulturowych transakcji i translacji, przestrzeń międzykulturowego spotkania. Nigdzie chyba problematyka tożsamości kulturowej nie została tak silnie wyeksponowana i nie wywołała tak twórczej debaty wokół postkolonializmu, hybrydyczności, wielonarodowości, transkulturowości – nigdzie też nie była ta debata tak silnie zakorzeniona w praktyce codziennego, międzykulturowego współbycia. Przesunięcie do centrum grup uprzednio marginalizowanych, Pierwsze Narody, transkulturowość i obywatelstwo diasporyczne, pojęcia narodowości i państwowości, ale też postnarodowość i postpaństwowość,transnarodowość i transkulturowość, dekonstrukcja tradycyjnych narodowych ideologii i autokonstrukcja społeczności, dialog z Innymi i pomiędzy Innymi, postetniczność i tożsamość ludności rodzimej. Jednocześnie obawa i wyczulenie na zagrożenia: ,,kontroli epistemologicznej" przez kulturę dominującą czy politycznego zarządzania różnic, które nie zostawia przestrzeni dla dialogu kultur; ostrożność wobec pozornie neutralnych i nienaznaczonych innością/etnicznością kultur i literatur wywodzących się z kręgu anglo-europejskiego, ale ,,z natury" niejako nadal zajmujących pozycję uprzywilejowaną jako epistemologiczny punkt odniesienia. Pytania kanadyjskie to pytania najżywotniejsze dla współczesnego tygla cywilizacji. Czy klonować zatem kanadyjski klon, czy raczej pozostać przy syropie?

Klonowanie Kanady to numer „Er(r)go” gościnnie przygotowany przez Eugenię Sojkę, znakomitą propagatorkę kultury kanadyjskiej i problematyki wielokulturowości.

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go…,
Canada. But not any longer as the embodied myth of the far-off Eden—"the land of plenty"—now a multicultural laboratory, a politically sanctioned experiment of mutual grafting of the tissues of the Self and the Other. Thus, Canada—or perhaps TransCanada—as a controversy: not of the politically banal duality of culture (English Canada as the Britannia of the North and Quebec as the New France), but of the phenomenon that remains significant not only for the western civilization—the coexistence of multiplicity of cultures. Canada as an immense physical space—unfathomable forests, The Rocky Mountains, lakes—but also as a space of cultural translations and transactions, a space of cross-cultural meeting. Probably nowhere else has the issue of cultural identity been made so apparent and evoked such creative debates over postcolonialism, hybridity, multinationalism, transculturalism—nowhere else have those debates been so strongly rooted in the practice of everyday, cross-cultural coexistence. The centralization of the groups hitherto marginalized, the First Nations, transculturalism and diasporic citizenship, the concepts of citizenship and nationality, but also post-citizenship and post-nationality, transcitizenship and transculturalism, deconstruction of traditional national ideologies and self-construction of the society, the dialogue with the Other and amongst Others, post-ethnicity and the identity of the indigenous peoples. At the same time, apprehension and watchfulness for the threat of "epistemological control" by a dominant culture or political management of differences which leaves no space for cultural dialogue; wariness for the seemingly neutral cultures, unmarked by otherness/ethnicity and literatures of the Anglo-European origin, which nevertheless still appear to hold a position privileged as the epistemological point of reference. The Canadian questions are questions of utmost significance for the contemporary melting pot of civilizations. Should we then believe in the growth of the maple leaf or just stick to the maple syrup?

Map(l)ing Canada is an issue of Er(r)go guest edited by Eugenia Sojka, a distinguished spokesperson for Canadian culture and the theme of multiculturalism.

Wojciech Kalaga

In Essex County, in Secret Path (his collaboration with Gord Downie), in Roughneck, and in his creation of the indigenous Canadian superhero Equinox for Justice League United: Canada, Jeff Lemire highlights a vision of the Canadian ‘north’ as transformative space. In Lemire’s hands, ‘the north’ is where Chanie Wenjack’s historical reality (Secret Path), Derek and Beth Ouelette’s personal demons (Roughneck), and Miiyahbin Marten’s life as an ordinary indigenous teen in Moose Factory, Ontario (Justice League United Volume 1: Justice League Canada) all undergo a transformation which speaks to shifting perceptions of identity, responsibility, and belonging in Canada. The north becomes a site where Lemire (and Lemire’s readers) directly confront how even a deliberate act of intended reconciliation between settler-colonial and indigenous peoples can effectively colonize the space in which it occurs. All three works, in different ways, deploy rhetorical strategies to minimize the ‘collater...

Indigenous history is commonly approached as a counter-narrative, treated as if it threatens some stable, communal understanding of history and place. A Western epistemology has rigidly shaped how most Torontonians see, and as a result it can be challenging to see Indigenous history as autonomous. The city feels unified to High Park as place—in Toronto, in Ontario, in Canada. All three are Haudenosaunee words, constantly used without any reflection of their history that predates the colonization of the country. The dissonances created by contrasting forms of perception contribute to an estrangement of Indigenous communities from locations that have significant spiritual meaning to them. In High Park, visions of a sublime expanse of nature, and as a place of rich Indigenous history, contrast and compete. Wherever these visions are expressed, a contest is enacted between the oral and the literary, between mythology and history, between spirituality and science.

Canadian English has constituted a separate variety of English for several decades; however, outside Canada and the States not many people know about it, and additionally, for the past few years it has been highly influenced by its neighbouring variety, American English. The purpose of this research was to examine perceptions of Canadians towards their own variety, and the questions asked were whether they continue to regard it as a separate and ongoing variety, and an integral part of their national identity; in addition, how Swiss individuals in my adopted country, Switzerland, perceive the specific variety of Canadian English and whether they think a variety is central to the identity of a nation. A combination of qualitative and quantitative study was used, which employed two focus groups, the Canadians and the Swiss, with a common questionnaire for them to answer; post-questionnaire, a series of interviews were conducted. Key findings were that Canadians are very interested in keeping their variety alive and part of their national identity; for the Swiss, it is rather unknown as a variety, but they are very interested in learning more about it. The study was linguistically significant for the reason that it revitalised the presence of Canadian English among the more known varieties, such as American and British English; moreover, future researchers may be interested in what it has to offer as a subject and be motivated to write and research more extensively on it.

A detailed history and analysis of the film Hard Core Logo (1996) by Bruce McDonald, this book considers the film in relation to Canadian cinema and music, the road movie, and the study of masculinity. Part of the Canadian Cinema series from the University of Toronto Press.
http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-McDonalds-Hard-Canadian-Cinema/dp/1442612738

Unlike French-speaking Canadians whose language set them apart from the rest of North America, English-speaking Canadians shared the same language as Americans. Or, at least, so it seemed. A band of lexicographers in the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA) set out to show that Canadians did, in fact, speak English with a distinctly Canadian accent. This “dictionary movement” produced a series of Canadian dictionaries, culminating in 1967.

За полтора столетия, прошедшие после создания канадской федерации, “страна кленового листа” проделала путь от самоуправляющейся колонии в составе Британской империи до одного из наиболее развитых государств мирового сообщества. Своеобразие канадского исторического опыта является плодотворной почвой для научных исследований. Неослабевающий интерес учёных к проблемам возникновения наций и национализма открывает широкие перспективы в области исследования канадской модели становления национального самосознания. Изучение данной проблемы будет способствовать выявлению механизмов формирования массового сознания, пониманию закономерностей эволюции политической системы Канады. Данное исследование представляет собой первую в русскоязычной историографии работу, непосредственно посвящённую изучению темы становления канадской нации в последней трети XIX – начала XX вв.

For 17 years, between 1988 and 2005, victims of the multitude of abuses at Indian Residential Schools tried to obtain justice through Canada's civil court system. They were fought at every stage and with every litigation manoeuvre available to Canada and the churches. Their claims for loss of parental affection, language and culture were not allowed in court. Their claims of genocide were rejected. Their claims of inadequate education, food and health care were rejected. Their claims on inter-generational harms were rejected. Many of their claims were rejected for being filed too late. Many of their claims were rejected on the basis that the employer of their abuser was not vicariously liable for the abuse and in the policy choice between whether the child victim should go without compensation or whether the employer corporate/government/church should be required to pay for the abuse, too often the courts decided it would not be fair to allow the child victim to be compensated. This paper seeks to consolidate in one place all of the Indian Residential School civil court decisions and citations, and provide summaries of those cases. In so doing, this paper also deals with other cases of institutional child abuse during this period. This paper also details the various court decisions in which the Canadian justice is complicit with the Roman Catholic Church in refusing to acknowledge the Roman Catholic Church as a legal entity that can be sued. In the author's view, no one can claim to know how Canada's civil court system really works until they learn how that system dealt with the claims of abused indigenous children.

Cette thèse porte sur la production, l’articulation télévisuelle et la réception médiatique et populaire des dix-sept épisodes de la série Canada : A People’s History/Le Canada, une histoire populaire, présentée sur les ondes de CBC/Radio-Canada en 2000-2002. La série est analysée sous l’angle novateur de la comparaison des scénarios originaux et finaux, des interactions multiples du son, de l’image, de la trame narrative et des 900 courriels envoyés au service à l’auditoire de la CBC/Radio Canada par les téléspectateurs.

La théorie du codage/décodage (Stuart Hall) nous sert à qualifier l’économie politique du média télévisuel et celle de la réaction des téléspectateurs. Notre analyse s’inscrit au coeur du courant des « cultural studies » (Critical race theory, critical multiculturalism theory, critical gender theory, critical journalism studies) dans sa volonté d’expliquer les représentations historiques à l’aune de la structure inégalitaire de la société canadienne.

À la suite de nos analyses empiriques, nous constatons que la série est un mélange hétéroclite de nation-building passéiste et de nouveau multiculturalisme. À la confluence des représentations coloniales et postcoloniales, le récit de la série propose aux téléspectateurs une grandiose excursion dans le temps du Canada. Racontée sur le mode d’une grandiloquente narration, l’histoire fait la belle place aux paysages sauvages, aux « Great White Men », au patrimoine autochtone et à l’histoire de l’installation des migrants.

Dans les faits, ces reconstitutions historiques spectaculaires obscurcissent cependant une réalité implacable, soit que la série constitue une refondation imaginaire de l’ordre libéral canadien, une mise en récit du passé telle que l’envisagent les élites libérales actuelles du pays. Ainsi, le récit télévisuel définitif ne conteste jamais la légitimité historique de l’État fédéral. De même, dans sa reconnaissance des torts causés aux minorités ethnoculturelles, il s’aligne plus directement sur le nouveau modèle du vivre-ensemble multiculturel. Par ailleurs, la censure – à l’interne de la production – de la violence des peuples autochtones et du racisme entre groupes ethnoculturels minoritaires fixe les limites de la paix sociale de la société libérale canadienne contemporaine. En définitive, cette mise en récit télévisuelle sert l’hégémonie culturelle des élites libérales anglo-canadiennes, surtout ontariennes, à laquelle le producteur délégué Mark Starowicz, les journalistes radio-canadiens et certains historiens de l’école historiographique des limited identities participent bon gré mal gré.

Cette hégémonie culturelle n’est toutefois pas omnipotente : elle est fortement contestée, à l’intérieur même de la production tout autant que dans la société, par des historiens, des journalistes et des téléspectateurs qui s’opposent au récit proposé et à l’ordre libéral établi en vertu de leur antilibéralisme, de conceptions nationalistes francoquébécoises, d’un féminisme diffus, d’un anticolonialisme militant ou de régionalismes assumés."

This thesis focuses on the production, articulation and popular and media reception of the TV series Canada: A People’s History, which consist of 17 episodes and was broadcast by the CBC/Radio-Canada network in 2000-2002. This TV series is analyzed using a ground-breaking approach, including: comparative analysis of original and final scripts; study of sound, image and narrative interactions; and examination of 900 e-mails sent by viewers to the CBC/Radio-Canada Audience Relations department.

Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory is used to qualify the political economy of the television medium and viewer’s reaction. Our analysis lies within the scope of cultural studies (Critical race theory, critical multiculturalism theory, critical gender theory, critical journalism studies) in its efforts to explain historical representations in terms of the unequal structure of Canadian society. Following our empirical analysis, we find that the series is an eclectic mix of oldfashioned nation-building and new multiculturalism. At the confluence of colonial and postcolonial representations, this TV narrative offers viewers a grand tour of Canada’s past. The story’s bombastic narration offers a unique endeavor composed of scenic landscapes, “Great White Men”, Aboriginal heritage and history of migrant settlement. In fact, these spectacular reconstructions of history obscure an implacable reality.

The series is an imaginary “refounding” of the Canadian liberal order, the transformation of the past into a narrative envisaged by today’s liberal elites. This definitive TV narrative never denies the historical legitimacy of the federal state. Similarly, by recognizing wrongs caused to ethnocultural minorities, it aligns itself more directly with new model of multicultural coexistence. Moreover, in-house censorship of indigenous peoples’ violence and racism between ethnocultural minority groups set the limits of social peace within contemporary Canadian liberal society. Ultimately, this TV transformation of the past into a narrative fits the cultural hegemony of English speaking Canadian liberal elites, mainly from Ontario; Executive producer Mark Starowicz, CBC journalists, and some historians belonging to the ‘limited identities’ historiographical school, are the participants of this hegemony, whether they were cognizant or not.

This cultural hegemony is not omnipotent: it is highly contested by production members and society at large, including historians, journalists and viewers who oppose the TV narrative as much as the liberal order by virtue of their anti-liberalism, French- Québécois nationalist conceptions, diffuse feminism, militant anti-colonialism or strong regionalism.

Предлагаемое  учебно-методическое  пособие  призвано  помочь студентам, аспирантам и всем, кто интересуется историей Канады и вопросами национальной политики. Объектом внимания в нём является канадская государственная национальная политика, причем не только как совокупность законодательных мер и административных решений, но и как идеология и, шире, дискурс, определявший сущность социальных отношений. Целью  пособия  выступает  определение  содержания  и  основных этапов развития канадской национальной политики, выявление наколенных Канадой позитивных достижений в данной области, особенно тех, которые могут быть актуальны в российских условиях.
Хронологические  рамки  пособия  поставлены  достаточно  необычно по сравнению с принятой в исторической науке периодизацией. Однако их выбор объясняется внутренней логикой развития объекта изучения: от первых мероприятий в области национальной политики в конце XIX в. до окончательного утверждения в конце XX в. политики мультикультурализма в качестве принципиального нового способа организации межэтнических отношений и государственной стратегии в данной области.
Методологически и содержательно предлагаемое учебно-методическое  пособие  является  продолжением  издания  «Межэтнические отношения и национальная идеология в Канаде в новое время»,  а  потому  в  нём  не  будут  затрагиваться  те  проблемы  теории национализма и политической истории Канады, которые уже были освещены на предшествовавшем по хронологии историческом материале.  Для  их  самостоятельного  изучения  ниже  предлагается список литературы. Эти издания рекомендуются для освоения не только студентам, но и каждому кто хочет разобраться в вопросах формирования  наций,  национализма,  национальной  идеологии  и политики.

Bois-Brûlés is a translation of the book by the same name that was awarded the 2020 "Prix de Canada" for the best French-language book receiving funding from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences' (FHSS) Awards to Scholarly Publications Program. Immediately following the announcement, the Indigenous Advisory Circle of the FHSS resigned in protest, pushing the FHSS to release a statement distancing itself from the jury's decision.

Opposition to the authors' research by Indigenous peoples continued throughout 2020, when the four provincial Mi'kmaw Councils and the Métis National Council wrote a public letter to the SSHRC protesting the funding agency's awarding of a $203,999 Insight Grant to Malette, Bouchard, and anthropologists Denis Gagnon and Siommon Pulla for research that supports the political claims of a self-proclaimed Métis group in New Brunswick. The well-documented and active opposition to the authors' research by Indigenous scholars and governments means that reviewing this book requires careful attention.

At first glance, one may be impressed by the number and range of excerpts from archival documents identified by the authors in Bois-Brûlés. Nonetheless, what is at issue is that the authors' historical method eschews rigour for political expediency. Every time authorities in the nineteenth century use either "métis," "halfbreed" or "bois-brûlés" to describe a mixed-race individual, they automatically become the founders of a distinct Métis community in a region north of Ottawa, regardless of their family life, cultural and linguistic practices, historical experience, and sense of self. The result of their approach is that First Nations people-in this case, Algonquins, whose territory spans the Ottawa River watershed-are erased from the historical record.

What follow are two salient examples of the type of evidence that animates the book's approach: on page 116, there is an image that first appeared in the magazine Opinion publique in 1882, with the caption, "Winter house of Noui Icipaiatik, Algonquin Métis." In their subsequent analysis, the authors draw two key conclusions based on the image and caption. First, they claim that the use of the term "Algonquin Métis" by ...

For the past five years, I have been studying race shifting among white French descendants, those who count among their ancestors the first French settlers in the Americas (pre-1665). Most of this population currently resides in the easternmost provinces of Canada and in parts of New England in the United States. What I discovered is that since the early 2000s, tens of thousands of these French descendants have shifted into an “Indigenous” identity based solely on ancestry that is 325–400 years old. Throughout these regions, this social movement has led to the creation of nearly a hundred new “Indigenous” organizations that, on behalf of their white-settler membership, now lobby for a variety of Indigenous rights. Because these efforts have succeeded in altering the political landscape to varying degrees—notably through four “Abenaki tribes” in Vermont that received state recognition in 2011 and 2012—similar groups have emerged as “Abenaki” in New Hampshire and Quebec, “Algonquin” in Ontario and Quebec, and “Métis” in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Maine. The two largest organizations in Quebec were created by white men seeking to entrench their hunting rights while Indigenous territorial claims were being negotiated. These two organizations alone now have more than 25,000 paying members, combined.

Why did it take so long before civil lawsuits went to court for Indian Residential Schools in Canada? This paper notes that in 1857 Canada enacted a law for the "gradual civilization" of Indians. The paper questions who needed to be gradually civilized? This paper traces the major developments (gradual civilization) in Canadian law from the Second World War until the early 1990s that collectively made it possible for civil lawsuits for Indian Residential School claims to come to court. Some of the changes are directly relevant to the circumstances of racial discrimination and indigenous rights, but other changes may surprise some readers, such as Crown liability, limitation periods, class actions and more. The paper discusses briefly some of the most important indigenous rights cases and explains just how limited these "victories" were. The paper also notes that there is still a lot more civilization needed within the Canadian legal system. Hopefully, Canada's civilization will not be so gradual over the next 50 years.

This paper provides a chronological sequence of the laws that were used to create and enforce Indian Residential Schools in Canada. The paper provides extensive excerpts from the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The excerpts are chosen based on how directly they are related to law, and the excerpts are re-organized to be presented in a chronological manner. The table of contents of the paper can serve as a time line of the laws that created and enforced and ended Indian Residential Schools. Other sources are also cited.

This paper is one of series written by the author in attempting to understand and explain why it was nearly impossible for indigenous peoples to use the legal system to protect themselves or obtain compensation for the abuses they suffered in the residential schools until well into the 1990s.

Canada requires new citizens and an assortment of legislators, law enforcers and public servants to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Second and her heirs and successors. This paper examines the history of the oath of allegiance in both England and Canada; the history of how the monarch of England came to be the monarch of Canada through the doctrine of discovery; a history of case law surrounding the oath to the Queen in Canada; the history of Canada steadily moving away from laws and symbols of England to establish Canada's independence; the rights of indigenous peoples to refuse to swear the oath of allegiance; and how the oath to the Queen offends the constitutionally entrenched principles of equality and freedom of expression. The paper refers to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concerning the doctrine of discovery and the oath to the Queen. The paper concludes that the Canadian courts have trivialized and made a mockery of almost all of this.

The Canadian ‘home’, intended as “the space-group-time entity in which individuals spend the greater part of their lives” , looks like constantly working to rearrange itself from the inside, dealing with the many single and collective identities as well as the many different cultures. “The Western metropole must confront its postcolonial history, told by its influx of postwar migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity” ; the Canadian postcolonial and Aboriginal narrative perfectly fits to Bhabha’s metaphor of the Western metropole, sometimes even used in the First Nations literature with a real and concrete connotation, symbolising civilisation in opposition to a purer identity connected with wilderness. This paper will focus on four main texts which show how urban spaces and Aboriginal identity interact, what does “being at home” means, how the home and nonhome contexts emerge in a conflictual way.

This article won the Journal's R.W. Jackson award for best article published in 2017.
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As Canada prepares to turn 150, this article discusses what curricular shifts are necessary to reconcile history education’s disciplinary tools with practices of historical consciousness that will encourage learners to consider the moral dilemmas associated with Canada’s colonial legacy, silenced histories, and multiple shifting identities in the present. It introduces a conceptual Framework of Canadian National Narratives that captures current constructions of Canadian national identity communicated in Canadian sites of pedagogy. Taking into consideration debates around historical consciousness as a pedagogical project, this article recommends that curricular imperatives in history education critically expose students to a country’s master national narrative templates and those narratives that contest and rebuke them through frameworks such as the Canadian one detailed in this article. Given the current historical moment, it suggests such national narrative frameworks would form part of a new curricular imperative titled the Narrative Dimension that would offer a way forward for history education.