Unfit to Fight: The History of Rejecting First World War Volunteers – An Excerpt

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By Nic Clarke

Nic Clarke is an historian at the Canadian War Museum who has researched Canadian Expeditionary Force policy concerning the physical fitness of recruits, and the implications of rejection for volunteers.  The following is an excerpt from his recent book on the topic, Unwanted Warriors: The Rejected Volunteers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015).  We publish it with the author’s blessing and the permission of the University of British Columbia Press.

Nic Clarke Cover

At the outset of the war in the summer of 1914, Canadian military authorities had, on paper at least, a black-and-white model of military fitness. An individual was either fit or unfit to serve. There was no middle ground. Moreover, the physical standards an individual had to meet to be deemed fit to serve were exceptionally high. By the end of the war, however, the military authorities’ definition of military fitness had changed radically. This transformation took the form of both a lowering of the minimum physical standards for service in many units and a wider reconceptualization of what it meant to be fit for military service.

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The Polish Government, the Holocaust and Jan Grabowski

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By Jim Clifford

“‘Who controls the present, controls the past,’ wrote George Orwell, and the Polish authorities seem to have taken Orwell’s words to heart.”[1] On September 20th, University of Ottawa historian Jan Grabowski published an op-ed in Macleans highlighting the dangers of a new law working its way through Poland’s parliament that threatens historians and others with up to three years in jail if they “accuse the Polish nation, or the Polish state, [of being] responsible or complicit in Nazi crimes committed by the III German Reich.”[2] Grabowski continued:

…in the face of the new legislation, historians who argue that certain segments of Polish society were complicit in the extermination of their Jewish neighbours in the Second World War will now think twice before voicing their opinion. What about those who would like to study the phenomenon of blackmailing of the Jews, known in Polish asshmaltsovnitstvo? What about those who would like to talk about the role of the Polish “blue” police who collaborated with the Germans in the extermination of the Polish Jewry? What about those who want to shed light on the deadly actions of the Polish voluntary firefighters involved in the destruction of Jewish communities?[3]

Lukasz Weremiuk, the Chargé d’affaires at the Polish Embassy in Ottawa responded a week later arguing Grabowkski’s article “contains a list of strong, but often groundless opinions and accusations toward Poland.”[4] I highly recommend people read Grabowski’s full article on the Maclean’s website along with the response from the Polish Embassy and Grabowski’s further comments.

This recent controversy caused me to reflect on my 2015 visit to Kraków and Auschwitz-Birkenau. My dad and I drove from Munich to Poland and spent a couple days in Kraków before driving back via the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. Continue reading →

Tariffs and Taxes and Boredom, Oh My! Using a role playing game to teach about the debates over the tariff in Canadian history

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By Mark Leier

1st122If there is anything more boring than the history of Canadian tariffs, I would chew my own leg off in an attempt to escape from it. Yet from Confederation to the National Policy to Prairie populism to the Maritimes Rights movement to the Auto Pact to NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fights over tariffs have been at the centre of Canadian politics and economics. Is there a way to help students appreciate this part of Canadian history?

Probably not. But “The Great Canadian Tariff Game” can help them understand tariffs and why they have framed some of the most divisive moments in Canadian history. Continue reading →

From Reel to Real: Using Film to teach Labour History

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John-Henry Harter

society-of-the-spectacleDuring my undergraduate degree I had an epiphany in the only labour history class offered at my university. Here being taught in this class was my history, my own lived experience. More broadly, it was an acknowledgement and validation that the working class mattered. As a mature student, I had worked for years before entering post-secondary and had not really found a foothold. Labour history helped establish that foothold. It started to put words to experiences I had not been able to articulate: words like solidarity, alienation, class, and stratification.

Oddly enough film studies was another discipline that discussed ideas and issues that seemed more real and relevant to my life. Reification, commodification, and hegemony were all concepts that helped me understand the world around me.

It wasn’t until I started teaching at Simon Fraser University as a sessional instructor and later as a lecturer that I had the opportunity to bring labour history and film together. I was not the first to do this, but never-the-less it was exciting and held the promise of connecting with students like I had been so much earlier. This paper reflects on these experiences to explore the process of using film to approach and teach labour history.[1] Continue reading →

Modern Treaties in Canada: A Call for Engaged, Collaborative Historical Research

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By Andrew Stuhl, Bruce Uviluq, Anna Logie, and Derek Rasmussen

Modern treaties are reshaping Canada. Since 1975, the federal government and Indigenous communities have entered into 26 of these comprehensive land claim agreements, covering parts of all three territories and four provinces. Modern treaties have provided Indigenous ownership over 600,000 km2 of land and capital transfers of over $3.2 billion, but they are not just real estate or cash transactions. They also establish new relationships between signatories around resource development, wildlife and fisheries management, education, health services, and more. As some of the treaties currently in negotiation become finalized—as of August 2016, there are nearly 100 tables open across the country—the existing map of modern treaties will become a vestige in Canada’s evolution.

Map showing the modern treaty territories.

Modern Treaty Territories in Canada in 2009. Nearly half of Canada’s lands and waters are in some way impacted by these comprehensive land claim agreements. Reproduced with permission of the Land Claims Agreement Coalition.

We are not interested here in continuing the argument for why modern treaties deserve our attention. Scholars in and outside academia have already made the case. Rather, we use this post to invite historians to consider two other questions, both of which shape how we translate that attention into action. Who is the audience for research on modern treaties? What are the routes and roadblocks in the modern treaties archive? We hope our answers inspire more collaborative and engaged research on one of Canada’s most transformative, yet unfinished episodes. Continue reading →

Without Words: Learning from Absences in the Wendat Language

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By John Steckley

The Wendat (Huron), when first encountered by the French in the early 17th century, were living south of Georgian Bay in central Ontario. They spoke an Iroquoian language (one related to those of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois), and grew corn, beans and squash for most of their food. The missionaries that worked with them were the Jesuits, who during the 17th and 18th centuries developed some of the most extensive dictionaries and grammars then recorded.

Through these texts, I have studied the Wendat language for about 40 years, and have written or edited six books on the subject. I often say that the language is my best teacher. It never stops instructing me about how the Wendat ancestors thought. It continues to suggest to me how the language-based teachings of the ancestors could prove useful for mainstream North American society in the early 21st century. One way it can teach is through concepts the ancestors did not express with their language, concepts not necessary in their lives. At the very least the language can be seen as presenting an alternative viewpoint that challenges our mainstream Western sense of the universal.

The Wendat language has no way of saying best. Continue reading →

Travels with Caroline

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Alban Bargain-Villéger

Caroline de?me?nage (1987)

Caroline déménage (1987)

Unlike my previous contributions, this post is the result of an accident. While browsing the contents of my external hard drive in June during a (late) spring cleaning operation, I found a folder labelled “Caroline.” Intrigued, I opened the file and immediately remembered what these forgotten documents were. In the summer of 2008, while on vacation at my grandparents’ place, I spent a couple of hours reading a number of children’s books, which my grandmother used to read to me when I was a child. Entitled Caroline, these books follow the adventures of the eponymous character, a blonde preteen in red overalls, and her eight anthropomorphized critter friends. Both amused and intrigued, I decided to photograph the books. Since I was in the early stages of my doctoral research at the time, and since I am not a historian of childhood, I decided to archive the folder and forgot about it for the next eight years.

Although there was plenty to write about this summer, chancing upon the “Caroline” folder was serendipitous. Continue reading →

The Morality of Mergers

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By Jonathan McQuarrie

henry_herbert_stevensRecently, Monsanto received a $66 billion purchase offer from the even mightier German pharmaceutical company Bayer. It would be hard to find a more disliked firm than Monsanto, and the fact that a major pharmaceutical company is the potential buyer has created even more alarm. But should we disentangle our moral concerns from our economic understanding?

The Bayer offer is a massive one, even during a spike in of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), measured by value, in North America. Globally, the total value of M&A in 2015 set a new record as measured by total value. In Canada, the proposed merger of two major potash companies, Potash Corp. and Agrium Inc. and Enbridge’s proposal to acquire Spectra Energy Corp. have prompted concern over a “mega-merger mania.”

Financial news discussions tend to focus on two key points. Firstly, we see the typical business and financial questions that animate much of the business papers. How much will the merger or acquisition contribute to creating value, both for shareholders and the new entity? What sort of shared competencies, expertise, and efficiencies do the two firms have, and how will the larger entry generate profit from them? Might the M&A lead to some sort of bust—an unwieldy conglomeration whose brand identities fail to work together? (The Quaker Oats’ acquisition of Snapple in 1994—remember Snapple? —is used as a case study in this regard).

The second key point are any legal questions. In the United States, M&As are subject to the Federal Trade Commission’s Antitrust laws, whose origins stretch back to the Sherman Act of 1890. In Canada, M&As are subject to oversite from the Competition Bureau. The Bureau is governed by the Competition Act, which was passed in 1985, but whose origins stretch back to a Combinations in Trade Prevention Bill discussed in the House of Commons in 1888. In both the United States and Canada, M&As are subject to legal reviews that are designed to prioritize consumer rights. For instance, the FTC quashed a potential Staples-Office Depot merger because the firms failed to convince a court that their merger would lead to anything but a reduction in the number of stores, and thereby, competition and customer service.

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History Slam Episode Ninety-One: Teaching in China

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By Sean Graham

What did you for the summer? A common question asked when you see someone for the first time in the fall. Normally, I haven’t had an overly interesting answer to that question, but this year was a little different. For a couple months this summer I had the pleasure of traveling to Beijing to teach in the international summer school program at the University of International Business and Economics. It was my first time not only in China, but in Asia, so the cultural learning curve was steep, but by the end of the summer, I had started to feel more and more comfortable with my surroundings.

In addition to being in a new city, the teaching was rather different from what I expected. The biggest thing that I discovered was how much I rely on assumptions in my teaching. Teaching, whether in Boston or Ottawa, I learned how much I could reference something and be assured that the students were familiar with the reference. On the other side of the world, however, I couldn’t always rely on that luxury and had to do a better job presenting a clear narrative.

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Dorothy Verkerk from the University of North Carolina about the experience of teaching in the summer program at UIBE. Recording while we waited for our flight to Toronto at the end of the program, we chat about the challenges of teaching a condensed summer session, some of the highlights of the summer, and how much we enjoyed teaching our UIBE students. We also debate the pros and cons of teaching abroad and discuss my ambivalence towards Chinese beer.

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“Finally”: Peace in Colombia?

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Stefano Tijerina 

Ares. "El Proceso de Paz. Secuestrado por el Miedo? La Pluma.net. May 24, 2014.

Ares. “El Proceso de Paz. Secuestrado por el Miedo?” LaPluma.net, May 24, 2014.

It is with great skepticism that I reflect on the recent announcement of the peace agreement between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government.  I grew up in Bogotá, Colombia and lived through directly and indirectly the multi-layers of the most recent Colombian Civil War.  Within this fifty-two year old Civil War I experienced the other spatial dimensions of violence that also impacted and continue to impact Colombians on a daily basis.  I have seen informal and organized crime, I have seen the bodies of the victims of urban social cleansing, I have been shaken by the bombs detonated by narcos, and I have heard the stories of those impacted by paramilitary violence, and even military violence.  I have seen the outcomes of systemic and structural poverty that ultimately led to greater social violence, including the attacks on workers and labour union leaders, I have seen the violence that falls upon those that question the state including comedians, journalists, students, civilians and humanitarian NGOs, and I have seen the cultural violence perpetuated on women, racial minorities, the LGBTQ community, indigenous groups, the homeless and other disenfranchised groups.

There is no good and evil in this conflict and from my perspective everyone has blood on their hands directly or indirectly.  Some do not want peace because there is plenty of money to make from the perpetuation of war; some do not want peace because their pain from lost ones may only now be satiated with vengeance; some want peace to advance their own individualistic agendas; others want peace because they have never experienced such pleasures; and others do not even care because they are marginalized and lack citizenship rights.  My experience in Colombia, my own knowledge and historical understanding as a scholar, and my gut feeling tells me there will not be peace in Colombia.  The history behind the genocide of the Unión Patriótica political party members in the late 1980s is enough evidence to show me that peace is not possible, and it is a history I am convinced will repeat itself in this particular case. Continue reading →