A new approach to debates over Macdonald and other monuments in Canada: Part 2

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This is the second part of an essay that ran last Tuesday. Read Part 1 here.

By Stéphane Lévesque

I believe that every citizen of Canada, from students to adults (including political leaders), would gain from a progression towards more sophisticated forms of historical consciousness that encourage critical distance and informed opinions, and cultivate the capacity to “digest complexity” – both human and societal.

Memory and identity politics thrive on tribalism and cognitive simplification. They promote projects and muster support based on political agendas that evade complexity. Yet, societies and their pasts are highly complex and multifaceted, and need to be analyzed and recognized as such. Representations of the past, and possible courses of action, might better be informed by this sense of historical complexity.

Any attempt to delineate this intellectual complexity of historical consciousness runs the risk of cognitive and normative generalization but in this article I hope to offer a conceptual map as a starting point for further discussion (and transposition) on how “types” of individuals are most likely to engage in issues of commemoration, using the Canadian situation as an example. Continue reading →

Revisiting the 1981 CUPW Strike for Maternity Leave

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A July 11, 1981 demonstration in Edmonton, Alberta. CUPW/AUPW.

Mikhail Bjorge and Kassandra Luciuk

As co-instructors, we are currently teaching a course on the history of women and work. Our primary concern in this course is to have students think historically about women’s lived experiences under capitalism. We explore how things looked in the past, how they were transformed over time, and, in turn, why they look the way they do today. By teaching in this way – pulling history into the present – we aim to re-center the enduring struggles of women to create a better future. Moreover, we try to dismantle the notion that gains are bestowed on societies through benevolent states or the calm functioning of legislative powers. Whether it be suffrage, equal pay, women’s liberation, gender parity, the right to choose, sexual harassment legislation, or LGBTQ2 rights, all were widely disparaged yet courageously fought for through the direct action of women and their allies.

The struggle for maternity leave by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) serves as a particularly powerful lens through which to analyze these themes.[1] By the 1980s, the union began to push seriously for the inclusion of maternity leave as a core bargaining demand. The Treasury Board of Canada Post, with whom CUPW was negotiating, as well as the government was worried about the spillover effects. If Canada Post agreed to paid maternity leave, then other government departments, and even the private sector, would be forced to follow suit.[2]

With negotiations going nowhere, CUPW went out on strike. Their demands were multifaceted, but maternity leave was singled out by capital, media, government, and the public.[3] In turn, maternity leave was deemed egregious, unnecessary, and even greedy. Risking it all, postal workers and their allies fought for forty-two days and won. Their victory reverberated across Canadian society. Other unions quickly followed suit and, before long, the government institutionalized and expanded maternity leave to equalize the playing field. What started out as a gain for postal workers quickly turned into a gain for all Canadian women.

It’s important to recognize the spirited efforts of CUPW members during the strike to illuminate that progress doesn’t happen without struggle and courage. But it’s even more critical to shed light on how the 1981 strike was demonized. This is in stark contrast to how maternity leave is presented today – a fundamental right to be enjoyed by all Canadians. Indeed, it’s even commonly referred to as a “Canadian value” that differentiates us from our southern neighbours.

In our course, we think about what accounts for these kinds of shifts in societal thinking. How was maternity leave reconceptualized from a “greedy demand” into a core Canadian tenet? We also explore the problems and consequences of these mythologized understandings. What is conveniently forgotten in current conversations about maternity leave? How does this impact the narrative surrounding strikes and the way in which they are understood?

With a postal strike looming, it’s worthwhile to challenge the depoliticized accounts of gains made on the picket line. Continue reading →

“The town’s gone wild”: Sounds of Victory in Toronto, 11 November 1918

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By Sara Karn

Come along, be merry, join our Jubilee.
Mars has got the knock-out, Peace is in, you see.
Toot your little tooter, deck yourself with flags.
Grab your feather tickler, be among the wags.
Don’t forget the powder, sprinkle it around.
Laugh-it will not hurt you; make you strong and sound.
Show you are a human – be just as a child.
Everybody’s happy; the town’s gone wild.
Take your wife or sweetheart, stroll on Yonge or Queen.
Million flags are waving; oh what sights are seen!
Smiles, about ten million greet you everywhere.
Everybody’s busy – busy chasing care.
Climb into an auto, choose a truck or Ford;
Blow your little whistle; What a din, Oh, Lord!
Peace, we bid you welcome, woman, man, and child.
Everybody’s happy; the town’s gone wild.[1]

When the First World War came to an end at 11:00am on 11 November 1918, the battlefields fell silent but there was an explosion of sound around the world in celebration of victory and peace. In Toronto, people emerged from their beds in the early hours of the morning to join spontaneous gatherings in the streets. Later in the afternoon, many cheered-on the floats and marching bands in organized parades. As described by Toronto resident, Robert Todd, in the above poem, the streets of Canada’s largest city were filled with men, women, and children waving flags, tooting horns, and blowing whistles. Indeed, the town had gone wild.

Continue reading →

Disjunctures of Public Memory: Remembrance Day in Sackville NB

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By Andrew Nurse

Last week I was taking an evening walk – the kind recommended by your doctor, as in “get some exercise” – and I strolled by the Sackville NB skate park my son used to frequent. That was a while ago. The park is different now. There is a graffiti wall and the ramps and jumps had been modernized. Hanging near it, affixed to a power pole, was a Remembrance Day banner. They actually fly all over town, or at least along a number of streets.

The banner in question

This juxtaposition of the skate park and the banners struck me as a remarkable and important disjuncture in cultural memory. How many of the kids frequenting the skate park, I wondered, thought about the memorial that flew next to them? The scene was made even more complex by construction in the next lot over where the town was repairing the local ball fields. The look was not surreal – a overused word – but it was odd.

Remembrance Day is politically and historically controversial. Continue reading →

Western Media Coverage of Egypt’s Coptic Christians Must Stop Blaming the Victim

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Funeral for victims of Bus Attack, November 3rd 2018 (www.rogeranis.photo)

Michael Akladios

On November 2, Islamist gunmen opened fire on a bus leaving the St. Samuel Coptic Orthodox Monastery in Upper Egypt’s Minya governorate, killing at least seven Coptic Christians and injuring 16 others. The attack is similar to another one that took place in May 2017, when gunmen opened fire on buses transporting Coptic Christians to the same monastery for prayers and pilgrimage, killing 28 people.

Following Friday’s attack, international media largely situated the violence within a context of Coptic Christians’ presumed wholesale support for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime. Such narratives not only attempt to posit the attack as an isolated or exceptional incident, but also reduces Copts to homogeneous supporters of a regime that provides them with “special protection,” and yet perpetuates their continued exclusion, persecution, and death.

A New York Times article by Declan Walsh and Mohamed Ezz, written on the same day as the attack, is emblematic of coverage about Egypt’s Copts by Western media. The language deployed by such articles suggests that all Coptic Christians support Sisi’s regime, and hence are partially responsible for the atrocities committed against them.

This numerical and religious minority, numbering between eight to 10 percent of the total population in Egypt, are often painted as avid supporters of the regime. Despite government intransigence over discriminatory church-building laws — less than one percent of churches and religious buildings submitted for government approval in early 2017 have been accepted — Islamist groups use the erroneous claim that Copts support Sisi and the military regime in return for a degree of protection.

As the authors of the New York Times piece highlight, Sisi has consistently said he “has put security concerns at the heart of his autocratic style of rule,” which is pure rhetoric. Sectarian attitudes also have a long and deep history in the country and do not need “the Islamic State’s campaign to sow sectarian divisions,” as the writers state.

Nationalists, Islamists, and Church reform movements in the nineteenth century helped to lay the groundwork for an emergent national identity that increasingly drew distinctions between Christians and Muslims in Egypt. Continue reading →

A new approach to debates over Macdonald and other monuments in Canada: Part 1

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By Stéphane Lévesque

“One of the things we heard very clearly from the Indigenous family members” says recently re-elected Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps (2018), “is that coming to city hall… and walking past John A. Macdonald every time, feels contradictory. And if the city is serious about reconciliation, which I would say we are, then one important thing we do is temporarily remove the [statue] from the front steps of city hall.”[1]

The city of Victoria’s recent political decision to take down the statue of Macdonald is not trivial. It came at a strategic moment when local, provincial, and national governments face pressing demands to remove historic monuments or rename buildings and sites of memory, from Hector Langevin to Egerton Ryerson and John A. Macdonald. How should Canadian authorities respond? What role could historical consciousness play with respect to these pressing demands?

Given the various articles on the subject on Active History[2], my goal is not to replicate their important contributions but rather to discuss their implication for public education and historical consciousness using Canada as a context for analysis.

Why them? Why now?

Monuments are making news around the world: from South Africa to Argentina, from Australia to Canada. Christopher Columbus, James Cook, Cecil Rhodes, and John A. Macdonald never met one another but they all share something in common: they symbolize the new history war – a frontal public attack on powerful historical male figures who represent contested narratives of the collective past. Why is this happening now? Continue reading →

A Short History of Treaty Nomenclature in Ontario

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By Daniel Laxer, Jean-Pierre Morin, Alison Norman

Treaties in Ontario

Have you ever wondered why the treaty for the territory you live on is named as it is? Why are some numbered and some named after people? Why is the Toronto Purchase also known as Treaty 13? Why are there two Treaty 3s in Ontario? No doubt that Ontario’s treaty history is the most complicated in the country, with the most treaties and the most varied naming conventions. This article is an attempt to clarify some of the messiness.Treaty making has a long and complicated history in Ontario. Continue reading →

Remember/Resist/Redraw #17: Canada’s Internment of Ukrainians, 1914–1920

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In the spring, the Graphic History Collective re-launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as an ongoing series.

Last month we released RRR poster #17 by Orion Keresztesi and Kassandra Luciuk that looks at Canada’s internment of Ukrainians, 1914-1920. The poster makes connections between the past and present and grapples with timely issues such as immigration, law, and racism.

We hope that Remember | Resist | Redraw encourages people to critically examine history in ways that can fuel our radical imaginations and support struggles for social change. Learn more about how you can support the project on our website, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Grappling with Settler Self-Education in the Classroom: Rereading the History of Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed

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By Rebekah Ludolph

“If the past 30 years have taught us anything, it is that there is a powerful, loud bunch of privileged white settlers who do not want to learn about us or from us…they are unaware and do not have to bother doing their research.” – Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm (Anishinaabe)

Akiwenzie-Damm calls for settlers to self-educate. To do their research and acknowledge the information that is available to them because of the hard work of Indigenous writers and scholars.

As a settler graduate student attending lectures and leading tutorials I have worked primarily in thematic courses featuring one or two Indigenous literary works framed as texts to promote settler-student education about settler-colonialism in Canada. From this experience, I notice that class discussions often verge on what Eve Tuck (Unangax) calls “damage-centered research.” Our curriculum “intends to document people’s pain and brokenness in order to hold those in power accountable for their oppression” but, in the process, often “reinforces and reinscribes a one-dimensional notion of [Indigenous] people as depleted, ruined, and hopeless” (409).

This often happens inadvertently when classes overlook the important work Indigenous texts perform outside of settler education or when class is conducted under the assumption that it is only composed of settler students (whether Indigenous students choose to publicly identify themselves or not). While there are already many resources teachers can use to address this situation, the politics of settlers using Indigenous literatures for self-education warrants deeper investigation.

The publishing and reception history of Métis writer and community worker Maria Campbell’s 1973 autobiography, Halfbreed, for example, points to the long-standing practice of positioning Indigenous texts as first-and-foremost tools for settler education. Maintaining this interpretive position, to the exclusion of other perspectives, continues to produce damage-centered readings of Indigenous texts.

In this post, I want to try to explore different ways in which Settlers can approach this literature, its literary history, and the broader concerns raised with regard to education by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I will use Campbell’s Halfbreed, a key work in Canadian and Indigenous literary history and thus a key point of interaction between settlers and Original Peoples, as a case study. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 124: Live at the Cellar

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By Sean Graham

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Marian Jago about her new book Live at the Cellar: Vancouver’s Iconic Jazz Scene in the 1950s and ’60s. We talk about Canada’s jazz scene, the co-operative structure of the Cellar, and the type of performers who played at the club. We also chat about clubs in other cities, the counterculture movement of the mid-20th century, and Marian’s use of oral history.

Continue reading →