Past Imperfect (Journal)
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"We Cannot Shoo These Men to Another Place": The On to Ottawa Trek in Toronto and Ottawa
No full textThis year is the sixtieth anniversary of the On to Ottawa Trek. The original Trek started in Vancouver as over a thousand unemployed men attempted to reach Ottawa by rail to express their discontent with the policies of the Bennett government. Their journey ended in Regina when a police-provoked riot led to their dispersal. Major works on the subject have not recognized that parallel treks occurred in Manitoba and Ontario from June to August 1935. "We Cannot Shoo These Men to Another Place" explores trek events in Toronto and Ottawa and discovers that while the trek itself was a failure, it did reveal the anti-Communist paranoia of both the political right and left and the Canadian state
The "Veil" Surrounding Alexander Henry, the Elder\u27s Mixed-Blood Sons
No full textFur traders have played an inordinately important role in western Canadian history; their records and their published journals are the bedrock of our historiography. Paradoxically, we know little about the private lives of many of these traders. By assembling a readily available and conflicting body of knowledge on Alexander Henry, the Elder, and by linking it to other scattered bits of information, this paper presents a profile of Henry and his family that differs considerably from the traditionally accepted view
From Pariahs to Patriots: Canadian Communists and the Second World War
No full textOfficial anti-communist policies, adopted by the Mackenzie King government during the Second World War, were only partially effective. These policies were implemented by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the armed forces high command, and included internment, banning the Communist Party of Canada (cpc), and monitoring communists in the armed forces. These policies, however, were thwarted by the logic of the war, as well as by opposition from liberal public opinion and the communists themselves
Prometheus Unbound: The Technology of Bodybuilding in the Nervous Age
No full textBy emphasizing bodybuilding as the technology of physique transformation, this article sets out to explore the social meaning of bodybuilding as a response to the crisis of masculinity that occurred during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Intimately entangled with issues of class, gender, religion, medicine and consumer culture, the history of bodybuilding and the contemporaneous development of a hyper-muscular aesthetic offers a fascinating window through which to view and examine the construction of masculinity
Sir Lewis Namier: an Eastern European\u27s Historical Outline
No full textSir Lewis Namier is well known for the method of historical research that he developed. His emphasis on intense primary source research, attention to political structures, and concentration on the motivation of the individual historical actors have been incorporated, in varying degrees, into the methodology of most historians. Yet, an examination of his essays on Eastern Europe suggests differences and similarities between Namier\u27s historical work on Eastern Europe and his work in other areas. An explanation of these differences suggests that the historian who atomized eighteenth-century British history also had the ability to synthesize those "atoms" into a broad historical outline. This important and often overlooked aspect of this most enigmatic of historians is brought out clearly in his work on Eastern Europe
Spiritual and Secular Transculturation in Russian America, 1821-1867
No full textThe focus of this essay is to reveal the secular and spiritual transculturation that shaped the relationship between the indigenous Aleut and Alutiiq with colonial Russian America from the time of the second charter of the Russian-America Company (RAC) in 1821 until the end of the colony in 1867. This period was marked by a systematic attempt on the part of the Russian imperial elite to codify (and classify) the offspring and cultural identity of mixed Russian-Native parentage (creole). The syncretism of Orthodoxy and indigenous spirituality, however, simultaneously challenged any attempt by the centre to “Russify” or “Christianize” the local inhabitants. The result of this latter era in the history of Russian America was an alternative model for Empire that eschewed the acculturation/assimilation paradigms inherent in Native-Newcomer relations associated with contemporary European settler societies