Past Imperfect (Journal)
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Martine J. Reid. Paddling to Where I Stand: Agnes Alfred, Qwiqwasutinuxw Noblewoman. Translated by Daisy Sewid Smith. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004.
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Mnemonics for War: Trench Art and the Reconciliation of Public and Private Memory
No full textThe study of British First World War memorials has generated a considerable body of literature since its emergence as a scholarly field in the 1990s. Less attention has been devoted, however, to commemorative objects of a smaller and more personal character that were collected during and after 1914-1918 for display in homes and museums. This paper finds ‘trench art’, battlefield souvenirs and commercially produced war kitsch negotiating the gap between civilian and military experiences of war and its translation into memory. Particular consideration is given to the Imperial War Museum as representative of institutional attitudes towards this unique and still-contested category of unconventionally commemorative material
Popular Darwinism and Geography Textbooks in Canada, 1850-1920
No full textInfluenced by Darwin\u27s ideas, geographers in the late nineteenth century attempted to understand how the earth affected man. Disseminating their ideas through textbooks, geographers established what physical and climatic features were favourable for advancement and also defined what constituted progress or success. A dense population, for instance, was desirable, a sign the race was succeeding. This paper analyzes pre-and post-Darwinian geography textbooks used in the Canadian school system, indicating that they helped to shape culture at the turn of the century. Geography textbooks in Canadian schools were an important mechanism for the transmission of popular conceptions of Darwinian thought
Party-Komsomol Relations in the Soviet Military, 1918-1924
No full textDuring the Russian Civil War many Communist Youth League (Komsomol) military recruits loyally supported the Bolshevik Party on the civilian and military fronts. With the cessation of hostilities the Komsomol attempted to consolidate control over its members in the armed forces by creating Komsomol military cells. Party leaders, believing that Komsomol recruits were politically unreliable, denied all Komsomol requests for autonomy and forced League members to subordinate themselves to military Party organs and to undergo intensive political indoctrination. The Party hoped that these measures would raise the political qualifications of Komsomol recruits. As the number of Komsomol members in military units grew, the strict subordination of Komsomol members proved untenable. The Party therefore created Komsomol "groups assisting the Party" in 1924. Their establishment effectively purged the Party of politically immature Komsomol members and reorganized the Parry\u27s military control apparatus
Sacred Ground: The Liberation of Alsace-Lorraine, 1944-1946
No full textAlsace-Lorraine, a region annexed from France by Germany in 1871 and recovered by France in 1918, was reannexed by Germany once more following the fall of France in 1940. In 1944 French liberation forces embarked on an intense campaign to regain what it considered "sacred ground," and the French media projected an image of an Alsatian population enthusiastically endorsing this effort to be reunited with the rest of the country. A careful reading of documentary evidence, however, suggests that the process of liberation and the reintegration of the region into France did not proceed smoothly. The demands the liberation forces placed on the civilian population to join the military campaign against the Nazis, combined with the delicate issue of collaboration, the mutual distrust, the strenuous efforts to "re-Francocize" the region following four years of Nazification (a process which had included indoctrination, service in the Wehrmacht, the installation of extermination camps in the territory, and collaboration), generated an ambiguous relationship between Charles de Gaulle\u27s government and Alsatians. Official French policy in the region, which deviated from that practiced in the rest of France, reflected the circumstances peculiar to Alsace-Lorraine
Offspring as Enemy? How Canada\u27s National Magazine Confronted Youth and Youth Culture in the 1960s
No full textThe idea of a "generation-gap" is one of the principal features in the mythology of the 1960s. The construct implies that the response of parents to the social and cultural activism of their teenage baby-boomers, those born in the period 1946-1962, was systematically hostile and decidedly unsympathetic. An examination of the contents of the Canadian periodical Maclean\u27s between the years 1959 and 1973, however, reveals a very different reaction towards youth. Attitudes in the magazine regarding youth culture were generally positive and frequently laudatory, thus calling into question the reality of the generation-gap