Showing papers in "British Journal of Canadian Studies in 2010"

Canadian Multiculturalism: Global Anxieties and Local Debates

Abstract: In much of the world, and particularly in Europe, there is a widespread perception that multiculturalism has failed, and Canada has not been immune to these rising global anxieties. A number of commentators have argued that smug complacency is blinding Canadians to growing evidence of stresses and failures in ethnic relations in their country. In this article, we explore this evolving debate. We briefly review the global backlash against multiculturalism, and why some commentators see warning signs in Canada as well. We then look at the evidence about how the multiculturalism policy in Canada operates, and about trends in immigrant integration and ethnic relations. We show that there are indeed stresses and strains within Canadian multiculturalism, with real issues that require serious attention. But we misdiagnose the problems, and their remedies, if we read the Canadian experience through the lens of the European debate.

Women, Gender, and Canadian Foreign Policy, 1909–2009

Abstract: A neglected part of the history of Canadian foreign policy is the role and contribution of women. Women have been engaged in Canadian foreign policy since the early part of the twentieth century, though they were not formally admitted to the Department of External Affairs until 1947. Women represented Canada at the League of Nations and later at the United Nations, and continue to be engaged through national and international organisations in campaigning on issues that are important for women but are not yet included on the official agenda. My purpose in this article is to bring the women of the Department of External Affairs and the parallel stream of women in non-governmental organisations out of the shadows; and to suggest that Canadian foreign policy as traditionally framed may be changing as a result of the body of gender studies in international relations that has developed since the late 1980s.

Disqualification professionnelle et expériences temporelles: enquête auprès des immigrants francophones africains installés en Alberta

Abstract: Bien que les effets economiques de l'obstacle systemique de la non-reconnaissance des competences des immigrants soient de plus en plus documentes, les impacts a long terme de ce phenomene sont insuffisamment examines. Dans cet article, nous essayons de mieux comprendre les effets de cet obstacle sur les experiences temporelles des immigrants francophones africains. Pour 'survivre' et contourner l'obstacle de la non-reconnaissance de leurs competences, les immigrants interroges affirment qu'ils doivent inventer des 'strategies de survie'. La plupart de ces strategies les enferment dans une circularite qui les empeche de s'adapter a la culture temporelle de la societe d'accueil canadienne. Cette situation illustre un paradoxe au cœur d'une societe multiculturelle qui accueille, mais qui dresse en meme temps, dans ses pratiques sociales, des barrieres qui empechent l'immigrant de s'adapter aux valeurs promues.Although the economic effects of the systemic obstacle of the non-recognition of the credentials of...

Golden Decade(s)? Reappraising Canada's International Relations in the 1940s and 1950s

Abstract: The notion of a bygone lustrous period in the history of Canada's international relations permeates memoirs and biographies of Canadian diplomats, scholarly literature, journalism and popular commentary. This image has become a central icon in a nationalist pantheon, a vital myth about Canada's exceptionalism, its purported international mission and its supposed primordial internationalism. Moreover, the greater past has become the standard by which the lesser present has been judged and found wanting. This paper raises doubts about the validity of this depiction of the past, particularly the characterisation of Canadian motives and achievements in world affairs during and after the Second World War, and poses questions about the purposes to which this misrepresentation of Canada's diplomatic history has been put in more recent times.

A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard/Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields

Abstract: Blanche Howard and Allison Howard (eds), A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2007), 352pp.Cased. $35. ISBN 978-0-6700-6613-1. Paper. $19. ISBN 978-0-1430-5226-5. Eleanor Wachtel, Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields (New Brunswick: Gooselane, 2007), 180pp. Paper. $19.95. ISBN 978-0-86492-501-5. These two rewarding volumes constitute a valuable supplement to Carol Shields's literary legacy. The first collates Shields's correspondence with her friend and fellow author Blanche Howard, with whom Shields collaborated on the epistolary novel A Celibate Season. The second volume brings together Shields's interviews with Eleanor Wachtel conducted between 1988 and 2002. Edited by Howard and her daughter Allison, A Memoir of Friendship begins with Anne Giardini's Foreword, which reflects upon the dying art of letter writing and contextualises Shields's and Howard's relationship. Shields first met Howard in the early 1970s in Ottawa and formed a friendship that would endure until Shields's death in 2003. Howard was, at the time of their first meeting, the more established writer, having won the 1972 Canadian Booksellers' Award for her novel The Manipulator. 'I have an overwhelming wish just to talk to someone about the whole subject of writing', Shields states in an early letter (p. 4), as she was embarking on her own literary career. Books would remain a focal point of the women's correspondence over the next thirty years. The volume is particularly fascinating for the intimate insight that it gives into the writing life, both private and public. Howard read drafts of almost all of Shields's novels and offered advice and suggestions that were usually incorporated by Shields into her work. Unfortunately, excessive editing of some of these comments makes this aspect of the volume rather less revealing than it might have been, though the development of A Celibate Season is covered fairly comprehensively. Both authors are disarmingly frank about their own writing. 'Some days I'm astonished by my brilliance and others I feel lower than Danielle Steele', Howard confesses (p. 499), while Shields wonders whether 'writers ever get to the point of complete faith in their blatherings' (p. 510). Howard's increasing struggles with publication are juxtaposed with Shields's growing success and fame, and reflections upon literary prizes and the stresses of promotion are also enlightening. Another highlight of the volume is the discussions of the books Shields and Howard are reading and their sometimes acerbic, pleasingly unorthodox comments on fiction, Canadian and otherwise. The Double Hook is dismissed as 'dreadful imitation Faulkner' (p. 10), The God of Small Things as 'high trash' (p. 377), The English Patient as 'awfully studied, terribly solemn, taking itself incredibly seriously' (p. 274), and The Blind Assassin as 'a long, dull read, alas' (p. …

For Purity or Prosperity: Competing Nationalist Visions and Canadian Immigration Policy, 1919–30

Abstract: This study examines how Canada's immigration policy became the site of competing nationalist visions in the post-First World War period, when Canadians struggled with a changed sense of the nation's identity and purpose. It focuses on two groups, divided largely along gender lines: female civil servants new to Ottawa's immigration department, and Canada's leading industrialists. At the crux of the immigration debate in this period, as now, was whether cultural or economic interests should take precedence in policy. Exploring the debate in an historical context reveals immigration policy formulation to be an enterprise that responds to constantly changing social and economic systems, and relations of gender and power.

Canada and the Human Security Network (1998–2010): RIP?

Abstract: This article examines the role of the Human Security Network (HSN) within the context of Canadian foreign policy. Launched as a bilateral Canadian–Norwegian initiative in 1998, the HSN now encompasses twelve like-minded middle and smaller powers from across the globe. While Canada's human security agenda and Ottawa's activism in other multilateral forums have been extensively treated in the Canadian foreign affairs literature, scant scholarly attention has been dedicated to the HSN generally or as an instrument of Canadian foreign policy specifically. The authors assert, based on interviews with Canadian and other HSN diplomats, that although human security remains an important policy concern for Ottawa, the HSN itself no longer serves as a major diplomatic reference point and that Canada may even withdraw from the very forum that it co-founded. This dramatic development has less to do with the 2006 government changeover and more with macro trends within the HSN itself.

'A Great Stride Forward': The Post-Discharge Re-establishment Order (PC 7633) of 1 October 1941

Abstract: More than a million Canadians enlisted during the Second World War, and soon after September 1939 Ottawa was confronted with the first members of a new generation of veterans. A cabinet committee on demobilisation and rehabilitation was formed in December 1939 and, on 1 October 1941, 'The Post-Discharge Re-establishment Order' (PC 7633) was issued. This provided out-of-work and training benefits and extended the country's new unemployment insurance scheme to those who served. The principal architects of PC 7633, though veterans of the Great War, rejected the approach to demobilisation favoured by the Canadian Legion, which wanted those for whom work was not available kept in uniform, on the government payroll, until jobs could be found for them. PC 7633 gave the government the high ground in the evolving wartime debate over veterans' affairs and laid the foundation for the set of benefits known from 1945 as the Veterans Charter.

Foundlings and Water-Babies: Mothers, Daughters and Imperialism in Audrey Thomas's Graven Images

Abstract: This article examines the representation of maternal experience, and the ways in which the relationship between mothers and daughters is inflected by imperial, colonial and postcolonial histories of maternity and childhood in Audrey Thomas's novel Graven Images. The article is informed by postcolonial and feminist theorisations of female settler identity.

US–Canadian Economic Relations, Twenty Years after the USA–Canada Free Trade Agreement

Abstract: Canada's economic relationship with the USA is by far its most important trading relationship. Canada benefits greatly from being located adjacent to the world's largest and most advanced economy. Because of the free trade agreement that Canada implemented with the USA in 1989, the two economies have become increasingly integrated. However, the Canadian–US economic relationship has recently come under stress because of border security concerns in the USA, seemingly intractable trade disputes in some industries, and the complications involved in trying to address issues of bilateral concern in the context of the trilateral North American free trade agreement. Canada is attempting to diversify its external economic relations by negotiating new free trade agreements outside North America, but will remain highly dependent on the US economy and must address certain issues to ensure that the bilateral relationship remains robust.

Use of Non-Traditional Evidence: A Case Study Using Heraldry to Examine Competing Theories for Canada's Confederation

Abstract: Heraldry emerged out of a need to identify public authority and, thus, lends itself to the examination of nationhood. This article uses the symbols granted to Canada and its provinces surrounding C...