Showing papers in "Journal of Canadian Studies in 1999"

Neo-liberalism, State Restructuring and Immigration: Changes in Canadian Policies in the 1990s

Abstract: The essay focusses on recent changes in immigration and settlement policies in Canada and their impact on immigrant women and immigrant families in the 1990s, at a time when Canada has been experiencing a restructuring of the state as well as a restructuring of the economy. In the 1990s several significant changes have been introduced in immigration and settlement policies. On the one hand, the emphasis on global competitiveness has led to increased requirements on the type of independent class immigrants Canada recruits, who not only have to be highly skilled and educated and/or wealthy, but also "up and running" on arrival. On the other hand, fiscal restraint on the part of the state has led to an emphasis on self-sufficiency and individual responsibility on the part of immigrants. In line with this latter emphasis, Canada has introduced several new policies in the 1990s with significant implications for immigrants: more stringent requirements and enforcement procedures for family sponsorship; changes t...

Immigrant Canada : demographic, economic, and social challenges

Abstract: A Nation of Immigrants: Past, Present and FutureChristopher G. AndersonEds. Shiva S. Halli and Leo Driedger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999."Immigration made the last century a success for Canada."(1) So declared Elinor Caplan, the minister of Citizenship and Immigration, as she announced the government's intention to admit between 200,000 and 225,000 immigrants and refugees into the country during 2000. It is a remark that none of the authors under review here would probably contest, as they all, each in their own fashion, explore various ways in which newcomers have contributed to Canada throughout its history. Whereas the minister's comment was offered as an expression of millennial optimism, however, there is another, darker side to the immigration story that is also the focus of the books examined below. Canada has not always opened its door to immigrants and refugees, and those admitted have not always found themselves welcomed as equal members of society. For much of the country's history, immigration has been used as a means to increase the labour pool in the pursuit of economic growth, and most immigrants did not share in the wealth that was thereby created. Of course, the immigrant experience in Canada (and the Canadian experience with immigration) has never simply been an economic process, but also one of managing the reality of social diversity and understanding the meaning of political equality. As well, the experience has involved a search for safety by the persecuted, and Canada's response to the needs of refugees constitutes another way in which to assess the country's success in the twentieth century.Thus, Caplan's statement - like the familiar refrain that Canada is "a nation of immigrants" - is at first blush telling more for what it hides than what it reveals. The books under review here help to develop the tools necessary to comprehend more fully the complexity of what it means for Canada to succeed as a country of permanent settlement for immigrants and refugees. The five volumes reflect the diversity of the field across disciplines and methodologies. Here the reader is drawn through the realms of demography, history, political science and sociology, carried by empirical and theoretical work, macro- and micro-level studies, qualitative and quantitative analyses, archival research and surveys of the literature, often undertaken in compelling combinations. The authors and editors explore the distant and recent past, but always with an eye towards the present and the near future. If there is one common theme that joins these texts it is that to understand Canada, it is necessary to study the many ways in which newcomers have shaped its evolution. Not surprisingly, the authors and editors do not manage all that they set out to achieve. Indeed, individually and collectively, these works reveal in particular the extent to which the last quarter of the twentieth century remains little understood. None the less, each book makes a distinct contribution to the study of Canadian immigration (and therefore of Canada as well) and establishes important signposts for future research.With the publication of The Making of the Mosaic, a notable need in the Canadian immigration policy literature has at last been, if not satiated, then at least well satisfied. Prior to Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock's volume, students lacked a comprehensive guide to this policy area.(2) In providing such a resource, the authors offer more than just an introduction for those unfamiliar with the field, or an overview for others already well-versed. They also provide, in effect, a useful guide to the literature that brings attention to some of its strengths and weaknesses. In seeking "to describe and interpret the major epochs or episodes in the evolution of Canadian immigration policy with a view to uncovering and rendering explicit the ideas or values, the interests, and the issues that engaged public debates, and to examining the institutions through which these ideas, interests, and issues were mediated in each of these periods" (4), Kelley and Trebilcock have set themselves a formidable task. …

["Race," Rights & the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies]

Abstract: These fine books on aspects of law and criminality support the platitude that crime does not pay -- except for lawyers, criminologists and insurance companies. Canadian criminals put in more time in jail per dollar stolen in other countries, although these statistics predate the conviction of Alan Eagleson. Another statistic, even less likely to stir patriotic pride, is that Canadian youth, as Bernard Schissel points out, have the highest per capita rate of incarceration of any country in the world.If crime rates in Canada have dropped off in recent years, corresponding to the diminishing ratio of youth in the Canadian population, we still have a lot more lawyers. Prior to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians had less than half as many lawyers per capita as the Americans but now we approach two-thirds of the American ratio (Law and Markets 77-81) creating "the danger of supply-driven and socially harmful increases in litigation" (85). Virtually, all of the contributors to Law and Markets bemoan Canada's increasing litigiousness; none defend the very quality that brought one of Canada's most honoured citizens to jail. The Fraser Institute has brought together an interesting volume that seems to bear the message of Adam Egoyan's movie The Sweet Hereafter; namely, that lawyers as ambulance-chasers are bad news. Law and Markets is concerned not with corporate criminality but with the prospect that enterprising lawyers, instigating class action suits on contingency fees, will be able to dupe civil juries, and cut into profit margins. Indeed, Richard Hazelton, the CEO of Dow Corning which filed for bankruptcy because of the silicone breast implant suit, tells a cautionary tale for Canadian businesspeople.Contributors point out that jurors lack competence to assess the scientific and technical evidence about toxic emissions, risks to health, the relationship of causality and legal accountability; prejudices about dioxin spills may skew assessment of the personal injury caused by the spillage. The one exception to the anti-litigation view of the 17 contributors to Law and Markets is Mark Mattson, an environmental litigator, who argues convincingly that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act needs radical revision or abolition. Mattson argues that the federal government should either enforce environmental standards or leave private litigators like himself to engage in civil ligation against environmental polluters. Mattson recommends that public interest groups and their lawyers split the fine levied on the offending corporations or municipalities (135). While Mattson may conform to the Fraser Institute's policy on deregulation -- "It is government intervention that stands in the way of a public right to protect community resources" (136) -- his proposals would encourage litigation, diminish shareholder profits and raise citizens' taxes. If the aim of Canadian economic regulation is, as Konrad von Finckenstein puts it, "user-friendly regulation," we are led to conclude that deregulation and user-friendly regulation are not the same thing. If the conflicting interests of Richard Hazelton and Mark Mattson reveal the current contradictions of capitalism, we might also note that the provinces geographically and ideologically closest to the Fraser Institute (British Columbia and Alberta) are the most litigious, while New Brunswick are Newfoundland are least litigious (158-9).An exciting challenge for the Fraser Institute would be to take on the human rights legislation that emerged after the Second World War, arising from a combination of anti-Nazi principle, Keynesian welfarism and acceptance of wartime control of goods and services in the public interest. Since human rights codes abridge several common law rights, of property and contract, specifically the right of business to discriminate in favour of preferred employees, buyers, tenants and customers, the Institute's views on James Walker's compelling account of the role of human rights legislation in limiting racism in the Canadian marketplace would be illuminating. …

Making Sense of Sentencing

Abstract: Law, Crime, Punishment and SocietyGreg MarquisEds. Julian V. Roberts and David P. Cole. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 363 pp.Legal studies in Canada are experiencing a golden age as articles, anthologies and monographs produced by academics trained in the 1980s and 1990s continue to appear. Nine books, nearly 50 authors and more than 2,000 pages of text and notes later, this reviewer is suffering from intellectual fatigue, but the type that comes from a good workout.In terms of Canada's legal history, the Osgoode Society has been the leading force for publication for two decades. As of 1999 it had produced more than three dozen monographs or collections of essays. Its most recent anthology is edited by G. Blaine Baker and Jim Phillips, law professors who are also noted legal historians. Essays in the History of Canadian Law VIII evolved out of a 1998 conference dedicated to pioneering legal scholar R.C.B. Risk. In the 1970s the American-trained Risk published on the relationship between law and the economy in nineteenth-century Ontario. Significantly, these essays did not appear in history publications, but in law journals. His work is largely unknown to most Canadian historians, but Risk has exerted an important influence on legal history scholars associated with law faculties. His stature is acknowledged by two scholars of international repute, Robert Gordon and David Sugarman, and his body of work and its effect are assessed in an insightful chapter by G. Blaine Baker.Most of the contributors to the Risk festschrift are involved with law schools, and the tone of most chapters tends towards classic legal history. Many of the contributions will challenge undergraduate students of history or criminal justice. Exceptions include Constance Backhouse's study of a racially motivated murder of a member of the Onyota'a:ka (Oneida) First Nation in 1902, a case study that underscores the lack of research on race and law in Canadian history. Hamar Foster's examination of Indian title in British Columbia and John McLaren's article on Chinese criminality in British Columbia from 1890 to 1920 also have broader appeal than mainstream legal history. White society "racialized" the Chinese not only through stereotypes, but through criminal law and law enforcement, especially in the areas of gambling, prostitution and opium smoking. McLaren indicates that although the Chinese in British Columbia were subjected to legal and bureaucratic racism, police harassment and informal discrimination, as a "despised minority" they also appealed to the rule of law and the courts for protection. On a more mundane level they utilized the civil courts for disputed commercial transactions. Because most criminal convictions against the Chinese were summary offences, it was rare for them to surface in appeal courts. Yet according to McLaren, appellate judges in British Columbia were guided by law, not racial prejudice, in many of their rulings involving the Chinese.Peter Oliver's chapter on the judiciary in the historiography of Upper Canada offers a counter-revisionist critique of recent interpretations that condemn the colonial elite's manipulation of the legal system under the constitution of 1791. For much of the twentieth century, conservative and "consensus" historians of Upper Canada regarded judges and other members of the legal elite in a positive manner and dismissed radical reformers such as William Lyon Mackenzie as "demagogues." Early nineteenth-century reformers had complained loudly over the administration of justice, particularly when it was abused by Tory magistrates and judges for political ends. In recent years, scholars examining treason, sedition, libel and a number of celebrated murder trials have portrayed the Tory elite as subverting the rule of law. According to Oliver, it was the appointed judges, not popular politicians, who pressed for law reform prior to the 1840s - reforms such as the notable diminution of capital offences in 1833, jail reform and prisoners' rights. …

[Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990]

Abstract: She Answered Every Call: The Life of Public Health Nurse, Mona Gordon Wilson (1894-1981). Douglas O. Baldwin. Charlottetown: Indigo Press, 1997.The Women of Royaumont: A Scottish Women's Hospital on the Western Front. Eileen Crofton. East Lothian: Tuckwell Press, 1997The Military Nurses of Canada: Recollections of Canadian Military Nurses. Vol. 1 E.A. Landells, ed. Whiterock, BC: Co-Publishing, 1995.Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990. Kathryn McPherson. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996.Nobody Ever Wins a War: The World War I Diaries of Ella Mae Bongard, R.N. Eric Scott, ed. Ottawa: Janeric Enterprises, 1997.Jean I. Gunn: Nursing Leader. Natalie Riegler. Markham: A.M.S./Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1997.Canadian nursing history is strongly rooted in conventional biography and the descriptive narrative style. Consequently, the careful recording of events and preservation of archival material has ensured a rich resource for future research in nursing's early development and its notable leaders (Gibbon and Mathewson). While recording the contributions of exceptional nurses, this method necessarily limits analysis of the role of the wider community of nursing practitioners, preventing comprehensive understanding of nursing's history and development and its place in the history of women's work. In 1991, historian Veronica Strong-Boag confidently predicted that "the history of nurses is changing women's history and the history of Canada"; she noted a new interest in nurses and nursing among social historians as they began to question nursing's relationship to issues of gender, class and race (231). Yet historians Kathryn McPherson and Meryn Stuart have cautioned that not all nursing scholars welcome these new "historical studies informed or motivated by political theory," and many prefer that nursing history mainly serve nursing's own interests (18). This conservative approach history has led to cautious consideration of nursing within the broader context of Canadian social history. By comparison, in the 1980s American scholarship took the lead in examining the work and culture of nursing. New interpretations by American historians Barbara Melosh in "The Physician's Hand": Work, Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (1982) and Susan Reverby in Ordered to Care: the Dilemma of American Nursing, 1856-1945 (1987), directed American nursing scholarship towards labour history as a model for analysis. Until recently, Canadian nursing lacked a similar analytical framework for interpretation of its own historical development.The history of nursing in Canada spans the centuries; before the religious nursing orders brought to the continent by the earliest European colonists were the healing practices of Aboriginal peoples. Yet nursing as an organised and structured profession for Canadian women dates only from the late nineteenth century, when the Victorian enthusiasm for order and institution building gave rise to the development of the hospital system (Rosenberg). The regularised training of Canadian nurses was initiated as educated, single, young women were recruited to prepare for certification as graduate nurses over a two- or three-year period while working on the hospital wards. The new century saw the evolution of standardised, professional nursing in Canada, with much credit due to a generation of remarkable leaders, each of whom put a distinctive stamp on her own training programme. The history of these inspired women has dominated the wider development of Canadian nursing history into the 1990s, but the achievements of the much larger force of working nurses who trained in the schools, served in the field of public health, and were a major component in the development of a much-heralded Canadian hospital-care system, deserves equal scrutiny; Kathryn McPherson's Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990 has finally given Canadian nursing history its own comprehensive analysis. …

Cultured Wilderness in Jasper National Park

Abstract: The upper Athabasca River valley in Jasper National Park has witnessed considerable human influence over the past 200 hundred years. By analysing a wide variety of influences at different times during the past two centuries, this essay considers again the meaning that Canadians accord the idea of wilderness, generally, and the idea of wilderness in the context of national parks, specifically. The discussion is guided by the view that wilderness is itself a human construct, deeply informed by human values, even if those values alter from one epoque to another. Situe dans le parc national jasper, le haut de la valee de la riviere Athabasca a W le theatre d'une activite humaine considerable au cours des 200 dernieres annees. En analysant une vaste gamme d'influences A diverses epoques au cours; des deux derniers siecles, cet essai considere encore une fois l'importance que les Canadiens accordent generalement a l'idee d'un milieu sauvage, et particulierement a l'idee d'un milieu sauvage dans le contexte des parcs nationaux. La discussion est orient6e par l'opinion qu'un milieu sauvage est lui-m@me un concept humain, profondement influence par les valeurs humaines, rn@me si ces valeurs changent d'une epoque A l'autre. Debatable as some find it, the idea of wilderness is a paradox. Replete with tensions, it foists a culturally determined set of assumptions on space perceived in an absolute way to lie beyond culture. This essay studies the tensions in that idea through a 200-year period of human presence in the upper Athabasca River valley of Jasper National Park (JNP). Its theoretical thrust depends chiefly from the orientation of William Cronon's introduction and essay, "The Trouble with Wilderness," in Uncommon Ground (1995), his edition of papers about the human place in nature. In that introduction, Cronon discusses the paradoxical use we make of words like nature and wilderness. We make them stand for universal reality while enduing them with all our "most personal and culturally specific values" (51). And he concludes with the identification of nature as a paradox, "the uncommon ground we cannot help but share" (56).1 As for its content, this essay is informed to a great extent by the work of the Culture, Ecology and Restoration (CER) Project, an ongoing interdisciplinary study of human influence on the Athabasca River valley (Fig. 1).2 This valley, a very wide one as western Canadian mountain valleys go, can serve as a synecdoche for Canadian wilderness. Because it dominates the 10,880 km^sup 2^ of JNP, it needs very centrally to be understood as part of a grand Canadian symbol of identity.3 Citizens flock to national parks and feel Canadian in them. They do so especially in the western mountain parks. As the first park in the national system, Banff remains the brightest jewel in the crown, and its neighbouring mountain parks the next brightest. Moreover, mountains readily inspire awe in such a way as to seem to exceed their own spatial dimensions. In the case of the Canadian dominion, sublime geography served as both the obstacle to and, once matched by technology in the form of railways, the symbol of nation-making aspirations. History and geography have thus conspired powerfully; consequently, the mountain parks have transcended regional identity to become national, and, with their designation in 1984 as a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), global. In interdisciplinary research in the social and natural sciences, the CER Project studies the historical changes in, and ideologies that have informed, human influences on a protected area, with a view to understanding the interconnectedness of the human and non-human worlds and, thereby, to contributing to decisions about how to manage for ecological integrity. Like other protected areas, JNP mirrors what we people have valued at every stage of our and its evolution. just as we must disabuse ourselves of the idea that wilderness can be defined "as a collection of organisms to be saved like paintings in a well-endowed museum" (Sauer 34), so we must disabuse ourselves of the idea that our desire for leisure in wilderness settings (hiking or shopping, camping or fine dining, cross-country or downhill skiing) can occur without our exerting a profound impact on non-human realms. …

"The Pecker Detectors are Back": Regulation of the Family Form in Ontario Welfare Policy

Abstract: [The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors only and do not represent the opinions of the Ontario Legal Aid Plan.] How do we understand the state's need to police the social and sexual lives of single mothers? To what extent has this policy changed over time in its regulation of single mothers' relationships? This paper explains how the state determines who is and who is not worthy for Mothers' Allowance based on a mother's associations with men - and how this has been contested by those subject to it. Following a brief historical examination of the policy's determination of moral worthiness, we pay particular attention to a 1995 change to the definition of "spouse" in the social assistance system, which has meant a return to the practice of intense surveillance of poor mothers' relationships and contacts with men, after an eight-year period in which the state withdrew somewhat - although never entirely - from this scrutiny. Thoses who police these relationships have been nicknamed the "Pecker Detectors." The paper concludes that low-income single mothers have become a target for moral scrutiny and blame in the 1990s. This not only impacts upon single mothers on welfare but it affects all women. Condemning single mothers to abject poverty and moral scrutiny deters other women from leaving unhappy or abusive relationships, impeding the ability of all women to become full and equal citizens in Ontario society. (Les opinions exprintees dans cet article sont strictement celles des auteurs et ne representent pas les opinions du Regime d'aide juridique de l'Ontario.) Comment peut-on comprendre le besoin de l'etat de controler la vie sociale et sexuelle des meres celibataires? Jusqu'a quel point cette politique de reglementation des rapports des meres celibataires a-t-elle change avec: le temps? Cet article explique comment l'etat determine quelles meres meritent de toucher une allocation en se basant sur les rapports que ces meres ont avec les hommes et comment cette politique a ete contestee par les personnes visees. Apres un bref examen historique de la facon dont la politique determine le merite moral, l'article met l'accent sur un changement apporte a la. definition du terme > en 1995 dans le cadre du systeme d'aide sociale. Ce changement s'est traduit par un retour a la pratique de surveillance intense des rapports et communications des meres celibataires avec les hommes, apres une periode de huit ans oil l'etat s'etait quelque peu - mais pas completement - eloigne de cette pratique. Les gens qui surveillent ces rapports ont ete surnommes les >. L'article conclue que les meres celibataires qui ont un faible revenu sont devenues la cible d'un controle et de reproches moraux dans les annees 1990. Ceci n'influe pas seulement sur les meres celibataires qui touchent des prestations d'aide sociale mais sur toutes les femmes. En condamnant les meres celibataires a une pauvrete pitoyable et a un examen moral, on decourage d'autres femmes de quitter des rapports abusifs ou malheureux, nuisant ainsi a la capacite de toutes les femmes de devenir des citoyennes a part entiere de la societe ontarienne. [T]here is some continuity in the gendered content of today's discussion of welfare and that of eighty years ago. Then and now one dominating concern is a fear that "proper" families would be destabilized by the provision of incentives to single motherhood - whether through marital breakup or out-of-wedlock births - a fear which reveals not far below the surface a view that proper families must be enforced precisely because they do not always come "naturally" and are not always inherently desirable.1 - Linda Gordon In 1940 Gladys Walker, a single mother, had her Mothers' Allowance cheque cancelled after the welfare worker made several surprise visits to her home. The welfare worker wrote: I was mystified by a "boy friend" who was in the house when I called and stayed right through the time I was there and had many suggestions as to why the allowance should be granted. …

Ontario Works and Single Mothers: Redefining "Deservedness and the Social Contract"

Abstract: For the first time in Ontario, since the introduction of the Ontario Mother's Allowance (OMA) programme in 1920, single mothers in financial need will lose an important form of protection that has ...

Embodied Negotiations: Children's Bodies and Historical Change in Canada, 1930 to 1960

Abstract: Using adult memories of growing up in Canada, this study explores the role children's bodies and embodiment played in shaping private experience and historical change between 1930 and 1960. Attention is focussed on gender, race and sexuality as primary forces in the embodiment of children. During the period under study here, childhood was conceptualized as a time to inculcate particular attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race and class that would influence children's sense of self and, ultimately, serve the interests of the hegemonic social order - white, middle-class, patriarchal, herosexual. In adult memories of growing up, the body is remembered as the site through which acceptable self-identities and the priorities of the larger social order were mediated and negotiated. Although these two impulses were often at odds in childhood, the former was often conflated with the latter. A partir de memoire d'enfances passees au Canada, cette etude explore le role joue par le corps des enfants et sa representation dans l'elaboration des experiences privees et du changement historique entre 1930 et 1960. L'attention est portee sur l'identite sexuelle, la race, la sexualite en tant que forces premieres dans la representation des enfants. Pendant la periode etudiee, l'enfance etait perdue comme la periode ou l'on inculquait des attitudes particulieres vis-a-vis de l'identite sexuelle, de la sexualitY, de la race et de la classe. Celles-ci devaient influencer la facon d'etre des enfants et devaient, au bout du compte, servir les interets de l'ordre social hegemonique - soft blanc, de classe moyenne, patriarcal et heterosexuel. Dans leurs memoires les adultes presentent le corps comme un site ou les identites personnelles acceptables et les priorites de l'ordre social en general etaient raisonnees et negociees. Meme si ces deux impulsions ne s'accordaient pas souvent pendant l'enfance, elles etaient souvent enchevetrees Tune dans l'autre. Ellen Davignon remembers with clarity the day she started her period. It happened at eleven o'clock in the morning and she was in English class at school near Johnson's Crossing Lodge on the Alaskan Highway where she grew up in the 1940s. Without supplies, discreet guidance or privacy, Ellen remembered feeling a mixture of fear, humiliation and loss of control.1 Later that day she sheepishly informed her mother that she needed to know about Kotex. Her mother was understanding but questioned why Ellen had waited until the evening to share the news of such a monumental development. She could only muster an "I dunno" in response, yet Ellen had her reasons: "To me, there was something so intensely private about what was happening to me that I didn't want to reveal it to anyone ... not even to my mother ... I wanted it to be my secret." Having spent his childhood in a residential school in Spanish, Ontario, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Basil Johnson, an Ojibway, remembered different yet equally complex negotiations between his body, his needs and his situation: "Food was the one abiding complaint because the abiding condition was hunger, physical and emotional ... it was a substance that could not only allay hunger but also bring some comfort to a desolate spirit and soul."2 Physical hunger, however, only masked the spiritual and emotional hunger that could not be satiated as long as they were separated from their families. These autobiographical recollections are situated in quite different cultural and social contexts and therefore assume their own unique meanings. The daughter of Danish immigrants, Ellen grew up in a patriarchal, white, working-class, nuclear family. Basil was removed from his Native home and community as a young boy and placed in residential school, a hostile and assimilationist environment sanctioned by the interests of white society. These children, it could be readily argued, had very different childhoods. In the midst of their differences, however, both experienced their bodies as significant arbitrators of experience. …

Reforming Health Care Governance: The Case of Nova Scotia

Abstract: This article examines the place of decentralization and democratization as an element in the health care reform plans of one province, Nova Scotia. It begins with a brief review of the arguments for a different kind of state, one based on the principles of democratic administration, before considering the issues these arguments raise for health care governance in particular. Nova Scotia's health care system is situated within the broader Canadian context, and this essay notes the particular challenges, difficulties and opportunities for reform within this provincial setting. The essay provides an overview of Nova Scotia's health reform process, paying close attention to the various fiscal, political and administrative factors at work. It concludes with an assessment of the Nova Scotia case that duly notes both its accomplishments and failures, and the lessons, problems and prospects it may suggest for reforming health care governance elsewhere in Canada. Decentralization and democratization are not just about the ideal of citizen empowerment or the quality of democracy. They are also important to the long-term goals of cost containment and resource allocation, as well as the need to change the public's perception of the factors important to securing the health and well-being of their communities. While other policies must be pursued to accomplish all varied goals of comprehensive health care reform, moving towards a fully democratic and participatory system of health care governance continues to be central to its long-term success. Cet article traite de la place des processus de decentralisation et de democratisation dans les plans de reforme des soins de sante d'une province : la Nouvelle-Ecosse. L'auteur examine d'abord brievement le pour et le contre d'un etat different fonde sur les principes d'une administration democratique avant de se pencher sur les problemes poses par ces arguments concernant l'administration des soins de sante en particulier. Le systme de soins de sante de la Nouvelle-Ecosse est situe dans le contexte plus vaste du systeme canadien et l'auteur indique les defis, difficultes et possibilites de reforme qui sont particuliers A ce cadre provincial. Uarticle donne un aperp du processus de reforme des soins de sante en Nouvelle-fcosse en etudiant specialement les facteurs fiscaux, politiques et administratifs presents. L'article se termine avec une evaluation du cas de la Nouvelle-Ecosse qui indique clairement les realisations et les echecs ainsi que les lecons, les problemes et les possibilites qui s'offrent pour toute activM de reforme ulterieure de I'administration des soins de sante dans d'autres parties du Canada. La decentralisation et la democratisation ne visent pas seulement une prise de pouvoir Wale de la part des citoyens ou une democratie de qualite. Ces processus sont egalement des elements; importants pour realiser les objectifs A long terme de controle des cofits et de repartition des ressources ainsi que pour changer la perception du public concernant des facteurs vitaux pour la sante et le bien-kre de leurs collectivites. Bien que d'autres politiques doivent egalement etre etablies pour realiser les buts multiples d'une reforme globale des soins de sante, la poursuite d'un systeme entierment democratique et participatif d'administration des soins de sante continue de jouer un role central pour reussir A long terme. The immediate cause of the recent travails of the welfare state in Canada was a fiscal crisis brought on by the compounding effects of budget deficits and a spiralling public debt load. A longer term and more insidious structural malaise plagues the welfare state, however, particularly in the social policy sector where expensive social programmes administered by rigid and unwieldy bureaucracies are now the focus of sustained criticism. Critics point out the waste and inefficiency associated with multiple layers of administration, red tape, overregulation, high taxation and the general "deadening" effect of big bureaucracy on individual initiative, responsibility and entrepreneurship. …

The Northern Vision of Harold Innis

Abstract: Harold Innis, Canada's pre-eminent social scientist in the inter-war period, developed a northern vision for Canada in the 1920s. Through field research and study of communications, the fur trade and mineral production, he developed an understanding of the North as an industrial frontier and as a binding agent for national unity. This paper examines Innis's engagement with an imagined North by assessing the various cultural and intellectual impulses that focussed his attention on the region. It re-reads his fieldnotes as cultural texts inscribing a gendered and racialized North, and considers his portrayal of the region to southern audiences. Harold Innis, le sociologue pr@ponda down the Yukon River in 1926 with his former student, W.K. Gibb; to various towns of northern Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes in 1927; and to Hudson Bay in 1929 .2 These four busy summers have been enshrined as mythic instances in the history of Canadian historiography. Donald Creighton's biography of Innis devotes four pages in a slim volume to the Mackenzie voyage alone. He suggests that the trip marked a turning point in Innis's personal development: the limping junior scholar, still showing the marks of war in 1924, returned from the North an invigorated, healthy man, no longer in need of a cane.3 The North served as a context for the redefinition of self: from ill health to vigorous manhood; from uninitiated scholar to renowned field researcher and economist. Parsing this image of Innis and the North - by inquiring into the constructed nature of the idea of the North and Innis's role in developing it; by asking what Innis sought to learn and earn from his northern experiences; and by considering how Innis's northern research altered his development as a scholar in the 1920s this paper seeks to redraw this mythic instance, to focus the problem of the social creation of nordicity in the context of intellectual biography. Innis imagined the North before arriving there, grafted ambitions onto the region, inscribed ideas in field notes and represented the North to popular audiences in southern Canada on his return. In the process of creating a northern vision that stressed the importance of the North as a frontier for industrialism and a binding agent for national unity, Innis adopted and refashioned popular ideas of Canada's northern regions and remade himself as a public intellectual and nationalist thinker. …

Restructuring, Gender and Social Security Reform in Canada

Abstract: As a significant component of the institutional structure of the economy, social security reform has been at the policy forefront in Canada in recent years. This paper reviews the debate around reform and the programme changes that resulted, focussing on how these changes intersect with economic restructuring and their gender implications. Social security reform, like economic restructuring, has gendered impacts and reflects particular assumptions about gender relations. Changes to Employment Insurance and to the funding of welfare, social services and child benefits are discussed in this light, and comparisons are made with American reforms. The expected impacts by gender, work pattern, level of income and family situation are considered. The paper demonstrates the harmonizing down that has occurred and the penalties imposed on people in non-standard jobs and on welfare, who are disproportionately women. A titre d'element important de la structure institutionnelle de 1'economie, la reforme de l'aide sociale a fait couler beaucoup d'encre au niveau politique au Canada pendant les dernieres annees. Cet article examine les debats portant sur la reforme et les modifications du programme en mettant l'accent sur la facon dont ces modifications influent sur la restructuration economique et sur les repercussions possibles pour les deux sexes. La reforme de l'aide sociale, comme la restructuration de l'economie, influe differemment sur les hommes et les femmes et reflete des idees particulieres sur les rapports entre les sexes. Des changements apportes a l'assurance-emploi et le financement de l'aide sociale, des services sociaux et des prestations pour enfants sont discutes dans ce contexte et des comparaisons sont faites avec les reformes americaines. Les repercussions prevues selon le sexe, le mode de travail, le niveau de revenu et la situation familiale sont etudiees. L'article demontre comment les situations ont ete conciliees (pour le pire) et quelles sont les peines imposees aux gens qui ont des emplois non standard ou qui touchent des prestations d'aide sociale, dont la plus grande partie sont des femmes. anada, like the United States, has undertaken major reforms to social security policy' in the 1990s. In Canada the policy discourse in recent years has been explicitly framed in the language of restructuring. Policy responses in both countries to economic restructuring have been similar - an emphasis on the individual and the market, manifested in policies such as deregulation, privatization and free trade, premised on improving global competitiveness. As a significant component of the institutional structure of the economy, social security reform has been at the policy forefront in Canada for the past several years. This paper reviews the debate around social security reform in Canada and the programme changes that resulted, focussing on how these changes intersect with economic restructuring and their implications for gender equity. The process of restructuring is gendered - from the changes in the labour process that affect men and women differently, to the macro-economic models that underlie structural adjustment and related policies (Bakker 1994, 1996; Elson 1995; Scott 1995). So too, social security reform has gendered impacts and reflects particular assumptions about gender relations (MacDonald 1998; Pierson 1990; Abramovitz 1996; Gordon 1994). Changes to unemployment insurance and to the funding of welfare and social services are discussed and comparisons are made with American reforms. While Canada and the US started at very different points, they are moving in much the same direction, resulting in a harmonizing down with similar gendered impacts.2 Throughout the discussion, use is made of six principles that emerge from feminist work in economics that can help guide an evaluation of social security policies from a gender perspective (MacDonald 1998). 1. Intra-household inequality should be taken into account in the design of policies. …

The Reform Party’s Re-imagining of the Canadian Nation

Abstract: Accepting that national political communities are continually (re)invented through political and ideological struggle, this paper examines the way in which the Reform Party of Canada has brought its New Right populist discourse to three nation-defining areas of public policy: (i) bilingualism and the status of Quebec within Canadian federalism; (ii) multiculturalism and immigration; and (iii) Aboriginal self-governance. With reference to theoretically driven interpretations of how "the politics of cultural recognition" challenges the ideal of "universal citizenship," it is argued that Reform's vision of Canada is based on an exclusionary discourse which would limit the political and cultural capacities of Quebecois nationalists, ethnocultural minorities and Aboriginal peoples who are struggling to define the Canadian political community in a manner that allows them to assert their collective identities and pursue particular destinies. Acceptant l'idee que les communautes nationales politiques sont continuellement (re)inventees a travels des combats politiques et ideologiques, cette etude examine la facon dont le parti canadien de la reforme a apporte, dans le cadre de la nouvelle droite, son propre discours populiste dans trois domaines nationaux critiques de la politique publique: (1) le bilinguisme et le statut du Quebec au sein du federalisme canadien, (2) le rnulticulturalisme et l'immigration, et (3) l'autonomie gouvernementale autochtone. Selon des references d'interpretations theoriques affirmant que 'la politique de reconnaissance culturelle conteste l'ideal de la 'citoyennete universelle,' l'etude affirme que la vision du Canada du parti de la reforme est base sur un discours d'exclusion. Celui-ci limite les capacites politiques et culturelles des nationalistes quebecois/es, des minorites ethnoculturelles et des peuples autochtones qui luttent pour definir la communaute politique canadienne afin de pouvoir affirmer leurs identites collectives et poursuivre leurs destines uniques. In the final days of the 1995 Quebec referendum, Jean Chretien promised Quebeckers that if they rejected sovereignty his government would ensure the formal recognition of Quebec as a "distinct society" within Canada.1 Then, feeling the pressure of an extraordinarily close vote - 49.4 per cent voted in favour of secession - Chretien moved quickly to introduce into the House of Commons a non-constitutional resolution that recognizes Quebec as a distinct society and commits the government of Canada to be guided by this fundamental political reality. Not wanting to be seen to snub Quebecois nationalists who are soft on separation, Preston Manning committed himself to supporting Chretien's distinct society resolution, but only if it was amended to safeguard explicitly the integrity of Canada, ensure the equality of the provinces and protect minority rights within the province of Quebec. In particular, Manning said he would be willing to recognize Quebec as a distinct society so long as nothing in the resolution would "deny or be interpreted as denying that Canada constitutes one nation."2 What does it mean to say that Canada constitutes "one nation"? Clearly Preston Manning's rhetoric was meant as a rejection of the dualist conception of Canada as a compact between two "founding nations." The Reform Party leader has never supported this vision of the Canadian community. Indeed, since the party was founded in 1987, Manning and his fellow Reformers have been vocal critics of the understanding of Quebec's place within Canada that is usually implied by the dualist notion of "distinct society."3 But what conception of Canada's national political community does Reform champion in place of dualism? How would Preston Manning characterize this "one nation" which is Canada? These are not simple or straightforward questions to answer. They are, nevertheless, important questions because throughout the 1990s the Reform Party has been a participant in political debates about the definition and character of Canada's national political community. …

The Principles of Liberal Internationalism according to Lester Pearson

Abstract: Liberal internationalism remains the dominant perspective of those who study Canadian foreign policy, many of whom evoke the "Golden Age" of Canadian diplomacy under Lester B. Pearson. This article analyses Pearson's own ideas about the approach that Canada should take on the world stage and reveals recurring themes in his thinking. Analysis of these ideas imparts some general guidelines for conducting Canadian foreign policy. Primary documentary material in the Public Archives of Canada, interviews with Pearson's son and colleagues as well as Pearson's own writing are used to interpret the central elements of his belief system and assess his contribution to liberal internationalism. This article increases understanding of the effect of belief systems on foreign policy-making and of the impact of the liberal ideology that permeated North American culture during Pearson's era. L'internationalisme liberal demeure la perspective dominante parmi celles et ceux qui etudient la politique etrangere canadienne, et nombreux sont celles et ceux qui aiment revenir sur l'Age d'or de la diplomatie canadienne sous Lester B. Pearson. Cet article analyse les idees de Pearson sur l'approche que le Canada devrait adopter dans le cadre de la scene mondiale. It en ressort que certains "themes" dominaient sa pensee et ceux-ci permettent de tracer quelques grandes lignes generates guidant la conduite de la politique etrangere canadienne. Pour interpreter les elements centraux du systeme de pensee de Pearson, cette etude utilise des documents de premiere main tires des archives publiques du Canada, des entretiens avec le fits de Pearson et ses collegues, ainsi que ses propres ecrits et reflexions publiques. La contribution originate de cet article touche a l'identification de themes dominants et d'idees generates dans la propre pensee de Pearson. Distiller les themes auxquels Pearson faisait continuellement reference permet d'apporter une meilleure appreciation de sa contribution concrete a 1'emergence de l'internationalisme liberal. Cette etude contibue aussi a la litterature croissante sur l'effet des systemes de pensee sur la politique etrangere tout en offrant une meilleure comprehension de l'impact preponderant de l'ideologie liberate qui impregnait la culture candienne sous l'ere pearsonienne. One of the truest things that one of his closest friends who knew him much better than I did, Hume Wrong, ever said about him was that Pearson never seemed to act on grounds of rationally arrived principles which could be stated and clearly expressed as motivation. He said that, to understand Pearson, you have to think of him as a sort of a Houdini: you tie him up, stick him in a mess, and without telling you how, why, or when, he'll get himself out and in the process help all the others who are involved. George Ignatieff' Introduction: Pearson's Career The career of Lester Bowles Pearson is important in the study of Canadian foreign and defence policy because of his lifelong effort to secure international peace and security. Mike Pearson rose through the ranks of the foreign service to become prime minister. After serving in the First World War and then lecturing in history at the University of Toronto, he joined the Department of External Affairs (now the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade) in 1928. He moved rapidly through the ranks of the diplomatic service, acting as head of the Canadian delegation to the League of Nations, as a diplomat in London from 1935 to 1941 and as Canada's first ambassador to the United States in 1944. He became the deputy minister or undersecretary of state for External Affairs in September 1946. In 1948, at the behest of then Prime Minister Mackenzie King and of Louis St. Laurent, he entered Parliament and served as the minister or secretary of state for External Affairs from 1948 to 1957. He then succeeded St. Laurent as leader of the Liberal Party and was the leader of the Opposition during the Diefenbaker era. …

Towards permanent insecurity : The social impact of unemployment

Abstract: Numerous studies have revealed a relationship between unemployment and various other social ills. These include poverty, negative shifts in self-esteem for affected individuals and their families, ...

[Honest Politics: Seeking Integrity in Canadian Public Life]

Abstract: The title of this review attempts to identify a common theme in these three books, which deal in different ways with current debates in Canadian political life, in particular what their authors see as a decline in our civic values. The first two are in the tradition of public administration, dealing with issues of ethics and corruption in the public sphere. The third is quite different. It is a philosophical reassessment of the Confederation debates and their implications for contemporary Canadian federalism and its institutions.All three are written by political scientists. Three of the five authors teach at western universities: John Langford at the University of Victoria, Allan Tupper at the University of Alberta and Samuel LaSelva at the University of British Columbia. The other two, Ian Greene and David Shugarman, emphasize that their concerns are rooted in their earlier experiences at the University of Alberta and working in Alberta politics. As I grew up in Manitoba, the western Canadian background of the authors may explain some of my problems with the other common theme of the three books, which is that we should aspire to go back in time to capture something which was nobler and better.I will deal first with the books which are most similar. The more recent book by Greene and Shugarman liberally cites the earlier work by Langford and Tupper. Honest Politics: Seeking Integrity in Canadian Public Life, claims in its Introduction "to present a framework for sorting out right from wrong in politics. We don't claim to have all the answers ... [and] have focused on three key areas of misconduct that need to be checked and repaired: conflicts of interest, undue influence, and dirty handed politics" (vi). The book starts from the premise that mutual respect, or what my grandmother used to call common civility, is the essence of a democracy and that five principles of democracy follow from this: social equality, deference to the majority, minority rights, freedom (and by this they seem to mean freedom of expression) and integrity. The emphasis throughout is on integrity and to some degree social equality.The chapters that follow discuss the relationship between ethics and the principles of democracy and explore the nature of ethical duties and ethical problems. There are chapters on each of the three areas of misconduct and two chapters of prescriptions. Most chapters use a combination of examples drawn from newspaper reports, judicial and other inquiries into ethical shortcomings and the results of workshops or focus groups on the nature of ethical politics held with a series of academics, journalists, graduate students, former politicians and practitioners. It is not clear from the lists of participants what the criterion for selection was.The major problem is that the book simply does not hold together. One reason may be that there are not enough cases of malfeasance to constitute a pattern of dishonesty or lack of integrity. Another may be that the authors exhibit more sensibility than sense in their concern about some of the cases cited. The chapter on conflict of interest covers fewer than 10 cases of real, potential or apparent conflict of interest over a 13-year period in both provincial and federal politics, scarcely an epidemic of lack of integrity. The one case of fraud (Michael Gravel) and the two cases of conflict of interest (Sinclair Stevens and William Vander Zalm) were corrected. Most would agree that the individuals should have known better but they seem to be isolated examples of lack of integrity, not evidence of a trend. In two of the other cases cited there was a failure to disclose loans made from the Progressive Conservative Party to Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers. This may be against guidelines for full disclosure but it is difficulty to accept that this is very serious case of conflict of interest. Greene and Shugarman suggest in the similar case of undisclosed benefits to the former premier of New Brunswick the late Richard Hatfield, that such conduct could have made him partial in situations where he had the discretion to provide benefits to donors (85). …

Women on guard : discrimination and harassment in corrections

Abstract: Law, Crime, Punishment and SocietyGreg MarquisMaeve McMahon Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999 202 ppLegal studies in Canada are experiencing a golden age as articles, anthologies and monographs produced by academics trained in the 1980s and 1990s continue to appear Nine books, nearly 50 authors and more than 2,000 pages of text and notes later, this reviewer is suffering from intellectual fatigue, but the type that comes from a good workoutIn terms of Canada's legal history, the Osgoode Society has been the leading force for publication for two decades As of 1999 it had produced more than three dozen monographs or collections of essays Its most recent anthology is edited by G Blaine Baker and Jim Phillips, law professors who are also noted legal historians Essays in the History of Canadian Law VIII evolved out of a 1998 conference dedicated to pioneering legal scholar RCB Risk In the 1970s the American-trained Risk published on the relationship between law and the economy in nineteenth-century Ontario Significantly, these essays did not appear in history publications, but in law journals His work is largely unknown to most Canadian historians, but Risk has exerted an important influence on legal history scholars associated with law faculties His stature is acknowledged by two scholars of international repute, Robert Gordon and David Sugarman, and his body of work and its effect are assessed in an insightful chapter by G Blaine BakerMost of the contributors to the Risk festschrift are involved with law schools, and the tone of most chapters tends towards classic legal history Many of the contributions will challenge undergraduate students of history or criminal justice Exceptions include Constance Backhouse's study of a racially motivated murder of a member of the Onyota'a:ka (Oneida) First Nation in 1902, a case study that underscores the lack of research on race and law in Canadian history Hamar Foster's examination of Indian title in British Columbia and John McLaren's article on Chinese criminality in British Columbia from 1890 to 1920 also have broader appeal than mainstream legal history White society "racialized" the Chinese not only through stereotypes, but through criminal law and law enforcement, especially in the areas of gambling, prostitution and opium smoking McLaren indicates that although the Chinese in British Columbia were subjected to legal and bureaucratic racism, police harassment and informal discrimination, as a "despised minority" they also appealed to the rule of law and the courts for protection On a more mundane level they utilized the civil courts for disputed commercial transactions Because most criminal convictions against the Chinese were summary offences, it was rare for them to surface in appeal courts Yet according to McLaren, appellate judges in British Columbia were guided by law, not racial prejudice, in many of their rulings involving the ChinesePeter Oliver's chapter on the judiciary in the historiography of Upper Canada offers a counter-revisionist critique of recent interpretations that condemn the colonial elite's manipulation of the legal system under the constitution of 1791 For much of the twentieth century, conservative and "consensus" historians of Upper Canada regarded judges and other members of the legal elite in a positive manner and dismissed radical reformers such as William Lyon Mackenzie as "demagogues" Early nineteenth-century reformers had complained loudly over the administration of justice, particularly when it was abused by Tory magistrates and judges for political ends In recent years, scholars examining treason, sedition, libel and a number of celebrated murder trials have portrayed the Tory elite as subverting the rule of law According to Oliver, it was the appointed judges, not popular politicians, who pressed for law reform prior to the 1840s - reforms such as the notable diminution of capital offences in 1833, jail reform and prisoners' rights …

[The Cream of the Crop: Canadian Aircrew 1939-1945]

Abstract: The Cream of the Crop: Canadian Aircrew 1939-1945. Allan D. English. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996.Are Canadians an "unmilitary" people? We might be forgiven for thinking so. Since the 1950s, Canada has become peacekeeper to the world par excellence. Canada has consistently provided armed forces to serve the United Nations on peace support missions throughout the world. And, understandably, Canadians take pride in this role. Images of peacekeepers adorn coffee-table books, monuments, stamps and even our money. At a time when other nations resolve their differences through war, Canadians claim to be the world's observers and umpires. All of this, however, has a tendency to overshadow two important facts. First, while peacekeepers may preserve peace, they are none the less trained soldiers. Second, Canada does have a significant military history that both predates and coincides with our career as a peacekeeper. This history includes participation in five wars during this century alone.Military topics in Canadian history continue to attract public and academic interest. Early work in the field of military history often produced little more than "blow by bloody blow" accounts of battles. While this writing served a purpose, its preponderance resulted in the neglect of significant dimensions of the Canadian military experience. Aside from the tales of war heroes, the human element was overlooked; the experiences of the "ordinary" soldier remained largely untold. The "new" military history has made progress by recovering these unheard voices from the past and expanding the range of subjects considered worthy of study. Topics now include training grounds, the home front and even the reactions and experiences of "the enemy." The books examined in this review each reveal something of the changes in the way military history is being written. All of them remind the reader of the individual, or collective, human cost of war.Allan English's The Cream of the Crop is a significant departure from traditional military history. There are no accounts of air battles and bombing missions in this study of Canadian who served with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. Instead, English provides a "behind the scenes" exploration of key issues that had a direct bearing on the effectiveness of the Allied aerial war effort. Aircrew selection and training receive considerable attention, as does the controversial issue of crew removed from service on the grounds that they had demonstrated a "lack of moral fibre" [LMF]. By taking into account these two issues, English's analysis sheds new light on the overall effectiveness with which British and Canadian authorities organised people in the production and operation of the machinery of war. This, English suggests, was of "fundamental importance" to Canada's war effort (5).Early work in the field of aviation medicine, carried out during the First World War, is discussed and provides context for English's assessment of this medical field's development during both the inter-war period and the Second World War. He finds that lessons learned in the earlier conflict, particularly those relating to aircrew training, went unremembered. None the less, scientists and medical practitioners came to play a prominent role in the organisation and assessment of aircrew. In Canada, psychologists were regularly used in the development of candidate screening and training. While in Britain, psychiatrists became very influential; as specialists in human behaviour, they provided explanations for the mental breakdown of aviators. These explanations focused primarily upon "the inadequacies of the individual aviator" (68). Both physicians and psychologists are clearly seen to have played a significant role in the "managerial metamorphosis" that took place in the conduct of air warfare during the first half of this century (146). …

Untangling love and domination : Challenges of home care for the elderly in a reconstructing Canada

Abstract: The conceptual and policy challenges of caring are complex in the multiple and shifting contexts of increased corporatism, cracks that have become canyons in health care and social services, shifting attitudes towards entitlements and obligations in society and in families, and shifts in Canada's policy stances on caring as its post-war welfare state apparatus is rapidly dismantled. Concerns about care, who provides it and under what models, are central to the reconstruction project in which Canada is presently engaged as the central tenets on which collective and individual care and caring were built, are transformed. The task of this paper is to examine the challenges, specifically in home care for the frail elderly, along three interwoven dimensions: 1) Canada's approaches and presumptions as seen through comparisons with select other similar countries; 2) various models of home-based care in relation to social interactions, exchanges and identity construction in gender contexts; and 3) unanswered ques...

[Blaming Children: Youth Crime, Moral Panics & the Politics of Hate]

Abstract: These fine books on aspects of law and criminality support the platitude that crime does not pay -- except for lawyers, criminologists and insurance companies. Canadian criminals put in more time in jail per dollar stolen in other countries, although these statistics predate the conviction of Alan Eagleson. Another statistic, even less likely to stir patriotic pride, is that Canadian youth, as Bernard Schissel points out, have the highest per capita rate of incarceration of any country in the world.If crime rates in Canada have dropped off in recent years, corresponding to the diminishing ratio of youth in the Canadian population, we still have a lot more lawyers. Prior to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians had less than half as many lawyers per capita as the Americans but now we approach two-thirds of the American ratio (Law and Markets 77-81) creating "the danger of supply-driven and socially harmful increases in litigation" (85). Virtually, all of the contributors to Law and Markets bemoan Canada's increasing litigiousness; none defend the very quality that brought one of Canada's most honoured citizens to jail. The Fraser Institute has brought together an interesting volume that seems to bear the message of Adam Egoyan's movie The Sweet Hereafter; namely, that lawyers as ambulance-chasers are bad news. Law and Markets is concerned not with corporate criminality but with the prospect that enterprising lawyers, instigating class action suits on contingency fees, will be able to dupe civil juries, and cut into profit margins. Indeed, Richard Hazelton, the CEO of Dow Corning which filed for bankruptcy because of the silicone breast implant suit, tells a cautionary tale for Canadian businesspeople.Contributors point out that jurors lack competence to assess the scientific and technical evidence about toxic emissions, risks to health, the relationship of causality and legal accountability; prejudices about dioxin spills may skew assessment of the personal injury caused by the spillage. The one exception to the anti-litigation view of the 17 contributors to Law and Markets is Mark Mattson, an environmental litigator, who argues convincingly that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act needs radical revision or abolition. Mattson argues that the federal government should either enforce environmental standards or leave private litigators like himself to engage in civil ligation against environmental polluters. Mattson recommends that public interest groups and their lawyers split the fine levied on the offending corporations or municipalities (135). While Mattson may conform to the Fraser Institute's policy on deregulation -- "It is government intervention that stands in the way of a public right to protect community resources" (136) -- his proposals would encourage litigation, diminish shareholder profits and raise citizens' taxes. If the aim of Canadian economic regulation is, as Konrad von Finckenstein puts it, "user-friendly regulation," we are led to conclude that deregulation and user-friendly regulation are not the same thing. If the conflicting interests of Richard Hazelton and Mark Mattson reveal the current contradictions of capitalism, we might also note that the provinces geographically and ideologically closest to the Fraser Institute (British Columbia and Alberta) are the most litigious, while New Brunswick are Newfoundland are least litigious (158-9).An exciting challenge for the Fraser Institute would be to take on the human rights legislation that emerged after the Second World War, arising from a combination of anti-Nazi principle, Keynesian welfarism and acceptance of wartime control of goods and services in the public interest. Since human rights codes abridge several common law rights, of property and contract, specifically the right of business to discriminate in favour of preferred employees, buyers, tenants and customers, the Institute's views on James Walker's compelling account of the role of human rights legislation in limiting racism in the Canadian marketplace would be illuminating. …

"Less, Worse and More Expensive: Childcare in an Era of Deficit Reduction"

Abstract: "Less, Worse and More Expensive: Childcare in an Era of Deficit Reduction"1 Despite the enormous need of children, mothers, families and employers for childcare, its provision is worsening in Canada in the 1990s. Although more is known about the positive impacts of high quality early childhood care and education on child development than ever before, few children have access to high quality early childhood care. Although women's increasing participation in paid work means there is a greater need for non-family care, childcare service expansion is stalling. Childcare is one of the earliest casualties of a rapidly restructuring Canadian welfare state. This article considers the past and current place of childcare, highlighting what is happening in the 1990s and showing how childcare arrangements illuminate the assumptions of the Canadian welfare state. It argues that women's equality is compromised when services for children are treated as either a private family responsibility or a matter for the market. Citizenship and entitlement are circumscribed when childcare needs are delegated to such arrangements. Malgre le besoin pressant de services de garde pour les enfants, les me which is seen as unremunerated work tends to fall on women.3 Childcare advocates seek to replace this conservative scenario with public entitlement and provision. In the 1990s, as the Canadian welfare state undergoes deficit-driven restructuring, the contrast between institutional arrangements and advocacy demands grows more sharp. In Canada, non-family childcare is organized as a fee-for-service, and as such is provided by the market: there is no national childcare legislation, and provinces are free to establish (or fail to establish) whatever services they choose. Like other social welfare services, childcare falls under provincial responsibility, and federal inaction permits wide variations in quality, accessibility and affordability@ Childcare is not a mandatory service, and as a result provincial/territorial governments rarely operate childcare programmes nor ensure they are in place, as is the case for social services, healthcare and education. …

Jules Sioui and Indian Political Radicalism in Canada, 1943-1944

Abstract: Two remarkable conventions of First Nations chiefs and political leaders in Canada occurred in Ottawa during the final years of the Second World War. Ostensibly protesting military conscription and income taxation, the issues at the conventions went to the heart of their oppression: the denial of aboriginal rights, nationhood and self-determination. The essay critically reviews the context of Indian policy leading up to the conventions, the impact of the protest led by Jules Sioui and the continuing divergence of First Nations' and state objectives concerning the future place of Indians in Canada. In conclusion, the essay discusses the idea of citizenship and the inclusion of indigenous peoples in states of European settler origins. Deux assemblees d'importance reunissant des chefs des Premieres nations et des dirigeants politiques Canadiens ont ete tenues a Ottawa au cours des dernieres annees de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Pretendument avancees pour protester contre la conscription et l'imposition sur le revenu, les questions discutees au cours des assemblies touchaient au coeur de l'oppression affectant les Premieres nations : la negation des droits des autochtones, le statut de nation et l'autodermination. L'article jette un coup d'oeil critique sur le contexte de la politique autochtone qui a mene a la tenue des assemblees, les repercussions de la contestation menee par Jules Sioui, et les differences persistantes entre les objectifs des Premieres nations et ceux de l'Etat concemant la place occupee a l'avenir par les autochtones au Canada. En conclusion, l'article discute de l'idee de citoyennete et de l'inclusion des peuples autochtones au sein des kats crees A la suite de l'emigration europeenne. Until recently, mainstream, academic literature generally asserted that prior to the impetus of the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy the political organization of First Nations in Canada was weak and almost non-existent.1 More recent analysis however, suggests that political organization and activism among the First Nations varied with their perceptions of crisis, common interest and the tolerance by the dominant state of their political rights and cultural activities.2 One example of such activism was a remarkable Indian protest led by Jules Sioui and the Comite de Protection des Droits Indiens. Held in Ottawa during the height of the Second World War, Sioui and the Comite I shall argue, not only support this more recent analysis but formed the basis for a clear divergence between Indian aspirations and federal Indian policy objectives in the post-war period. In particular, the protest and convention resulted in a speech to the delegates by Thomas Crerar, the federal minister responsible for Indian Affairs at the time. His speech not only formed the ideological basis for state policy in the post-war period, but raised important questions about Indian citizenship in Canada, and the differences of opinion that clearly existed between the people of Canada and the First Nations about the meaning of aboriginal protection, their collective and sovereign rights. Government Attitudes Towards Indian Politics During the Inter-War Period During the inter-war period, of all the challenges to its administration that the Department of Indian Affairs most resented and with which it tried to deal most firmly were those initiated by the First Nations themselves. This was not surprising if it is understood that Indians were not simply any recipient of government service but, in the recesses of historical consciousness, were there to be civilized and managed lest they entertained any thought of asserting old ways and reclaiming their lands. The Euro-Canadian displeasure with Indian political activity persisted and drove, in irrational ways, government responses to perfectly rational objections to wardship, tutelage and the denial of historical rights. The Deputy Superintendencies of Duncan Campbell Scott (1913-1932) and Dr Harold W. …

Historical Roots of Canadian Democracy

Abstract: Concentrating on the crucial decade of the 1830s, this essay examines the political thrust and social underpinnings of early Canadian democracy. It concentrates on the role of local community life,...

Vanishing Acts II: Queer Reading(s) of Timothy Findley's Headhunter and Not Wanted on the Voyage

Abstract: This article provides an exploration of the way in which our cultural articulation of forms of identity politics determine and preclude what will be visible and invisible in our lives and in our reading of texts. The article begins by articulating the ironic and ambivalent relationship between visibility and invisibility in racial, gendered and heteronormative terms, and then proceeds to analyze the function of the heteronormative gaze as an effect of power in its readings of Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage and Headhunter. Findley's work brings into view those who are "not wanted on the voyage," that is those who are marked as other by the heteronormative gaze and, in doing so, recuperates as subjects both the author himself, as a gay man, and all of those who are unwanted and invisible. Cette etude offre un examen de la faqon dont notre articulation culturelle des formes de la politique identitaire determine et restreint ce qui devient visible et invisible dans nos vies et dans nos lectures de textes. Cet article s'ouvre sur une presentation de la relation ironique et ambivalente des questions de visibilite et d'invisibilite en fonction de la race, de l'identite sexuelle et de l'heteronormatif. II procede par la suite a l'analyse de la fonction du regard heteronormatif en tant qu'effet de pouvoir dans la lecture de Not Wanted on the Voyage et de Chasseur de tetes de Findley. Son travail rend visibles celles et ceux qui "ne sont pas du voyage," c'est-A-dire qui sont percu(e)s comme autres par le regard heteronormatif, et, ce faisant, recupere comme sujets non seulement l'auteur lui-meme, en tant qu'homme gay mais aussi tous ceux et toutes celles qui sont rejete(e)s et invisibles. In his recent book White, Richard Dyer lays out the complex interrelationships between visibility, power and whiteness. Whiteness will, I suggest, stand in the following quotation for any hegemonic category of social relations: Whites must be seen as white, yet whiteness as race resides in invisible properties and whiteness as power is maintained by being unseen. To be seen as white is to have one's corporeality registered, yet true whiteness resides in the non-corporeal. The paradox and dynamic of this are expressed in the very choice of white to categorise us. White is both a colour and, at once, not a colour and the sign of that which is colourless because it cannot be seen: the soul, the mind, and also emptiness, non-existence and death, all of which form part of what makes white people socially white. Whiteness is the sign that makes white people visible as white, while simultaneously signifying the true character of white people, which is invisible. (Dyer 45) One might further argue, in reading the "text" of both visibility and invisibility within the discursive structures of social and institutional power, that visibility and invisibility both fit neatly into the binaristic discourse of contemporary understandings of sociopolitical structures, especially those now interpellated under the rubric of "identity politics." One might also assert that visibility and invisibility are, not surprisingly, utterly dependent on the position of the "reader" of the "text": thus whiteness is invisible to whites at the exact moment when it is both complicit in and essential to the formation of the white person as the observing, but unmarked, subject. It is in exactly this mode that critics have argued for studies of, for example, the creation and regulation of heterosexuality.' To leave heterosexuality unexamined risks always its re-inscription as the norm against which its binary opposition, homosexuality, can only be seen en passant: abnormal, inverted, perverted. Homosexuality can still only exist through the eyes of an invisible heterosexual hegemony, in which, paradoxically, heterosexuality is the only visible mode of being and homosexuality disappears: a vanishing act of epic social proportions. The paradox of the visibility of the invisible regime of heteronormativity is played out daily in the pop culture images that inundate our "ordinary" lives; moreover, it is played out in an ironic mode that is primarily recognizable to those who do not see themselves amongst "legitimate" representations. …

[Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience]

Abstract: Home Medicine: The Newfound-land Experience. John K. Crellin, McGill- Queen's/Hannah Institute Studies in the History of Medicine, Health, and Society. 1. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.This decade has seen a rising national and international interest in the cultures and histories of Atlantic Canada. This attention - most conspicuously manifest in the popularity of such contemporary artistic events as The Shipping News, Margaret's Museum and the Celtic music revival - perhaps signifies that a certain romantic nostalgia for the simpler life lingers in the popular imagination. In the academic world, nostalgia is taking a reflexive turn, being acknowledged as an element at work in the hermeneutics of texts and events. Such reflexivity is particularly evident in Ian McKay's The Quest of the Folk and Ronald Rompkey's Labrador Odyssey, both of which offer alternatives to the founding fictions that have worked to efface the cultural histories of at least some Atlantic Canadians. These texts foreground the representation of culture, challenging us to read against historical and folkloric constructions of societies and their identities. They ask that we acknowledge the subject positions of historical narratives and question the processes behind what we are asked to read as culture. It is this reading practice that informs my own comments on the five diverse accounts of maritime histories and cultures offered in The Quest of the Folk, Labrador Odyssey, Home Medicine, Canadians at Last and The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island.McKay's The Quest of the Folk examines the antimodernist impulse at work in the processes of cultural selection and invention in twentieth-century Nova Scotia. Its thesis is interesting and adversarial: "The Folk," as category and construction, reduces "people once alive to the status of inert essences" and voids "the emancipatory potential of historical knowledge" (xvi). What is perhaps most contentious is not the argument itself, but the representation of "cultural producers" such as Helen Creighton as aesthetic colonizers who actively sought and produced the Folk according to their own romantic impulses: This book is about the "path of destiny" that led Creighton and countless other cultural figures to develop "the Folk" as the key to understanding Nova Scotian culture and history. It is about the ways in which urban cultural producers, pursuing their own interests and expressing their own view of things, constructed the Folk of the countryside as the romantic antithesis to everything they disliked about modern urban and industrial life. (4)Its five chapters contextualize the concept of the Folk, explore Creighton's role in the development of maritime folklore, examine the commodification and discourse of "Innocence," and survey the idea of the Folk under postmodern conditions (30). In its demystification of the interpretative framework and construction of culture and identity, The Quest of the Folk revises twentieth-century Nova Scotian history and calls for a "questioning of the ways in which a politics of cultural selection has made certain debatable assumptions seem like 'natural' commonsense" (40).Strategic representation is both a conceptual focus and a rhetorical tactic of The Quest of the Folk, which characterizes Creighton as both a romantic ethnographer and a shrewd businessperson with copyright privileges and movie rights on her mind: "To preserve the idealized 'culture' of the Folk was necessarily to commodify it. This was the contradictory logic of modernizing antimodernism" (136). McKay's rhetorical manoeuvring is particularly evident in his many references to "Helen" that implicitly work to diminish her authenticity as a professional. In representing the influences that informed Creighton's reading of the Folk and her criteria for canonization, McKay foregrounds her class perspective and split subjectivity, "caught between the roles of Victorian ladyhood and the twentieth-century professionalism of a 'new woman'" (61). …

[Challenging Territory: The Writing of Margaret Laurence]

Abstract: Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1997.When Shakespeare's Juliet asked "what's in a name?" she entered a long and continuing conversation about the relationship between words and the world, about the self, identity and representation. In a postscript to a letter written in January 1961, Margaret Laurence asks her lifelong friend, Adele Wiseman, "did I tell you - I've changed my name to Margaret?" Named Jean Margaret by her parents, Laurence was known in her early years as Peggy, and it is this name that she forsakes in her letter to Wiseman claiming that "it was Peggy I hated, so I have killed her off (I hope)" (Lennox and Panofsky 129). Margaret Laurence, of course, was the name under which her first novel, This Side Jordan, had appeared in 1960, and it is the name under which all her subsequent work was published, work that justly earned Laurence respect and acknowledgement as one of Canada's foremost and accomplished writers. In The Life of Margaret Laurence, James King reflects on this postscript, first asking "why did Margaret 'kill off' Peggy?" then answering that "Peggy was the girl she had been, whereas Margaret was the woman she aspired to be" (151). While King sees this transition as "sudden and violent, almost as if a change in personality would follow a change in name" (Ibid.), the disjuncture between the two is subtly qualified by Laurence's parenthetical "I hope." The name Margaret Laurence may have been adopted, but the relinquishing of all that had gone before was clearly not possible.Reading through the list of the above titles, it is this name, Margaret Laurence, that emerges as the constant element, and, in the language of the library catalogue, as the main subject of this review. But, as is always the case with any search for a subject, these eight works reveal that the ostensibly singular subject with which one begins cannot finally be apprehended or discerned in any single or uniform manner. Given the emphasis in literary theory and criticism over the past several decades on notions of plurality, multiplicity, heterogeneity and difference, to note that the writings of Margaret Laurence have been approached and interpreted in diverse ways may seem mundane, even unnecessary. However, the writings of Margaret Laurence are not all that is located under the main subject heading here. There is also the person who bore the name Margaret Laurence, and the life that she led. In this collection of recent works on the subject of Margaret Laurence we accordingly find two collections of essays on Laurence's writing, two works offering comparative discussion of Laurence alongside another writer, a structuralist reading of two of Laurence's Manawaka novels, two letter collections and a biography.Names and identity, subjects and subjectivity have received much critical scrutiny of late, and I introduce these issues at the outset of this review both to foreground the concerns this scrutiny has raised, and to suggest that they are of particular relevance in considering the life and work of Margaret Laurence. Much literary study of the past several decades has addressed important questions about the relations between a writer, the writer's life in the world, the world and the works written. All of these recent studies of Margaret Laurence consider, to varying degrees, these relations and questions. If an earlier critical orthodoxy argued that the literary work should be approached as autonomous and self-contained, as separate from the historical and biographical circumstances of its creation, the impelling force behind much recent literary analysis has been the urge to return the work to the context in which it was produced and received. This return, however, has not supported the reappearance of an understanding of history, of a period or a life, as simply background, or as the ground upon which an author's intentions and meanings can be fixed. Instead, the literary text increasingly has come to be understood as a form of discourse that interacts with and is shaped by other discourses and practices in specific historical moments. …

[Banking on Deception: The Discourse of Fiscal Crisis]

Abstract: The Implications of Knowledge-based Growth for Micro-economic Policies. Peter Howitt. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1996.Attention to the problems which social science addresses tells us a great deal about the nature of the Canadian economy and the national identity, about not only material realities but also Canadian values.Values are ever present in the lexicon of economics. They penetrate economics at a level of vocabulary, perceptional selectivity, definition of the problem, choice of subject matter, rationalization and normative certitude. Values serve as a filtration system governing the formulation and evolution of ideas. They can take the form of some notion of human nature, a partial theory knowledge or a specific conception of reality. Whatever form they take, values determine how scholars order the world around them. Of course -- as the books under review demonstrate -- at any one time a plurality of values exists and these values compete in the formulation of theory, the direction of public policy and our understanding of the immediate and distant past.The six works under review are diverse in both method and scope. Diversity is part of the Canadian condition. Indeed -- as Robin Neill has demonstrated in his classic study -- the history of Canadian economic thought is one of contradiction, paradox and heterogeneity.(f.1) The fact that the Canadian nation is made up of five distinct regions, each displaying its own pace and pattern of economic growth, has contributed to the assortment of competing economic discourses and paradigms. Yet such variance need not be problematic. On the contrary, states the intellectual historian A.B. McKillop, our national identity is based on the existence of diversity.(f.2)Despite their differences, the books under review are similar in the matters to which they attend. Two books analyze the nature of the debt and debt discourse (albeit in very different ways). Two others -- utilizing dissimilar methodologies -- attempt to account for the role of innovation and invention in economic growth. A fifth questions the value of the quintessentially Canadian programme of equalization payments while the sixth seeks to understand the economic and political forces involved in the recent neo-conservative transformation of Canadian society.In the first section of this review, the choice of subject matter, the arguments of the authors, as well as the political-valuational judgments that colour their reasoning, will be identified and compared. In the second and third sections, a closer examination of some of their metaphysical preconceptions will be undertaken, specifically of the authors' perceptions of human nature and conceptions of reality. The last section is dedicated to an analysis of methodology and the role of the historical method in economics.The Matters to Which We AttendEach way of ordering -- or interpreting -- postmodern life starts with an implicit or explicit decision about priority. When dealing with economic phenomena the tendency in the discourse of social science has generally been to pick one main topic of interest and regard the rest as secondary, indeed, epiphenomenal. To do so is to manifest one's perception of what things are good, important, and desirable in the world.Three of the books under review deal with public finance. In The Uneasy Case for Equalization Payments, Dan Usher calls into question the belief that equalization payments from Ottawa to the provinces redistribute income, increase GNP and further equality. He uses arithmetical examples to illustrate the potential inequalities (Part II), inefficiencies (Part III) and inequities (Part IV) in the existing system. Having made his case, Usher concludes that the subsidization of have-not provinces is not necessarily beneficial to the poor nor is it necessarily favourable to general prosperity. Indeed, it is just as likely, Usher maintains, that intergovernmental transfers have simply shifted income from one group of affluent people to another, with little -- and only incidental -- benefit to the poor. …

Cultural Literacy, First Nations and the Future of Canadian Literary Studies

Abstract: First Nations literature presents a variety of challenges to scholars and teachers of Canadian literature to which we have a responsibility to respond. Studying First Nations literature is one means by which we can increase our understanding of and respect for First Peoples and create the political will to involve ourselves in the social justice issues that concern them. In this paper, we discuss the reasons for promoting greater cultural literacy (by which we mean the mainstream becoming acculturated by aboriginal cultures) in Canadian students, and we offer pragmatic suggestions as to how it might be achieved. La Litterature des premieres nations presente une variete de de defis aux disciples et aux professeurs de la litterature canadienne auxquels nous avons une responsabilite de repondre. Etudier les premieres nations que la litterature est une signifie par de ce que nous pouvons augmenter notre comprehension et le respect pour les premiers peuples et creent la volonte politique de se faire participer dans les issues sociales de justice qui les concernent. En cet article, nous discutons les raisons de favoriser une plus grande instruction culturelle (par ce que nous voulons dire devenir de courant principal acculturated par les cultures indigenes) dans les etudiants canadiens, et offrir pragmatique suggestion quant comment pouvoir realiser. The more you know, the more you will trust, and the less you will fear.1 First Nations present the national government and culture in Canada with a challenge; in fact, the kind of federation Canada will be in the future depends on how this issue is resolved. In this paper, we argue that Canadian literary critics have a responsibility to find ways of responding to First Nations literature and promoting the cultural literacy of Canadian readers. Because First Nations literature represents a fundamental challenge to constructions of fields of literary studies or canons of texts organized by nation-state, we struggle to understand how the concept of "nations within," as well as the ongoing debates about Canadian unity, constitutional crisis and aboriginal self-government, reconfigure national literature in particular, and national identity in general. The urgency and importance of these issues call for a sophisticated approach to subjects pertaining to aboriginal peoples. For this reason, and because the position of the earth's aboriginal peoples will continue to be an urgent social issue in the twentyfirst century, Canadian academics, along with politicians and other policy makers, have a responsibility not only to attend to the concerns of First Nations in Canada but also to involve themselves in the work of decolonization. Scholars and teachers of Canadian literature turn our attention to literary writing by First Nations peoples as one sphere in which such political action takes place. 1: The Paradox of (in)Visibility Histories concerned with the colonization and settlement on which Canada is built are necessarily replete with references to aboriginal peoples, but such accounts rarely deal with the history of First Peoples, leading Bruce Trigger to call for a historical understanding of "native people in terms of their own beliefs and perceptions" (436). Whereas the erasure of "the Native" as the dying and disappearing "Indian" in American culture betrays, in Louis Owens's words, "an unmistakable yearning to be Indian" (31) and inspires the romantic nationalist moments in English-Canadian literature identified by Margery Fee, the erasure of "the Native" in Canada has more often been signified by absence and forgetting. Paradoxically, First Peoples are an (in)visible presence in the Canadian mainstream, including the official history most of us learned in school - there but seldom represented except in relation to the dominant culture - a position in which "the Native" signifies the abject, pushed to the fringes of consciousness and the edge of town. …

Tenure and the Canadian Professoriate

Abstract: No other aspect of university life is as misunderstood as tenure.1 Even the usually clear-eyed John Ralston Saul gets it wrong. Defining it as "a system of academic job security which has the effect of rating intellectual leadership on the basis of seniority;" he asserts that its "initial justification ... was the need to protect freedom of speech, due to the justifiable fear that controversial professors might suffer at the hands of disapproving financial and governmental interests."2 This is mistaken. Tenure long antedates the modern concern with academic free speech. It is rooted in three ancient and persistent academic desires: for intellectual independence, collective autonomy and the time and financial security needed to carry on scholarly and scientific work. Not only is tenure misunderstood, it is under heavy attack. When I bought my copy of Matthew W. Finkin's The Case for Tenure (1996), the bookstore clerk read the title and said with obvious surprise: "The case for tenure? I thought everybody was against it." The purpose of this paper is briefly to examine and explain the legal and institutional development of tenure in Canada, to sketch the debate that surrounds it today, and to discuss its continuing function in academic life. Tenure in Canadian universities has been of two different kinds. At the first Englishlanguage institution of higher education established in what is now Canada, King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, professors explicitly enjoyed tenure for life during good behaviour3'(This was akin to the tenure that the judiciary came to enjoy.) Most universities made no reference to the term of office in their charters or early statutes, creating a presumption, particularly in those institutions which were influenced by the Scottish university tradition, that tenured professors held their offices for life, though they might be pensioned off when it suited a governing board to vote the money. (Formal pension plans did not exist until they were gradually introduced during the first half of the twentieth century.) Judicial interpretation from 1860 to 1923 did not sustain the presumption of life tenure. Wherever the principle was tested it was rejected, usually though not invariably in favour of the notion that tenured professors, though appointed without term, held their offices during the pleasure (that is at the discretion) of the governing boards of their institutions. Starting with the University of Toronto Act of 1906, moreover, tenure during pleasure became the legislatively imposed policy of five of the six pre-1950 provincial universities. (At the sixth, the University of New Brunswick, tenure during pleasure had been established by means of judicial interpretation.) Not until the 1960s did tenure during pleasure begin to yield to tenure during good behaviour, as faculty associations managed to obtain board approval of dismissal procedures that required cause to be shown before a tenured faculty member could be removed. The first British North American case involving tenure took place in New Brunswick. Removed in 1861 from his professorship of classical and modern literature, Edwin Jacob asked the Court of Queen's Bench for certiorari, a judicial review, charging that the Senate (until the 1950s this was the name of UNB's governing board) was not legally constituted. The court ruled that "the offices of the Professors ... are not held for any fixed time, nor by any permanent tenure; but ... are held at the pleasure of the governing bodies of the University, i.e., the Senate in the first place, subject to the approval of the Crown." Assuming such approval, "the Senate may ... remove any of the officers, without any formal proceeding in the nature of a trial, in the same way that a private individual may dispense with the services of a clerk or other servant..... No formalities need be observed or notice given.4 Judicial process took a different course in the classicist George Weir's suit against the board of trustees of Queen's University, but the outcome was similar. …

Writing against Knowing, Writing against Certainty; or What's Really under the Veranda in Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues

Abstract: This article looks at attitudes towards history in Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues. It situates the novel in its North American context, as an example both of "l'americanite," and an investigation of "l'alterite. " It follows the progress of its characters as they simultaneously retrace and deconstruct the colonialist-expansionist vision represented by "the American dream." The article speaks to the tension in the novel between Eurocentric and Aboriginal imaginative and historical discourses, and to its engagement with post-colonial issues of power and disempowerment. It places these specific textual concerns in the larger context of post-Holocaust thought, seeing it in particular as a consideration of the relationship between historical and providential authority and individual moral responsibility, and as an engagement with fascism. Cet article examine les attitudes face a l'Histoire dans le Volkswagen Blues dejacques Poulin. Il situe le roman dans son contexte nord-americain et en fait a la fois un exemple de - l'americanite et une enquete de l'alterite, L'article suit la progression de ses personnages alors qu'ils retracent et deconstruisent simultanement la vision colonialiste-expansionniste representee par - le reve americain -. L'article souligne dans le roman la tension entre les discours eurocentriste et autochtone comme etant createurs et historiques, et les questions post-coloniales liees au pouvoir et a l'asservissement. Il dispose ces inquietudes textuelles particulieres dans le contexte plus large de la pensee apres l'holocauste , la voyant particulierement comme l'etude de la relation entre l'autorite historique et providentielle et la responsabilite morale individuelle, ainsi que comme une prise de position contre le fascisme. "Hearing the silence of the world, the failure of the world to announce meaning, we tell stories." (Kroetsch v). "Story-telling is the shortening of the road." (Irish saying) Volkswagen Blues is Jacques Poulin's sixth novel, and the first to be set largely outside Quebec. It has been read by some Quebecois critics as a significant example of l'americanite, or awareness of America, a term which suggests a new openness in some Quebecois novels to influences outside the traditional narrative borders of Quebec society.1 This awareness is seen as a departure from the traditional ethnocentricity of Quebecois writing, a movement from quebecitude to an investigation of l'alterite, or "the other."2 There can be no doubt that the novel deals with the relationship between Quebec and America, and Poulin himself makes that clear ("un des themes du livre ... [est la] place du francais en Amerique" - Poulin, "Letter"). Nor, given the importance in the novel of the troubled relationship between the Eurocentric and the Aboriginal, can one ignore the importance of "the other." But the novel's concern with both the North American context and postcolonial issues of power and disempowerment is merely part of its more fundamental engagement with some aspects of post-Holocaust thought, in particular the relationship between historical and providential authority and individual moral responsibility, and the possibility of knowing and certainty. These concerns are expressed by a profound textual engagement with the futility and danger of quests and goal-directed behaviour, so that what appears to be a simple story about a man and a woman travelling together in a Volkswagen van in search of the man's brother is in fact a richly layered moral fable. The novel was translated by Sheila Fischman in 1986, and it is to the translation I will refer on the grounds that an essay based on it will be more accessible to the novel's English-speaking readers.3 Like all "road novels" the text is episodic. The search for the brother is made up of a series of episodes held together like beads on a string which at first glance seem to touch each other only occasionally. …