The Racial Mosaic
The Racial Mosaic

Author: Daniel R. Meister

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2021-12-22

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0228009987

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Canada is often considered a multicultural mosaic, welcoming to immigrants and encouraging of cultural diversity. Yet this reputation masks a more complex history. In this groundbreaking study of the pre-history of Canadian multiculturalism, Daniel Meister shows how the philosophy of cultural pluralism normalized racism and the entrenchment of whiteness. The Racial Mosaic demonstrates how early ideas about cultural diversity in Canada were founded upon, and coexisted with, settler colonialism and racism, despite the apparent tolerance of a variety of immigrant peoples and their cultures. To trace the development of these ideas, Meister takes a biographical approach, examining the lives and work of three influential public intellectuals whose thoughts on cultural pluralism circulated widely beginning in the 1920s: Watson Kirkconnell, a university professor and translator; Robert England, an immigration expert with Canadian National Railways; and John Murray Gibbon, a publicist for the Canadian Pacific Railway. While they all proposed variants of the idea that immigrants to Canada should be allowed to retain certain aspects of their cultures, their tolerance had very real limits. In their personal, corporate, and government-sponsored works, only the cultures of "white" European immigrants were considered worthy of inclusion. On the fiftieth anniversary of Canada's official policy of multiculturalism, The Racial Mosaic represents the first serious and sustained attempt to detail the policy's historical antecedents, compelling readers to consider how racism has structured Canada's settler-colonial society.

Steering the Course
Steering the Course

Author: Samuel H. S. Hughes

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780773520424

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With the frankness and clarity of someone whose life has been lived to the full, Sam Hughes tells the story of that life, from his early years in Victoria, BC – his father was a chief engineer at Canadian Northern Railway – to his many years on the bench in Ontario as a Supreme Court judge. Hughes gives moving details about his life, from his time in England as a child while his father was in action in France during World War I, to time abroad in the army during World War II, to events during his twenty-six-year tenure on the bench. His passion for family and for law shine through his account. Even after retirement, he was still very much involved in the law and was appointed to lead the Royal Commission investigating child abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland. Steering the Course not only documents a life but provides a poignant first-hand account of this century. His recollections of the events and changes that this country has undergone during the last eighty years are a stirring reminder of an important part of our recent past. From the book: "My earliest recollection was of the first daylight air raid on London when my mother and I were living in St John's Wood. I remember the explosions that accompanied the bombing of Selfridge's in Oxford Street and I remember clearly that the taxi from which we were hastily removed had yellow facings on its doors." "On New Year's Day 1944 misery and frustration prevailed. Slit trenches, the natural refuge and even sleeping place for soldiers in combat, were full of water ... George Renison and I took a bottle of Scotch whisky to the command vehicle of the First Brigade ... The bottle, which went only once around the company, was a reminder of the celebrations of other days and its like had not been seen for weeks."

The Valley of the Trent
The Valley of the Trent

Author: Edwin C. Guillet

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1957-12-15

Total Pages: 611

ISBN-13: 1487598068

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The Trent system of lakes, rivers, and canals occupies a considerable part of the counties of Hastings, Durham, Northumberland, Peterborough, Haliburton, and Victoria, in the province of Ontario. This volume of documents, records, and early writings covers the discovery and settlement of the valley, development and decline of the lumber trade, the Trent Canal and community life, and is abundantly illustrated in gravure and line from source materials. The Times Literary Supplement says of this first volume that is "raised high hopes of an important contribution to Canadian social and economic history." British Book News says that the "excerpts from manuscripts, newspapers, old and rare books and pamphlets, with the excellent contemporary illustrations, give a vivid and valuable account of early life in this interesting area."

Wild Rose
Wild Rose

Author: Louise O'Connor

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2018-09-26

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1623496764

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During much of his brief and troubled life, Victor Marion Rose was a walking anomaly. The scion of a venerable Texas farming and ranching family, he was widely reported to be unable to distinguish one horse from another. He fought for the Confederacy and endured imprisonment at Ohio’s notorious Camp Chase, yet he later bitterly decried the Civil War as utter folly for the South. His florid poetry often celebrated the feminine mystique and ideal as he considered it, yet he was infamously unfaithful and sometimes abusive in his relationships with women. He built a respected reputation as a journalist and historian, and at the same time, he struggled with alcoholism and bouts of deep depression. Born in 1842 as the third of thirteen children of a wealthy Victoria, Texas, planter, Victor Marion Rose served as publisher and editor of the Victoria Advocate from 1869 to 1873 before moving to Laredo—reportedly due to a scandalous love affair—where he edited the Laredo Times. He also wrote volumes of poetry and published several histories of South Texas and the biography of Gen. Ben McCulloch. Rose ultimately succumbed to pneumonia in February 1893. Louise S. O’Connor, a descendant of Victor Marion Rose, has mined family records and recorded family traditions about “Uncle Vic.” She carefully reviewed Rose’s collected papers, both in her personal possession and in the archives of the Briscoe Center for American History and other repositories. Wild Rose provides an intimate portrait of a complicated individual who, despite his frequently unsuccessful struggles with his demons, nevertheless left an important mark on Texas history and letters.

Ontario and Quebec’s Irish Pioneers
Ontario and Quebec’s Irish Pioneers

Author: Lucille H. Campey

Publisher: Dundurn

Published: 2018-09-08

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 1459740866

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The compelling story of Canada’s Irish pioneers, revealing the enormous scope of their achievements. Beginning in the eighteenth century, an increasing number of Irish people sought the better life that Ontario and Quebec offered. Set free from the stifling economic and social constraints that held them back in their homeland, they prospered. And yet, strangely enough, they continue to be mourned as victims. In this second book of the Irish in Canada series, Lucille Campey takes on the victim-ridden mythology of destitute Irish immigrants fleeing the famine of the 1840s. In fact, the Irish influx to Quebec and Ontario began a century earlier. Comprehensive and extensive research has been distilled to produce an informative and lively account of this great immigration saga, whose roots date back to the time of the British Conquest of New France in 1763.