Canadian History

In 2005 the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark ruling in the debate on privatization of Quebec's health care system. The Quebec government subsequently made several decisions, such as lifting the ban on private insurance for some health services already offered in the public system. We interviewed 42 stakeholders who were involved in the decision process between 1999 and 2008 and analyzed their views. We identified three types of positions on privatization, based on two key factors raised in these encounters: (a) the ideological and political inertia of both civil society and the state and (b) the concerted action of stakeholders.

Séminaire de l'axe ArtIS - LARHRA 2023/2024
"L'art et la matière : méthodes, pratiques et perspectives"
organisé par Alice Ensabella et Marlen Schneider
31 mai 2024 – 13h30-15h30 - Lyon, salle Bollier (MSH) et en ligne

"La matérialité de l’art au prisme du sensible : perceptions, expériences, savoirs" - séance coordonnée par Marta Battisti et Erika Wicky (Université Grenoble Alpes-LARHRA) (Séance commune de l’axe ArtIs et de l’axe Savoirs)

- Zuleika Murat, Professeure associée d'histoire de l'art médiéval (Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali, Università di Padova) : « Warmth is the grace of the Holy Spirit »: handwarmers in medieval religious practices.

- Charlotte Ribeyrol, Professeure de littérature britannique du XIXème siècle (Sorbonne Université, VALE) et Honorary Curator de l’Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) : Staging the Victorian colour sense: a presentation of the exhibition Colour Revolution, Victorian Art, Fashion and Design (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

The ongoing struggle for Indigenous land rights in Canada traces its roots to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, later revised as the Indian Act. While initially intended to regulate territories in North America, the Proclamation inadvertently solidified British Crown’s dominance over Indigenous lands. This dominance is evident in the historical and current issues faced by Indigenous communities, particularly highlighted by the Kanesatake Resistance, also known as the Oka Crisis of 1990. This 78-day standoff between the Mohawk First Nations and the Canadian government arose from the proposed expansion of a golf course over sacred Mohawk burial grounds. The conflict exemplifies Canada's deep-rooted systemic biases, with the Indian Act putting settler benefits above Indigenous welfare. Furthermore, despite resolutions, land rights continue to be a contentious issue, as the government's actions often appear symbolic rather than transformative. Analyzing the crisis through the lens of Frantz Fanon’s writings on colonization provides deeper insights, emphasizing the profound psychological, cultural, and social impacts of colonization. The ongoing challenges faced by the Indigenous communities, as seen through events like the Oka Crisis, are not just about land rights but also about recognition, respect, and genuine self-determination against a backdrop of colonial oppression.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson wrote an intensive, dramatic account of his exploration and trading voyages in the Great Lakes region in the mid 1600s, but is less read and less memorialized than John Smith, Samuel de Champlain, or Robert Cavelier de la Salle. This paper examines the first part of his manuscript narrative, held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and first published in the 1880s. The episode, had it been widey distributed when Radisson first wrote it in London in the 1660s, might be known as a foundational text of the captivity genre, alongside Mary Rowlandson's of 1682. The obscurity of the text can also be attributed to Radisson's awkward English prose (he had been taught to read and write French), and his career as a mercenary moving back and forth between English and French empires.

Women are a minority in the energy sector everywhere in the world-and Canada is no exception. Concerns about climate change and fossil fuel insecurity have ensured significant interest in Canada in the technologies and financing for transitioning to clean energy, but far too little attention is being paid to the employment equity implications of such a transition. Despite growing awareness that renewables like wind, solar, and bioenergy generate a much larger volume of employment than fossil fuels, even organizations committed to advocating for social justice in debates about environmental sustainability in Canada have never specifically mentioned gender inequity. This article identifies opportunities and constraints for women's employment in the renewable and clean energy sector in Canada. Broad findings from this research suggest that women can gain optimal traction from clean energy initiatives only if there are wider socially progressive policies in place. Since women's ability to take advantage of new energyrelated employment options is often constrained by social barriers that limit their access to certain types of education, training, and employment, it is crucial social equity policies go beyond energy sector planning to optimize economic opportunities for women. The conversation about gender equity in Canada's green economy is currently incipient and tokenistic. Raising awareness is therefore urgent and critical.

Oshogbo in Southwestern Nigeria was renowned for the Yoruba, patterned, indigo – dyed cloth; Adire. Traditionally called “ilu Aro”, home of indigo and indigo dyeing, the dyers in the town were patronized from far and near for their dyeing prowess. This art tradition however suffered a lull in the twilight of Nigerian Colonialism in the 1950s, due to lack of willing young apprentices to learn this generational art which traditionally, was passed from mothers to daughters, as the young girls now preferred Western education in an Eurocentric setting. Another challenge was the flooding of Nigerian markets with cheaper, imported textiles, which were not taxed, while the locally produced ones were. Hand in hand with these twin problems is the mindset of many educated Nigerians, who  then saw the Adire merely as rural cloth for poor, illiterate, rural dwellers. This trend however changed in the Post – Independence years of the 1960s, with the concerted efforts of certain individuals, among...

Mais quelle histoire de la Révolution Florent Grouazel et Younn Locard écrivent-ils ? Cette question a été le thème central du premier Café BD Histoire, tenu le jeudi 5 octobre au Vieux Châtelet, à Paris. Elle explique que l'on revienne, ici, à

Canadians are often seen as conflict-averse, forever remarking banally on the weather and apologizing for non-existent transgressions. But this behaviour arguably stems from the centrality of irreconcilable conflicts to the idea and experience of Canada. Canadians' sense of nation is rooted in conflict, and conflict works its way out to the branches of their everyday life. This course invites students to reflect on the conflicts behind the everyday activities and iconic images that underpin Canadian identity. We will examine three everyday experiences-eating, working, and being a student-and three iconic sites of Canadian nationalism: Louis Riel, the Group of 7, and hockey.

Everybody loves a murder mystery. Of all the historical situations researchers encounter nothing has quite the same impact as discovering an innocent person hanged, a guilty person going free. Co-directors of the GREAT UNSOLVED MYSTERIES IN CANADIAN HISTORY project located at the University of Victoria, John Lutz (Department of History, University of Victoria) and Ruth Sandwell (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto), have just received funding from the Canadian Content Online Program (CCOP) of the Canadian Heritage Ministry to move ahead with phase two including two new mysteries “What happened to Aurore Gagnon?” (Peter Gossage, Research Director) and “Nobody Knows His Name: Klatssasin and the Chilcotin Massacre” (John Lutz, Research Director) to complement the pilot “Who Killed William Robinson?”

This is the third of three lectures given on 5,6 and 8 March 2007 as the Sandars lectures for that year at Cambridge University Library. The text is as read at the time, but includes some later revisions and citations to works used within the text. The slides shown are listed in a separate document.

Historians of childhood, in the words of Rodolph Leslie Schnell, “study one of the conspicuous mutes of history” (Schnell, 1982, 294). Yet, children seem mute only to the ears of the historian. Contemporaries hear children gibber, laugh, cry, and sing. In an attempt to hear these historical voices, this chapter analyses the singing practices of children migrated to Australia and Canada under the British child migration schemes between 1869 and 1967. In the Subaltern Studies tradition, research on marginalised actors’ voices tends to understand “voice” metaphorically, focussing on its narrative dimension. Attending to children’s singing draws attention to the sound dimension as well. Sound can express more than words alone, and singing allows for different ways of framing and archiving children’s voices.

In early modern France, foraging practices were associated with a 'primitive' style of food procurement, with times of dearth and poverty. It was believed those practices brought humans back to the level of animals. The French explorers and missionaries who wrote about their culinary experiences in the Northeastern part of the North American continent at the time of contact paid little attention to the non-cultivated plants used by the diverse Indigenous groups they encountered. Imbued by their own food culture, they failed to acknowledge, not only the plants, but also the Indigenous science behind the management of those natural resources. One of the many consequences of the French-Indigenous encounter was the imposition on Indigenous peoples of the settlers' dominative approach to nature and, subsequently, the systematic erosion of their various food systems. The case of the Mi'kmaw chiquebi, (Apios americana) clearly illustrates this process. Once an essential part of Indigenous diets, by the 20th Century, the root had fallen into almost oblivion.

Holly Gibney is on the cover by name but not by face. Since she is in the continuation of Bill Hodges and Finders Keepers, she should be white. But she comes after the Holly Gibney of The Outsider adapted for television, and here she is a Black woman with a very expansive hairdo, with dozens of long braids. But don‘t worry. In this book, Holly Gibney encounters none of the problems a Black woman would encounter as an investigator having to deal with white people without a gun, a uniform, and a badge. The way she gets the confidence of white people, including in this case the serial killers, at least one, does not show any racial bias on their side. And from the second serial killer, she only gets reluctance to speak and even cold hostility and distance keeping. Concerning Barbara Robinson who is a Black woman, this second serial killer, Emily Harris serves her a cup of tea of the worst possible type she can devise.

That’s what I think is the main shortcoming of this book: the lack of graphic descriptions of what these serial killers do to their victims, how they cut them up, probably alive for a while, and concerning the consciousness of the racial bias Black people are the victims of, it is only rather generic and more a social trait of the US society than frustration and resentment on the side, I mean the inner and mental side, of the Black characters, Jerome and Barbara, and a few others like Ellen Craslow, and since we are in the George Floyd period, I am surprised that there is no allusion to him, and only an allusion to a fictitious local and unknown Black victim in a similar situation and yet not very graphic about it.

Impetus for the 1908 establishment of the Free Text-Book Branch in British Columbia arose from three sources: a new emphasis on social reform in the nation as a whole; the vibrant state of the province’s economy; and political pressure instigated by parents, their School Trustee representatives, and organized labour, supported by the Vancouver School Board and City Council. It represented a concerted effort to provide equality of educational opportunity to all students enrolled in the public school system. In spite of the diverse array of challenges encountered, it was a change whose time had come.

Impetus for the 1908 establishment of the Free TextBook Branch in British Columbia arose from three sources: a new emphasis on social reform in the nation as a whole; the vibrant state of the province's economy; and political pressure instigated by parents, their School Trustee representatives, and organized labour, supported by the Vancouver School Board and City Council. It represented a concerted effort to provide equality of educational opportunity to all students enrolled in the public school system. In spite of the diverse array of challenges encountered, it was a change whose time had come. RÉSUMÉ L'établissement, en 1908, d'une succursale de la Free TextBook en Colombie-Britannique tire son origine de trois éléments : l'importance renouvelée d'une réforme sociale sur le plan national; une économie provinciale prospère; et les pressions politiques initiées par les parents d'élèves, les commissaires d'école et les syndicats, pressions soutenues par ...