Posts com a Tag ‘HOFFMAN George (Res)’
Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870 – NOËL (CSS)
NOËL, Françoise. Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. 372p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.2, p., 2005.
In Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870, Franoise Nol portrays middle class family life in the mid-nineteenth century. The book is divided into three parts. Part one is entitled The Couple and deals with courtship and marriage. The second part concerns parents and children and discusses childbirth, childhood and parent-child relationships. The last section discusses kinship ties and community life.
The book contains several generalizations related to Canadian family history in the 1800s. The author contends that most couples married for love. Companionate marriage was the norm, and the role of parents in mate selection was no longer as significant as it had been. As well, Nol shows that relations within families were affectionate. Parents showed an extraordinary concern for their children, which continued even after they married and left home. She also illustrates that much of family life took place beyond the door of the home. Families were a part of a large social network which included kin, friends and neighbours. Sociability was an essential part of family life.
Nol’s account has many strengths. The research, as indicated by the endnotes and bibliography, is impressive. The author shows a broad knowledge of her subject. She links her findings to scholarship in the United States and Britain. She is always aware of the larger picture. Parallels are drawn between families in the Canadas and what American historians of the period refer to as the rise of the Republican Family. When discussing child rearing, she refers to the Enlightenment and the influence which thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau were having on the view that children could be nurtured. Such analysis illustrates the significance of family history as a field of study. Family history is not merely human interest stories from the past. Nor is it titillating tidbits related to love, courtship and marriage. Rather, as Franoise Nol shows, it is an important part of social history which helps us to better understand the overall nature of past societies.
I would suggest that readers begin this book by studying the introduction. Here the author discusses the sources upon which her work is based. The book’s subtitle is A View from Diaries and Family Correspondence. In the introduction Nol identifies the diarists and letter writers. We are told when and where they lived and something about the circumstances of their lives. These people appear and re-appear in the pages which follow. It is important to consider who these correspondents are when assessing the conclusions Nol reaches regarding nineteenth century Canadian families.
The diaries and letters which are used do raise some concerns. The sample is not representative of all segments of society. Nol acknowledges this limitation but suggests that the sources accurately reflect the middle class, which in itself, of course, is a valuable historical contribution. However, some questions can be asked about some of the diarists and correspondents, particularly those who are used to illustrate that family values among francophones and anglophones and people of different religious backgrounds were similar.
There is a general contention in the book that the attitudes and principles which guided family life were similar regardless of religion, language and ethnicity. Several diaries and numerous letters of English Canadians are referred to but so are those of French Canadians like Amde Papineau and Ludger and Reine Duvernay. Considerable emphasis is also placed on the journal of Abraham Joseph, a merchant and member of a well-known Jewish family in Lower Canada. The conclusion that follows is that class, not other factors, was most influential in shaping family life in the Canadas during the nineteenth century. Nol does not ignore religious and cultural differences but in the end suggests that religion was not the deciding influence. Family life of Protestants, Catholics and Jews was similar.
But can Amde Papineau and his extended family be used to prove such a point? Papineau was the son of patriote leader Louis Joseph Papineau. After the Rebellion of 1837 he lived in exile with his family in the United States. There he met and eventually married Mary Westcott, the daughter of a merchant from Saratoga, New York. Amde kept a diary rich in detail about his life before and after his marriage. After moving to Montreal following her marriage, Mary exchanged letters with her father in New York for the rest of her life. Nol uses both the diary and letters extensively throughout the book.
Amde was Catholic, and Mary was Protestant. In 1846 they were married in Saratoga by a Presbyterian minister in a fifteen minute ceremony in the Westcott home. After their move to Montreal, Mary usually attended her own church but sometimes accompanied her husband to a Catholic mass at Notre-Dame. And occasionally Amde went with his wife to a Protestant service. A daughter was baptized in the Presbyterian church and a son in the Catholic church. Clearly this was an unusually liberal attitude toward religion and inter-faith marriage. Or perhaps it was evidence of religious indifference. This unconventional family has an important place in Nol’s portrait of family life. One can well ask if Amde Papineau and Mary Westcott can be used to illustrate French Canadian Catholic families, particularly in light of the conservative forces which were growing in the Quebec church after 1850.
Despite this reservation Family Life and Sociability is a major contribution to nineteenth century Canadian social history. It will not be easily read by high school students or by students in introductory university courses. However, teachers and professors certainly can use it to introduce their students to family history as a branch of historical studies. The fascinating information which the book contains about love, birth, life and death is and always will be of interest to everyone.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
[IF]Here: A Biography of the New American Continent – DePALMA (CSS)
DePALMA, Anthony. Here: A Biography of the New American Continent. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001. 375p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.2, p., 2004.
In this much-acclaimed book, Anthony DePalma argues that the traditional continental divisions in North America are fading. Canada and Mexico, though still distinctive, are becoming more American and the United States is beginning to pay more attention to its northern and southern neighbours. By the end of the 20th century North America was more than a geographic expression; it was becoming an economic, cultural and even political entity.
DePalma reported from both ends of the continent in the 1990s. He was the New York Times foreign correspondent in Mexico City from 1993 to 1996 and in Ottawa from 1996 to 1999. This gave him an unusually good vantage point during an interesting decade. In 1994, from Mexico, he reported on the peso crisis and the assassination of Luis Donaldo Cololosio, who many expected to become the next Mexican president. He travelled deep into the forests of Chiapas and heard Subcomandante Marcos address his Zapatista followers. In Canada he reported on the Nisga’a Treaty, visited the Inuit of Igloolik in the Arctic, and commented on the aftermath of the sovereignty referendum in Quebec. Here: A Biography of the New American Continent is based on such experiences. It is impressively reported and eloquently written. DePalma has an acute reporter’s eye.
The book is the story of the personal re-education (DePalma uses this term in the preface, p. xiii) of a journalist who understood little about Mexico and Canada before he lived there. He reports to Americans on their neighbours and informs them that the three countries can no longer exist as islands. In the new global age they have no choice in this matter; they are stuck with each other. DePalma believes that the United States, because of its wealth, power and past errors, has a special obligation as these new realities take shape. The book is an appeal for Americans to look southward and northward. Canada and Mexico are vital to the future of the continent. They have great potential and are interesting, culturally diverse societies. And surely, DePalma argues, diversity is a virtue in the interdependent world of the 21st century. Here is a book more for Americans than for Canadians and Mexicans. The author hopes that by reading it the American public will experience some of the re-education which he did.
The title of the book is interesting. DePalma attempts to write the biography of a place, the new America, which he believes emerged in the 1990s. But, of course, biography cannot be written without looking back at where the subject came from. Thus the author reflects extensively on the histories of Mexico and Canada in light of the critical changes on the continent which he witnessed. However, the book should not be read primarily to understand Canadian history. There are over generalizations, misleading impressions and errors. Are the thousands of loyalists (p. 78) who settled in Canada at the time of the American Revolution the major explanation for Canadian anti-Americanism over the next two centuries? Did Eastern Europeans who settled in the Canadian west bring socialist ideals with them (p. 78), which contributed to the development of cooperatives on the prairies and a national publicly funded medical system? This would be news to the vast majority of Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians and Mennonites who came from Russia and Austria in search of land. Has Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights made Canada more American? Is use of the charter to enhance Native treaty claims and gay rights evidence of creeping Americanism (p. 203)? Certainly many Canadians, and likely most Americans, would question that assumption. Can the massive Progressive Conservative defeat in 1993 and Brian Mulroney’s personal unpopularity be explained by a backlash against the Free Trade agreement (p. 50)? This ignores Meech Lake and the rise of the Reform party in the west, a party that supported free trade. And surely DePalma’s sympathetic treatment of Andy McMechan’s hatred for the Canadian Wheat Board (pp. 204-208) sheds little light on the differences between Canadians and Americans and even less on the history of prairie agriculture.
January 1, 1994, the date NAFTA went into effect, is central to the thesis of the book. It marked the birth of the new America. DePalma acknowledges that there was considerable opposition in all three countries. Some people in the short run were hurt. Others were more marginalized than ever. Change never occurs without a social cost. But, in the end, the author argues, the proponents of NAFTA were right, and the agreement created a new and better continent. He concludes that in the mid-90s the United States, Mexico and Canada, though still different and despite continuing tensions, began to focus on what they had in common and not to accentuate their differences. In the process Mexico became more democratic, less corrupt and more economically stable; Canada was less nationalistic, less obsessed with its identity; and the United States was less insular, more outward looking, more international. DePalma sees the outcomes of the three almost concurrent national elections in 2000 as a manifestation of that continental conversion (p. 343) that had begun earlier in the decade. The winners, George W. Bush, Vincente Fox and Jean Chrtien strongly supported NAFTA and greater continental cooperation.
DePalma’s views are optimistic, even idealistic. He approvingly refers to Vclev Havel’s speech to the Canadian parliament in 1999. The poet-president of the Czech Republic claimed that the nation state was passing away and that he foresaw a world in which traditional states would cede power to international agencies. To Anthony DePalma the new America is a part of that future. Blurring national differences will usher in a new and better world.
Possibly this is a prophetic book, but surely it is too soon to tell. In fact, the events of the past three years lead one to question its conclusions more than support them. Large numbers of Mexicans continue to live in desperate poverty. Opposition to globalization is growing. The Balkans and Middle East appear to disprove Vclav Havel’s vision of declining nationalism. The Iraq War was a disastrous setback to international cooperation. And certainly the United States, Mexico and Canada were not a triumvirate against Saddam Hussein! George W. Bush, the first president during the new North American age, is far less popular among Canadians than Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy who were in office when Canada, according to DePalma, spent much of its energy opposing continental integration and distinguishing itself from the United States.
Obviously this book is thought provoking and controversial. The issues it raises should be discussed in all Canadian classrooms.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
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Sharing the Good Times: A History of Prairie Women’s Joys and Pleasures – HOLT (CSS)
HOLT, Faye Reineberg. Sharing the Good Times: A History of Prairie Women’s Joys and Pleasures. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd. 2000. 232p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.
Sharing the Good Times is an interesting and useful contribution to prairie history for three reasons. Material from primary sources is presented on a number of topics related to the social history of prairie women. The photographs in the book are excellent. Sharing the Good Times is, in part, a photo history and, as the author notes in the introduction, photos do tell stories and catch a moment of truth. There is also an extensive list of secondary and archival sources at the end of the book which includes many references not found in standard bibliographical guides. This bibliography will be of considerable value to students of both western Canadian and women’s history.
The book contains ten chapters, and a particular theme is developed in each. In some instances the author identifies an individual and shows how aspects of her life relate to the theme. In other cases voices from the past address the theme directly through lengthy excerpts from memoirs, diaries, letters or interviews. For example, in the chapter entitled What About the Outer?, which concerns dress, fashion and hairstyle, readers are introduced to Dorothy Clark, who moved to Alberta in 1924 from Minneapolis where she had been trained in beauty culture. Clark became a hairdresser in Lethbridge and was soon using a marcelling iron for the short hair and waves which were popular hairstyles in the 1920s and 1930s. The author then refers to The Perfect Woman, a book which circulated in the Canadian west in the early 1900s. Several paragraphs recommending home remedies to women to help them attain what was considered the ideal of physical beauty at the time are quoted directly.
Most of Sharing the Good Times follows a similar pattern. Love Lights Shining, Women’s Culture, Women’s Lives and Sisterhood are examples of other chapter titles. Some of the events and the characters are well known, such as Nellie McClung, Ethel Catherwood, the Edmonton Grads and the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League; but most are ordinary people living normal lives at various times during western Canada’s past. The result is a considerable body of entertaining, interesting and historically significant information which can be used to think perceptively about western Canada’s cultural history.
There is, however, at least one problem with the book, and it relates to its central purpose. Faye Reineberg Holt argues in the introduction that too often in the past histories of prairie women concentrated on the difficulties of their lives, which she refers to as the negative part of life. Holt contends that the happy side also deserves to be told and that this book, as its title suggests, was written with that purpose in mind. From the perspective of the historian this is a curious and even dubious view. It raises a number of questions. Why did previous writers emphasize the hardships and sacrifices of women? Can the negative and positive sides of life be separated? Is it not possible to argue that many of the recollections of the women in Sharing the Good Times can be used to show the difficulties of life as easily as its joys? There are, for example, references to life on the frontier, pioneer experiences, depression and war in the book.
It seems to this reviewer that the author should simply have let the women tell their stories. These interesting accounts stand on their own; let the reader judge whether they are joyful or not. In the end what the women have to say is more complicated and difficult to interpret than the author suggests by her approach. When it was said that mothers of drought-stricken families in the prairie dust bowl of the 1930s maintained their senses of humour and enjoyed life, a wise person replied: yes, but sometimes it was necessary to laugh to keep from crying.
Sharing the Good Times could be used by high school teachers in History and Social Studies courses. It is written at a level which makes it readable for high school students. The nature of its subjects love, dating, honeymoons, fashions, sports undoubtedly interest teenagers. I recommend that teachers select women from these pages and use their words to bring the past alive and make it interesting for young students. Great historical events remain important, and many are referred to in this book, including the fur trade, the Riel Rebellions, the settlement of the west, the two world wars, the 1920s and the Great Depression. There is material in Sharing the Good Times which shows how the lives of ordinary prairie women were a part of those times. For many students that realization can give history personal meaning.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
[IF]Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada: The Petworth Project, 1832-1837 – CAMERON; MAUDE (CSS)
CAMERON, Wendy; MAUDE, Mary McDougall. Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada: The Petworth Project, 1832-1837. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. 354p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.1, 2002.
Historical writing reflects the fact that Canada is a nation of immigrants. Most accounts, however, concern the twentieth century and are not about the English. This book about the Petworth Project is an exception and, although narrow in scope, greatly adds to our understanding of nineteenth century immigration to Canada.
Between 1832 and 1837, eighteen hundred men, women and children travelled from Portsmouth, England to Upper Canada under the auspices of the Petworth Emigration Committee. They came mainly from parishes around Petworth in West Sussex in southeastern England and settled in what is today south-central and western Ontario. This book, filled with personal accounts, tells the story in marvellous detail: its English setting, the voyages across the Atlantic and settlement in Toronto, Hamilton, London and their vicinities.
The Petworth immigrants were primarily poor agricultural labourers and their families who received both private and public assistance to migrate. The Earl of Egremont (who owned much of the land around Petworth), the local parishes, the British government, and colonial officials in Upper Canada were all involved. The central character in the story was Thomas Sockett, rector of Petworth, personal chaplain to Egremont and founder of the Petworth Emigration Committee. He initiated the emigrations, chartered the ships, recruited prospective immigrants and, through correspondence, carefully observed their adjustment to life in Canada. Sockett deserves much of the credit for the success of the Petworth migrations.
The emigrations occurred during the time of the Swing Uprisings in southern England. Threatening letters were circulated by a mythical Captain Swing, and during the winter of 1830-1831 there were a series of local protests involving strikes, arson, machine breaking and mass demonstrations by unemployed agricultural labourers. Those in authority grew increasingly alarmed. Egremont, Sockett, and Sir John Colborne (Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada) were Tory paternalists who supported government assisted emigration and settlement for humanitarian reasons because they believed it would solve the problem of rural social unrest by removing the unemployed poor from the local English parishes and giving them a new start in Canada. Thus, it is interesting to see that there was a link between the famous Captain Swing and some pioneers on the frontier of Upper Canada.
During the 1830s, however, a new attitude toward the poor in the countryside was emerging within the British government and, in the aftermath of the Swing disturbances, a new Poor Law was introduced. It was based on free market principles and on the belief that government assistance only perpetuated poverty by encouraging dependency on public relief. It rejected the rationale behind the Petworth emigrations. Soon this new doctrine of laissez-faire liberalism was in place in England and among government officials in Upper Canada. In 1836 Sir Francis Bond Head (who is best remembered for precipitating the uprising led by William Lyon MacKenzie) arrived in Upper Canada and replaced Colborne as Lieutenant-Governor. Bond Head was fresh from his success of efficiently introducing the new Poor Law in England’s Kent county and was opposed, in principle, to government assistance to immigrants on either side of the Atlantic. The new political ideas which were current in England and in Upper Canada help to explain why the Petworth Project did not continue and why there was no large scale government assisted emigration and settlement in the years that followed. Thomas Sockett and those of similar views opposed the poor law reforms but their paternalistic humanitarianism was out of favour in mid-nineteenth century England.
Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada is a significant contribution to the study of nineteenth century Canada and will mainly be read by historians and used in university level studies. However, immigration topics are a part of most high school Canadian Studies courses, and the Petworth Project can be used by teachers to illustrate how immigrants are affected by events in both their country of origin and their new homeland. Too often we fail to emphasize that events in Canada do not occur in isolation from the rest of the world. Wendy Cameron and Mary McDougall Maude make clear that developments in England during the 1830s, particularly those in rural parishes, were directly connected to the lives of the people of Toronto, Hamilton and the Canadian frontier.
I strongly recommend this book to all serious students of nineteenth century Canadian history. It is a remarkable achievement based on an immense amount of research, much of which, due to space limitations, has not been described in this review.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
[IF]Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community – SMITH-HEFNER (CSS)
SMITH-HEFNER, Nancy J. Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999. 237p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.35, n.1, 2000.
In Khmer American Nancy Smith-Hefner examines the movement of Cambodians, most of whom were refugees, into the United States. She provides a moving portrait of their trials and tribulations as they attempted to adjust and make their way in a new society. She shows that they faced many of the same challenges that earlier immigrant groups, such as the Irish, Germans, Poles, Italians and others, had faced. At the same time, however, because of their cultural background and the circumstances of their arrival, there are also important differences.
Smith-Hefner’s account is not a history of Cambodian Americans. Rather it is an anthropological study of the Khmer (because the overwhelming majority of Cambodians are ethnic Khmer, the terms Khmer and Cambodian are both used in the book in reference to the language and the people of Cambodia) refugees and their families who live in metropolitan Boston and some neighbouring cities of eastern Massachusetts. The story is told largely from the perspective of the parental generation of Khmer refugees.
Since 1979 approximately 152,000 Cambodians have settled in the United States. Today the Khmer population of Boston and surrounding area is about 25,000. The city of Lowell, north of Boston, is said to have the second largest Khmer population in the United States after Long Beach, California. Most of the refugees, upon whom Smith-Hefner’s study is based, fled the horror of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The experiences under Pol Pot’s murderous regime exacted a high toll on the Khmer. Many of Cambodian refugees in the Boston area spoke openly when interviewed of having personally witnessed torture, rape and killings.
Khmer American includes a discussion of the basic beliefs and practices of Buddhism which, the author states, is essential for understanding Khmer culture. Khmer child rearing practices are described with particular emphasis on the moral education of children. Smith-Hefner shows that these beliefs relate directly to the cultural discontinuities that Khmer children face in American schools. Cultural practices in regard to sexuality and marriage are also explained, including a fascinating account of a Khmer wedding. Through examining these various social processes, it is shown how acculturation occurred and how a reconstructed Khmer identity emerged in the United States during the 1990s.
Khmer American is a well-documented study. It is based on an impressive amount of published and unpublished material which is referred to in the notes and references at the end of the book. As well, Smith-Hefner spoke with members of the Khmer community in the Boston region. She allows people to speak for themselves by quoting at some length from these interviews. Many of the excerpts are moving and filled with human interest. The author’s knowledge of the Khmer language adds greatly to her work. There are frequent references to the Khmer language and how certain key words can best be translated into English. The book shows an understanding of both traditional Khmer culture and contemporary American society. As a result the study contributes substantially to an overall interpretation of the immigrant experience in twentieth century America.
Both because of the subject and the academic level, it is unlikely that Khmer American will be widely read by Canadian high school students. However, they would find parts of it interesting and understandable. The book refers to inter-generation conflict between parents and their children over such matters as respect for elders, religion, dating and arranged marriages — subjects on which Canadian teenagers no doubt would express strong opinions.
Certainly history and social studies teachers could usefully apply the book to their classes. It provides an excellent description of Buddhism and Khmer culture. It contains a case study of a relatively unassimilated ethnic group within a multicultural society. This could be compared with earlier immigrant groups or with those of different cultural backgrounds. Another approach would be to compare the American experience with the Canadian. How many Cambodians came to Canada in the 1970s and 1980s, and how has Khmer culture fared in Canada? Do the two experiences prove or disprove the theory of an American ‘melting pot’ and a Canadian ‘mosaic’? In conclusion, I strongly recommend Khmer American. It is a serious academic study of an important and interesting subject.
George Hoffman – Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
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