Owram, Doug

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

534 Histoire sociale / Social HistoryHistoire sociale – Social History, vol. XXXVIII, no 76 (novembre-November 2005)able to count upon a better organized and funded federal government to provide fortheir financial and social needs in an even longer conflict.Galen PerrasUniversity of OttawaNELLES, H. V. — A Little History of Canada. Don Mills: Oxford University Press,2004. Pp. xi, 268.H. V. Nelles approaches this new history of Canada in an intriguing and imaginativemanner. Canada, he says, is a story of transformation. Accordingly, he organizes hiswork around the dynamic forces of change rather than the more traditional dates weassociate with other histories. “My starting and ending points [for each chapter] arenot the major political events ... but rather moments of relative equilibrium when anew order has been consolidated” (p. vii).Following this principle, Nelles divides the book into four periods, running fromthe first human habitation to the present. In each section he pursues the primarydynamics that reshape the land we know as Canada. In the first section he follows thedevelopment of Native communities, their interaction with the first European explor-ers, and the development of a permanent and relatively mature European settlementby 1740. He then looks at the transformation to a British colony by 1840, a British-based but independent Dominion by 1939, and the evolution of an independent, con-tinentally oriented, and multicultural nation in the last part of the twentieth century.In doing so he gives us a potential new framework for interpreting Canadian history.The search for such a framework, as all Canadian historians know, has been elusivesince the fragmentation of historiography in the 1960s. Viv Nelles has thus made animportant and innovative contribution to the way we look at our own history.As the title promises, this is very much a “little history”, with a text only 250 pageslong, so Nelles is forced to make choices on what to include in his reinterpretation.Perhaps the greatest strength of the work is the seamless way in which he has incor-porated the story of Native communities into this framework. Space is also devotedto military events, from Wolfe at Quebec, through the War of 1812, to considerabledetail on World War II. (Ironically, the war that might have had the greatest impact on“transforming” Canada, World War I, receives relatively less attention.) In contrast,enthusiasts of labour history will find relatively little.Such choices are inevitable and are also inevitably bound to raise debate amongprofessional and amateur historians alike. More important, perhaps, are two structuralissues. First, I would argue the book requires one more division. To take Canada from1840 to 1939 as one transformation is, in my opinion, simply too much transforma-tion. In 1840 Canada was still an overwhelmingly agricultural society, made up ofseparate British colonies in the east and vast fur trading territories in the west. FrenchCanada’s place in the nation was in doubt in the wake of rebellion and Lord Durham’sassimilationist views. Responsible government, though near, had not yet beengranted, and the United States was still a distrusted adversary of the mother country.Histoire sociale – Social History, vol. XXXVIII, no 76 (novembre-November 2005)Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 535By the 1880s or 1890s the creation of the transcontinental Dominion, the partial set-tlement of and assertion of control over western Canada, the arrival of railways, andgrowing economic ties to the United States had created quite a different Canada.Indeed, the rather disappointing years from the Riel rebellion to the new prosperity atthe turn of the century begs to be seen as a period of calm, albeit disappointing calm,between two quite dynamic eras.There is another and very broad interpretive issue to be considered. On one sideNelles is writing a primer on Canadian history for a general audience. He says thathe wants his book to give Canadians and travellers “a concise overview” of the basicelements of our history. On the other side, he says explicitly that this is a “personalinterpretation, not a textbook” (p. ix) These comments are somewhat contradictoryand reflect a degree of tension within the book. At times the work is refreshinglyinterpretive and has moments of rhetoric that are both iconoclastic and irreverent.The great hero Wolfe is more or less dismissed. The Winnipeg general strike “setback the organized labour movement in Canada by a generation” (p. 169). Evenechoes of Creightonian distrust of the United States appear from time to time. Atother times it has the characteristics of a text, covering the required facts with mini-mal comment, little anecdote, and fairly routine attention.Most of all, in a personal interpretation of Canadian history, it would have beenrefreshing if Nelles had given us his sense of what Canada is all about. Nelles has acareer of distinguished research and teaching. In these years he, like all of us, hasconfronted the many interpretations, myths, and clichés about our nation. We havebeen called the peaceable kingdom, the great multicultural experiment, the domin-ion of the north, and the conservative reaction to republican excess. We are crato-philes to our neighbour’s cratophobia and we are the helpful fixers, the nation thatwas carpentered rather than forged, and so forth. Comment on these myths and, ulti-mately, on what, aside from change itself, Nelles sees as the essence of Canadawould have taken the author out on a limb, but it would also have added much to thehistory.Broad interpretations invite broad comment. In making mine, however, I do notwant the most fundamental conclusion to be missed. This book is a real success anda valuable contribution to the reworking of Canadian history.Doug OwramUniversity of AlbertaOLIVER, Peter (ed.) — The Conventional Man: The Diaries of Ontario Chief JusticeRobert A. Harrison, 1859–1878. Toronto: University of Toronto Press for theOsgoode Society, 2003. Pp. xii, 644. A social historian running across the title of this volume in a list of new acquisitionswould not likely linger on it more than a second or two, just long enough to decidewhether or not to suppress an incipient yawn. The cover, with its portrait of the portlydiarist in full judicial regalia, quill pen poised to sign some no doubt impenetrable

Nelles, H. V. — A Little History of Canada

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Nelles, H. V. — A Little History of Canada

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)