Burns, Robin B.

English

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

COMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 237 WILLIAM M. BAKER. - Timothy Warren Anglin, 1822-/896, Irish Catholic Canadian. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1977. William Baker's Timothy Warren Anglin is a thoughtful study of a man who was not very significant. Anglin was a Catholic emigrant from Ireland who edited The Freeman in St. John, New Brunswick, from 1849 until 1883. He defen-ded Irish and Catholic interests in his journal and for a short time in the New Brunswick assembly. Anglin also stood out as one of the most articulate and convincing opponents of Confederation. After losing that battle, he represented the largely Acadian Gloucester County in the first of three Dominion parliaments. He was elected Speaker of the House of Commons during Alexander Mackenzie's government and he was defeated in the 1878 general election. Anglin eventually moved on to Toronto and spent the rest of his years seeking, but never obtaining, a permanent government job. As Baker himself concluded, Anglin was a loser. The author argues that a study of Anglin will reveal something about the history of the groups he represendted: the Irish, the Catholics and the people of New Brunswick. Baker accomplishes this to a limited extent. He remains pre-occupied with Anglin's biography. This is a most difficult task, for there are no Anglin papers and there are large gaps in the files of Anglin's newspaper. Baker poses many thought-provoking questions about his subject, but many cannot be answered. For example, was Anglin involved with Young Ireland and the 1848 rebellion, and did this prompt his emigration a year later? Baker writes that little is known about Anglin's twenty-five years in Ireland and he is content to sketch what is known in two pages. The author might have been able to remedy this by using Irish sources. It seems odd that Anglin, whose family owned substantial property in Ireland, would choose to emigrate to St. John. Was Anglin a younger son? This might have been ascertained by consulting parish records in Clonakilty. Other records and sources might have helped to make the accounts of the Anglin family and Clonakilty more detailed. Anglin was at his best when he opposed Confederation, and Baker's account is excellent. Anglin's arguments were well reasoned and based on a realistic appreciation of the true interests of New Brunswick. When one reviews the ex-traordinary good sense of Anglin's case, one wonders what manner of men were Tilley and those who sacrificed that Maritime province. And when one reads Baker on how Tilley and his party turned the 1866 election into a Protestant cru-sade, one is led to agree with Goldwin Smith's observation about the smallness of the pit and the fierceness of the rats. Anglin's subsequent years are rather uninteresting. There was one heroic moment when he stepped out of the Speaker's chair to speak against the tyranny of prohibition and he was active in the struggle for Catholic schools in New Brunswick. In this he appeared to be the lackey of the Catholic bishops. Bishops Rogers and Swenny engineered Anglin's victories in Gloucester and seemed re-sponsible for his defeat after concluding that the Conservatives offered more. Baker argues, convincingly, that Anglin was typically Irish, Catholic, middle class and Victorian, as hard-working as he was long-winded. Anglin's views on the great issues in the latter third of the 19th century seem as predictable as they are dull. By 1880 Anglin was, in Baker' s words, a "has-been". But Anglin had sixteen more years to live and a young family to support. It is difficult not to feel sym-pathy for the man as he vainly appeals to political friends for a job or with his wife who appeals to his political foes. One of Sir John A. Macdonald's earliest refusals stated, "My principle is reward your friends and do not buy your ene-238 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY mies". In Timothy Anglin's case at least, Sir John A. remained faithful to his principles. * * * Robin B. BuRNS, Corcordia University. VERONICA STRONG-BOAG.- The Parliamant of Women : The National Coun-cil of Women of Canada. Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1976. With its many initiatives over the past few years the History Division of the National Museum of Man has been both servicing and prodding the schol-arly community in Canada. The Mercury Series, of which this book is the latest publication, produces research hot off the conference circuit or straight out of the oral defence. The format is cheap and the publication is quick. The benefits are obvious. Research results are into the hands of users almost before the words have ceased or the ink has dried. Even the drawbacks may have some long-term bene-ficial effect. In this case the publication is a Ph. D. thesis and few theses are ready for public consumption the minute they have passed the university tests required of them. Invariably they are too long, too detailed and too tedious; invariably they evoke from a reader both the picayune and the grandiose questions that prob-ably only belong in the office of the supervisor, on the report to the Graduate Dean or at the oral defence. Enough of such publications and graduate schools will start demanding more polished productions from their students ; when that happens the Museum can add another feather to its cap. There were of course pressing reasons for the publication of this thesis. It is in the new field of women's history where, until recently, the dearth of Canadian materials was truly scandalous. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, this is the first doc-toral thesis in the field in Canada, if one excepts Catherine Cleverdon's Woman Suffrage Movement in Canada completed for an American university in the late 1940s. If rumour is correct, it had to sustain a fair fight even to get started. That, in the end, it should be just what one expects of a very good doctoral thesis -scrupulously researched, carefully constructed and contributing greatly to our knowledge of Canada's social history - was probably a surprise to the skeptical. That the author, skilful pioneer that she is, should want to go on immediately to other untouched territory is both understandable and necessary. For even in the time she spent on this thesis, women's history moved quickly away from elite women making public contributions Uust like men) to ordinary women experienc-ing the vicissitudes of everyday life. In social history in general, and in women's history in particular, one has to move quickly. While the author moves swiftly into a broad study of women in the 1920s, we consumers can profit, thanks to the National Museum, from what must be the biggest, most detailed and cheapest book on the market today. The National Council of Women, a federation of women's organizations, had pretensions to being a national voice, a "parliament" for the women of Canada. It emerged at the very time that other organizations -political, social , economic, intellectual - were flexing their pan-Canadian muscles, stretching themselves out from local and regional and sectarian concerns. This book documents the rise, the prominence and the gradual decline of the NCW from its origins in 1893 (with antecedents in numerous clubs and associations in the 1870s and 1880s) to its lethargy of the late 1920s when affiliated groups broke away and unkind 

WILLIAM M. BAKER. — Timothy Warren Anglin, 1822-1896, Irish Catholic Canadian.

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/38874/35279

WILLIAM M. BAKER. — Timothy Warren Anglin, 1822-1896, Irish Catholic Canadian.

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