In the decades following the Second World War, a revolutionary change took place in the Canadian national identity. The English-Canadian majority entered this period identifying themselves as British and emerged from it with a new, independent sense of themselves as purely Canadian. Assured of their unique place in the world, Canadians can now reflect on the legacies and lessons of their British colonial past.
Canada and the British World surveys Canada's national history through a British lens. In a series of essays focusing on the social, cultural, and intellectual aspects of Canadian identity over more than a century, the complex and evolving relationship between Canada and the larger British World is revealed. Examining the transition from the strong belief of nineteenth-century Canadians in the British character of their country to the realities of modern multicultural Canada, this book eschews nostalgia in its endeavour to understand the dynamic and complicated society in which Canadians did and do live.
Candid and ambitious, Canada and the British World is recommended reading for historians and scholars of colonialism and nationalism, as well as anyone interested in what it really means to be Canadian.
Introduction / Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis
1. "Information Wanted": Women Emigrants in a Transatlantic World / Elizabeth Jane Errington
2. Self-Reflection in the Consolidation of Scottish Identity: A Case Study in Family Correspondence, 1805-50 / Sarah Katherine Gibson
3. Entering the Christian World: Indigenous Missionaries in Rupert's Land / A.A. den Otter
4. Law and British Culture in the Creation of British North America / David Murray
5. New Brunswick Women Travellers and the British Connection, 1845-1905 / Gail G. Campbell
6. "Our Glorious Anglo-Saxon Race Shall Ever Fill Earth's Highest Place": The Anglo-Saxon and the Construction of Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Canada / Paula Hastings
7. Canada's Boys - An Imperial or National Asset? Response to Baden-Powell's Boy Scout Movement in Pre-War Canada / Patricia Dirks
8. Part of the British Empire Too: French Canada and Colonization Propaganda / Serge Courville
9. Competing Visions: Canada, Britain, and the Writing of the First World War / Wesley C. Gustavson
10. Claiming Cavell: Britishness and Memoralization / Katie Pickles
11. Scrutinizing the "Submerged Tenth": Salvation Army Immigrants and their Reception in Canada / Myra Rutherdale
12. Enigmas in Hebridean Emigration: Crofter Colonists in Western Canada / Marjory Harper
13. Nation-Building in Saskatchewan: Teachers from the British Isles in Saskatchewan Rural Schools in the 1920s / Marilyn Barber
14. Brushes, Budgets and Butter: Canadian Culture and Identity at the British Empire Exhibition, 1924-25 / Christopher Tait
15. Instructor to Empire: Canada and the Rhodes Scholarships, 1902-39 / David E. Torrance
16. The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission in the 1930s: How Canada's First Public Broadcaster Negotiated "Britishness" / Mary Vipond
17. Canadian Labour Politics and the British Model, 1920-50 / James Naylor
18. Historical Perspective on Britain: The Ideas of Canadian Historians Frank H. Underhill and Arthur R.M. Lower / R. Douglas Francis
19. The Monarchy, the Mounties, and Ye Olde English Fayre: Identity at All Saints' Anglican, Edmonton (1875-1990s) / Frances Swyripa
Contributors
Index
