International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue Internationale D'études Canadiennes

Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction

Editor-in-Chief Rédacteur en chef

Robert S. Schwartzwald, University of Massachusetts Amherst, U.S.A.

Associate Editors Rédacteurs adjoints

Caroline Andrew, Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa, Canada Claude Couture, Faculté St-Jean, Université de l’Alberta, Canada Coral Ann Howells, University of Reading, United Kingdom

Managing Editor Secrétaire de rédaction

Guy Leclair, ICCS/CIEC, Ottawa, Canada

Editorial Assistant Adjointe à la rédaction

Laura Hale, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Advisory Board / Comité consultatif

Maria Cristina Rosas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico Giovanni Dotoli, Université de Bari, Italie Saturo Osanai, Chuo University, Japan Jacques Leclaire, Université de Rouen, France Bernd Dietz, Cordoba University, Spain Vadim Koleneko, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia Michael Behiels, University of Ottawa, Canada Maria Bernadette Veloso Porto, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brésil Wolfgang Kloos, Universität Trier, Germany Myungsoon Shin, Yonsei University, Korea Wilfredo Angulo Baudin, Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Liberator, Venezuela Coomi Vevaina, University of Bombay, India Helen O’Neill, University College Dublin, Ireland Jane Moss, Romance Languages, Colby College, U.S. Jiaheng Song, Université de Shantong, Chine Malcolm Alexander, Griffith University, Australia Ines Molinaro, University of Cambridge, U.K. Therese Malachy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israël Erling Lindström, Uppsala University, Sweden Leen d’Haenens, University of Nijmegen, Les Pays-Bas The International Journal of Canadian Paraissant deux fois l’an, la Revue Studies (IJCS) is published twice a year internationale d’études canadiennes by the International Council for (RIÉC) est publiée par le Conseil Canadian Studies. Multidisciplinary in international d’études canadiennes. scope, the IJCS is intended for people Revue multidisciplinaire, elle rejoint les around the world who are interested in the lecteurs de divers pays intéressés à l’étude study of Canada. The IJCS publishes du Canada. La RIÉC publie des numéros thematic issues containing articles (15-25 thématiques composés d’articles (15-25 pages double-spaced), research notes pages, double interligne), de notes de (10-15 pages double-spaced) and review recherche (10-15 pages, double interligne) et essays. It favours analyses that have a d’essais critiques, et privilégie les études broad perspective and essays that will aux perspectives larges et les essais de interestareadershipfromawidevarietyof synthèse aptes à intéresser un vaste éventail disciplines. Articles must deal with de lecteurs. Les textes doivent porter sur le Canada, not excluding comparisons Canada ou sur une comparaison entre le between Canada and other countries. The Canada et d’autres pays. La RIÉC est une IJCS is a bilingual journal. Authors may revue bilingue. Les auteurs peuvent submit articles in either English or French. rédiger leurs textes en français ou en Individuals interested in contributing to the anglais. Toute personne intéressée à IJCS should forward their papers to the collaborer à la RIÉC doit faire parvenir IJCSSecretariat,alongwithaone-hundred son texte accompagné d’un résumé de word abstract. Beyond papers dealing cent (100) mots maximum au secrétariat directly with the themes of forthcoming de la RIÉC. En plus d’examiner les textes issues, the IJCS will also examine papers les plus pertinents aux thèmes des numéros à not related to these themes for possible paraître, la RIÉC examinera également les inclusion in its regular Open Topic section. articles non thématiques pour sa rubrique All submissions are peer-reviewed; the Hors-thème. Tous les textes sont évalués par final decision regarding publication is des pairs. Le Comité de rédaction prendra la made by the Editorial Board. The content décision finale quant à la publication. Les of articles, research notes and review auteurs sont responsables du contenu de essays is the sole responsibility of the leurs articles, notes de recherche ou essais. author. Send articles to the International Veuillez adresser toute correspondance à la Journal of Canadian Studies, 75 Albert Revue internationale d’études canadiennes, Street, 908, Ottawa, CANADA K1P 5E7. 75, rue Albert, 908, Ottawa, CANADA For subscription information, please see K1P 5E7. the last page of this issue. Des renseignements sur l’abonnement se The IJCS is indexed and/or abstracted in trouvent à la fin du présent numéro. America: History and Life; Canadian Les articles de la RIÉC sont répertoriés Periodical Index; Historical Abstracts; et/ou résumés dans America: History and International Political Science Abstracts; Life;CanadianPeriodicalIndex;Historical and Point de repère. Abstracts; International Political Science ISSN 1180-3991 ISBN 1-896450-23-7 Abstracts et Point de repère. © All rights reserved. No part of this ISSN 1180-3991 ISBN 1-896450-23-7 publication may be reproduced without © Tous droits réservés. Aucune repro- the permission of the IJCS. duction n’est permise sans l’autorisation The IJCS gratefully acknowledges a grant de la RIÉC. from the Social Sciences and Humanities La RIÉC est redevable au Conseil de Research Council of Canada. recherches en sciences humaines du Canada qui lui accorde une subvention.

Cover photo: Public domain. Photo de la couverture : Domaine public. International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

25, Spring / Printemps 2002 Post-Canada

Table of Contents / Table des matières

Robert Schwartzwald Introduction / Présentation ...... 5 Cynthia Sugars National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism ...... 15 David Jefferess The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others ...... 43 Ian Angus Cultural Plurality and Democracy...... 69 Marijke Huitema, Brian S. Osborne and Michael Ripmeester Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario ...... 87 Patrick J. Smith Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion? ...... 113 Julie Rak Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black...... 149

Off-topic Article / Article hors-thème João Fábio Bertonha Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective...... 169

Review Essay / Essai critique Guy Beauregard Diaspora Studies: Scattered Speculations ...... 197

Authors / Auteurs ...... 205

Canadian Studies Journals Around the World Revues d’études canadiennes dans le monde ...... 207

4 Introduction Présentation

Post-Canada. When the Editors Post-Canada. Lorsque les rédacteurs chose this theme for a volume of ont choisi ce thème pour un volume the International Journal of de la Revue internationale d’études Canadian Studies, we foresaw any canadiennes, nous pouvions déjà number of “posts” that might be prévoir qu’un certain nombre de engaged: for us, post was not so « post » seraient abordés : l’adverbe much a modifier of “Canada,” but latin post ne devait pas tant servir à potentially a series of substantives modifier le « Canada » lui-même modified by Canada as in, “What qu’à présenter une série de might a Canadian theorization of substantifs modifiés par le Canada, post-modernism, or post- comme dans la question suivante : historicism, or queer studies–as a « De quoi pourrait avoir l’air post approach to questions of l’élaboration d’une théorie sexuality and gender–look like?” canadienne du postmodernisme — Of course, we always expected that ou du posthistoricisme — ou des post-colonialism would be present études « queer » à titre d’approche in such a repertory, but we are both post des questions de sexualité et de surprised and intrigued by the rapport des sexes? » Bien sûr, nous extent to which it is clearly the nous étions toujours attendu à ce que focus of so many of the articles. In le postcolonialisme figure à un tel our post dossier, Canada is not so répertoire, mais nous avons été à la much the exemplary entity which fois surpris et intrigué par la mesure represents itself to the world dans laquelle il se situe au cœur through such theorizations, as it is même d’un si grand nombre des itself subjected to destabilizing articles qui nous ont été soumis. analyses: Here is Canada in Dans notre dossier post, le Canada struggle with its colonial-settler n’est pas tellement l’entité past; faced with contemporary exemplaire qui se représente au internal challenges for recognition monde à travers l’élaboration de by its subaltern, internal Others; telles théories qu’il n’est lui-même and precariously situated in its l’objet d’analyses déstabilisantes. relations of interdependence and Ici, le Canada est en lutte avec son hegemony in a newly configured passé colonial et colonisateur, global conjuncture. confronté à des défis internes contemporains et à son désir de In our opening article, “National reconnaissance par ses Autres Posts: Theorizing Canadian subalternes et internes, et installé Postcolonialism,” Cynthia Sugars dans une situation précaire dans ses points out how “for Canadian relations d’interdépendance et Studies scholars, what is perhaps d’hégémonie à l’intérieur d’une most alluring about the study of conjoncture mondiale qui vient Canada is that it affords one the d’assumer une figure nouvelle. privilege of witnessing a national identity in the making.” Yet even if Dans le premier article, Cynthia this allure springs from, or gives Sugars montre comment « pour les

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 25, Spring / Printemps 2002 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes rise to, nationalist feeling, today chercheurs en études canadiennes, ce such feeling is belated insofar as it que l’étude du Canada présente must already be postcolonial. In peut-être de plus séduisant, c’est this necessary imbrication of the qu’elle nous donne le privilège nationalist with the postcolonial, d’assister à la création même d’une Canada’s settler-invader history identité nationale ». Et pourtant, interpellates all Canadians, who même si cette attirance découle d’un respond to it diversely and in sentiment nationaliste, ou y donne proportion to the ways in which the lieu, à l’heure actuelle le sentiment persistence of colonialist forms of en question est tard venu dans la oppression, however variegated, mesure où il doit déjà être touch their lives. Postcolonial postcolonial. Dans cette imbrication theory is belated to the extent that it nécessaire du nationaliste et du sets out to disrupt homogenizing postcolonial, l’histoire narratives of Canada, and it also d’envahisseurs et colonisateurs du suggests alternatives to forms of Canada interpelle tous les governance that have drawn Canadiens, qui y répondent de toutes authority from such narratives. sortes de façons et proportionnel- lement aux diverses manières dont la While Sugars insists that persistance des formes colonialistes postcolonial theory offers a d’oppression, si variées soient-elles, productive way for challenging ont une incidence sur leurs vies. La Canada’s management and théorie postcoloniale est tard venue marginalization of internal Others, dans la mesure où elle entreprend de David Jefferess argues that the disloquer les récits homogénéisants internal focus of postcolonial du Canada et aussi parce qu’elle critique in Canada has a blind spot. suggère des solutions de rechange In his study of the press coverage aux formes de gouvernement qui ont of the trial and flogging of Bariya traditionnellement tiré leur autorité Ibrahim Magazu, a young Nigerian de tels récits. woman convicted of engaging in pre-marital sex, Jefferess traces Tandis que Sugars insiste pour dire how a much more classically- que la théorie postcoloniale nous articulated rhetoric of colonialism offre un moyen productif de remettre was deployed to reaffirm for en question la gestion et la Canadians their identity as white, marginalisation des Autres internes Christian, and Anglo. En route, he par le Canada, David Jefferess shows both how the virtuous soutient pour sa part que le foyer compassion of “ordinary” interne de la critique postcoloniale Canadians is heightened in the au Canada comprend un angle mort. coverage by its reduction of Dans son étude de la couverture Magazu to a passive victim when médiatique du procès et de la issues of sexual autonomy were flagellation de Bariya Ibrahim clearly at stake, and how the Magazu, une jeune femme nigériane coverage places Muslims and reconnue coupable de relations Islam outside the “traditional” sexuelles prénuptiales, Jefferess Canadian values that have rallied montre comment, à cette occasion, these “ordinary” Canadians. on a déployé une rhétorique du

6 Introduction Présentation

Finally, the coverage is contrasted colonialisme articulée de façon plus with that of documented human classique et ce afin de réaffirmer rights abuses by the Talisman l’identité blanche, chrétienne et corporation of Canada in Sudan. « anglo » des Canadiens. Ce faisant, These are presented as not rousing il montre à la fois comment la the indignation of “Canadians,” but compassion vertueuse des Canadiens merely of sporadic protesters. In a « ordinaires » est renforcée, dans la country currently without a “usable couverture médiatique de past”–be it in the form of a national l’événement, par sa réduction de narrative that can garner some Magazu au statut d’une victime broad consensus, or as a common passive, et ce même si des questions set of lieux de mémoire–defining d’autonomie sexuelle étaient oneself against external Others may clairement en jeu. Il montre aussi be a form of compensation that comment la couverture médiatique complicitously underwrites an situe les musulmans et l’Islam en unreconstructed national identity. dehors des valeurs canadiennes « traditionnelles » qui ont rallié ces Ian Angus’s essay takes as its point Canadiens « ordinaires ». Enfin, il of departure Canadian oppose la couverture de l’affaire multiculturalism, arguably the Magazu avec celle des atteintes bien development for which Canada is documentées aux droits de la best known and celebrated among personne dont la société canadienne those who take an interest in the Talisman s’est rendue coupable au country abroad. Angus asks us to Soudan. De la façon dont on nous les look more closely at the implicit présente dans les médias, ces abus ne claims of many proponents of susciteraient pas l’indignation des Canadian multiculturalism, for « Canadiens », mais simplement whom it is an already achieved l’opposition de protestataires isolés. ideal. Such proponents, however Dans un pays actuellement dépourvu good their intentions, skirt essential d’un « passé utilisable » — que questions about multiculturalism’s celui-ci prenne la forme d’un récit pertinence for relations among the national propre à mobiliser un vaste various nations of the Canadian consensus ou encore d’un ensemble “nations-state,” and the precise commun de lieux de mémoire —la ways in which it has defined définition de soi-même contre les relations among a range of Autres externes peut constituer une ethnicized and racialized groups in forme de compensation qui, de façon Canadian society. (In my view, the complice, souscrit à une identité absence of any articles in French, nationale non reconstruite. or that specifically address Quebec in this thematic issue, is entirely L’article d’Ian Angus prend comme symptomatic of the situation Angus point de départ le multiculturalisme has identified.) To do so, canadien, soit ce qui sans nul doute multiculturalism would have to constitue le développement pour lequel le Canada est le plus connu et begin by ethnicizing “ordinary” pour lequel il reçoit le plus d’éloges Canadians and then take on a des personnes qui s’intéressent à lui postcolonial dimension. Explaining à l’étranger. Angus nous invite à

7 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

his proposal by way of speech act regarder de plus près les prétentions theory, Angus argues that such an implicites de plusieurs avocats du approach would “legitimate a multiculturalisme canadien, pour qui plurality of traditions to which a il s’agit d’un idéal qu’on aurait déjà speech act may refer to provide a atteint. Ces défenseurs du meaningful context in intervening multiculturalisme, si bonnes que in public discourse.” By moving soient par ailleurs leurs intentions, beyond the recognition of a évitent des questions essentielles au multiplicity of authorized speakers sujetdelapertinencedu (as in mutlticultural diversity), a multiculturalisme pour favoriser les postcolonial approach would open relations entre les diverses nations de up the fields within which such « l’État-nation canadien » ainsi que speech can be interpreted by les façons précises dont il a défini les “touching the rules of interaction” relations entre toute une gamme de themselves. groupes ethnicisés et racialisés au sein de la société canadienne. (À Marijke Huitema, Brian S. Osborne mon sens, l’absence, à l’intérieur du and Michael Ripmeester’s study of présent numéro thématique, de tout land claims conflicts between article en français, ou qui porterait Algonquin and Mississauga First précisément sur le Québec, constitue Nations in eastern Ontario un symptôme éloquent de cette actualizes Angus’ distinction situation que dégage Angus.) Pour y between minority speech that is parvenir, le multiculturalisme devrait “reduced to a content” and imperial commencer par ethniciser les speech that “not only provided Canadiens « ordinaires » et puis content but also a tradition which assumer une dimension decided the definitive interpretation postcoloniale. En expliquant sa of the speech act in question.” The proposition dans les termes d’une authors show how long-held, théorie des actes de langage, Angus unresolved land claims have in fact soutient qu’une telle approche been elicited by the concepts of « légitimerait toute une pluralité de exclusivity and productivity in traditions auxquelles un acte de landholding that Europeans langage peut faire référence afin de brought with them. Formerly définir un contexte signifiant unbounded territory whose use and d’intervention dans un discours occupancy had once been public ». En transcendant la negotiated on the presumption of reconnaissance d’une multiplicité de spatial overlap now became locuteurs autorisés (comme dans la delimited through land survey. For diversité multiculturelle), une First Nations, the Canada mapped approche postcoloniale ouvrirait des out through the appropriation of champs à l’intérieur desquels un tel this now-regulated territory would discours pourrait être interprété en indeed be post. Today, postcolonial « touchant aux règles mêmes de theorizations of mapping and of l’interaction ». “cultural flows” may actually serve to bring non-First Nations L’étude de Marijke Huitema, Brian Canadianists closer to an S. Osborne et Michael Ripmeester sur appreciation of Native les conflits de revendications

8 Introduction Présentation understandings of land by leading territoriales qui ont opposé les us beyond a perfunctory, albeit premières nations des Algonquins et respectful cultural relativism. They des Mississauga dans l’est de may also help us better understand l’Ontario fournit une illustration how the legal, adversarial pursuit concrète de la distinction qu’opère of land claims by these First Angus entre le discours minoritaire Nations against a backdrop of qui est « réduit à un contenu » et le continuing interdependence and discours impérial qui « non interaction devoid of personal seulement a fourni du contenu, mais hostility might be understood as également une tradition qui a tranché something other than paradox. de l’interprétation définitive de l’acte de langage en question ». Les Patrick J. Smith’s essay on the auteurs montrent comment des evolving role of “Cascadia” in the revendications territoriales U.S.-Canadian Pacific Northwest anciennes et encore irrésolues ont, surveys evolving definitions that en fait, procédé des concepts are both spatial (from a relatively d’exclusivité et de productivité de la small area organized around Puget propriété foncière que les Européens Sound and the Georgia Basin to a ont apportés avec eux. Un territoire region extending from Alaska to autrefois non borné et dont l’usage the Oregon-California border) and et l’occupation avaient jadis été temporal (from early ad hoc négociés suivant la présomption de responses to specific economic and chevauchement spatial est environmental situations to current dorénavant délimité par arpentage. prescriptive attempts to situate the Pour les premières nations, le region within a globalist policy Canada cartographié en conséquence perspective of sustainable de l’appropriation de ce territoire development). “Cascadia” may désormais réglementé serait well derive strength from the véritablement un post-Canada. challenges to “nation-state centric” Aujourd’hui, l’élaboration de notions of territory that théories postcoloniales du mappage globalization makes possible, et des « courants culturels » peuvent although for this to happen, Smith en fait contribuer à faire en sorte que argues, other kinds of “definitional les Canadianistes qui clarity” would be necessary. Using n’appartiennent pas aux premières the Oresund region of the European nations puissent mieux saisir les Union as an example, he façons multiples dont les demonstrates the ways in which the Autochtones s’y prennent pour EU offers its sub-regions far more comprendre le territoire, et ce en les opportunities for such clarity than amenant à dépasser un relativisme NAFTA does for “Cascadia”, a sans doute respectueux, mais situation only exacerbated by superficiel. Ces théories pourraient post-9/11 security concerns. également nous aider à mieux Whether such cross-border, comprendre comment les luttes regional strategies can survive juridique et adversative menées par these concerns is an implicit ces premières nations pour obtenir la question posed by Smith’s essay. reconnaissance de leurs revendications territoriales sur un

9 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

Our thematic dossier closes with arrière-fond d’interdépendance Julie Rak’s analysis of Conrad persistante et d’une interaction libre Black’s foray into autobiography as de toute hostilité personnelle, an attempt at a self-willed, constitue, en fait, quelque chose de post-Canadian performance. By tout autre qu’un paradoxe. relinquishing his Canadian citizenship to become a British L’article de Patrick J. Smith sur le peer, Black is in a very literal sense développement du rôle de la post-Canada! In a back to the « Cascadie » à cheval sur la frontière future move, Black retreats to the canado-américaine sur la côte du “mother country” in protest against Pacifique passe en revue l’évolution what he sees as the Canadian flaw des définitions de cette région que of rewarding the unmeritorious l’on a essayé de formuler — through government profligacy. définitions tant spatiales (d’une Drawing fruitfully on Marx’s région relativement peu étendue theory of the commodity fetish, entourant le détroit de Puget et le Rak shows how Black’s attempt to Bassin de Georgie, à une vaste offer an intellectual justification for région s’étendant de l’Alaska aux his rise to power through a confins de l’Oregon et de la precocious autobiography is Californie) que temporelles (depuis defeated by the commodity les réponses ad hoc à des situations character of the book itself. She économiques et environnementales argues that in the memoir form particulières que l’on formulait au taken by the book, Black the début jusqu’aux tentatives “subject” in fact becomes prescriptives actuelles de situer la subjugated to Black the observer région dans une perspective de and frequenter of the privileged. In politique globaliste de the end, the attempt to carve out a développement durable). La space for right-wing views within « Cascadie » pourrait fort bien tirer intellectual discourse–a decidedly ses forces des défis que la post-Canadian project, in Black’s mondialisation permet de lancer aux view–loses out to the very notions du territoire qui sont Canadian-like role of observer that centrées sur l’État-nation, même si, he detests. pour que cela se produise, soutient Smith, il faudrait d’abord recourir à Our open-topic article by João d’autres formes de « clarté Fábio Bertonha offers a définitionnelle ». En citant la région comparative study of attitudes de l’Oresund de l’Union européenne toward Italian fascism in the Italian à titre d’exemple, il illustre les immigrant communities of Canada façons dont l’UE offre à ses régions and Brazil. Bertonha examines the beaucoup plus d’occasions de struggles between fascist and parvenir à une telle clarté que anti-fascist groups for the loyalties l’ALÉNA ne le fait pour la of these communities, the « Cascadie », une situation que les interventions of the Italian préoccupations de sécurité qui se government in the two countries, sont fait jour après le 11 septembre and the responses of the Canadian 2001 n’ont qu’exacerbées. Les and Brazilian governments to these stratégies régionales

10 Introduction Présentation efforts. Taking into consideration transfrontalières pourront-elles factors of social class, generation, survivre à ces nouvelles religiosity, and the gradations of inquiétudes? C’est la question cultural and political integration implicite que soulève le texte de with local and national cultures, Smith. Bertonha explores the extent to which “defensive nationalism” or Notre dossier thématique se clôt ideological commitment played a avec l’analyse à laquelle se livre role in Italian emigré identification Julie Rak de l’excursion de Conrad with, or acquiescence to, fascist Black dans le domaine de propaganda. l’autobiographie, où elle voit une tentative entêtée de performance Finally, our review essay by Guy postcanadienne. En renonçant à la Beauregard takes up issues of citoyenneté canadienne pour accéder diaspora that the IJCS explored at à la Chambre des lords britannique, length in Volume 18, “Diaspora Black est devenu post-Canada,etce and Exile.” Here, the emphasis is dans un sens tout ce qu’il y a de plus very much on the discontinuities of littéral! Dans un mouvement de diasporic experience, including the retour vers l’avenir, Black se retire links that diasporic communities dans « la mère-patrie », pour forge with each other beyond their protester contre ce qu’il perçoit ties to “home.” Ong’s exploration comme un défaut des Canadiens et of “flexible citizenship” and Ang’s particulièrement de leur writing on “hybridity” as a way of gouvernement dépensier et qui destabilizing the ethnic in consisterait à récompenser les multiculturalist discourse (using personnes dépourvues de mérites. Australia as the case study) are Tirant un parti fructueux de la both instructive, and “spoken to” théorie marxienne de la marchandise by the two Canadian texts by Wah considérée comme fétiche, Rak and Brand discussed in the review. montre comment la tentative de These “address the topics of Black pour articuler une justification hybridity and diaspora in a more intellectuelle à son accession au literary, personal, and explicitly pouvoir par l’écriture d’une discontinuous style,” Beauregard autobiographie qui survient un peu tells us, and thus participate– tôt dans sa carrière vient se briser sur despite their limited international le fait que le livre lui-même revêt le circulation–in “the ethics of caractère d’une marchandise. Elle discussing the often violent soutient que, dans la forme même de rearrangements of communities and mémoire que prend l’ouvrage, Black collective identifications in […] the le « sujet » est en fait subjugué à transnational world.” This brings us Black l’observateur et le familier des back full-circle to our thematic privilégiés et des puissants de ce dossier: from Sugars’ argument for monde. En dernière analyse, sa differentiating postcolonialism’s tentative de découper un espace pour political concerns from the more les opinions de la droite à l’intérieur ludic speculations on the Canadian du discours intellectuel — un projet postmodern, to Angus’ in favour of résolument post-canadien, de l’avis postcolonialism as an essential de Black — doit battre en retraite

11 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes component of democratic face au rôle d’observateur, si multicultural practice. typiquement canadien, qu’il assume alors même qu’il le déteste Robert Schwartzwald cordialement. Editor-in-Chief Un article hors-thème de João Fábio Bertonha constitue une étude comparative des attitudes envers le fascisme italien qui ont caractérisé les communautés d’immigrants italiens au Canada et au Brésil. Bertonha examine les luttes auxquelles se sont livrés les groupes fascistes et antifascistes pour se gagner les loyautés de ces communautés, les interventions du gouvernement italien dans les deux pays et les réponses des gouvernements canadien et brésilien à ces efforts. Tenant compte de facteurs de classe sociale, de génération, de religiosité et de niveau d’intégration culturelle et politique aux cultures locales et nationales, Bertonha explore la mesure dans laquelle le « nationalisme défensif » ou l’engagement idéologique ont joué un rôle dans l’identification des émigrés italiens ou leur consentement à la propagande fasciste.

Enfin, notre essai critique, signé par Guy Beauregard, reprend les questions de diaspora que la RIEC avait explorées en profondeur dans le volume 18, « Diaspora et exil ». Ici, l’accent est mis très clairement sur les discontinuités de l’expé- rience de la diaspora, y compris les liens que les communautés de la diaspora forgent les unes avec les autres, au-delà des liens qu’elles maintiennent avec le pays d’origine. L’exploration de la « citoyenneté flexible » à laquelle se livre Ong et l’écrit de Ang sur « l’hybridité » à

12 Introduction Présentation titre de moyen de déstabiliser l’élément ethnique dans le discours multiculturel (en se servant de l’Australie à titre d’étude de cas) sont tous les deux riches d’enseignements et adressés par les deux textes canadiennes, de Wah et Brand, qui font également l’objet de discussions dans l’essai critique. Ceux-ci « s’attaquent aux thèmes de l’hybridité et de la diaspora dans un style plus littéraire, plus personnel et explicitement discontinu », nous dit Beauregard, et ainsi ils participent — et ce en dépit de leur diffusion internationale limitée — à « l’éthique de la discussion des réarrangements souvent violents des communautés et des identifications collectives dans [...] le monde transnational ». Ceci nous ramène au point de départ de notre dossier thématique, soit, par exemple, à l’argument de Sugars, qui souhaiterait que l’on établisse une distinction entre les préoccupations politiques du postcolonialisme et les spéculations plus ludiques sur le postmodernisme canadien, ou encore à l’argument d’Angus qui soutient que le postcolonialisme constitue une composante essentielle de la pratique démocratique multiculturelle.

Robert Schwartzwald Rédacteur en chef

Cynthia Sugars

National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism1

A Canadian is someone who works for a swedish company, sitting on an indian made desk atop a persian rug drinking bavarian coffee sweetened with philippine sugar wearing english tweeds with matching italian shoes drives a german car writing to parliament with a japanese ball point pen on american paper complaining about how all the foreigners are taking away our jobs. Inscription posted on the wall of the Group of Seven exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 1996.

Abstract Idealized notions of Canada as either postmodern and/or postnational do not attend to the sociocultural realities of contemporary Canadian society. On the contrary, it is precisely because Canada is neither postmodern nor postnational that postcolonial theory is so important as a means of understanding Canadian society and culture. After considering some of the central questions in Canadian postcolonial theory, this paper argues that the much debated settler-invader model remains of value, not as a prescriptive imperative, but as a contestatory means of challenging our ingrained assumptions about Canada.

Résumé Les notions idéalisées qui veulent que le Canada soit postmoderne et/ou postnational négligent les réalités socioculturelles de la société canadienne contemporaine. Tout au contraire, c’est précisément parce que le Canada n’est ni postmoderne, ni postnational que la théorie postcoloniale revêt une telle importance à titre d’outil de compréhension de la société et de la culture canadiennes. Après avoir examiné certaines des questions centrales de la théorie postcoloniale canadienne, le présent article soutient que le modèle du colon/envahisseur, dont on a beaucoup débattu, conserve de la valeur, non comme un impératif prescriptif, mais comme un moyen de contestation, de remise en question de nos présuppositions les plus profondément enracinées au sujet du Canada.

Over the last few decades, Canada has been variously, and often-times contradictorily, figured as either a “postmodern” or a “postnational” nation-state–sometimes as both at once. Robert Kroetsch, describing a late twentieth-century context, claimed that Canada had skipped over its modernist period and “evolved directly from Victorian to Postmodern” (“Canadian” 1); Northrop Frye felt that Canada had passed “from a pre-national to a post-national phase without ever having been a nation” (Divisions 15). However, the transposition of the qualities of literary postmodernism (fluidity, boundlessness, fragmentation, free-play, parody, etc.) to definitions of statehood is a dubious enterprise. The notion of an amorphous and endlessly decentred postmodern nation-state, figured in terms of an ideal of disunity, can perhaps only be maintained as long as it is contained within a tidy, self-enclosed narrative. By an “ideal of disunity” I refer to the ways Canada’s multicultural and multi-regional components are sometimes seen to map a fragmented, yet nevertheless coherent and harmonious, Canadian “identity.” This symbolic constitutionofpan-Canadiannessisinherentlyself-contradictory,forwhile Canada is affirmed in terms of its endlessly divisible pluralism, it is recouped as a nation defined by an unspecified sense of cohesion and cultural identity. This, indeed, is the paradox of the Canadian nation-state. However, figurations of Canada as a postmodern ideal often succeed in placing Canada outside of any particularized location, outside of history, at the same time as they celebrate the infinitely specific, the endlessly localized, the multiply interpretable. The more heterogeneous Canada is seen to be, the more it becomes aestheticized, knowable by the sheer extent to which it seems to defy identification. What defines such figurations of Canadian amorphousness is a wishful belief in an idealized world: a post-imperial–and by implication postnational–utopia (rather like Northrop Frye’s famous description of Canada as the sought-for “peaceable kingdom” [Conclusion 249]). In academic discourse, this has tended to manifest itself as a celebration of Canada or Canadian culture as “postmodern.” Canadians, this discourse tells us, are inherently ironic and paradoxical; by extension, the Canadian state is defined (also paradoxically) by its integral ineffability. Such appeals to Canada’s postmodern character often invoke some conception of postmodernity as a positive and liberatory quality. Hence, invocations of “the Canadian postmodern,” such as Linda Hutcheon offers in her book of the same title, are launched from a politically grounded sense of the dialogic potential of Canadian multiplicity. Such figurations hold an obvious appeal for those of us interested in Canadian socio-cultural politics. However, it is one thing to celebrate the diffuseness of the contemporary postmodern state, to advocate a radical pluralism that characterizes Canada asakindofutopiawhosedialogicnaturemeansthateveryvoicecanhaveits say and harmony can persist in the midst of apparent chaos–especially if one limits one’s politics to the realm of culture. But this is an altogether

16 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism different thing in practice. To speak of Canada as a postmodern state is ultimately to say very little of consequence about the Canadian here and now. InthisessayIamproposingtwothings.First,thatidealizedconstructions of Canada as a postmodern ideal (and thereby as inherently oppositional) can efface the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Canadian society. What I am taking issue with specifically is the way the discourse and ideology of postmodernism can be used for depoliticizing and dehistoricizing ends. Second, I am suggesting that the discourse of postcolonialism may be the most meaningful approach to discussions of Canada and Canadian culture at this historical juncture, expressly because Canada is neither postmodern nor postnational. Because national identity constructs have not been superceded, we need a way of satisfying the urge for these while also acknowledging their constructedness (which includes a consideration of the ways they interpellate various constituencies differently). While my essay underscores the impossibility of speaking of an unproblematized national identity, it insists that questions of Canadian identity must be complicated rather than merely subverted or discarded. As Alan Lawson argues, “Postcolonialism and anxiety [are] always tied together” (“Proximities” 24), which might be to suggest that postcolonialismshouldmakeoneuncomfortable.Butwhatdoesthismean? And how would it contribute to an effective socio-cultural politics?

Lost in the Post I belong to an internet discussion group on Canadian literature. At times the discussion takes on a distinctly confessional quality, providing a forum for Canadian literature enthusiasts to exorcize their anxieties about Canadian culture and national identity. Recently, an exchange centred around the question of how one went about defining who was or was not a Canadian writer, to which one respondent replied that since Canada didn’t actually exist, the question was moot. This sparked a barrage of responses, from one respondent’s identification of Canada as a form of “nostalgia” to another’s insistence that, given that the debate took place around income-tax time, the construct “Canada” took on an all too material reality. This debate gets resuscitated periodically whenever discussions of Canadianidentityarise.Indeed,ithadanearlierincarnationwhenoneofthe papers at the 1993 British Association of Canadian Studies (BACS) conference, “Canada: The First Postmodern State?,” took issue with the colloquium’s postmodernizing premise. The presenter argued that Canada was anything but postmodern, that, in fact, it had all of the characteristics of a decidedly “modern” state: a centralized federal government, national health care, socialized welfare, cultural protectionism, and a constitution (however under reconstruction). The fact that political and social

17 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes consensus has been so difficult to achieve in Canada is a quintessentially “modern” experience. J.M.S. Careless’s famous account from 1969 of Canada’s “limited identities” describes a nation grappling with the legacy of an agonistic modernity, and his description remains remarkably prescient today. Given that the BACS conference took place at the time that Canada was undergoing a series of intense wranglings over its constitution, the subject matter for the conference seemed curious indeed. The reality in Canada is not that unifying national constructs have ceased to be self- evident (if, indeed, they ever were, which is doubtful), but that people are only too keenly aware of their continuing significance and (at times disturbing) power. The distinctive character of conceptualizations of Canadian identity inheres in the fact that national unity has typically come to be defined by the constitutive disunity of the nation. This is what leads Careless to assert in 1969 that “the distinctive nature of Canadian experience has produced a continent-wide entity identifiable in its very pluralism” (9). Northrop Frye argues much the same thing in his 1971 preface to The Bush Garden, where he states that the “tension between this political sense of unity and the imaginative sense of locality is the essence of whatever the word ‘Canadian’ means” (iii). Of course, attempts to define Canada in terms of plurality and compromise have been present from the very beginnings of our national history, so it should come as little surprise to hear contemporary cultural theorists influenced by a “poststructuralist” vocabulary assert the constitutive “paradox” that is present-day Canada. However, it is important to attend to the diverging directions a poststructuralist epistemology can take: towards political noncommitalism and radical relativism or towards political contextualization and social change. The appeal to the spell of postmodernism, which, in the name of plurality and difference is somehow supposed to whisk away any signs of power imbalance or social hierarchy, results in a reaffirmation of the status quo, if only by looking askance from what would disrupt its vision.2 Celebrations of a polymorphously postmodern Canadian society free from internal tensions and strife–or at least, able to deal with such tensions peacefully (as, ostensibly, in the case of Native peoples or Québec)–succeed only in emptying the Canadian domain of anything remotely contestatory or political, and certainly in ignoring Canada’s tacit complicity in many contemporary global imperialist operations. As Anne McClintock observes, this is how the category of the postmodern “may too readily license a panoptic tendency to view the globe through generic abstractions void of political nuance” (Imperial 11). What emerges is a kind of post-historical space, where the ambiguities and disturbances of the present are disavowed in a celebration of postmodern ambivalence. This notion of Canada utilizes a limited version of postmodernism as an idealistic play of pluralities without any sense of

18 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism accompanying political strife or contradiction. To use Homi Bhabha’s words, it “participates in fetishistic forms of social relations” (“Anxious” 203), a process by which an appeal to heterogeneity functions to aestheticize the realm of ethics and politics. The more you emphasize this unproblematized fragmentation, the more you construct a mystique of diversity, and the more the social realities get lost–or mangled–in the post. In the celebrations of Canada as the first, or latest, or most typical, postmodern (even, at times, postnational) nation, the complex political realitiesandhistorieswithinCanadaaregettinglostinasurfeitof“postness.”

From Post to Post IfCanadaisoftenregardedasaninternationalrole-modelpreciselybecause of its constitutive fragmentation, this is also the case because of its supposedly post-imperial status (both intra- and internationally), a label which suggests that it has somehow resolved the imperialist legacies of both its own colonial history and that of the contemporary transnational global network. For many commentators, this renders Canada all the more quintessentially postmodern. As a result, the postcolonial and the postmodern are sometimes conflated in critical discourse about Canada, a problem that has led many critics to explore the significant areas of difference between the two terms (see Brydon, Hutcheon, Mukherjee and Slemon). In many instances, readers automatically attribute to the “post” prefix a sense of opposition, resistance and critique, a positive evaluation that is key to the contemporary “post-ings” of Canada. And yet, as Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests, the “post” in postcolonialism is not the same as the “post” in postmodernism.3 In “‘Circling the Downspout of Empire,’” Hutcheon offers a useful outline of the confusion of the two terms in discussions of Canadian culture. While she sees both modes (in the cultural sphere) to make use of similar thematic concerns and discursive strategies (her example is the doubled trope of irony), it is the postcolonial that she more explicitly identifies as a “constructive political enterprise” that “implies a theory of agency and social change” (171). As Hutcheon argues, postcolonialism has “a theory of agency that allow[s] [it] to go beyond the postmodern limits of deconstructing existing orthodoxies into the realms of social and political action” (150).4 Tiffin and Brydon argue in a similar vein, opposing the postcolonial to the postmodern on the basis that the ambivalent stance of the latter makes it inadequate for assessing one truth claim over another (Tiffin, Introduction and “Post-Colonialism”; Brydon, “White”). In Brydon’s view, that version of relativistic ambivalence which suggests “that action is futile; that individual value judgements are likely to cancel each other out; that one opinion is as good as another” only “works to maintain the status quo,” and is therefore impotent when it comes to enabling any politically interventionist approach (“White” 192). Likewise, in “Modernism’s Last Post,” Slemon argues that while postmodernism assumes “the construc-

19 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes tedness of all textuality … an interested post-colonial critical practice would want to allow for the positive production of oppositional truth- claims” (9).5 The conflation of the two perspectives was brought disturbingly home to me in an email response I received to a Canadian literature symposium that I was organizing for May 2002 on “Postcolonialism and Pedagogy.” In his letter, the author chided me for applying the term postcolonialism in a Canadian context: “The entire concept of ‘postcolonialism’ referred to in your recent call for papers seems to me to be problematic. Here in British Columbia there are those who would assert that there is nothing ‘post’about the ‘colonialism’that exists in Canada.” While the author of the letter had a valid point, his phrasing of the problem suggests a lack of familiarity with contemporary postcolonial debate in Canada. It hints at what is perhaps a fairly widespread misconception about the nature of postcolonial theory, which is in fact a substantial body of criticism addressing the persistence of colonialist operations into the present day. Very few (if any!) postcolonial theorists have an idealized notion of the current historical moment as safely “post” attitudes of racism, hierarchy, authoritarianism, oppression, misogyny or colonialism, though many accounts of the contemporary postmodern world do (or at least they tend not to contain the sense of outrage that marks postcolonial accounts). The latter is what enables any number of offensive statements to be breezily justified under the convenient label of “postmodern irony,” a defence one hears invoked rather too frequently these days. As I will outline later in this essay, a number of postcolonial theorists, like many postmodernists, have noted the dissonant or “in-between” nature of settler-invader cultures such as Canada. On the surface, this would seem to lend to Canada an inherently “postmodern” character. But rather than constructing a vision of Canada that is divorced from any contaminating or problematizing socio-political realities, theorists of Canadian postcolonialism focus on the continuation of imperial relations within the locus of the postcolonial. For this reason, accounts of psycho-social dissonance should not remain at the level of abstract “postmodern” formulation, for registers of disruption have very real, material effects on specific individuals and communities. Different modes of ambivalence exist within any given national settler-invader context, which means that one cannot allow the rhetoric of cognitive disruption to mask the very real power dynamics that continue to operate in these locations. The problem with many misconstrued assessments of postcolonialism in Canada may be that they apply a “postmodern postcolonialism” to the Canadian context, perhaps a holdover from a long tradition of a doubled response to the colonies in which Canada was figured in terms of both disorienting wilderness and socio-cultural liberation. However, the assignation of each term to a separate sphere by applying postmodernism to the realm of aesthetics and postcolonialism to the political (eg. Hutcheon,

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Brydon) does not necessarily resolve the dilemma.6 To address this problem, Appiah suggests that one must revise one’s definition of postmodernism by distinguishing between postmodernism and post- modernization, the latter being “not an aesthetics but a politics” (352-53). Postmodernism as an aesthetics can be illuminating and exciting, but as a politics it is ineffectual. Of course, one cannot wholly separate the realms of aesthetics and politics, but neither can they be folded into each other; rather, each informs the other without being reducible to it. As Brydon observes, “The name ‘post-modernism’suggests an aestheticising of the political while the name ‘post-colonialism’ foregrounds the political as inevitably contaminating the aesthetic, but remaining distinguishable from it” (“White” 192). A conflation of these registers lingers in accounts which equate an idealized Canadian society and politics (phrased in terms of postcolonial resistance and postmodern fragmentation) with a celebration of a (postmodern and postcolonial) art form and metaphysics.7 Given McClintock’s assessment of the current turn to the rhetoric of the “post” as a symptom “of a global crisis in ideologies of the future, particularly the ideology of progress” (Imperial 392), it is easy to see how such idealized and containing constructions of Canada, what Brydon calls “post-modernist revisionings” of the postcolonial, only “function to defuse conflict” on the site of the postcolonial object (“White” 195).

Is Canada Postcolonial? And so, if the modern is not yet “post” in Canada, and neither, most assuredly, is the “colonial,” how does one go about describing Canada as postcolonial? While it is important to note that postcolonialism includes the sense in which imperialist legacies continue into the present day–and this is a key component of all postcolonial theory–one cannot dismiss the liberatory potential of many contemporary postmodern and poststructuralist interventions. Whatever one might think about poststructuralist conceptualizations of the mediated nature of reality or its critique of Western epistemology, especially the critique of transcendent metanarratives and holistic identity constructs, it is very difficult to ignore the potential of such philosophical inquiries when engaging in discussions of national configurations. Indeed, these critiques have made it impossible to speak of an unproblematized national identity any longer. Any discussion of Canadian culture and society today must come to terms with this fact. Clearly, one can no longer speak of Canada the way one was used to in the past. Certainly any invocation of “the many as one,” as Homi Bhabha memorably put it, is no longer tenable (“DissemiNation” 142). The entire course of Canadian history and culture has largely been a deliberation of this impossibility, despite frequent attempts to cover it over. Certainly one can no longer take for granted generally agreed-upon assumptions about national homogeneity when one sets out to invoke

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Canadian identity, or Canadian history, or Canadian anything, although I’m sceptical that one ever could assume such totalities. The history of Canadian cultural theory is, after all, plagued by such definitions and counter-definitions and qualifications. In order to address competing notions of national belonging, one needs some way of talking about historical and emergent power dynamics in the contemporary nation-state. Because national labels continue to have intense power–even in a globalized world–we also need some way of addressing the resonance of cultural narratives. The “nation,” then, is not just a socio-political fact, but as critics such as Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha have explored, it is also a way of “storying” or talking about ourselves. Despite the many negative manifestations of nationalism across the globe, it remains the case, as Charles Taylor maintains, that a sense of belonging to a political community is a crucial aspect of individual identity (Abbey 116), which in a sense is what Frye understood when he defended his notion of national “unity” as “the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life” (Preface vi). Because “Canada” very clearly does exist–sometimes as an empirical reality, other times as an abstraction, often as both at once–a postcolonial perspective may be the only adequate way of speaking about a national construct which is constantly under negotiation. However, the application of a single “postcolonialism” is an impossibility, which is a sometimes forgotten fact: there are many different, and at times competing, postcolonialisms in Canada.8 This, in part, is the power of postcolonial theory: it is fraught by the very discontinuities it seeks to address. In Canada, as in other settler-invader cultures, the very term postcolonialism is being challenged as various constituencies vie with one another for postcolonial legitimation–what Stephen Slemon refers to in another context as the “scramble for postcolonialism.” The questions proliferate: Is Canada postcolonial? Who in Canada is postcolonial? Are some Canadians more postcolonial than others? And is the label “Canadian” even acceptable any longer? These questions form an important backdrop to any study of Canadian society and culture; indeed, it is becoming increasingly impossible to discuss Canada without the aid of a postcolonial approach of some kind. The fact that so many are grappling for postcolonial legitimacy suggests that it has something productive to offer. A postcolonial perspective can provide a means of reflecting on this scene of embattlement, a way, perhaps, of postcolonializing the postcolonial.

Postcolonializing the Postcolonial Before settling on the question of Canada’s postcoloniality, one must first address the intense debates that have taken place around the inclusion of settler-invader colonies within the field of postcolonial inquiry.9 The status of settler colonies has persisted as something of a thorn in the side of

22 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism postcolonial studies. Indira Karamcheti, for instance, refers disparagingly to the “Pat Boone, blue-eyed postcolonialism that is going on in Canada and Australia” (qtd. in Lawson, “Proximities” 27). Such attacks have prompted a number of critics to reflect upon the reasons for this resistance. Alan Lawson suggests that it has to do with the doubled aspect of settler-invader postcolonialism, which calls unwanted attention not only to the New World’s colonizing history and present, but also to its claims to a disrupting experience of national and psychological colonization (“Postcolonial” 23). Specifically, Lawson writes of the internal split between the settler’s experience as both colonized object of a European oppressor and colonizing oppressor of the indigenous peoples of the land the settler occupies. Slemon likewise argues that the sense of a coherent and identifiable Other has always been missing for the settler subject. In his words, “the illusion of a stable self/other, here/there binary division has never been available to Second-World writers, and that as a result the sites of figural contestation between oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, have been taken inward and internalized …” (“Unsettling” 38).10 Moving, like Bhabha, from the individual to the nation, Chris Prentice attributes this internal split to those haunting “Others” who threaten “the image of National Sameness” (47). The sublimated nature of these conflicts perhaps makes it especially difficult to identify contested relations between subjects in a settler society (as well as areas of cross-cultural contact), thereby enabling inequalities to operate at more invisible and insidious levels. This might in turn account for the temptation to exclude Canada from beneath the postcolonial umbrella. Slemon’s assessment of the excision of settler-invader colonies from the postcolonial map is particularly informative. In “Unsettling the Empire,” he argues that this exclusion has occurred through the association of anti-colonial resistance as “synonymous with Third- and Fourth-World literary writing” (33).11 This point has been echoed by Brydon, who notes how “It still seems easier for critics to discuss the cultural impositions of the British empire on civilisations established along lines recognised … by European models–that is India and Africa–than it is to consider the transportation and transplantation of English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Caribbean” (“Commonwealth” 10-11). The excision of settler postcolonialism implies a prescriptive essentializing of the postcolonial sphere, which denies not only the different manifestations that colonialism can take, but also, as Lawson argues, that the colonial moment is very much a relation, and an ongoing one at that. However, if the “ambivalence of emplacement” is the condition of the settler’s existence and possibility (Slemon, “Unsettling” 39), it is also in the empirical reality of emplacement, within the Canadian political landscape, that these processes of identificatory ambivalence are rehearsed. This means that it is important to address the diverging claims to postcolonial status within the nation. This staging of warring perspectives–whether

23 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes between “contending authorities of Empire and Native” (Lawson, “Postcolonial” 24) or between a fractured sense of authentic and derivative identities–makes Canada a resonant site for many postcolonial commentators. It is important to return to these debates because their assumptions continue to plague postcolonial theorizing of the settler-invader colonies. In many instances, opponents take issue with the terminology itself, suggesting that the label “settler-invader” leaves out enormous numbers of people who do not identify themselves as descendants of Canada’s early settler-colonizers. This claim is undoubtedly valid, not only for Canada’s indigenous peoples and those whose ancestry is aligned with other, non-English, immigrant groups, but also for many Canadians, such as myself, who do identify themselves as “English” Canadian (i.e., English-speaking) but who do not hail from (or identify with) English stock. To attach to the Canadian postcolonial context the sense of a “mainstream” authenticating blood-line is not only to misrepresent Canada’s “genetic” present, but also to misconstrue many of the more critical and politically engaged attempts to address Canada’s multiple internal postcolonialities. Indeed, conceptualizations of national postcolonialisms become complicated when intra-national power dynamics are at stake. This emerged in the early 1990s during an important debate between two noteworthy Canadian cultural theorists, Linda Hutcheon and Diana Brydon. In her essay “‘Circling the Downspout of Empire,’” Hutcheon questioned whether as a settler colony Canada should be included within the global field of postcolonialism: “I cannot help feeling that there is something in this that is both trivializing of the Third World experience and exaggerated regarding the (white) Canadian” (155). In her view, Canada’s Native peoples represented the true “resisting, post-colonial voice of Canada”(156). AlthoughHutcheongoesontodiscussalternativewaysone might configure Canadian postcoloniality, Brydon took issue with her implicitly hierarchical identification of an “authentic” Canadian perspective, arguing that “there is more than one Canadian post-colonial voice” (“White” 194). In his essay “Olga in Wonderland,” itself a response to Brydon’s critique of Hutcheon, Enoch Padolsky argued that the critical discourse of Canadian postcolonialism had failed to “adequately engage non-mainstream Canadian reality” (18). Citing The Empire Writes Back’s somewhat dubious claim that in Canada “the internal perception of a mosaic has not generated corresponding theories of literary hybridity” (qtd. 21), Padolsky argued that the postcolonial approach in Canada “excludes all consideration of ethnic groups as groups…or of the rich inter-group social and political history that a national framework implies” (25). While this may have been true of a good deal of literary criticism in Canada in the past, many Canadian postcolonial critics have for years been attending to these

24 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism very issues. As Brydon states, “[t]he drawing of such distinctions is the whole point of talking about post-colonialism in Canada” (“White”194). Nevertheless, attacks on the settler-invader model of Canadian postcolonialism have persisted in theoretical debates in Canada. Arun Mukherjee, for example, argues that settler nationalism omits minorities and Aboriginals (“Canadian Nationalism” 72-74, 83), and insists that changing demographics in Canada will necessitate a redefinition of the “Canadian reader” (82). Elsewhere, Mukherjee states that the postcolonial conflates colonized and colonizers in settler societies (“Interrogating” 18), and that conflating the colonial experience of the Third World with that of settler colonies is highly problematic (“Whose” 216). Amaryll Chanady, like Padolsky, similarly questions the homogenizing nature of postcolonial theory, in which, for instance, Canada is conceptualized in the same way as India (16). While these critiques highlight important areas for concern, they often misrepresent the many highly theorized, politically engaged discussions of Canadian postcolonialism, for it is such homogenizing conceptualizations that many Canadian postcolonial theorists (including those who discuss Canada as a settler-invader society) attempt to oppose–that is, they insist on the non-equivalence of postcolonialisms between (and within) nations. Embedded within the Canadian settler- invader context is an inherent ambivalence towards a singular, homogenizing nationalism, for the settler-invader locale is by definition internally conflicted. Roy Miki’s charge against Hutcheon of maintaining “the static and containing model of ‘centre-margin’” (135), despite her opposition to a holistic Canadian postcolonial identity, provides a useful lesson here. It reiterates the way postcolonial critics remain interested in preserving the political potential of interrogatory contestation while rejecting the exclusively oppositional poles that the terminology of postcolonialism oftenimplies.Asettler-invadermodel,whichbyitsverydefinitionattempts to subvert these easy oppositions (both within Canada and without) and to reveal sites of (sometimes non-contradictory) ambivalence, may offer one way out of these disempowering and restrictive binaries. Ultimately, the settler-invader approach offers a radical critique of problematic Us-Them or “West and the Rest” dichotomies (Slemon, “Unsettling” 34). Indeed, it is a space of what Slemon calls “discursive polemics,” a “space of dynamic relation between those … binaries which colonialism ‘settles’ on a landscape” (38). In a location where such binaries are ineffective, where essentialized identity and cultural constructs have become highly problematic(andahistorical),where“otherness”cannotbereadilyengaged to prop up definitions of a centralized concept of self, some facet of the settler-invader formulation of subjective ambivalence and political agency is vital. Aformulation of this kind may be necessary to provide a means of accounting for processes of both contestatory and cooperative instances of cross-cultural contact. As Brydon states, such a model asserts local

25 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes independencies with larger interdependencies, describing forms of interaction that “cooperate without cooption” and “‘contaminate’ without homogenising” (“White” 196).

(Post-)Colonial Legacies Nevertheless, the fact remains that the settler-invader formulation is posited from the point of view of a self-identifying settler subject. One way to address this exclusionary figuration is to address settler-invader formulations as a cultural-historical inheritance rather than a description of contemporarysocialrealities.Whilethesettler-invaderparadigmmayhave become outmoded as a way of describing the present-day constitution of Canadian society,12 a settler-invader history remains as a problematic legacy which all Canadians, regardless of ancestry, “inherit” and respond to in a variety of ways. This fact has led a number of postcolonial theorists to insist that any discussion of Canadian culture and society must by necessity address the legacy of the history of colonial settlement in this country (see, for example, Brydon, “White”; Lawson, “Proximities”; Goldie; Findlay; Fee; Hutcheon, “‘Circling’”). As George Elliott Clarke argues, to dispense with Canada’s settler-invader history “is to ignore the value of its great contradictions–as a site of both attempted imperial reinscription” and resistance to that legacy. Brydon suggests that settler theory must be merged with indigenous engagements with postcolonialism “to consider how these two decolonizing theories might purposefully work together toward a vision of a redefined Canada” (“Canada” 7).13 According to Len Findlay’s memorable challenge, one must “Always indigenize!” If, as Hutcheon notes, postcolonialism negotiates “the once tyrannical weight of colonial history in conjunction with the revalued local past” (152), the same is true in any number of ways in Canada, where writers engage with Canada’s settler-invader heritage from a variety of perspectives. Hutcheon’s quotation from Italian-Canadian Québec writer Filippo Salvatore, who insists that “the defeat of the Plains of Abraham and that of the Patriotes in 1837 did not leave indelible psychic scars on me” (qtd. Hutcheon 159), attests to the problematic nature of a liberal pluralist ethic when attached to a politically inflected postcolonial context. To be a writer in French living in Québec today is to be intricately influenced by the defeat of the Plains of Abraham, regardless of whether or not this event had an immediate impact on one’s ancestors. A shared history, as Stuart Hall contends, “does not constitute a common origin” (“Cultural” 396), which is not to say that one’s ethnic identity need be any the less significant. As Smaro Kamboureli observes, the “logic of self-location” can quickly turn into a “kind of ‘ethnic absolutism’” (4), for one is never only one ethnicity or identity, never situated in a bubble of pure “non-contamination,” but a complex of variable identities which change and adapt depending on the particular context one inhabits at any given moment. Surely psychoanalytic figurations of subjective unsettlement have taught us this if nothing else. To

26 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism belivinginQuébectoday,partakinginthesocietalandculturalcontext(asa writer, no less), writing in the (not uncontentious) provincial language, is to be, whether one likes it or not, marked by these “psychic scars.” A pluralist stance which obviates the realities of cross-cultural overlaps and inter- connections, not to mention the continuing impact of historical events on present and future configurations, merely encourages a form of isolationism (and retreat?) which can only have negative ramifications in the future. The fact remains, as Hutcheon insists, that “history cannot be conveniently ignored” (153), which means that discussions of postcolonialism in Canada are hard-pressed not to discuss its settler-invader history, a history which continues to have an impact on Canadians today–not only through such things as legal precedents, nationalist iconography and the media, but also through Canada’s public-education system,whichinfluencesanyCanadian,regardlessofancestry,whoattends school in this country. However, it is important to recognize, as Neil ten Kortenaar insists, that “history can be sliced in different ways” (30), especially in the classroom where children are taught “to think of themselves as Canadian” (29-30). This is an important reminder for those of us interested in discussions of Canadian postcolonialism, for to “remember” Canada’s history is not to overlook the fact that history looks different according to who is telling it, and who is on the receiving end. As postcolonial cultural critics, we should be looking not only at the different ways the settler-invader legacy is addressed, but at the various internal hierarchies which affect the ways the narrative of the nation gets constructed and transmitted. A writer of Japanese-Canadian ancestry might engage with Canada’s settler-invader history quite differently from a First Nations writer, and differently again from a person of Ukranian descent, just as one might see differences among anynumberofCanadiansofmixedancestrywhodonotidentifythemselves alongasingleethnicorracialcontinuum.Nonetheless,itisstillimportantto remember the rather obvious fact that “the European language and culture imported by the colonizers now form an integral part of [settler-invader] countries’cultures” (Vautier5). Like Filippo Salvatore, critiques of settler- invader postcolonialism in many cases erase this historical fact, which continues to have a clear influence on present social and cultural realities. In effect, the exclusion of settler-invader contexts from the domain of the postcolonial enacts “a strategic disavowal of the actual processes of colonization” (Lawson, “Postcolonial” 20) while sanctioning a forgetting ofhistory.Tosuggestthatthisconfigurationdoesnotaffecteveryonehereis surely misleading: by living here–whether of “settler” ancestry or not, whether diasporic or indigenous–we all inherit this legacy, even if we do not “inherit” it in quite the same ways. As S. Shankar inquires in response to critiques of postcolonialism’s emphasis on a history of embattlement, “if the past is lost to it, then what is left to orient the postcolonial?” (146).

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If postcolonialism is necessarily “‘contaminated’ by colonialism” (Hutcheon, “‘Circling’” 171), this does not mean, as Brydon also points out, that it need be complicit with it. The inheritance of the “settler predicament” occurs in different contexts. Indeed, the inclusion of settler-invader societies under the umbrella of the postcolonial can help to illuminate continuing transcultural colonialisms and cross-overs into the present day. As Alan Lawson argues, in excluding them from examination, one risks overlooking that location “where the processes of colonial power as negotiation, as transactions of power, are most visible” (“Postcolonial” 22; see also Griffiths 169, 175). This is important, for it reemphasizes the fact that the settler-invader label is not intended to describe a unified field or cultural response. Rather, it might be used to designate a variety of responses to an historical fact. In practice, this formulation of the contestatory field of Canadian postcolonialism might involve a recognition that the conceptualization of settler subjectivity or expression is a “tendentious discursive phenomenon [which] foregrounds the slippage from invader to peaceful settler” (Lawson, “Postcolonial” 28). Brydon has recently argued that “the very notion of ‘Canada’ is posited on the basis of this substitution” (“Canada” 6). It is not surprising, then, that many authors writing in the context of settler-invader cultures feel compelled to engage with this obdurate “return of the [not-so-repressed] colonial moment” (Lawson 32), making the essentialized figuration of settler-invader cultural expression far less harmonious than its opponents imply. In this sense, Slemon’s description of the subjective ambivalence expressed by many writers in settler-invader societies is apt, for he describes the way most Canadians, to some degree, have internalized “the sites of figural contestation between oppressor and oppressed” (“Unsettling” 38). The settler-invader legacy is always (at the very least) a lingering presence in discussions of postcolonial cultural and social identities in Canada, and one, therefore, with which we are all pressed, at one time or another, to engage.

Postcolonial Recognition All of this suggests that the theoretical field of postcolonialism is far from static and that accounts of Canadian postcoloniality are being continually revised and complicated. My account thus far points to the ways changing conceptions of Canadian postcoloniality have in recent decades converged with socio-political discussions of multiculturalism, leaving more encompassing (and more naive) considerations of both national and postcolonial identity in their wake.14 Discussions of Canada as postcolonial have slipped into discussions of postcolonial communities within contemporary Canada, a move that is paralleled in the context of postcolonial theory worldwide in which “‘internally colonized’ cultures within the nation state” have become the subject of focus (Moore-Gilbert 9).

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However, assertions of the various micro-nationalisms in Canada are marked by a contradiction, for even as they insist on collective identities within the nation, they are committed to deconstructing such paradigms on a national level. These complexities make it extremely difficult to speak of coherent group identities in a postcolonial context where diverse peoples have been thrown together through a combination of discordant historical processes (colonization, migration, urbanization, capitalism, etc.). Since one of the prime legacies of empire is that of hybridization, it has become increasingly difficult to speak of the purity of identity in any postcolonial context. This has led in recent years to considerations of the opposition between liberal individualism and identity politics, and the connections of this debate to postcolonial theorizations of citizenship, nation and identity. Critics such as David Sealy, Tamara Palmer Seiler and Duncan Ivison, for example, explore non-contradictory ways of conceiving the relation between national identity or citizenship and pluralist identities. For others, however, this impasse is insurmountable. This is the gist of Ranu Samantrai’s critique of Charles Taylor’s “The Politics of Recognition” in herprovocativearticleaboutCanadianmulticulturalism.Taylorattemptsto find some way of acknowledging the collective rights and identities of the cultural groups who constitute the Canadian polity. According to Samantrai, this backs Taylor into a corner, since on the one hand he invokes the overarching system of Canadian rights legislation, while at the same time he defends the rights of those collectivities within Canada that come into conflict with the laws of the nation-state. While Samantrai’s critique of the contradiction at the core of Taylor’s approach is valid, it nevertheless overlooks the applicability of Taylor’s model to the specifics of a Canadian context. Indeed, a socio-political model that allows for some level of contradiction may be the only way of adequately addressing the internal complexities of the contemporary Canadian state. Seiler and Ivison have launched an important linking of postcolonial theory (generally undertaken by cultural theorists, though not usually limited to the sphere of cultural production) with political theory. “The reshaping of normative conceptions of sovereignty and property by contemporary political theory,” writes Ivison, “surely needs to follow– hence the value of the postcolonial challenge” (167). Specifically, these critics have begun to investigate the overlaps between Taylor’s theory of non-contradiction, as expressed in his accounts of “‘deep’ diversity” and different “ways of belonging” in Canada (Reconciling 183), and postcolonial theory’s emphasis on paradox and coterminous subject positionings. Taylor’s approach may therefore be a radical intervention, and a postcolonial one, for by rejecting the supposed antagonism between a “politics of universalism” and a “politics of difference” (“Politics” 37-38), and between national unity and cultural diversity, he articulates a critique of

29 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes binary models that have long crippled cultural and political discourse in Canada. Taylor’s plea for the possibility of asymmetrical belonging may be the only way one can be postcolonial in Canada today. Unless one decides to crush the demands of smaller constituencies, systems of asymmetrical belonging are inevitable and desirable. Taylor’s position thus echoes postcolonial theorist Alan Lawson’s account in “Proximities” where, in a different context, he outlines ideas of differential “belonging” (27) or “incompleteoccupation”(22). AccordingtoLawson,twopeoplescanhave claims to the same territory without one demand obviating the other, which allows for different ways of asserting a postcolonial relationship to a particular time/space. If this debate leads one to ask whether it is finally even possible to speak of Canada as postcolonial, it may also suggest that the Canadian context is especially informative since it highlights a set of highly fraught and contested negotiations between different claims to postcolonial recognition.

National Posts Frank Davey, and Northrop Frye before him (Modern 17), have used Canada’s constitutive diversity to make the case for Canada being “post-national.” Taken to its logical extreme, this might lead one to inquire (as did one of the listserv members cited earlier) whether or not Canada, in fact, exists. If the “post” is taken as a marker that it does not (that is, as a deconstruction of the national collectivity), is it not also a sign of national complexity–whichmakesitthereforealsoanindexofthenation’semphatic resistance to demolition? Bruce King identifies contemporary postcolonialism’s emphasis on “a deconstruction of the nation” (“New Centres” 20), and yet it seems clear that postcolonialism is profoundly commited to national constructions. Indeed, the conflict between the national and the international represents the pivotal dilemma of postcolonialism: if the national is identified as that which renders one identifiably postcolonial, its implicit homogenization is that which the postcolonial seeks, intra-nationally, to interrogate.15 In part, the inherent comparativist enterprise of postcolonial theory (and, earlier, Common- wealth studies) fostered its transnational dimension. At the same time, postcolonialexpressionhasalwaysbeenfirmlyrootedinexplicitlynational concerns. The discourse of postcolonialism has been marked from its early beginnings by this ambivalence. Although it emerged out of nationalist movements for “authentic” cultural expression, from an “international” perspective, it is often qualified as too provincial.16 Therefore, many of the debates surrounding postcolonial studies have focussed on one or the other dimension: either it is accused of being too universalizing/internationalist (Mukherjee) or not international enough (Rushdie) OR its nationalist impetus is found to be suspect.

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The logic of collective identities is thus as bound up with postcolonialism’s defence of nationalist expression as it is with any deconstruction of national unity. This is perhaps a sign of the continuing power of national-cultural allegiances even within a transnational global network. In Canada, the vector of the nation continues to have profound psychic resonance–particularly amongst students of Canadian Studies–filling an intense psychic and cultural need. Ultimately, there can be no separation of postcolonialism from nationalism. The question instead concerns what one takes that national consciousness to mean. For Canadian Studies scholars, what is perhaps most alluring about the study of Canada is that it affords one the privilege of witnessing a national identity in the making. Weare privy to the forging of a national mythology, a construction that is still in process. This, after all, is what makes all of the disputes over national identity and belonging so visceral. Frantz Fanon argued that the way of defining a national culture needs to be revised (188). This is especially true in view of the fact that in a globalized, postcolonial era, one can no longer talk about a single volk, which means that any invocation of a past essence or bloodline is complicated due to global processes of colonialism, migration, modernization, westernization, transnationalism, etc. It is in this sense that Hall speaks of “‘the post-colonial’ as an episteme-in-formation” (“When Was?” 255). The fact that the nation is a construct, then, does not render it invalid, but rather attests to its productive malleability over time. Any assertion of nationhood today must include space for internal revision and critique. It must acknowledge that even proto-national expression is in fact a “fluctuating movement” that gains shape as it calls the status quo into question (Fanon 182). Anational culture, Fanon argues, acquires form and content as these battles are fought (188). In Canada, we see this in the ongoing contests and debates over postcolonial priority. As a theoretical approach, postcolonialism enables one to visualize these dynamics. As we observe various contests for postcolonial legitimation, we also witness competing struggles for access to the national imaginary. A crisis of identity may not be what plagues Canadian culture, but rather that that culture is undergoing continual transmutations. This is not to say that attempts have not been made to exclude different groups from the national imaginary. Theorists such as Himani Bannerji, Arun Mukherjee, Scott McFarlane, Aruna Srivastava, Daiva Stasiulis and Radha Jhappan have outlined the embattled nature of these constructs. What I am suggesting is that it is a postcolonial perspective that can best enable one to expose and illuminate these various sites of contestation. Not only is there clearly “more than one Canadian post-colonial voice,” as Brydon argues (“White” 194), but there are also several ways of undertaking a postcolonial reading of Canada or of imagining a postcolonial Canada. Coral Ann Howells writes that as a postmodern utopia, there is “no transcendental image” in Canada. The point is precisely the reverse–that there are indeed

31 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes transcendent narratives about Canada which it is the task of postcolonial writers and critics to interrogate. The conflicts now will determine the narratives of the future. The realm of culture is where one sees this most clearly–where one finds a national mythology being interrogated as well as forged. Because Canada is relatively young, we’re able, in one coup d’oeil, to see the length of the accumulating trajectory (from the atrocities of colonization, to the forging of the nation-state, to the present-day)–to view the emplotment of the national narrative along with the disputes that have arisen along the way. Because Canada had to be self-consciously created–and because Canadians have always known this (in a way that was not as apparent in other nations that trace their origins into a dim past and whose history seems vaguely pregiven)–we are able to get a clearer view of the historical “scripting” of the nation. Today, with the deconstructive/postcolonial turn, we are witnessing a continuation of this conscious enscription, whereby an “incredulity” towards centralizing metanarratives, to quote Jean-François Lyotard, and a vying for narrative priority, have become one of the central narrativesofCanada. Canadianhistoryandidentityhavetoadegreealways been defined by this process: a meeting of classes and cultures; a transplantation, and hence revising, of previous mythologies; an “indigeni- zation” from there to here. Canada has never been defined according to a single mission, a single story-line. Apostcolonial approach enables one to see this, even as it provides a vocabulary for investigating the incongruities various narratives articulate. This is not to idealize Canadian history and myth-making, but to highlight what accompanies such processual identities. It allows one to see more clearly where certain over-writings and whitings-out have occurred, and where they succeeded only precariously. We can see points of resistance and anxiety–eager moments of appropriation and threatened points of self-defence. Postcolonialism allows one to describe these processes of contestation and narration, in part by offering a meta- multicultural perspective. It offers a means of distinguishing between what Bhabha, in “The Commitment to Theory,” identifies as the gap between diversity and difference (a critique that has some parallels in Frye’s distinction between unity and uniformity [Preface vi]).17 Diversity implies some notion of totalization and addresses culture as an integral object of knowledge. “Cultural diversity,” Bhabha writes, “is the recognition of pre-given cultural contents”; it utilizes “a radical rhetoric of the separation of totalized cultures that live unsullied by the intertextuality of their historical locations, safe in the Utopianism of a mythic memory of a unique collective identity” (34). This echoes the sense of the Canadian “mosaic,” and implicitly those versions of identity politics and dialogism invoked by many notions of the Canadian postmodern. And yet, as Bhabha argues, it is at the boundaries of signification that the loci of cultural authority and identity can be interrogated. “The concept of cultural difference focuses on

32 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism the problem of the ambivalence of cultural authority: the attempt to dominate in the name of a cultural supremacy which is itself produced only in the moment of differentiation” (34). Cultural difference, then, refers to the ways the enunciation of cultural identity calls into question its very authority. It reveals “a split in the performative present of cultural identification” (35), between tradition and identity, on the one hand, and the revision of cultural certitudes, on the other. Acting as both a determinant and negation of national identity at any given moment, it enables one to view a national culture, not as a given, but as something that can be minted anew and “performed” in any number of cultural contexts. While this theoretical model provides a way of acknowledging the impossibility of old-style national constructs without abandoning the need for national collectivities altogether, it also highlights the ways an idealized multiculturalism celebrates diversity at the expense of difference, without allowing for overlapping processes of contestation and mutuality. The error lies in the reliance on a false dichotomy of diversity-versus-sameness when neither individual nor collective identities work in this way. Historically, Canada has long been defined in terms of the politics of mixed identities. Today we talk about the levels of ambivalence that mark these identity constructs, both between them and internally. A postcolonial approach enables one to practice what Taylor calls an “inspired adhoccery” (“Rushdie” 121);18 that is, it addresses these various identities in situationally specific rather than prescriptive ways. It thus allows one to interrogate the performance of “Canadianness” in any number of contexts, resisting the impulse to define too categorically, while at the same time acknowledging that the vector of the nation has potential as a meaningful identity marker of some kind. Smaro Kamboureli’s meditation on the Canadian diasporic critic’s “(self-)location” perhaps expresses this best of all: If every Canadian is at once Canadian and something(s) else, this doubleness does not necessarily present [the individual] with a choice that will resolve the either/or condition of her hybridity…. As her ethnic background cannot be reduced to a stable and essentially “true” past, so her national identity as Canadian resists simplification … The objective is neither to construct an opposition nor to effect a balance between these positions; instead, it is to produce a space where her hybridity is articulated in a manner that does not cancel out any of its particularities. (Kamboureli 22)

Inspired Adhoccery While postcolonialism has been variously construed as an overly universalizing discourse, what I hope the foregoing discussion suggests is that, finally, a postcolonial approach may offer a compelling way of conducting a microhistory of socio-cultural phenomena in Canada, if not also an illuminating “post-colonizing” of postcolonial figurations of Canada themselves. Moving from the expressions of colonial/anti-colonial nationalism of the 1960s and 70s, such as those offered by George Grant,

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Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee and Robin Mathews, which nevertheless still posited an anti-American or anti-British Canadian identity as a fairly homogeneous entity; to the more globally conscious “worlding” of Canadian culture in terms of its Commonwealth positioning (see John Moss and W.H. New); to the postmodern figurations of Canadian unifying “disunity” (Kroetsch, Hutcheon); to the settler-invader conceptualizations of Canadian “second world” in-betweenness (Slemon, Brydon); one finds oneself coming smack up against the implacable wall of postcolonialism’s internal marginalizations. Critiques of Canadian postcolonialism have been launched from various sectors: from the First Nations’ challenges of Thomas King and Lee Maracle, to the “minority” critiques of Arun Mukherjee, Amaryll Chanady and Enoch Padolsky. More recently, critics such as Brydon and Goldie have been suggesting that postcolonial theory must move away from its nation-based focus to an examination of the role of globalization (see Brydon, “Canada”). In the wake of these serious contestations of Canadian postcoloniality, how does one begin to recuperate postcolonialism in a fractious, contemporary context? In part, postcolonialism’s strength as a theoretical perspective has been its adaptability. From its early incarnations in Canadian cultural nationalism, it has enabled a powerful critique of various power bases and discourses–in part, this intervention was made possible by many of the early (1960s and before) critiques of the entrenchment of imperialist discourse in Canada. Postcolonialism has been particularly important as a way of revising conceptions of the nation, and of clarifying the interrelations of various constituencies within Canada. It continues to be of immense value in a Canadian context for its enabling of four interrelated strands of methodological inquiry: (1) its analysis of the ways that individual and group identities are shaped (rejected, affirmed, negated, etc.) and the material consequences of this shaping for those affected by it; (2) its recognition of the continuing legacy of imperialist structures, particularly, but not solely, in the context of settler-Aboriginal relations; (3) its acceptance of contradiction, and hence its recognition that two claims may co-exist side by side; (4) its assessment of the impact and contours of national image-making, including a recognition of the continuing power, both enabling and debilitating, of such constructs. What the various debates about Canadian postcolonialism highlight is the contested terrain of “Canada” and the intricate complications of what it means to speak in any meaningful way about “Canadianness.” They do not, however, point towards the new era of the blissfully “post-Canadian,” such as Northrop Frye dreamed of in his conclusion to the Literary History of Canada (249). Nor do they highlight some wished-for space that is reassuringly beyond politics. Instead, they reveal the ways that the “post” in postcolonial includes the conflicts of historical time, even as the “post” in postnational suggests a wishing away of such conflicts. Goldie has recently

34 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism written about the demise of nationalism in contemporary Canadian culture (“Blame” 224), though perhaps it is rather that our understanding of nationalism in a Canadian context has undergone (and is undergoing) revision. Brydon provides an instructive (postcolonial) reassessment of Canadian nationalism in her critique of Jonathan Kertzer’s Worrying the Nation. According to Brydon, Kertzer expresses consternation at the dispersal of the notion of national identity: “Joy Kogawa and Daphne Marlatt, he complains, do not see the nation as ‘an essential social unit, or a mystical bond, or a spiritual soil’; for them, ‘It is a contested, public space within which they must find whatever freedom and justice they can attain…’” (158). “Here is a viable redefinition of the nation,” Brydon continues, “Why does Kertzer find it inadequate?” (“It’s Time”19). As Kamboureli similarly notes, the fact that hybridity is a constituent element of Canadian culture necessitates a “revised concept of nationalism” (23), not an eclipse of the national altogether. While it has become impossible to contain the contradictions of contemporary nationhood, these debates are a testament to an experiential urgency at the base of the much mocked Canadian identity crisis. At the same time, they highlight the marker of the “Canadian” as something which can never be taken for granted, and never too comfortably employed. Brydon describes settler-invader colonies as “an unstable site for memory” (qtd. in Laura Moss 4). A postcolonial perspective allows one to approach this inherent instability in a way that is politically enabling. As a theoretical approach, it may be indispensable, for it highlights the points where historical memory too easily slips into forgetfulness, pulling it back to recollection before it is indeed decidedly post.

Notes 1. The Canadian writing under consideration in this article is exclusively in English. I will not be undertaking a presentation or analysis of postcolonial writings in French, nor will I be considering the specific contours of the debates as they have unfolded in Québec. The term “postcolonial” is not generally used in studies of Québécois literature and culture. Although there are obvious overlaps with contemporary postcolonial theory, these debates are more commonly staged in terms of “la transculture” or “l’identitaire” or “l’écriture migrante.” Because the terminology and assumptions of the debates are somewhat different in the English and French Canadian contexts, it seemed more useful, for a survey of this kind where various critics are in dialogue with one another, to focus on one context alone. For work on Québécois culture and postcolonialism, see Marie Vautier. 2. Terry Eagleton launches an extended critique of such postmodern celebrations of unproblematized pluralism, which he perceives to be politically ineffectual (67). Diana Brydon identifies a similar problem in contemporary discussions of a limitless Canadian pluralism “which uses the idea of different but equal discourses to prevent the forming of alliances … ” (“White” 194). 3. A number of critics have set out to distinguish between postcolonialism and postmodernism, including Appiah; Brydon, “Myths”; During; Hutcheon;

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McDonald; Slemon; and Tiffin, “Post-Colonialism,” while Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin’s Past the Last Post collects a number of articles devoted to this issue specifically. See Mukherjee, “Whose?” for a critique of the assimilating tendencies of both discourses. For further discussion of the relation between the two terms, see Bhabha, “Postcolonial” and Prentice. For general critiques of postmodernism, consult Eagleton; Habermas; Jameson; Kaplan; Norris; Palmer; and Simpson. 4. I agree with Hutcheon’s distinction between these terms; however, I am less certain of her celebration of the oppositional potential of the postmodern, especially an idealized Canadian postmodern. Defences of postmodernism which construe a revelling in subversion in idealized terms can mask the ways postmodernism can instead contribute to a reinforcement of totalizing and hierarchical power structures. At some point the disingenuous and noncom- mittal—however liberating (and ironic) they might appear—fold back on themselves to become a defence of things as they are. 5. During takes a similar position, arguing that postcolonialism highlights the “neo-imperialist” nature of postmodernism by “using those practices and concepts (representation, history, evaluation) which postmodernism most strenuously denies” (369). 6. Chris Prentice argues that in fact postmodernism poses a threat to postcolonial national identity/unity by functioning as the abject object against which postcolonialism defines itself: “Thus the post-colonial insistence on the postmodern as ‘not-self’ may be seen as a defence or disavowal of the ‘self’s’ implication in it” (50). 7. See, for example, such postmodernizings of Canada as Hutcheon’s The Canadian Postmodern, Bowering’s The Mask in Place, and Kroetsch’s The Lovely Treachery of Words. A number of critics oppose the automatic association of the postmodern with oppositional or progressive politics. See Slemon, “Mod- ernism’s”; Mukherjee, “Whose?”; Eagleton; and Simpson. The whole of Eagleton’s study is devoted to unmasking this “illusion” of postmodernism, including the assumption that “difference, variability and heterogeneity are ‘absolute’ goods” (126-27). 8. For a recent collection of essays that explores the multiple postcolonialisms in a Canadian context, see Laura Moss’s forthcoming edition, Is Canada Postcolonial?: Essays on Canadian Literature and Postcolonial Theory (Wilfrid Laurier UP). See also my forthcoming anthology of the foundational essays of Canadian postcolonial theory, Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism (Broadview Press). 9. The use of the generalized category “settler-invader colonies” perhaps requires some qualification. Numerous critics, both Canadian and Australian, have explored the over-arching similarities between Canadian and Australian settler-invader contexts; see, for example, the work of William H. New, Goldie, Lawson, Brydon, Slemon, Prentice, and Tiffin. Alan Lawson and Anna Johnston’s entry on “Settler Colonies” in A Companion to Postcolonial Studies charts the many parallels between the two. These parallels include the following: discursive representations of the land as a terra nullius; the attempted erasure of aboriginal peoples, either through outright conquest or by more symbolic means (eg. the textual construction of a “dying race”); attempts on the part of early and subsequent settlers to figure themselves as indigenous to the landscape; a position of “colonial” inferiority to Britain and the subsequent “postcolonial” expressions of national independence and identity; an increasingly diverse multi-ethnic

36 National Posts: Theorizing Canadian Postcolonialism

population and the conflicts this creates in the formation of national metanarratives. This comparative approach, however, is not intended to suggest that national differences between settler colonies are negligible–differences, for example, in the historical context of exploration and settlement; the designation of each country’s “founding” peoples (Canada’s French settlement being most distinctive here); levels of affiliation and antagonism to the imperial centre; cultural mythologies and national iconography; geographical and climactic realities (the Outback versus the Canadian North, for example); the specific historical and cultural relations of settler and aborigine; and the particular multicultural constitution of each nation. On the contrary, the work of the above critics has been seminal in providing a theoretical base from which historically grounded and localized assessments of individual settler-invader societies might be conducted–work which these and other postcolonial theorists are actively pursuing. I am grateful to one of the anonymous readers of this article for calling this potential discrepancy to my attention. 10. This “in-between” position of the settler-invader subject has led many critics, such as Lawson and Slemon, to posit an inherent ambivalence at the core of settler-invader perception. However, this notion of ambivalence is not only applicable to those of settler ancestry. Many Canadian writers of “non-settler” origins use a similar vocabulary to describe their experience as “other” Canadians (eg. Kerri Sakamato, Joy Kogawa, Wayson Choy, Dionne Brand, George Elliott Clarke, Tomson Highway, and Aritha van Herk, to name only a few) as do many people of mixed race (eg. Fred Wah or Drew Hayden Taylor). See Bannerji, Itwaru, Mukherjee, and Miki for further discussion of this ambivalence of belonging to the Canadian nation-state. 11. In “Plato’s Cave,” Tiffin identifies the early split between “Commonwealth post-colonialism” and “colonial discourse theory” as the explanation for this disparity. She argues that the former aimed “to include study of the settler- invader colonies as crucial for the understanding of imperialism” while the latter tended to reject their inclusion within the sphere of the postcolonial (161). 12. See the chapter on Canada by Daiva Stasiulis and Rhadha Jhappan in Unsettling Settler Societies for an excellent historical account of the colonialist, racist and gendered roots of the founding narratives of Canada as a white settler society, and the ways these narratives have been contested. 13. For writings by Aboriginal critics on issues connected with Canadian postcolonialism, see the collections of essays edited by Armstrong, Battiste, Hulan and Ruffo. See also Thomas King’s well-known critique of postcolonialism in “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” 14. See, for example, articles by Gunew, Padolsky, Seiler and Sealy for attempts to bring postcolonial theory to bear on theories of multiculturalism and ethnicity in Canada. 15. See Neil ten Kortenaar for an insightful account of how “Canadian” postcolonialism is marked by an inherent contradiction between an affirmation and deconstruction of national identity constructs. 16. See my analysis of the native versus cosmopolitan dimensions of Canadian postcolonial cultural expression in “Can the Canadian Speak?” 17. I am indebted to Helen Hoy’s insightful and invigorating study, How Shall I Read These?, for elucidating Bhabha’s distinction (see pages 169-70). 18. My thanks to H.D. Forbes, whose paper, “The Realism of Charles Taylor’s Multicultural Idealism,” directed me to Taylor’s comment. Forbes’ paper was presented at the “Political Realism from Trudeau to Taylor” conference at the University of Ottawa, 15 June 2001.

37 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

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Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Allegory.” Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986. 98-121. Davey, Frank. Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel since 1967. Theory/Culture series. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993. During, Simon. “Postmodernism or Postcolonialism?” Landfall 39.3 (1985): 366-80. Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Fanon, Frantz. “On National Culture.” The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 1966. 167-99. Fee, Margery. “What Use is Ethnicity to Aboriginal Peoples in Canada?” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 22.3-4 (1995): 683-91. Findlay, Len. “Always Indigenize! The Radical Humanities in the Postcolonial University.” ARIEL 31.1-2 (2000): 307-26. Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” 1965. The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi, 1971. 213-51. ——. Divisions on a Ground: Essays on Canadian Culture. Ed. James Polk. Toronto: Anansi, 1982. ——. The Modern Century: Whidden Lectures 1967. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1967. ——. Preface. The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi, 1971. I-x. Goldie, Terry. “Blame Canada.” Essays on Canadian Writing 71 (2000): 224-31. ——. Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1989. Grant, George. Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism. Toronto: McClelland, 1965. Griffiths, Gareth. “The Post-Colonial Project: Critical Approaches and Problems.” New National and Post-Colonial Literatures: An Introduction. Ed. Bruce King. Oxford: Clarendon: 1996. 164-77. Gunew, Sneja. “Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism: Between Race and Ethnicity.” Yearbook of English Studies 27 (1997): 22-39. Habermas, Jürgen. “Modernity Versus Postmodernity.” Trans. Seyla Ben-Habib. New German Critique 22 (1981): 3-14. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1994. 392-403. ——. “When Was ‘The Post-Colonial’?: Thinking at the Limit.” The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. Ed. Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti. London: Routledge, 1996. 242-60. Howells, Coral Ann. “No Transcendental Image: Canadianness in Contemporary Women’s Fictions in English.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 6.1 (1991): 110-17. Hoy, Helen. How Shall I Read These?: Native Women Writers in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2001. Hulan, Renée, ed. Native North America: Critical and Cultural Perspectives. Toronto: ECW, 1999. Hutcheon, Linda. The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English- Canadian Fiction. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1988. ——. “‘Circling the Downspout of Empire’: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism.” ARIEL 20.4 (1989): 149-75. Rpt. in Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post- Colonialism and Post-Modernism. Ed. Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin. Calgary: U of Calgary P, 1990. 167-89. Itwaru, Arnold Harrichand and Natasha Ksonzek. Closed Entrances: Canadian Culture and Imperialism. Toronto: TSAR, 1994. Ivison, Duncan. “Postcolonialism and Political Theory.” Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity. Ed. Andrew Vincent. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 154-71. Jameson, Fredric. “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. 1-54. Kamboureli, Smaro. Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada. Toronto: Oxford UP, 2000.

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Kaplan, E. Ann. Introduction. Postmodernism and Its Discontents: Theories, Practices. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: Verso, 1988. 1-9. Kertzer, Jonathan. Worrying the Nation: Imagining a National Literature in English Canada. Theory/Culture series. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998. King, Bruce. “New Centres of Consciousness: New, Post-Colonial, and International English Literature.” New National and Post-Colonial Literatures: An Intro- duction. Ed. Bruce King. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. 3-26. King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” New Contexts of Canadian Criticism. Ed. Ajay Heble, Donna Palmateer Pennee, and J.R. Struthers. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1997. 241-48. Kroetsch, Robert. “A Canadian Issue.” Boundary 2 3.1 (1974): 1-2. ——. The Lovely Treachery of Words: Essays Selected and New. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1989. Lawson, Alan. “A Cultural Paradigm for the Second World.” Australian-Canadian Studies 9.1-2 (1991): 67-78. ——. “Postcolonial Theory and the ‘Settler’ Subject.” Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (1995): 20-36. ——. “Proximities: From Asymptote to Zeugma.” Postcolonizing the Commonwealth: Studies in Literature and Culture. Ed. Rowland Smith. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2000. 19-37. Lawson, Alan, and Anna Johnston. “Settler Colonies.” A Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 360-76. Lee, Dennis. “Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space.” Open Letter 2.6 (1973): 34-53. Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Fwd. Fredric Jameson. Theory and History of Literature 10. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. Maracle, Lee. “The ‘Post-Colonial’ Imagination.” Fuse Magazine 16.1 (1992): 12-15. Mathews, Robin. Canadian Literature: Surrender or Revolution. Ed. Gail Dexter. Toronto: Steel Rail, 1978. McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism.’” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Harvester, 1994. 291-304. ——. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. McDonald, Larry. “I Looked for It and There It Was–Gone: History in Postmodern Criticism.” Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (1995): 37-50. McFarlane, Scott. “The Haunt of Race: Canada’s Multiculturalism Act, the Politics of Incorporation, and Writing Thru Race.” Fuse Magazine 18.3 (1995): 18-31. Miki, Roy. “Sliding the Scale of Elision: ‘Race’ Constructs/Cultural Praxis.” Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing. Toronto: Mercury Press, 1998. 125-59. Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. London: Verso, 1997. Moss, John. Editorial. Journal of Canadian Fiction 3.4 (1975): 1-2. Moss, Laura. “‘Is Canada Postcolonial?’: A Report on the Conference.” Chimo 41 (Fall 2000): 3-6. Mukherjee, Arun. “Canadian Nationalism, Canadian Literature and Racial Minority Women.” Postcolonialism: My Living. Toronto: TSAR, 1998. 67-83. ——. “Interrogating Postcolonialism: Some Uneasy Conjunctures.” Postcolonialism 6-23. ——. “Whose Postcolonialism and Whose Postmodernism?” Postcolonialism 215-24. Murray, Heather. “Literary History as Microhistory.” Keynote address. Postcolonialism and Pedagogy Symposium: Canadian Literatures in the Classroom. University of Ottawa, Ottawa. 5 May 2002. New, William H. Among Worlds: An Introduction to Modern Commonwealth and South African Fiction. Erin, ON: Press Porcepic, 1975. Norris, Christopher. The Truth About Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Padolsky, Enoch. “‘Olga in Wonderland’: Canadian Ethnic Minority Writing and Post-Colonial Theory.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 28.3 (1996): 16-28.

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Palmer, Bryan D. Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History. Critical Perspectives on the Past. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990. Prentice, Chris. “Some Problems of Response to Empire in Settler Post-Colonial Societies.” Tiffin and Lawson 45-58. Ruffo, Armand Garnet, ed. (Ad)dressing Our Words: Aboriginal Perspectives on Aboriginal Literatures. Penticton, BC: Theytus, 2001. Rushdie, Salman. “‘Commonwealth Literature’ Does Not Exist.” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. 61-70. Samantrai, Ranu. “States of Belonging: Pluralism, Migrancy, Literature.” Writing Ethnicity: Cross-Cultural Consciousness in Canadian and Québécois Literature. Ed. Winfried Siemerling. Toronto: ECW Press, 1996. 33-50. Sealy, David. “‘Canadianizing’ Blackness: Resisting the Political.” Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism. Ed. Rinaldo Walcott. Toronto: Insomniac, 2000. 87-108. Seiler, Tamara Palmer. “Multi-Vocality and National Literature: Towards a Post- Colonial and Multicultural Aesthetic.” Literary Pluralities. Ed. Christl Verduyn. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1998. 47-63. Shankar, S. “The Origins and Ends of Postcolonial Studies.” Review article. ARIEL 30.4 (1999): 143-55. Simpson, David. The Academic Postmodern and the Rule of Literature: A Report on Half-Knowledge. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Slemon, Stephen. “Post-Colonial Critical Theories.” New National and Post-Colonial Literatures: An Introduction. Ed. Bruce King. Oxford: Clarendon: 1996. 178-97. ——. “The Scramble for Post-Colonialism.” Tiffin and Lawson 15-32. ——. “Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second World.” World Literature Written in English 30.2 (1990): 30-41. Srivastava, Aruna. “Imag(in)ing Racism: South Asian Canadian Women Writers.” Fuse Magazine 15.1-2 (1991): 25-34. Stasiulis, Daiva and Radha Jhappan. “The Fractious Politics of a Settler Society: Canada.” Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis 95-131. Stasiulis, Daiva, and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds. Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class. Sage Series on Race and Ethnic Relations 11. London: Sage, 1995. Sugars, Cynthia. “Can the Canadian Speak?: Lost in Postcolonial Space.” ARIEL 32.3 (2001): forthcoming. Taylor, Charles. “The Politics of Recognition.” Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994. 25-73. ——. Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism. Ed. Guy Laforest. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1993. ——. “The Rushdie Controversy.” Public Culture 2.1 (1989): 118-22. ten Kortenaar, Neil. “The Trick of Divining a Postcolonial Canadian Identity: Margaret Laurence Between Race and Nation.” Canadian Literature 149 (1996): 11-33. Tiffin, Chris and Alan Lawson, eds. De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textuality. London: Routledge, 1994. Tiffin, Helen. Introduction. Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism. Ed. Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin. Calgary: U of Calgary P, 1990. Vii-xvi. ——. “Plato’s Cave: Educational and Critical Practices.” New National and Post- Colonial Literatures: An Introduction. Ed. Bruce King. Oxford: Clarendon: 1996. 143-63. ——. “Post-Colonialism, Post-Modernism and the Rehabilitation of Post-Colonial History.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 23.1 (1988): 169-81. Vautier, Marie. “Comparative Postcolonialism and the Amerindian in English- Speaking Canada and Québec.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 28.3 (1996): 4-15. ——. New World Myth: Postmodernism and Postcolonialism in Canadian Fiction. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1998.

David Jefferess

The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others

Abstract Debates surrounding Canadian identity, particularly through discourses of multiculturalism and postcoloniality, are confined by the borders of the Canadian state. Focusing on media representations of the flogging of a young Nigerian woman under sharia law, I argue that the construction of the external Other as an object of Canadian compassion reinforces the Canadian imaginary as White and Christian. To reinforce the argument that this woman is marginalized in a narrative pitting Canadian benevolence against Muslim/ African barbarity, I analyze the way in which the Third World Other is elided entirely and appeals to Canadian identity as compassion disappear in coverage of Canadian corporate complicity in human rights abuses outside Canada.

Résumé Les débats entourant l’identité canadienne, et en particulier les discours du multiculturalisme et de la postcolonalité, sont confinés aux frontières de l’État canadien. En me concentrant sur les représentations médiatiques de la flagellation d’une jeune femme nigériane en vertu de la loi coranique (sharia), je soutiens que la construction de l’Autre externe comme objet de compassion canadienne renforce l’imaginaire canadien comme blanc et chrétien. Pour renforcer l’argument suivant lequel cette femme est marginalisée dans un récit qui oppose la bienveillance canadienne à la barbarie musulmane/africaine, j’analyse la façon dont le Tiers-Monde est entièrement élidé et de tels appels à l’identité canadienne comme compassion disparaissent de la couverture de la complicité des grandes entreprises canadiennes dans les atteintes aux droits de la personne commises en dehors du Canada.

In early December 2000, Canadians first heard of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu. In September of that year, the young Nigerian woman was discovered to be pregnant and was tried under sharia law for having premarital sex. In the six weeks between reporter Stephanie Nolen’s first report and the flogging of Magazu in late January 2001, there was nearly daily coverage of the story in the Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Canadian coverage of the story of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu’s trial and punishment is remarkable in terms of its intensity. Magazu’s experience is by no means uncommon; yet her story captured the imagination of the Canadian media and a large segment of the Canadian public for nearly two months. While the stories,

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 25, Spring / Printemps 2002 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes editorials, op-ed pieces and letters to the editor which appeared in The Globe and Mail often stated the basic facts of the case, coverage of the story and responses to it quickly became focused upon Canadian responses to the story, rather than the plight of Magazu herself. The story of Magazu became a story of Canadian compassion as Canadian identity.1 For the most part, Canadian identity and debates over the Canadian national imaginary are constructed within the borders of the Canadian state. Some significant aspects of Canadian identity, however, such as “tolerance,” “compassion,” “philanthropy,” or Canada as “peacemaker,” are often constructed in relation to the so-called “Third World.”Analyses of Canadian identity and postcoloniality must engage with the material and discursive relationships Canada–as a (post)industrial nation–has with the developing world. This identity is constructed through many cultural venues, including literary or artistic representations of the “Third World,” development discourse, or discourses of peacekeeping and Canada’s role in the international community. In this paper, I focus upon Canadian media constructions of Canadian identity through an analysis of media coverage of alleged human rights abuses in the “Third World.” Specifically, I am concerned with the way in which the story of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu was reported in The Globe and Mail, and the way in which reporters, editorial writers and letter-writers positioned Magazu as a figure through which Canadian identity could be affirmed. I will argue that while the “outsider within” Canada disrupts the Canadian national imaginary, representations of the “external” Third WorldOther play a significant role in reinforcing the “ordinary Canadian” of the national imaginary as White, Anglophone and Christian. I have made no comprehensive study of The Globe and Mail’s international reporting and have not made any Chomsky-esque measurements of the combined column inches devoted to this story in contrast to, for instance, reporting on Canadian-based Talisman Energy’s oil operations in the Sudan. However, the way in which mainstream media cover the continuing controversy surrounding Talisman’s operations provides an important contrast to the Magazu story in terms of the way in which the “Third World Other” figures in constructions of Canadian identity. Coverage of the story of Magazu’s flogging sentence was front page news, framed within human rights discourse, and seemed to focus on the story of an individual person. In contrast, on-going coverage of the exploitation of local communities or human rights abuses related to Canadian government or corporate efforts to develop markets in the developing world, when reported at all, are framed in economic terms, ignoring both the personal stories of those abused and Canada’s “core values” as identified in the Canadian government’s 1995 document on foreign relations, Canada in the World, namely “respect for human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the environment” (Canada). Constructions of Canadian identity as marked by multiculturalism and postcolonialism

44 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others are undermined by the coverage of the story of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, in which Canadian identity is predicated on its opposition to an essentialized non-Canadian Other. In contrast, coverage of Talisman’s operations in Sudan marginalize the Other and largely frame the story outside the parameters of national identity and culture.

The Borders of Canadian Postcoloniality Before turning to an analysis of coverage of the Magazu and Talisman stories, I wish to contextualize coverage of these stories in the way they intersect with dominant discourses of the Canadian nation and with the debate within postcolonial circles over Canada’s historical position in the world. For the most part, debates surrounding Canadian identity, particularly with respect to multiculturalism and postcoloniality, are constrained by the borders of the Canadian state. We speak about tolerance and pluralism within Canada, and Canada as postcolonial in the sense that it was a settler society subject to and an agent of imperial power. In addition, Canada’s postcoloniality is marked by the way in which Aboriginal peoples, other racialized groups, or Quebecois and French-speaking minority populations experience various aspects of “colonization” within a White/Anglo/Christian dominated state. For instance, the September 2000 “Is Canada Postcolonial?” Conference was framed around questions concerning the postcoloniality of Canadian literature and the appropriateness of postcolonial literary theory for analyzing First Nations’ literatures and official multiculturalism.2 Similarly, the four main sources of the myth-symbol complexes that Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis attribute to settler states disregard the role of that state in world structures of economic and cultural production (23).3 As well, Stasiulis and Radha Jhappan’s discussion of the history of Canadian policy toward women, Aboriginal peoples and various minority groups, focuses upon the way in which the Canadian state has managed Canadian identity through, for instance,immigrationpolicieswhichrelyuponracialandgendercriteria.In general, critical approaches to Canadian multiculturalism and postcoloniality rarely consider the relationship of Canada and Canadians to the world outside Canada, and when they do, the external Other is usually the historical metropolitan centres of France and Britain, or the United States; Canada as subject to American cultural hegemony, for instance, or the American “melting pot” in contrast to the Canadian “mosaic.” Donna Palmateer Pennee has recently begun to study the way in which the Canadian state projects Canadian culture abroad, and how this project intersects with state initiatives to expand markets for Canadian goods and services by developing capitalism and consumerism overseas. Pennee argues that in the 1995 government statement, Canada in the World/Le Canada dans le monde, “Canadian ‘culture’… becomes in official policy synonymous with the culture of capital” (Pennee “Culture” 154, original italics). The bases of an essentially “Canadian” identity, then, are not

45 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes specific to Canada at all; rather they are inflections of the globalization of consumer capital and the commodification of experience. Paradoxically, while the emergence of the transnational corporation and the growth of a more interdependent global economy seemingly point to postnationalism, as Pennee’s work shows with respect to Canadian foreign policy, the death of the nation has yet to come about. Although Canada has a major role in the changes taking place in global economics, Robert Martin argues that rather than being “postnational” Canada is still striving to achieve “nationhood” (359). Just as Stuart Hall argues that because essentialism has been deconstructed theoretically does not mean that it has been displaced politically (245), so it is the case that while the idea of the “nation” has come under sustained scrutiny in the academy, within state and popular discourses there is an earnest effort to (continue to) forge an “essential” Canadian national identity. Arun Mukherjee argues that Canadian nationalists of the 1960s and 1970s “constructed a Canada that was being savaged by American domination and used tropes of rape and seduction to speak about it. Their Canada was an innocent victim. These Canadian and Quebecois nationalists appropriated anticolonial vocabularies to speak of themselves as ‘the colonized’” (“Canadian” 89). Many postcolonial critics have utilized such a discourse to position Canada as “colonized” and postcolonial. While critiques of such a standpoint often problematically reinscribe postcolonialism’s reliance on a binary of dominant/exploited or colonial (states)/postcolonial (states) by arguing, for instance, that to consider Canada postcolonial is to trivialize the experience of Third World nations,4 the arguments of critics such as Stephen Slemon, Alan Lawson, Sylvia Soderlind or the writers of The Empire Writes Back, who recognize nations like Canada and Australia as settler/invader societies that are both dominated and dominating, seem no less problematic. When, for instance, Donna Bennett argues that “English Canada has played an oddly doubled role: subjected to an imperial power, it has also been an agent of that power in the control it has exercised over populations within Canada’s boundaries” (175) the “colonization” of English Canadians is overstated not least because such a position does not transcend the boundaries of the Canadian state to see the way in which this group, as much as it sought to forge an identity independent of the English metropole, recognizes itself as ideologically indebted to and a part of the British Empire. As Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis argue, colonial settlers, as much as they sought to distinguish themselves and their new nation from the “motherland,” “kept Europe as their myth of origin and as a signifier of superiority even when formal political ties and/or dependency with European colonial powers had been abandoned” (20). If we are to recognize issues of power as central to postcoloniality, then, as Mukherjee argues, the postcolonial label may be more appropriately applied to the relations of power among groups within Canada (“Whose” 2).

46 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others

With more recent formulations of the “postcolonial” which focus upon the critique of the very concept of the nation, and in which ideas of hybridity and ambivalence have challenged the binary structures of colonial power, Canada seems an ideal example of the postcolonial nation as hybrid and pluralistic. Celebrations of Canadian hybridity and multiculturalism as an emergent form of identity politics, however, are often unencumbered by historical and contemporary material circumstances of power, both within the borders of the state and without. I agree with Diana Brydon’s argument that Canada’s implication in contemporary capitalism and its historical relationtocolonialismare“compellingreasonsforincludingtheanalysisof Canadian culture within postcolonial studies” (10) rather than obstacles. StuartHallarguesthat“postcolonialism”shouldbeacknowledgedasashift or transition rather than a movement of linear transcendence, and that while “new configurations of power-knowledge relations” are emerging, postcolonialism should not suggest that the “after-effects” of colonial power have been suspended (250-1). As a result, I believe that to recognize postcolonialism as useful to an analysis of Canadian culture–in contrast to labeling Canada postcolonial–requires a more sustained analysis of how an essentialized culture and Canadian identity are constructed in relation to the rest of the world, recognizing Canada’s position of influence in the global spread of consumer capitalism. Alan Lawson argues that the identity of a settler/invader nation is constructed in resistance to a dominant culture: “Identity politics asserts the id-entity of the group as a form of opposition to other, more powerful groups who have access to more privileged speaking positions. In order to do this, identity politics asserts the uniqueness and homogeneity of the group” (“Postcolonial” 30). While constructions of Canada as a “mosaic,” “philanthropic” or “peaceable” may be argued as, in part, a form of opposition to the perceived cultural domination of the United States, this opposition relies upon the construction of cultural hierarchies, reminiscent to those of the colonial period. Chinua Achebe contends that colonial discourse constructed Africa as a place of negations, a foil to Europe, which thereby made Europe’s state of spiritual grace manifest (3). In many respects, the story of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu is represented in the pages of The Globe and Mail through images reminiscent of those more historically colonial discourses.

The Story of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu and the “Compassionate Canadian” The numerous articles, editorials and letters which appeared in The Globe and Mail in December 2000 and January 2001 rehashed the same basic “facts” of the case over and over: The unmarried Magazu was discovered to be pregnant in early September of 2000; she was brought before a sharia court, the Islamic system of law having been introduced in the northern Nigerian state of Zamfara earlier in 2000; she was charged with zina or

47 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes deliberate fornication; she claimed that she did not know the father of the child, as she had been coerced by her own father into having sex with three of his friends, and while seven witnesses testified to this fact, their testimony was dismissed; while she is reported to be 17, she looks much younger, perhaps 13 or even 11; she was found guilty and sentenced to 100 lashes for having premarital sex and an additional 80 lashes for falsely accusing the three men. Just a few days before her flogging, the sentence was reduced to 100 lashes and though an appeal was in process, Magazu was punished on January 22, 2001. Recurrent in nearly all of these stories and editorials were the “facts” that Magazu is illiterate, uneducated, had no lawyer during the trial and would most certainly die as a result of the flogging. This assertion of the brutality of the punishment is in marked contrast to the more subdued and nuanced report of her punishment which noted that sharia sanctioned flogging in Zamfara requires that the person conducting the beating hold a Koran between his arm and chest thereby restricting the force of the beating. Magazu is reported to have walked home after the public flogging, a punishment seemingly designed to humiliate as much as physically injure. Articles published prior to Magazu’s punishment also consistently noted that Canadians were outraged by the verdict and that the Canadian state was protesting to the Nigerian government on their behalf. Just days after first reporting on the plight of Magazu, under the banner, “Spare girl, Canadians ask Nigeria,” Nolen reports that Amnesty International Canada, Nigeria’s High Commission in Ottawa and the Canadian government had received an “unprecedented number of letters, faxes, calls and e-mails from concerned Canadians.” Further, these letters of outrage were characterized as being written by “ordinary Canadians” rather than the “typical” respondents to Amnesty International appeals. In the story, Nolen chastises the Nigerian High Commissioner for worrying about how the controversy might affect Nigeria’s “image.” The story of Bariya Magazu, however, is very much one of the Canadian “image.” Headlines personify the nation: “Canada outraged as girl gets 100 lashes” or “Canada assails Nigeria on flogging.” Pennee argues that in the discourse of Canadian international assistance, the government represents the people by acting on “their” behalf (“Cultural” 15). While articles did distinguish between the attempts of the Canadian government and citizens to prevent the flogging of Magazu, and at times the Canadian government is presented as acting on “behalf” of its citizenry, the state represents the nation in the sense that it stands (in) for the “people.” The various and distinct efforts by the Canadian government and Canadian citizens are conflated under the sign, “Canada.” This “Canada” is figured in morally superior terms to the world outside Canada, assuming a position of power through civility on the world stage. Inoneeditorial,underthebanner“180lashesinNigeria,”TheGlobeuses images of the savage Other: the case “reek(s) of injustice and barbarity,” and the reading of sharia is so “extreme” that it seems “closer to the spirit of

48 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others witch-hunts and the Inquisition” (“180”). Under the banner “Barbarity in Nigeria,” another editorial refers to the international protest as being “spearheaded” by Canada, the flogging sentence is attributed to “conservative Muslims” and is characterized as “barbarous,” “repugnant” and “uncivilized” (“Barbarity”). In describing her “breakfast with the Governor,” Stephanie Nolen describes Zamfara state governor Ahmed Sani’s luxurious mansion and her conversation with him: “An hour later, after a wide-ranging and affable conversation (his English is excellent), Mr. Sani said….” Enclosed within the parentheses is the mark of Governor Sani’s “difference.” Nolen deems it worthy to mention that an African Muslim who has instituted sharia speaks English; presumably readers would have expected that such an “uncivilized” man who is responsible for such “barbarity” would not. Governor Sani’s ability to speak English is presented as extraordinary, despite the fact that he is a high-ranking government official in a Commonwealth nation in which the official language is English. The Globe’s production of the “barbarous” external Other whom the “benevolent” Canadian may condemn is dependent upon a history of discursive constructions of the Muslim Other and fits within dominant Western media discourses of Islam. As Karim H. Karim argues, Islam has become the primary Other for the North/Westsince the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Northern media traditionally construct “Muslims as violent and as irrational barbarians intent on destroying civilization. Amonolithic and static ‘Islam’is presented as the antithesis of the Western liberal values developed over the last 300 years” (Karim 12). Similarly, in their study of Canadian media representations of Muslim women, Katherine H. Bullock and Gul Joya Jafri argue that Muslim Canadian women are presented as outsiders within Canada, their very appearance–in hijab for instance–reflecting distinctly “anti-Canadian” values (35). Articles covering the Magazu story often include a map of the state of Zamfara with the heading “Under Islamic law” and headlines include “Islamic law sentence of 180 lashes for premarital sex prompts outcry;” (Nolen “Spare”) and, “More whipping orders given under Islamic law” (Nolen “More”). In order for Canada’s spiritual grace to be manifest, to borrow Achebe’s phrase, the violence perpetrated against Magazu must be seen as foreign to Canadian “values and culture” and a result of the play of difference. Many of the letters of “ordinary Canadians” selected for publication emphasize this theme. For instance, Daniel Bellemare writes: “Let’s call a spade a spade. Sharia fundamentally contradicts the tenets of democracy and human rights.” Perhaps such choices of words as “barbarous,” “uncivilized,” “spearheading,” “calling a spade a spade” are simply unfortunate, and I am reading too much into these responses. Nonetheless, a (neo)colonial theme which is dependent upon post-enlightenment narratives of progress and development is clearly evident.

49 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

In her analysis of Canadian foreign policy documents, Pennee notes that the term “civilized” figures prominently within a discourse of maturation, and she argues that this rhetoric of maturity and civilization is integral to the Canadian imaginary both “at home” and in its “projection abroad” (“Culture” 151). While she states that the images of Canada projected at home and abroad are not separable, I would argue that Canada’s image of itself is very much dependent upon the way it imagines itself in relation to the world outside Canada, and specifically those places (and peoples) which are deemed “less developed.” Juxtaposed with assertions of the barbarity of the verdict, and the idea that the people of Zamfara are “uncivilized,” are in early pieces calls for Canada to act, and in later pieces statements of Canadian pride for leading the protest. Letter-writers such as Peter Langmuir state: “I’m proud that Canada, alone among nations, is speaking out against the virtual death sentence.” In fact, along with the repeated basic outline of Magazu’s story is a refrain of Canadian compassion and outrage which takes the form of reminders of protest letters, the Canadian state’s vociferousness on her behalf, or the fact that Magazu“hasbecomethefocusofaCanadian-ledcampaigntosaveherlife” (MacKinnon). By assuming the universality of (liberal) “democracy” and “human rights,” capitalist ideology, to which these concepts are indebted, is elided. As a result, the violence perpetrated against Magazu is represented as outside any social or political context. Instead, the flogging sentence is represented as an echo of Euro-Christian witch-hunts and the Inquisition; Islam and/or Nigeria exists in contradistinction to Canada’s superseded European cultural past, thereby affirming “Canada” as a mature (civilized) nation.

Compensating for the Lack of a “Usable Past” Benedict Anderson argues that nations need to imagine a principle of community even where there is little to postulate any (Bannerji “Dark” 97) and that the modern culture of nationalism draws upon the past to achieve this sense of community through such emblems as the cenotaph (Anderson 9). Canada does indeed draw upon such a past in imagining itself. For example, Pennee has analysed the establishment of a memorial to the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Pennee argues that Governor General Adrienne Clarkson’s eulogy for the Unknown Soldier, presented at the ceremony unveiling the memorial in the spring of 2000, performs the function of narrating a nation in which “the imagined individuality of this one soldier… must also function universally for ‘Canadians,’ for ‘us’… [the unknown soldier is] a conveniently empty signifier or blank slate on and by which ‘Canadian’ signifieds can be inscribed” (“Cultural” 2). Because the “Canadian” past, in temporal terms, is primarily the history of the land’s indigenous peoples–a non-European past–and because the history of settlement is being reread as invasion, domination and exploitation, the Canadian imaginary has only a limited

50 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others

“usable past.” Memorials to Canada’s war past are racially marked and are contained within a struggle among imperial powers. Stasiulis and Yuval- Davis argue that because settler societies lack a “usable” past through which to imagine the nation, the “element of a ‘common destiny’ is of crucial importance” (19). Because of Canada’s ethnic and cultural diversity andthemulticultural pluralism itpurports tocultivate, therecanbeonlyfew signifiers of a contemporary collectivity, to use Lawson’s terms, the “usable here, the usable now, the usable us” (“Discovery” 168). Canada must therefore create a mythology of the present and the future (i.e. multiculturalism, international assistance and peacemaking) to construct a national community. Diana Brydon argues that the non-Native Canadian’s “acknowledging guilt for the invasion and theft of First Nations lands … is easier than recognizing current, continued complicity in imperialist patterns of domination, both epistemological and economic” (8). While Brydon is referring to current non-Native (read: White/Anglo/Male) imperialist practices within the borders of the Canadian state, I believe that, to some extent at least, this unwillingness to acknowledge complicity in contemporary patterns of domination at “home” is facilitated by imagining Canada’s benevolence “abroad.” While this affirmation of benevolence may be linked to the past through images such as the cenotaph, the poppy, or the Unknown Soldier, it is very much confirmed through another, more contemporary, marker: those who live outside Canada. The national imaginary of the Canadian as “civilized,” “compassionate,” and a “peacemaker,” requires a “primitive” to which Canada can be “compassionate” or for which Canada can be a “peacemaker.” This national imaginary is facilitated in the representation of the violence against Bariya Ibrahim Magazu through the construction of the barbarous African/Muslim/Male. As Ken Wiwa argues in a Globe opinion piece, a binary is constructed in articles about Magazu between Christianity/Capitalism/Democracy/ Modernity and Islam/Anti-Capitalism/Tradition. Imagining the Canadian subject through such colonial or orientalist discourses of an external Other has significant ramifications for the possibilities of state-sponsored multiculturalism, a discourse of unity in diversity projected both at “home” and “abroad” as the distinctness of the Canadian nation. The continued classification, within postcolonial studies, of Canada as a settler-invader nation speaks of a society that was. However, this is not to say that “Canada” has been transformed from one thing to another, but that the Canadian imaginary has always been fraught, never solidly defined or entrenched. As Katharyne Mitchell notes, the “ethnic mosaic” and “multiculturalism were the original, celebratory examples of state-led attempts to forge a unique ‘Canadian’identity” (228).5 Such celebrations of heterogeneity and heteroglossia, however, as theories of the “postnational” would suggest, are antithetical to the imagining of the nation, especially in a space in which certain ethno-cultural groups hold places of

51 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes privilege within epistemological and material structures of power. Canada’s pluralism has been celebrated as one of its defining characteristics and “achievements,” and it is important to heed the reminders of critics such as Linda Hutcheon who reiterate that multiculturalism does have positive possibilities (15). However, critics such as Arun Mukherjee and Himani Bannerji have identified the way in which this national pedagogy of multiculturalism fails to translate into performance. Bannerji, for instance, argues that as an ideological state apparatus, multiculturalism is a “device for constructing and ascribing politicalsubjectivitiesandagenciesforthosewhoareseenaslegitimateand full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses” (Bannerji “Introduction” 6). Further, “these officially multicultural ethnicities are themselves constructs of colonial, orientalist and racist discourses” (9). In theory, the Canadian mosaic is supposed to provide a space in which no one groupissuperiortoanotherandcultural/ethnic/religiousdifferencesarenot only tolerated by individuals and groups within the nation but celebrated. However, as many critics have echoed, state-sponsored multiculturalism serves to institutionalize marginality, thereby entrenching the power of historically dominant groups, namely the Anglo/Christian/Male.6 Argues Bannerji: “by its very organization of social communities in ‘race’ and ethnic terms, the state constantly creates ‘Canadians’ and ‘others’” (“Geography” 72). The sentiments of letter-writer J.W. Cargill are indicative of such institutionalized and popular constructions of marginality. Cargill writes: After having read about the Nigerian girl, a victim of rape, being sentenced to 180 lashes for premarital sex and for accusing her attackers, I have been waiting, in vain, for a condemnation of this sort of inhumanity from the Muslims resident in Canada. So far, I have not seen one letter. Do they really support this appalling cruelty? Despite the multicultural ideal of unity in diversity, multiculturalism, in its performance, constructs or reinforces “insiders” (“genuine” Canadians) and “outsiders.” Cargill places the Muslim Canadian in an impossible position. Regarded as “outsiders within” (“Muslims resident in Canada”), Muslim Canadians cannot but undo themselves: by failing to condemn the violence of Muslims outside Canada they fail to be “Canadian,” while the assumption that Muslim Canadians have a particular responsibility to condemn such events outside the borders of Canada marks their difference from the “ordinary” Canadian. Like the media’s coverage of international events in general, The Globe’s coverage was not monolithic. The newspaper did publish a few letters which were critical of its demonization of Islam, representation of Magazu, and use of an isolated case of violence perpetrated against one individual to absolve Canadians and the West of their complicity in the structural violence of global poverty. As well, the paper published two opinion pieces

52 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others which countered the dominant story by providing context, in terms of Islam and sharia law, as well as the political, cultural and religious tensions in Nigeria. However, these perspectives which questioned or provided alternatives to the dominant narrative of the Magazu story were also utilized to reinforce this narrative. While critics such as Bannerji seek to show how state multiculturalism is flawed in that by organizing social communities in racial and ethnic terms, it constantly creates Canadians and Others, The Globe and Mail’s representation of the story of Magazu reveals the parameters within which difference is accepted in this so-called multicultural nation. In an Op-Ed piece under the banner “Don’t rush to judgment,” Sheema Khan discusses the story within the context of sharia law and in relation to similar cases. She refers to a case in Pakistan which was grossly misrepresented in Western media and argues that the Magazu case reflects a failure to implement sharia properly. She states: “[B]efore we rise up in outrage, let us find out more about the system, and work through it.” Such sentiments echo those of Nigerian women’s rights organizations BAOBOB and Women In Nigeria (WIN), which, while they condemn the flogging of Magazu as an abuse of human rights, make their case in legal rather than ideological terms, condemning the improper use of sharia law and not the system of law or Islam in general (see Busari, “WIN,” Imam “Whipping”). The statement quoted above by letter-writer Daniel Bellemare was written in response to Sheema Khan’s opinion piece. Bellemare contends that Khan is an apologist for Islam and that rather than constituting a specific unjust act, the flogging of Magazu reflects the inhumanity of Islam as a whole. Another of the four letters condemning Khan under the heading “Sharia is the problem” reads, in its entirety: “Just what part of barbarity does Sheema Khannotunderstand?”(Ireland).Suchovertlyanti-Islamicsentimentsonly emphasize the way in which Islam, as a Western discursive construction, and the specific case of Magazu’s punishment were equated in coverage of the story. The “concerned” or “ordinary” Canadian, then, cannot be Muslim. One suggested resolution to the conflict was that Magazu be brought to Canada. Wrote Colin Proudman: Is there no way the Nigerian girl and her child can be brought to Canada?Tensofthousandsofuswouldhelpinanywaypossible. She would be infinitely better off here, even though uprooted from family and culture. The family appears not to care and the culture will have her flogged to death. Please find out how something can be done. A few days earlier The Globe ran a story about a British Columbia cleric who had read about Magazu and had approached his congregation about offering her a haven in their community. Reporter Stephanie Nolen concedes that it would likely be impossible for Magazu to actually leave Nigeria, and so the article becomes about the compassionate sentiment of

53 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes the small church, and therefore the demarcation of difference between Canadian/Christian culture and Nigerian/Islamic culture. As well, while Nolen argues that Rev. Norman Thomas’ desire to “adopt” the young woman “demonstrates the level of commitment of many Canadians to protecting human rights of people in developing countries,” (“B.C.”) she does not explain how removing one individual from Nigeria will serve to protect human rights in general. Abdul JanMohamed argues that “the colonizer’s invariable assumptions about his moral superiority means that he will rarely question the validity of either his own or his society’s formation and that he will not be inclined to expend any energy in understanding the worthless alterity of the colonized” (65). Despite state claimstomulticulturalism,thereseemstobelittlepopularwilltoacceptand understand difference - to “work through it” as Sheema Khan proposes. The external Other can be named and described in a way that escapes the “ambivalence” of the status of outsiders–such as immigrants or racialized groups within Canada–within discourses of Canadian identity. Without a physical presence “here” in Canada, the Third World Other is that which she is represented to be. So, while, the “outsider within” disrupts the national imaginary of a homogenous, united Canada and Canadians–in Bhabha’s terms, the disruption of the pedagogy of the homogeneous nation by its heterogeneous performance–the external Other is crucial in (re)constructing the “ordinary” Canadian as Anglo, White, Christian, and, significantly, Male.

Canadian Nationalism and Western Feminism Discourses of Canadian nationalism are reinforced and complicated by an overlapping discourse of Western feminism. Their complex intersection was highlighted in the discussion that followed an earlier version of this paper, a discussion that was precipitated by the suggestion that the paper’s focus elided feminist protests over the treatment of Magazu and the role of “global feminist solidarity” in seeking to end male violence against women around the world. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty critique the Western origins of “international feminism” and argue that “calls for ‘global sisterhood’ are often premised on a centre/periphery model where women of color or Third World women constitute the periphery” (xviii). The initial letters to the editor responding to the story of Magazu were mainly written by women, and focused upon clarifying the details of the story and sharing information about how Canadians may register their concern to the Nigerian and Canadian governments over Magazu’s flogging. While initial outrage over Magazu’s sentence reflected, at least in part, concerns over women’s sexual freedom, the motivation for Canadian concern over the violence against Magazu presented in the editorials, articles and letters that followed is largely focused upon Magazu as a “victim” of sharia law. Apart from a story which reports of protests against Magazu’s punishment within Nigeria by

54 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others

BAOBOB for Women’s Rights (Nolen “Nigerians”), and the post-punishment statements of Project Alert on Violence Against Women (Nolen “Nigerian Activists”), the reactions of Nigerian or Canadian women’s organizations or how the story fits within a larger context and critique of male violence against women are absent. Indeed, presented as an innocent and passive victim in The Globe’s coverage, Magazu’s subjectivity as woman is recognized only in so far as this justifies the necessity to “save” her. While Shahnaz Khan argues that the Muslim woman’s body often becomes the “contested terrain between competing visions of authenticity” (146), Magazu is marginalized in a narrative pitting Canadian benevolence against Islamic barbarity within a discourse of universal human rights. It is important therefore to interrogate the way in which The Globe’s narrative of the story of Magazu, while it explicitly focuses on religious difference and implicitly on racial difference, also reveals how the production of the non-Canadian Other is inscribed through gender. The “facts” of Magazu’s story that The Globe presents are those which Nolen has been able to ascertain from her bases in Lagos and Abuja. Globe and Mail journalists, editors and readers avoid placing the story of Magazu in any socio-historical context, and so these “facts” construct a narrative in which Canada is constituted as hero through its desire to protect an “innocent,” “helpless,” female victim and through its condemnation of an “uncivilized” (Islamic) villain. A few days prior to Magazu’s flogging, however, Nolen acknowledged that the Globe’s construction of the protagonist of the story as the innocent young girl who was raped was uncertain if not inaccurate. What had been presented as a clear case of the injustice of Islamic law and state sponsored “torture” of a young girl became a “twisted tale” as the story’s headline reads. Describing her visit to Magazu’s village, Nolen describes how the girl says little and is generally told what to say by male relatives during her interview. “Ask cooler heads–cooler, female heads–about Ms. Magazu’s situation,” Nolen writes, “and the response is markedly different” (“Twisted” A12). Nolen describes how village “gossip” holds that Magazu unmarried at 17 was an anomaly for rural Nigeria. Instead of an “innocent young girl,” the women of the village, including “Thambaya Audu, perhaps the most respected woman,” while deploring the sentence, also explain that Bariya Ibrahim Magazu was widely known to be sexually active, had created a scandal in 1999 by having an affair with a married man, and likely became pregnant by a man with whom she had a relationship. Mohanty critiques the way in which (Western) feminist writing ignores how Third World women are material subjects of their collective histories in favour of the idea of the Woman as a cultural and ideological Other, and how such discourses “discursively colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing/representing a composite, singular ‘third-world woman’” (197). Further, she argues that the application of the concept of women as a

55 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes homogeneous category to women in the Third World “robs them of their historicalandpoliticalagency”(213,originalitalics).ByvisitingMagazu’s village and presenting various viewpoints on the case, and in particular, the women’s stories of Magazu’s behaviour, Nolen disrupts the representation of Magazu as passive. Rather than a helpless victim of rape, Magazu is represented in Nolen’s interviews with local women as an active agent, transgressing local customs regarding women’s conduct by becoming pregnant through a consensual relationship outside marriage. She is punished not for being a woman, but for not being the right kind of woman. Within the context of nationalist policies in Nigeria–a context absent in Globe coverage–continued poverty and underdevelopment have been attributed to the “immorality” of individual Nigerians, and women in particular (Imam “Dynamics” 289). However, while Nolen’s inclusion of the women’s stories of Magazu’s conduct recognizes the possibility of Magazu’s agency, she goes on to reconstruct Magazu as a helpless figure through which Canadian compassion can be asserted. First, Nolen characterizes Magazu as “running wild” and rather than seeing this “running wild” as an act of subversion–rejecting gendered expectations of behaviour–explains that Magazu may have been forced to seek sexual relationships outside the institution of marriage because she is “not a good-looking girl” and because she has a vaguely described deformity. Further, Nolen follows her reporting of the women’s “gossip” by hypothesizing that Magazu’s pregnancy could be a result of incestuous sexual abuse. Nolen does not substantiate the origin of such a hypothesis and concludes that “if, perhaps, Ms. Magazu was the victim of sexual abuse, of incest, and named the three men because she could not name a member of her own family–and if the men rallied around the sharia court to protect themselves–well that won’t come out either” (“Twisted”). Such a hypothesis seems to disregard the voices of the interviewed women and reinforce the dominant image of Magazu as passive, an image that is countered by Amina Mama’s claim that “on the basis of the ungathered evidence of millions of women all over the continent… African women have not been passive recipients of abuse, as some authorities would have us believe” (Mama 61). This article, however, published just two days before Magazu’s flogging, does problematize the figure of Magazu; if she is not more complex, her subject-status is more difficulttodetermine. Nonetheless,asintherestofTheGlobe’scoverageof the story, the circumstances of Magazu’s punishment are not placed in a broader socio-political or cultural context–such as the way in which women in Nigeria have been used as a scapegoat to explain lack of progress in development–which would acknowledge the agency of Magazu–and other women–while also recognizing that she is subject to domination. The above analysis is meant in no way to suggest that because Magazu was likely not the “innocent victim” she was constructed as that she deserved to be publicly flogged for having a baby while unmarried. Rather,

56 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others the article describing a “twisted tale” reveals the way in which the story of BariyaIbrahimMagazuisconstructed.BecausethestoryofBariyaMagazu takes place, for the Canadian reader, within the pages of The Globe and Mail, Nolen has the power both to appeal to the problematic essential authority of the subaltern woman’s voice–an authority and authenticity that Sara Suleri, among others, has problematized–and to disregard it; the voices of Magazu and the village women are constrained by the narrative Nolen constructs. Nolen’s questioning of the story of Magazu as it had been repeatedly reported serves to expose the way in which Canadians have the power to create, speak for and silence the external Other in their own interest. By framing the feminist implications of the story through a discourse of universal human rights, The Globe’s coverage seemingly elides gender issues while relying upon stock figures of the passive, victimized woman. Much like British colonial “concern” over sati, which Spivak characterizes as “white men saving brown women from brown men” (93) in the performance of Canadian “concern,” the subaltern woman’s body becomes the space on which ideology is contested, in this case between the West/ Modernity and Islam/Tradition. This concern about male violence against women resonates in interesting ways with the discourse of multiculturalism within Canada, which, as Bannerji has shown, sometimes allows for acts of male violence against women in Canada to be explained away through appeals to cultural tradition (“Paradox” 48). While Bannerji refers to the way in which tradition is given as an explanation for male violence against women perpetrated by immigrants or ethnic minorities–“outsiders” within Canada–it is important to note that recognition and censure of male violence against women within the dominant White/Christian society is both recent and tenuous.7 While Magazu’s punishment is likewise attributed to tradition, this tradition becomes the focus of Canadian moral outrage. By representing difference of the external Other as inadequacy or “lack,” the “spiritual grace” of Canadians is manifest.

Talisman’s Sudan Operations: The Erasure of the Other and Disappearance of Compassion Within the discourse of Canadian “concern,” human rights discourse is assumed to be both universal and natural. Steven Spencer writes to The Globe and Mail in response to the sentencing of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu: “The freedom of the individual is a universal principle because it is a profoundly humane ideal, allied to no particular creed.” Of course “individual freedom” is neither universal nor necessarily humane; it may be argued, for instance, that the privileging of such freedoms has limited the possibility of guaranteeing sustenance rights. Further, dominant human rights discourse is very much historically allied to the ideologies of capitalism, Western liberalism and democracy. Juxtaposed with Spencer’s letter is one from Kashif Pirzada: “I would say the grossest violation of

57 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes human rights is not an unjust sentence of a young girl, but the grinding poverty we allow our fellow humans to wallow in.” Pirzada sees Canadians as culpable in a system of unequal development. I would now like to turn to a brief analysis of The Globe and Mail’s coverage of one example of the way in which Canada or Canadians are culpable in underdevelopment and human rights abuses outside Canada, the Sudan operations of Canada’s largest independent oil and gas company, Talisman Energy, Inc. Coverage of the role of Canadian corporations and state economic policies in the “Third World” is largely absent in the mass media. The ethics of Talisman’s overseas operations have received much more critical attention in mainstream Canadian media than other Canadian corporations or Canada’s economic and development policies more generally. This coverage, however, starkly contrasts the coverage of the punishment of Magazu, both in terms of its intensity and in terms of the way in which coverage of the story is framed. Rather than critiquing Talisman through discourses of human rights and Canadian identity (as compassion to those suffering in the majority world), The Globe’s coverage is limited to sporadic stories, usually coinciding with the corporation’s annual meetings. In January 2000, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs validated the allegations of a variety of primarily Church-affiliated human rights groups that the operations of Talisman Energy are contributing to human rights abuses in Sudan. For instance, in his report to the Minister, John Harker confirmed: that people are being forcibly displaced from areas of oil exploration and extraction; violence and the fear of violence part of this government programme of forced relocation is resulting in food insecurity; Talisman’s airstrip at Helgig is the base for Sudan government helicopter gunships and Antonov bombers and this airstrip has facilitated government attacks on villages in the region; Talisman owned and Canadian-piloted helicopters have been used for Sudanese military purposes; Talisman’s oil operations are helping finance the Sudanese government; and current oil operations are exacerbating the war in Sudan. States Harker: “[I]t is hard to deny that displacement is now, and has been for some time, because of oil. This is a commodity which is seen increasingly as, and may well be, the enemy of the people with nowhere to go where they can enjoy human security” (Harker 11). Despite the report, the Canadian government chose not to impose any form of sanction upon the company (see “Talisman,” DeYoung). It is important to note that Talisman has continued to deny its involvement with Sudan’s government and military or to acknowledge the human consequences of its operations in Sudan. Indeed, echoing the justification of European colonial settlement of the Americas and the consequent extermination or displacement of Indigenous peoples, Talisman argues that its “oil field area” in Ruweng County, Pariang Province “has never known permanent habitation” (Harker 10).8 Nonetheless, after fears that U.S. legislation would mean that Talisman would be removed from the New York Stock Exchange for continuing to operate in Sudan and on-going litigation in which the American Anti-Slave

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Group is seeking $1 billion from Talisman, alleging that the company has deliberatelyaidedandabettedtheSudangovernmenttocommitacampaign of ethnic cleansing (Henthoff), there is continuing speculation in coverage of the company’s 2002 annual meetings that Talisman is seeking to sell its holdings in Sudan. While a Globe editorial characterizes Talisman’s defence against accusations of wrongdoing in Sudan as resting “on the proposition that companies are companies and governments are governments” (“Know”), the distinction between State, Corporation and Citizen cannot be so easily made. The dominant focus in Globe and Mail coverage of Magazu implicitly, and at times explicitly, imagines Canada as a more mature parent figure for the Third World. This warning comes from letter-writer James F. Doig: “The next time Nigeria wanted something from the club, Canada and others would be expected to ante up as though nothing of the sort had happened. Nigerians–and Canadians–should think about that.” In the coverage of the Magazu story there are recurrent reminders that Canada advocated for the suspension of development assistance and investment in Nigeria to protest the actions of former dictator Sani Abacha. These reminders draw attention to the kind of power Canada has to influence the governments of developing nations; the power to withhold material assistance and impose economic sanctions. Ironically, the sanctions against the Abacha regime occurred in response to the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, whom The Globe characterizes simply as a “poet and minority-rights activist” (MacKinnon “Canada assails”); Saro-Wiwa was one of the founders and leaders of The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and was killed for advocating an end to the abuses perpetrated against the Ogoni by Abacha and, significantly, the multinational, Shell Oil. In his Globe opinion piece, Ken Wiwa (the son of Saro-Wiwa) makes clear his outrage over the flogging of Magazu; yet he also warns that those whom North Americans and Europeans regard as “victims” of sharia often “readily embrace its version of justice.” Further, he argues that spectacular cases like that of Magazu become discursive fields on which Northern Nigeria battles the South; a battle which is parallel to the real and bloody battles being waged between a Muslim dominated North which has embraced sharia as a response to widespread poverty and corruption and a Christian dominated, and generally more westernized South. The banner headline for the piece, “The West is flogging an agenda,” is largely a misnomer. In concluding the piece, however–just preceding a paragraph in which Wiwa reinforces the all too familiar Western stereotypes of Africa as “a brutal place that grinds you down” and as “fevered craziness and baroque violence” juxtaposed with “charm,” “innocence” and “beauty”–Wiwa points out that Western media ignore a “host of practices” in Nigeria’s “modernizing” and largely Christian South “that offend any liberal sensitivity.”

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Himani Bannerji argues that Canada, as a multi-ethnic state, discovered multiculturalism “as a way of both hiding and enshrining power relations” (“Paradox”31). WhilerepresentationsoftheexternalOtherdisruptnotions of a stable and equitable multicultural nation, they also mask the unequal distribution of wealth and resources within Canada, and how this system of power functions globally by imagining a national community through its difference from the external Other, a difference marked by its paternalistic “concern” for that Other. A number of critics, including Alexander and Mohanty, Gloria Thomas-Emeagwali, Amima M. Mama and Ayesha Imam, have argued that Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) initiated by the World Bank and IMF in countries like Nigeria have exacerbated the feminization of poverty, decreasing girls’ access to primary education and diminishing health care, which has, for instance, hampered the efforts of local women’s groups to curb early marriage. I quoted JanMohamed above, regarding the way in which colonial discourse morally validates the colonizer’s culture, in order to closely link the discursive violence of the dominant theme in coverage of the Magazu story with the material power Canada has in its relations with the Third World. The construction of an external Other, of which The Globe and Mail’s coverage of Magazu is one example, is crucial to the act of eliding or legitimizing material domination within and by a group which, in this case, has its identity invested in ideals of benevolence and compassion. Read: We are outraged by this injustice and so we are compassionate; since we are compassionate we are helping to alleviate poverty and therefore cannot be culpable in it. When stories of exploitation in the Third World by Canadian corporations are reported in major Canadian newspapers–and these stories arerare–theyareusuallyrelegatedtotheBusinesssectionandshapedbythe discourse of economics rather than national identity.9 Significantly, while The Globe devoted space to the Magazu story nearly every day for nearly eight weeks, its coverage of Talisman Energy’s operations in the Sudan over the past few years has been limited to few and sporadic stories. Primarily, The Globe covers Talisman in its Business section, reporting either on the company’s corporate health–with only brief acknowled- gement of its “controversial” Sudanese operations–or its ongoing struggle to manage its image and maintain the faith of its stockholders. The allegations against Talisman are presented in a disinterested tone that is devoid of any connection to Canadian identity or Canadian values as stated in Canadian policy. For instance, Allan Freeman’s October 2001 Business piece pits Talisman against its “critics” and the U.S. Senate. Reporting on the corporation’s 2002 annual meetings, Lily Nguyen focuses upon Talisman’s efforts to sell its “controversial” operations in Sudan. She notes thatthemeetingis,forthethirdconsecutiveyear,besiegedbyprotestersand that the Sudan operations have “garnered Talisman a seemingly endless barrage of local and international criticism from human rights groups, churchesandanti-slaveryorganizationswhosayoilrevenueisprolonginga bloody civil conflict by funding the Khartoum-based government’s

60 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others military purchases” (Nguyen). While Nguyen also notes that for the first time, protestors “blamed” the Canadian government and people for failing to hold Talisman accountable, unlike the coverage of the Magazu case, in which the focus was often the “Canadian campaign” to save her, campaigns against Talisman become sources of information or provide context for Talisman’s share price uncertainty, but not the focus of the coverage. Indeed, the very distinction between Talisman’s “protesters”–the typical respondents of human rights appeals – and the “concerned” “ordinary” Canadians who called for action to stop the flogging of Magazu reflects the distinct ideological frameworks within which the two stories are told. The Globe concentrates on covering Talisman’s “controversy” and its players– Talisman,itscritics,theU.S.Senate–butnotthebasisofthecontroversy.10 In a May 2002 op-ed piece in The Globe, Gary Kenny implicates the Canadian public in the activities of Canadian corporations overseas, asking: “Are Canadians prepared to ignore the continuing corporate complicity, indirect or otherwise, of Calgary’s Talisman Energy in the oil-driven destruction of southern Sudan?” Kenny proceeds to document previous accounts of abuses in Sudan and their links to Talisman’s operations and draws upon his own “fact-finding” trip in February of 2002. He argues that the Canadian government has failed to act against Talisman and continues to profit from the corporation through corporate taxes and the Canadian Pension Plan’s ownership of $50 million in shares. In another op-ed piece, printed some two-years earlier in The Globe, Roger Winter, the director of a Washington-based committee for refugees, decries the idea that, at that time, Canadians were already “weary” about hearing allegations of Talisman’s complicity with Sudan government atrocities. Such appeals to Canadian “responsibility,” albeit without the rhetoric of “concern” or “compassion,” mark the contrast between the way the Canadian state and citizen are assumed as one in the story of Magazu–a story constructed as the suffering of a “helpless” woman as a result of a barbaric and specifically non-Canadian racialized Other–and the distinct borders between nation and corporate culture which the Talisman story reveals. The Globe clearly differentiates between the Canadian nation and Talisman, chastising the company for its “contradictions” and duplicity, warning that it cannot hide behind a “moral firewall” (“Know”). While numerous organizations and individuals in Canada have been lobbying the government to intervene–in the same way that Canadians sought government intervention in the Magazu case–and have worked diligently to raise public awareness about Talisman’s operations, the story has received limited attention and the victims of the human rights abuses have seldom taken the form of anything more specific than the euphemistic “displaced persons.” While Canadian identity is affirmed through the “difference” of the Other outside Canada, the Other is absent in the Talisman story. The Globe has not sent a reporter to Sudan to cover the story or follow-up on the “allegations” of Talisman’s “critics.” Nor has The

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Globe sought to reveal the “human face” of suffering, the “passive” victim of human rights abuses which cannot be so easily attributed to an “uncivilized” Other. Indeed, not only has the story not received the intense attention or the measure of gravity given to the Magazu story, The Globe has often taken a rather light-hearted view of the controversy. Leading up to the 2002 annual general meeting of Talisman, Globe business writer Brent Jang takes the voice of Talisman CEO Jim Buckee: “I sure wish someone would come along and buy our 25-per-cent stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum consortium in Sudan … I underestimated how the Sudanese investment would chew up so much of my time. As you can tell from those protesters outside our meeting, our company’s fine exploration and production work in other regions of the world have been overshadowed by the controversial Sudanese joint venture.” While Jang purports to share with readers the views Talisman will not make public during its 2002 AGM, the human rights abuses with which Talisman’s operations are allegedly complicit are lost in a focus on public image. In a similar story, Keith McArthur analyses ethical mutual funds against normal funds under the banner, “The saints and sinners investment portfolio.” In this light-hearted look at ethical funds, McArthur argues that when creating a portfolio of “evil” funds, Talisman Energy is an obvious choice. To return to Pennee’s assertion regarding the values underlying Canadian foreign policy, quoted in the introduction to this paper, media coverage of Talisman’s complicity in the displacement of the people of Sudan and the on-going civil war in that country reflects the way in which Canadianculturebecomesinofficialpolicysynonymouswiththecultureof capital. While the government of Canada is aware of the allegations against Talisman and has conducted its own studies which confirm these allegations, the exploitation of land, resources and people in the Third Worldby Canadian corporations such as Talisman lie across the “borders of compassion,” borders which expose the contradictions within the ideology of consumer capitalism that underlie and restrict the nation’s commitment to fostering human rights, democracy and the environment. In the story of Magazu, and I do not think that it is uncommon of Canadian constructions of the world outside Canada, human rights discourse is necessarily constrained by a narrative comprising the “helpless,” “needy” Third World Other in contrast with, and victim of, the “barbaric” Third World Other. Such a discourse is fundamental to constructions of Canadian identity as “humane” and “compassionate” as it functions to establish an imagined community of Canada, in which the role of Canada and Canadians in the structural violence of the Third World is erased and any relationship between Canadian affluence and Third World poverty is largely ignored.

Notes 1. I am indebted to those who participated in a discussion over an earlier version of this paper at the 2001 Conference of the Canadian Association of Commonwealth

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Literature and Language Studies in Quebec City. I also wish to thank Susie O’Brien for her support and critique of this paper as I reframed and reworked it. 2. The questions that framed the University of Manitoba’s September 2000 “Is Canada Postcolonial?” Conference were the following: Are some Canadian writers more postcolonial than others? What is at stake in conferring or denying “postcolonial” status to the literature of Canada? Can postcolonial theory be fruitfully applied to First Nations literatures? Does postcolonial literary theory make sense in the context of Canada’s official multiculturalism? Can postcolonialism help to locate Canadian literary production in the ongoing globalization of culture? 3. According to Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, the four main myth-symbol complexes which contribute to nation-building in settler societies are: 1) the resources of the hegemonic collectivity, such as language, systems of law, economics and politics; 2) distinguishing between national collectivities of the new and mother countries; 3) the appropriation of elements of the cultural resources of the indigenous population; and 4) the cultural symbols of other ethnic collectivities that have immigrated to the settler societies (“Introduction” 23). 4. See Hutcheon (“Circling” 155); this position is reiterated by Mukherjee (“Whose”). 5. In their article, “The Fractius Politics of a Settler Society: Canada”, Stasiulis and Jhappan reveal the way in which Canadian immigration policy, for instance, has historically sought to cultivate a distinctly “white” Canadian nation, this policy changing only after World War II (116-119). 6. See for instance, Stasiulis and Jhappan (124). 7. In July of 2001 a Canadian woman, who significantly is of Asian descent, was accused of holding her 18-month-old daughter out of the window of her car while it was traveling about 100 kilometres an hour. She was denied bail after being charged with causing a public nuisance and failing to provide the necessities of life (“Judge”). The denial of bail in this case seems harsh in relation to the standard practice of allowing (white) men bail after they have beaten and/or threatened their wives, girlfriends or children. 8. A 2001 report estimates that at that time more than 250,000 people from Bentiu had been displaced as a result of oil operations in Sudan (Omondi). 9. For instance, the mainstream media in Canada has failed to investigate the way in which the Peruvian government is repressing local dissent over Canadian multinational Manhattan Mines operations in Tambo Grande. The company’s operations allegedly threaten environmental damage as well as the livelihood of tens of thousands of residents whose land will be expropriated. Manhattan Mines is but one of twenty major Canadian mining companies active in Peru, companies which receive financing and “political risk” insurance from the federal government’s Export Development Corporation (EDC) (see Leger, “Protestors,” “Export”). 10. Another example of this sort of reporting is Jeff Sallot’s April 2002 story on the rise in occurrences of the disease kala-azar and tuberculosis in Sudan. He reports that a Medicine Sans Frontieres report connects the rise in disease to the displacement of people resulting from Talisman’s operations without context or elaboration.

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Hutcheon, Linda. “‘Circling the Downspout of Empire’: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism.” Ariel 20 (October 1989): 149-75. —. “Introduction.” Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Eds. Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1990: 1-16. Imam, Ayesha M. “The Dynamics of WINning: An Analysis of Women in Nigeria (WIN)” Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. Eds. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. New York: Routledge, 1997: 280-307. —. “The Whipping of Bariya Magazu.” 8 February 2001. Tempo [Lagos] 5 May 2002 . Ireland, David. Letter. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 4 January 2001: A12. “Is Canada Postcolonial?” 7 August 2001 . Jang, Brent. “Here’s What We Won’t Hear at this Week’s Oil Patch AGMs.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 29 April 2002: B8. JanMohamed, Abdul R. “The Economy of the Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature.” Critical Inquiry 12 (Autumn 1985). “Judge Denies Bail to Mother.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 20 July 2001: A14. Karim, Karim H. Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2000. Kenny, Gary. “Canada’s Silence on Sudan is a Vote for Oppression.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 1 May 2002: A15. Khan, Shahnaz. “The Veil as a Site of Struggle: The Hijab in Quebec.” Canadian Woman Studies 15:2/3 (Spring-Summer 1995): 146-152. Khan, Sheema. “Don’t Rush to Judgment.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 3 January 2001: A13. “Know Your Friends.” Editorial 27 September 2001. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 5 May 2002. . Langmuir, Peter A. Letter. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 5 January 2001: A12. Lawson, Alan. “Postcolonial Theory and the ‘Settler’ Subject.” Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (Fall 1995): 20-36. —. “The Discovery of Nationality in Australian and Canadian Literatures.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995: 167-169. Leger, Kathryn. “Murder, Mayhem and Mining.” The National Post [Toronto] 15 May 2001, National Post Online. 24 July 2001

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Mukherjee, Arun P. “Canadian Nationalism, Canadian Literature, and Racial Minority Women.” Floating the Borders: New Contexts in Canadian Criticism. Ed. Aziz-Nurjehan. Toronto: TSAR, 1999: 78-95. — “Whose Post-Colonialism and Whose Postmodernism?” World Literature Written in English 30:2 (Autumn 1990): 1-9. Nguyen, Lily. “Talisman Boss Confirms Talks to Sell.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 2 May 2002: B4. Nolen, Stephanie. “Nigerian Activists Rally in Wake of Teen’s Caning.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 27 January 2001: A22. —. “Birth Over, Nigerian Teen Awaits Flogging.” 28 December 2000: A1, A12. —. “Judge Sets Date for Flogging.” 6 January 2001: A20. —. “Nigerian May Escape 100 Lashes.” 20 January 2001: A21. —. “More Whipping Orders Given Under Islamic Law.” 12 January 2001: A12. —. “B.C. Church Offers Haven to Nigerian Teenager.” 5 January 2001: A8. —. “Spare Girl, Canadians Ask Nigeria.” 23 December 2000: A21. —. “The Twisted Tale of Bariya Magazu.” 20 January 2001: A13. —. “My Breakfast with the Governor.” 20 January 2001: A13. —. “Nigerians Try to Halt Girl’s Flogging.” 10 January 2001: A1, A10. Nolen, Stephanie and Murrey Campbell. “Canada Outraged as Girl Gets 100 Lashes.” The Globe and Mail. [Toronto] 23 January 2001: A1, A9. Omondi, Charles. “Oil Operations Displace Thousands.” 29 October 2001. African Church Information Service 5 May 2002. . Pennee, Donna Palmateer. “Culture as Security: Canadian Foreign Policy and International Relations from the Cold War to the Market Wars.” International Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue internationale d’etudes canadiennes 20 (Fall/Automme 1999): 149-171. —. “Cultural Nationalism in the Context of Globalization: Thinking Aloud about Teaching a National Literature at the Present Time.” Visiting Lecture. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. 1 February 2001. Pirzada, Kashif. Letter. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 6 January 2001: A14. Proudman, Colin. Letter. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 9 January 2001: A14. “Protestors Trash Manhattan Minerals Offices and Camp in Tambogrande, Peru.” Miningwatch Newsletter 5. 31 July 2001 . Sallot, Jeff. “Once-Rare Wasting Disease Ravages Region of Sudan.” The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 30 April 2002: A9. “Secret Punishment.” Editorial. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 23 January 2001: A12. Slemon, Stephen. “Magic Realism as Post-Colonial Discourse.” Canadian Literature 116 (Spring 1988): 9-24. Soderlind, Sylvia. Margin/Alias: Language and Colonization in Canadian and Quebecois Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Spencer, Steven. Letter. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 6 January 2001: A14. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia UP, 1994: 66-111. Stasiulis, Daiva and Nira Yuval-Davis. “Introduction: Beyond Dichotomies–Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class in Settler Societies.” Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class. Eds. Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis. London: Sage, 1995: 1-38. Stasiulis, Daiva and Radha Jhappan. “The Fractious Politics of a Settler Society: Canada.” Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class. 95-131. Suleri, Sara. “Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition.” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader: 244-256. “Talisman Helps Finance Conflict, Says Canada.” 4 May 2001. UN Integrated Regional Information. 5 May 2002.

66 The Borders of Compassion: The Canadian Imaginary and Its External Others

Thomas-Emeagwali, Gloria. “Islam and Gender: The Nigerian Case.” Muslim Women’s Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality Ed. Camillia Fawzi El-Solh and Judy Mabro. Providence: Berg, 1994: 73-84. “WIN Condemns Flogging of Teenage Mother Convicted Under Sharia Law.” 11 February 2001. Vanguard [Lagos] 5 May 2002. . Winter, Roger. “Canada’s Appalling Hypocrisy.” 23 March 2000. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 5 May 2002.

Ian Angus

Cultural Plurality and Democracy

Abstract Most descriptions of the multicultural encounter fail to capture it and reduce multiculturalism to inter-cultural encounter by describing it as an us-them relationship. In contrast, this essay argues that the multicultural encounter should be understood as an us-we relationship. Multiculturalism understood in this way sets up a unique relationship between the particular aspects of ethno-cultural belonging and the universal aspects of citizenship such that the right to ethno-cultural belonging can be sustained as a universal right. The multicultural speech act explains how an utterance and the field of discourse within which it normally takes on meaning may shift their relationship. Such a paradoxical relationship brings a tradition of thought into question in the context of a specific debate. In order to do this, the concept of multiculturalism must be expanded to include the notion of a post-colonial speech act. A discourse can be said to be multicultural insofar as the cultural tradition upon which a given speech act draws for its legitimation is not the only relevant cultural tradition upon which a responding speech act can draw. A discourse can be said to be post-colonial insofar as the institutional tradition within which a speech act occurs is open to debate about the rules on which it is based, not only the practices that refer to the rules.

Résumé La plupart des descriptions de la rencontre multiculturelle ne parviennent pas à saisir de quoi il s’agit et elles réduisent le multiculturalisme à une rencontre interculturelle, en le décrivant comme une relation entre « us and them » (eux et nous). Par contre, le présent article soutient que la rencontre multiculturelle devrait être comprise comme une relation entre « us and we » (nous et nous). Le multiculturalisme compris de cette façon crée une relation unique entre les aspects particuliers de l’appartenance ethnoculturelle et les aspects universels de la citoyenneté, de façon à ce que le droit à une appartenance ethnoculturelle puisse être soutenu à titre de droit universel. L’acte de langage multiculturel explique comment une énonciation et le champ de discours à l’intérieur duquel elle assume normalement une signification peuvent faire décaler leurs relations mutuelles. Une telle relation paradoxale remet en question toute une tradition de pensée dans le contexte d’un débat particulier. Pour y parvenir, on doit élargir le concept même de multiculturalisme afin d’y inclure la notion d’un acte de langage postcolonial. On pourra dire d’un discours qu’il est multiculturel dans la mesure où la tradition culturelle de laquelle un acte de langage donné tire sa légitimation n’est pas la seule tradition culturelle pertinente sur laquelle puisse s’appuyer un acte de langage qui y répond. On pourra dire d’un

International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 25, Spring / Printemps 2002 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes discours qu’il est postcolonial dans la mesure où la tradition institutionnelle dans laquelle un acte de langage se produit est ouverte à un débat sur les règles sur lesquelles il est fondé et non pas seulement sur les pratiques qui font référence aux règles.

Prologue: The Undecidable Field of Multiculturalism A rich established discourse on multiculturalism in Canada has begun to exert an influence in other countries. The possible relevance of Canadian multiculturalism to other social and national contexts depends primarily upon whether the specific conditions that brought it into being in Canada, and which often enter into the debate as unspoken assumptions, can be separated from the common issues of cultural politics in an international arena and made relevant in circumstances where different background assumptions pertain. For example, two recent Mexican philosophical arguments for multiculturalism by León Olivé1 and Fernando Salmerón,2 in which key reference is made to texts of Charles Taylor3 and Will Kymlicka4 that are also virtually canonical for Canadian debates, use the term almost entirely in relation to Aboriginal claims against its exclusion from the mestizo national identity, whereas such a use is extremely controversial in Canada and is often taken as a denial of Aboriginal claims to be founding nations, as will be explained subsequently. Such contextual points are important because Canadian debates concerning multiculturalism have begun to play a role in countries with very different histories. Canadian multiculturalism developed from the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission of the 1960s which was the federal government’s, and English Canada’s, response to the Quiet Revolution in Québec. In this genesis lies concealed the problematic field of application to which multiculturalism is directed. Is it a policy pertaining exclusively to constituted groups within an established nation(s)-state or does it pertain also to the legitimacy of the nation-state itself? Let us consider first the possibility that the genesis of multiculturalism necessarily ties it to the internal workings of a nation-state multi-national state or to a fragment of such a nations-state, such as English Canada.5 In such an understanding, multiculturalism refers to relations between citizens of a constituted state and not directly to the act of founding a state. It considers citizens not as individuals but as members of ethno-cultural groups that have a certain weight within the practices and policies of the nation-state. This is not to say that citizens are only members of ethnic groups. As individuals, they may claim certain civil rights from the state, including the right to leave their ethnic groups. The “right to exit” from an ethnic group is an important case where liberal individual rights intersect with communal or group rights. But multiculturalism itself is about group rights which are reducible neither to the rights of individuals nor co-extensive with the nation-state as a whole. That is to say, multiculturalism demands a legitimation that is based neither on individual rights nor on the

70 Cultural Plurality and Democracy fusing of the nation-state with a single ethnic group–as in the case of ethnic nationalism. In this case, multiculturalism is not applicable to the relations between Québec and Canada, nor to the politics of First Nations and Canada. In both of these, conquest is the historical cause of the situation which present politics seek to address. It thus pertains to the violence inherent in the founding of any state and the colonial relations that such a state establishes with its component groups. Limiting multiculturalism to intra-state relations bars it from addressing this issue. However, this limitation can seldom be rigorously adhered to. Multicultural politics within English Canada, for example, surpasses this limitation insofar as it becomes a model for relations between English Canada and the other constituent groups of the nations-state: First Nations and Québec. For this reason, both Québecois and Aboriginal thinkers protest their inclusion in Canada through multiculturalism.6 It excludes themfrombeingfoundingnationsandtreatsthemlikeimmigrantgroups.In this context, multicultural policy can act ideologically to confuse issues oriented to the legitimacy of the nations-state itself. Moreover, the reputed success of Canada in addressing the issues of minority groups through multicultural policies is often taken as a sign of its legitimacy as a state. In short, the difference between being “founding group” and being “an ethno-cultural minority group” cannot be consistently maintained without assuming the legitimacy of the Canadian nations-state and the processes through which it was founded. The difference between being a founding group and being a minority group is the crux of the matter. Here, as elsewhere, categorization is not innocent but compacts the history and politics of the assumptions underlying multiculturalism. As we will see later, it is a major state- managerial tendency of multicultural writers to treat this difference as if it could be definitively decided or, even worse, stipulated prior to debate. I raise the issues surrounding this difference not to decide them arbitrarily at the outset nor, indeed, to decide them at all, but to point out the role of background assumptions and the possibility that they could be used to prejudge the question of the legitimacy of the constituted nations-state. My discussion of multiculturalism will attempt to avoid this apologetic tendency by maintaining the undecidability inherent in the origin of Canadian multiculturalism as both a response to Québec sovereigntism and an inclusion of broader participation by ethno-cultural minorities in English Canadian institutions.7 Whether the issue pertains internally to inclusion in the Canadian nations-state or externally to a group claiming equal sovereignty must remain an open question. Its undecidability rests uncomfortably upon the history of conquests by the British Empire that forged a problematic unity between English Canada and the Canadian nations-state. The unity is problematic because English Canada is the only component that has entered this compact willingly. For English Canada, patriation of the legacy of Empire–in patriating the Constitution, for

71 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes example–appears as decolonization. Replacing the Empire with the Canadian nations-state cannot appear in such a fashion to those who were violently included into Empire in the first place. The plurality and mixing of legitimating traditions is a feature of life in the early 21st century which can be expected to continue and accelerate; thus, this teleology must be conceptualized within democratic theory. Moreover, it must be conceptualized in a manner that does not view the existing nation-state as defining the limits of legitimacy, even, or better, especially when such politics take place within the domain of the nation-state. To the extent that a plurality of legitimate cultural traditions can be legitimated as a social ideal, it may be generalized beyond the specific conditions that generated it in Canada. In Canada, thinking concerning cultural plurality has been generated by multiculturalism and it is here that thinking concerning the implications of cultural plurality for democracy can begin. However, in determining to keep the question of the legitimacy of the constituted nations-state an open question, thinking concerning cultural plurality intrudes upon the legitimacy of the nations-state itself. Cultural plurality refuses to remain within Canada and pertains outside to the founding of Canada itself. For this reason, while beginning with multiculturalism, I will argue that the teleology of multiculturalism requires that it be supplemented with postcolonialism. The necessity of this supplement corresponds to the undecidability of whether the field of application of multiculturalism is within Canada, within English Canada, or pertains to the founding and/or legitimacy of the nations-state itself.

Multiculturalism as a Component of National Identity The most common objection to multiculturalism is that it fragments the nation, that ethno-cultural allegiances compete with allegiance to the nation-state. Critics of multiculturalism suggest that we should all be just Canadians–that we should focus on what unites us, not what divides us. This is also true of critics of multiculturalism in Australia, Argentina, and, indeed, probably everywhere. Multiculturalism is seen as a policy of division which competes with national identity. Equality, it is claimed, consists in all citizens, considered individually, being treated similarly, which is taken to mean that the nation-state should stay entirely out of promoting ethno-cultural identification. Let us look at this criticism a bit more closely. For ethnic identity to compete with national identity, it must refer to the same domain of relevance. It is possible for me to be a husband and father, for example, and still to be a Canadian. As identifications, they do not compete. As even critics of multiculturalism would acknowledge, I can be born in England and be a Canadian–as someone else can be born in Japan and be Canadian. And, of course, one can be born in Canada within a family that has ties to

72 Cultural Plurality and Democracy another country because of emigration by one’s ancestors. Thus, ethnic identification and national identification do not necessarily conflict. It is the multicultural promotion of ethno-cultural identification that is claimed to conflict with national identity, say the critics. It is supposed that either one identifies with a group that is defined by its difference from other Canadians or one identifies with what we all have in common. Thus, a polarization has been set up–either national identity or multiculturalism–such that it is almost impossible to argue for multiculturalism and national identity simultaneously.8 Yet that is the argument of this essay. In so doing, I attempt to provide a justification for multiculturalism that pertains to its application as a key component of democracy for the conditionsofculturaldiversitywhichwillpredominateinthe21st century. To get around this unfortunate polarization, the issue can be better definedinthisway:“Howcanethno-culturalidentitybeunderstoodasakey content of national identity”? In order for one to experience his/her ethno-cultural belonging as not competing with his/her national identity, it must be seen as a component of national identity. That is, national identity is experienced in a certain way through the specific ethno-cultural identification. Most descriptions of the multicultural encounter fail to capture it and reduce multiculturalism to an inter-cultural encounter by describing it as an us-them relationship. In contrast, this essay argues that the multicultural encounter should be understood as an us-we relationship. That is, as a member of an ethno-cultural group one is a member of an “us” that is different from others, but as a member of a multicultural society one is a member of a “we” that includes both the “us” and also other similar “us” groups of which one is not a member. Instead of posing the issue as a question of belonging to one constituted collectivity versus another–which implies that they are within the same domain of relevance–it should be posed as two levels of identification for the same individual–one level at which my membership in an ethno-cultural group defines my difference from other groups within the nation-state and another level at which my common membership in the national group which I share with others of different ethnic groups allows for and validates my membership in a specific group. Ethno-cultural belonging is a way in which one participates in nationality. So defined, multiculturalism is an interplay of identity and difference and not a choice between them. Multiculturalism understood in this way sets up a unique relationship between the particular aspects of ethno-cultural belonging and the universal aspects of citizenship such that the right to ethno-cultural belonging can be sustained as a universal right. I have previously made this argument in the context of a critique of Charles Taylor’s hermeneutic conception of multiculturalism.9 The current essay attempts to sustain the argument for the political recognition of cultural diversity in a philosophically more rigorous fashion through an application of speech act theory, to argue that the issues of cultural diversity require a connection of multiculturalism to postcolonialism, and to extend its implications for democratic theory.

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A Contemporary Concept of Culture Until recent years, the nation-state provided a hegemonic framework within which the relationships between culture, economy and politics were stabilized. A relatively homogenous national political culture, combined with a significant role for national politics in economic development, allowed the nation-state to partition and harmonize cultural concerns. Cultural “differences” were seen as a matter for familial relations or voluntary (ethnic, artistic) organizations, on the one hand, or as driven by the requisites of work and commerce on the other. This division was held together by a dominant national culture assumed to be equally shared by all citizens which could therefore be presupposed in political decisions. This retrospective view is, of course, an ideal type and perhaps even a caricature, but it may provide a useful background for clarifying the shifting boundaries and new issues we face today. National cultures can no longer be seen as equally shared by all citizens. They are often redefined by critical voices as the imposition of a homogenizing force. Therefore national cultures must now be thematized in their relations to minority cultures within the nation-state, to emergent (often international) cultural formations brought into being by social movements, and to the cultural presuppositions of national political institutions and debate–which can no longer be regarded as either a-cultural universals or universally shared cultural assumptions. This weakening of the mediating and stabilizing role played by the nation-state corresponds to the expansion of cultural concerns from familial relations and voluntary organizations, on the one hand, and the globalization of the economy, on the other. Both of these tendencies have their horrific side: the subsumption of politics and economy into ethnic exclusivism and the reduction of cultural values to global commercial imperatives. Tribalism and commercialism are signs of our historical moment which emerge from within the current unsettling situation and are not likely simply to abate. But they are tendencies, not fates, and a major goal in the present context must be to keep them in check. Beyond this important task of avoiding the worst, democratic theory can also attempt to provide some guidelines for thinking about how cultural plurality can itself lead toward a new universalizing, civilizing democratic compact. Culture is a concept which necessarily implies a plural in the sense that one’s own culture would be invisible as such unless it were to encounter another culture. The us-them formulation is thus built into the instituting moment of the concept of culture.10 It corresponds to the moment of the discovery of the concept through a going-out from one’s own culture and encountering another. Another way of living that initially might seem merely non-sensical, or even not quite human (and thereby understood through the contrast of civilization with barbarism, or savagery), is grasped as another culture when its internal sense is discovered. From this

74 Cultural Plurality and Democracy instituting moment of travel, or intercultural communication (perhaps clearest in the imperial origins of anthropology), the notion of culture as an enclosed and internally coherent way of life has developed. There are two main responses to this discovery of an alien culture: the alien culture can be denigrated as less human, or less civilized, issuing in the hierarchical relation characteristic of colonialism. Also, it can reflexively generate a conception of the specificity of one’s own culture, in contrast to the other, and one might come to see one’s own activities, thoughts and beliefs as enveloped within a cultural form. While the concept of culture at this instituting stage of its development suggests that culture is a self-enclosed vessel, nevertheless the condition for the emergence of the concept of culture is that cultures do indeed interact and that a relation between them, often a colonial hierarchical one, is established. In our own time–characterized by world-wide immigration, international cultural industries, ethnic violence and the decline of the nation-state–the concept of culture developed from this instituting moment is no longer adequate. Indeed, it often tends to reinforce exclusivist and colonial tendencies. A contemporary concept of culture must thus take its departurefromacritiqueofthebasiccomponentsofthisfirst-levelconcept: 1] the idea of intercultural communication, or contact, as accomplished through travel, or movement between cultures already subsisting independently, 2] the idea of culture as an enclosed vessel based on an internal-external duality, where one is either inside or outside, and 3] the consequent notion of cultural contact as a relation between “us” and “them” groups. A contemporary concept of culture would thus take its departure from three basic ideas: One, the identities of cultures are formed, and exist as such, through their inter-relation–through an encounter with their limits; two, the cultural condition is, from the first, multicultural–that is to say, characterized by the interplay of diverse cultures–and, three, that consequently cultural interchange is, or ought to be, understood to occur between “us” and “we” groups. This latter point is the basis for the contribution that a theory of cultural plurality may make to democracy.

A Normative Approach to Multiculturalism Multiculturalism in Canada may refer to either the sociological fact of the existence of a plurality of ethnic groups with their own organizations and identities, to government policies that intend to preserve such identities, or to the “social ideal” of multiculturalism—the normative argument that multicultural society, with its attendant ethics and institutions, is a positive good that should be promoted. Richard Day has recently argued that “the Canadian government is attempting to confound the descriptive and prescriptive senses of multiculturalism in order to provide its policy with an unearned history and reality … as an already achieved ideal. … Scholarly writing has also contributed to the origin myth of Canadian multiculturalism as an already achieved ideal, through its invocation of a

75 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes history of diversity and tolerance marred only by occasional ‘exceptional’ events which, upon reflection, are seen as rationally motivated and therefore ‘understandable.’”11 This should stand as an important challenge to the critical thinker. The nation-building project of white settler culture in Canada did not proceed by erasure of “others”–Aboriginal people, French-Canadians, immigrants, ethnic groups, etc.–but through the management or schematization of them which was made possible by their relationship to an unstated norm that continues to underlie and structure all forms of multiculturalist policy discourse. Eva Mackey has made this point also.“Pluralist amalgamation functions through themaking ofaconceptual distinction between definitions of culture used for national core culture and for the cultures of ‘others.’”12 This distinction between normative national culture and the so-called folk survivals of others operates through the unmarked, non-ethnic, white, “Canadian-Canadian” identity. In being unmarked, and thus taken as simply Canadian without hyphenization, this assumed identity normatively structures the whole discourse of multiculturalism.13 It is clear that the Foucauldian style of critique used by Day and Mackey is not misplaced. Michael Ignatieff, in his Massey Lectures entitled The Rights Revolution, performs the trick of the “already-achieved ideal,” or, more accurately, “nearly achieved, achieved in principle, there’s a little left to do” when he describes “what we already are” as “a peaceable kingdom, a place where all languages, cultures, and peoples shelter together under the arch of justice”14 without doubting for a second that the existing Canadian state has not only the power, but the legitimacy, to define the limits of multiculturalismandtherulesoftreatynegotiationswithAboriginalpeople and Québec.15 Both Ignatieff and Will Kymlicka assume that the recognition of a plurality of identities within a nations-state solves the problem of the non-recognition of sub-national groups by a homogeneous, individualist, rights-regime.16 But the recognition of three groups (English Canada, Québec, First Nations)–which is indeed a necessary step–does not address the problem of the colonial monopolization by the nations-state of the rules of interaction between these groups. Recognition given in this fashion by an apparently benevolent state cannot confer sovereignty nor displace the unmarked, structuring category, which requires de-centring the assumption of the cultural neutrality of the state.17 Both Day and Mackey refer positively to an early (1983) incisive essay byKogilaMoodleywhichsimilarlypointedtotheseparationandinequality of cultures presupposed by multiculturalism.18 Moodley’s argument concluded by suggesting that “to be authentic, genuine multiculturalism would have to preclude a cultural hierarchy as well as mere parallelism of culturaltraditionsinisolatedcompartmentsandrepresentamutuallearning process in contrast to the one-sided effort at present.”19 The assumed Canadian-ness against which the ethnic is measured must be de-centred, which means that “ordinary” Canadians must be re-cast as ethnics. If one

76 Cultural Plurality and Democracy takes this possibility seriously as a guide to political thinking and, possibly public policy, one has to enter the ethico-political territory of valuations that is inhabited by political actors. But both Day and Mackey refuse to enter such a normative discourse which is suggested but not explored by Moodley. This refusal can be attributed to the influence of Michel Foucault on the concept of criticism that drives their analyses. Day argues explicitly that the structuring exclusion from which the project of multiculturalism derives vitiates the project of a democratic multicultural theory outright. “The perennially problematic and excluded Other is in fact required in order to create a simulation of wholeness for the Self. In the Canadian context, this means that multiculturalism as problem of diversity not only ‘prohibits’ multiculturalism as social ideal, it also provides its condition of possibility, through the very failure of its attempts at hegemonic suture [closure] of the social space which would achieve ‘full’ inclusion.”20 The ideal of an inclusion of all ethno-cultural minorities within the nation is thus described as a fantasy.21 The trick whereby the state and its policy discourse presents multiculturalism as an “already achieved ideal” is thus taken necessarily to apply to all attempts at a normative discourse of multiculturalism–even the post-colonial one for which I argue below. This seems to be a version of the myth of origins whereby the compromised and even bloody beginnings of a human practice are taken to vitiate all subsequent attempts to mitigate it or turn it to other ends. Moodley’s search for an “authentic, genuine multiculturalism” is thus abandoned, not because it has not been achieved, but because it is supposed to be in principle unachievable. Mackey describes Foucault’s model of criticism as designed to show “on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices we accept rest.”22 Similarly, Day quotes Foucault’s claim that genealogy is “dissociative, directed against identity, and opposes history given as continuity or representative of a tradition.”23 This is a very partial conception of critique which abandons any relationship between the activity of the critical intellectual and the perspectives necessary to political actors. Foucault himself, of course, was politically active, but that is not the point. He operated with a conception of critique that rendered political action entirely external to criticalintellectualactivity.Inadiscussionwithpoliticalactivistswhowere organizing “people’s courts” to judge mine owners who had allowed dangerous conditions that led to “accidents,” Foucault stated that the concept of justice could not be used in the struggle. The activists responded that the people were attached to the concept of justice and that it provided an entry into a larger debate about justice and class domination. Foucault was not convinced. He replied that in his view the history of justice as a bourgeois concept crucial to class domination meant that it could not be used against the bourgeoisie.24 A Foucauldian perspective is very good at showing how ethical-political ideas are formed through a history of

77 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes disciplinary practices, but it does not consider important the palpable fact that the popular interpretation and use of these ideas is not (always) confined within the space of this history. Moreover, political action will always have to engage with this history in some way. It renounces its effectiveness if it attempts to act in a manner entirely external to the concepts used in popular accounts and “critiques” of the system. This is not the first time that a Foucauldian perspective–or, sometimes, an Althusserian one, which is the same on this point–has affected the telling of the history of multiculturalism. It is commonplace at conferences, and at universities, to hear the claim that multiculturalism was, or is, a strategy of the federal government for maintaining its control. This account requires that one ignore all the places in the history of multiculturalism where ethnic groups entered into the fray and affected the outcome. The Foucauldian- style critique has been around in ethnic-political circles in Canada at least since the early 1980s, though in more colourful language. “The government’s idea of multiculturalism is like Disneyland” I recall someone saying to general assent at a conference organized by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies in 1984. But the Foucauldian perspective confuses the machinations of government with the actual outcome of the struggle. I think that most people involved in ethnic politics would agree that, for all its problems, multicultural policy in its actual functioning has left them more openings than its absence would have done. To understand multiculturalism as political site of struggle over colonial and de-colonizing forces requires that one understand not only government policy and intentions, but also the interventions that swerve them from their aims, and require compromises to get agreement. This is a politics of hegemony not of omnipotent state agencies. The process of gaining assent to policy involves other actors, their intentions and efforts, which mitigate the “original intention” of government. In short, Gramscian nuance is needed here. What becomes important for critical intervention is not so much the “taming of difference” but the moments at which such taming is diverted, when other possibilities arise. The politics whereby a mitigation of the taming intention of the state has been (partly) achieved is the important core of the story of multiculturalism. If it is told this way, the critical intellectual comes much closer to the needs of political actors. Thus, while the interventions of Day and Mackey make an important cautionary point–the critical intellectual must not reproduce the discourse ofstagingdifferenceinherentinstatepower–theycannotbesaideffectively to dispense with the necessity of a normative discourse concerning multiculturalism. To the extent that a theoretical discourse about multiculturalism confounds the ideal of democratic relations between ethno-cultural groups such that a national role is exclusively monopolized by one, or a few, groups it fails in its task of becoming, in Moodely’s words again, an “authentic, genuine multiculturalism.” In short, a contemporary normative multiculturalism must also be post-colonial. Against the

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Foucauldianargument,Iwanttosuggestthatthenormativequestioncannot be evaded and that Canadian multiculturalism is one fertile ground for thinking about future political relationships of mutual respect in an increasingly mixed world. It should not be used as a model of perfection, nor of travesty, but of a story whose mitigations of the taming management intention tell us something about what is necessary to get beyond them.

A Normative Multicultural Theory In its classic versions, democratic theory assumed the homogeneity of the people in all senses relevant to public deliberation. It is fairly clear in our present world that this assumption is no longer valid, that “the people” that deliberates is subject to cultural, linguistic, race, class and gender divisions. These divisions, which are usually pursued under the heading of the “politics of identity,” pose the question for democracy of how public debate can recognize such differences without utterly destroying the commonality upon which the substantive ethical life of democracy depends. The multicultural context can be defined by the interaction between ethno-cultural groups which produces a context of justification that applies to each among the plurality of groups and demands that each group recognize the legitimacy of the other groups by providing a justification in its own terms for the multicultural context. The archaic and exclusivist aspects of ethnicity that have recently resurfaced in ethnic nationalism are removed by a multicultural civic context which incorporates ethnic belonging into a discourse of universal rights. The multicultural context involves not just a plurality of cultures, but interaction between cultures in which legitimation points in two directions. Back, as it were, to legitimate particularity–or the relevance of ethno-cultural belonging in a public context–and forward, to propose a universalizing claim that requires critical translation into other cultures. The multicultural context thus requires that democratic speech embody both a defence of one’s own particularity and a universalizing claim to the defence of particularity as such. While multicultural society is, in an obvious sense, the context for particular ethno-cultural traditions, the reverse may also be the case. Particular ethno-cultural traditions also create the context for legitimizing multicultural society. This point may be explained succinctly with reference to speech act theory. The concept of a speech act, as explained by J. L. Austin, refers to statements which do not describe an action, nor state something about an action, but rather perform, or actually do, the action itself.25 Aclassic example of a performative statement is “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Considering speech as action has the advantage of shifting attention from the internal truth or falsity of a statement towards what is done, or accomplished, by the statement. My interest is not in the classification of statements as such but in the role of speech acts in democratic debate.

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The multicultural speech act embodies a relation between content and context in which the two terms may shift such that either may become context for the other. Generally speaking, we may say that such a situation arises when a reflexive statement cannot be stabilized by a hierarchization of levels of discourse. Self-reference takes a paradoxical form in the absence of an established hierarchy of meaning. An ethical claim, since it is made from within a cultural tradition, always involves two levels of meaning. In the multicultural context, no cultural tradition can claim unquestioned legitimation, thus the relation between statement and tradition cannot be definitively hierarchized. The speech act thus comes to encompass the two levels of meaning in a reflexive relationship. Since the claim is made in a multicultural context, it cannot be stabilized as subordinate to the cultural tradition from which it emerged. It may thus become the context for judging the cultural tradition itself. For example, a tradition that is capable of legitimating a strong claim to individual rights may motivate the respect of other traditions and may influence them to develop those aspects of their tradition that tend in this direction. The multicultural speech act is thus constitutively paradoxical.26 A paradox, of course, is not a contradiction but a mutual imbrication of levels that requires a working out of complex relations between particular and universal claims. We may thus refer to the multicultural speech act in order to explain the way in which an utterance, and the field of discourse within which it normally takes on meaning, may shift their relationship. Such a paradoxical relationship brings a tradition of thought into question in the context of a specific debate. The multiculturalism of the multicultural speech act consists of the inter-connected plurality of traditions of legitimation within which a given speech act makes sense and takes effect. The plurality of traditions of legitimation has the consequence that a given act no longer is straightforwardly dependent, as it were, on the discursive context provided by a tradition. A given act can also become the site for a critical interrogation of a tradition as a whole, since it does not depend on a single tradition for its meaning and effect, but upon a multicultural context constituted by the inter-relation and mutual translation of traditions. For example, a speech act which draws upon a tradition in which the commitment to the rights of the individual is weak, or even non-existent, is, in the multicultural context, required to respond to other traditions in which such a commitment is strong. Similarly, a tradition in which commitment to communalrightsisstrongmaylegitimateaspeechactwhichcanstrengthen the commitment to communal rights in other traditions. In both cases, the debate across ethical traditions strengthens, or weakens, strains in other traditions. Thus, my argument relies upon a conception of tradition that regards it as necessary to the formulation of the ethical import of a given statement–that no statement is meaningful simply by itself, but requires a context of meaning to become so. However, neither is a tradition simply

80 Cultural Plurality and Democracy monolithic. It contains different strains, arguments and commitments that can be strengthened, or weakened, in the context of a specific application of the tradition to debate concerning a contemporary issue. The debate across traditions enables the multicultural speech act to contain an expanded notion of critique that can extend to cultural traditions as a whole–unlike the restriction of critique to the extension of a tradition which, as hermeneutic philosophy has taught us, is inevitable if the legitimating tradition is singular. In this sense, an “authentic, genuine multiculturalism” could emerge that is not limited to government policy, sociological fact or academic apologies for these as a “realized ideal” but, rather, refers to the legitimacy of a plurality of traditions in public discourse. In order to do this, the concept of multiculturalism must be expanded to include the somewhat distinct notion of a postcolonial speech act in order to clarify a certain component of the plurality of legitimating traditions. This plurality–which has been present in Canada since its colonial inception and has, at least to some degree, always found official recognition–can be domesticated through the colonial assumption that one discourse is the only legitimate basis for the adjudication of competing claims. The postcoloniality of a speech act thus consists in the recognition that the plurality of traditions is legitimate. It therefore legitimates a plurality of traditionstowhichaspeechactmayrefertoprovideameaningfulcontextin intervening in public discourse. Postcoloniality thus refers to the impossibility of hierarchizing the plurality of traditions. Highlighting this component of contemporary democratic theory justifies a certain interpretation of Canadian federalism as the history of processes of inclusion of particularities into a proposed universality.27 Thus, as a tradition of diverse accomodations rather than subsumption under a homogeneous set of institutional arrangements. From this tradition of accomodation of particularities, a postcolonial democratic practice can orient itself. Adiscourse can besaid tobemulticultural insofar asthe cultural tradition upon which a given speech act draws for its legitimation is not the only relevant cultural tradition upon which a responding speech act can draw. A discourse can be said to be postcolonial insofar as the institutional tradition within which a speech act occurs is open to debate about the rules on which it is based, not only the practices that refer to the rules. My argument is that a multicultural and postcolonial discourse decentres the hierarchy between a speech act and its context in a way that widens the concept of critique. This expanded notion of critique decentres public deliberation such as to turn it towards a democracy that can sustain a plural but still substantive conception of ethical life. Thecentring legacyofCanadian federalism duetoitsoriginintheBritish Empire, and its continuing imperial relation to internal nationalities through conquest, has been dis-placed–though certainly not overcome–through the history of specific acts of accomodation to

81 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes particularities. Empire allows the other to speak but controls the rules of interaction between speakers such that the context, or the rules of interaction, is itself monopolized. Democratic theory must therefore not only address the question of “the right of the other to speak” but also the question of the “legitimate tradition(s)” within which such speech will be interpreted. Aboriginal speech, for example, has been present in Canada since its inception, but the Canadian nations-state has never ceded it an equal right of interpretation. Speech that isbarred from touching the rules of interaction becomes a “minority” speech precisely through this bar. It is relegated to being a content, whereas imperial speech not only provided contentbutalsoatraditionwhichdecidedthedefinitiveinterpretationofthe speech act in question. In principle, postcoloniality thus refers not only to the presence of a plurality of traditions in a given context, but primarily to the inability of any one of these traditions to monopolize the rules. If no single tradition “owns” the context, then every speech act functions in a double fashion: as a statement in a given debate and as a “representative” of the tradition which gives it meaning, such that this representation constitutes a claim to interpret the context of interaction. A key feature of the concept of democracy is thus that the multicultural and postcolonial subject is constituted by two “levels” of identification. Instead of identifying directly with the nation, the subject identifies with a sub-national group such as a linguistic, ethnic, gender or regional identity, and through this identification identifies also in a particular way with the nation. The nation is thus constituted by its internal plurality. The political subject is consequently in an us-we relation with other groups, not an us-them relation.

Conclusion: Decentring as Democracy Critiques of mono-culturalism and the legacy of colonialism converge on a critique of all “centrisms” that would attempt to insulate democratic debate from the decentring consequences of the interaction between cultures and the loss of a stabilizing imperial context. “Centring” is understood as the monopolizing, or attempted monopolizing, of the rules of discourse whereby those statements whose traditions are excluded from pertaining to the context of interaction become “minority” or “marginalized.” A contemporary democratic theory depends upon an in principle critique of centrism that, in two distinct senses, decentres the hierarchization of discourse and speech act which has confined democratic speech within the limitations established by dominant powers acting through the nation-state and the capitalist economy. The multicultural context implies the inadequacy of any “centrism”–Euro or otherwise. Insofar as a “centrism” arises when particular features of a cultural tradition are carried over into the universal claims made on its basis through the stabilization of a context of interpretation, only the constitutive paradox of the multicultural speech act can thoroughly undermine centrism. This it does, not by making a

82 Cultural Plurality and Democracy statementimmunetocriticismthroughculturaltranslation,butbyrequiring a working out precisely through such translations. It is a beginning statement, rather than a final one, which attempts to define the particularity of the relevant context by necessarily invoking universalizing concepts which themselves will demand particularizing criticism. Theclarificationofadecentringspeechactcanavoidthefalsealternative of a mere particularism or a homogenizing, rule-bound universalism in favour of the accomodation of particularities into a proposed universal- ization by recognizing a legitimate plurality of traditions. A discourse can be said to be multicultural insofar as the cultural tradition upon which a given speech act draws its legitimation is not the only relevant cultural tradition upon which a responding speech act can draw. Adiscourse can be said to be postcolonial insofar as the institutional tradition within which a speech act occurs is open to debate about the rules on which it is based, not only the practices that refer to the rules. A multicultural and postcolonial discourse thus decentres hierarchy in two senses. It decentres the hierarchy between cultural tradition and speech act by pluralizing the cultural traditions to which a speech act may refer in establishing its meaningfulness. It decentres the legitimacy of the institutional arrangements that have allowed the nation-state to address sub-groups within the nation, or potentially sovereign groups, from “above,” as it were, by dictating the rules of discourse. In short, the “multiculturality” of the speech act refers to the plurality of traditions within which a given statement takes on meaning. The “postcoloniality” of the speech act refers to the absence of a definitive hierarchy between traditions. Any concept of democracy that responds adequately to conditions of cultural plurality needs to incorporate these two dimensions.

Notes 1. León Olivé, Multiculturalismo y Pluralismo (Mexico: Paidós, 1999). 2. Fernando Salmerón, Diversidad Cultural y Tolerancia (Mexico: Paidós, 1998). 3. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition” in Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 4. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 5. This was the conscious limitation of scope in Ian Angus, A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality and Wilderness (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997) chapter 6 passim, especially p. 146. I am now arguing that such a limitation of scope is more problematic than I perceived at the time, that such a limitation is not innocent but contains theoretical consequences for removing the nations-state from consideration, that is to say, making the background assumption that it is legitimate. I have Richard Day to thank for problematizing this aspect of my previous work. 6. Regarding Aboriginal refusal, see Marianne Boelscher Ignace and Ronald E. Ignace, “The Old Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? Canadian Aboriginal Peoples and Multiculturalism” in Dieter Haselbach (ed.) Multiculturalism in a World of Leaking Boundaries (Münster: Lit Verlag, 1998) and Richard J. F. Day and Tonio

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Sadik, “The BC Land Question, Liberal Multiculturalism, and the Spectre of Aboriginal Nationhood” in BC Studies, 2002. Regarding Quebec, see Daniel Latouche, “Canada: The New Country from within the Old Dominion,” Queen’s Quarterly, 98, 1991 and Pierre Fournier, A Meech Lake Post-Mortem: Is Québec Sovereignty Inevitable?, trans. Shiela Fischman (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1991) chapter 5. 7. The question of how to refer to the non-Aboriginal, non-Quebec institutional order of Canada is itself a terminological question that compacts many important historical and political issues. Suffice it to say that I refer here to English as the language of common everyday interaction and its institutional consequences not to the origin of individuals. 8. I have documented this polarization in detail in A Border Within, pp. 135-46. 9. Ibid. pp. 147-54. 10. This concept of “institution” is explicated in Ian Angus, Primal Scenes of Communication: Communication, Consumerism and Social Movements (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 11. Richard Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) p. 6, 27. 12. Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) p. 151. 13. I have discussed the concept of the unmarked, organizing category in Primal Scenes of Communication, pp. 146ff. 14. Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (Toronto: Anansi, 2000) p. 136. See also pp. 9-10, where he states that “Canada has been inventive in finding ways to enable a large multi-ethnic, multinational state to survive and even prosper.” Though this possibility is, he admits “never-quite-realized,” it nevertheless exists in principle such that one need only accept and further the “rights revolution” already long underway. 15. Ibid., pp. 70, 9, 135, 121, 82. 16. Ibid., pp. 10-3, 76, 130. Will Kymlicka, “Three Forms of Group-Differentiated Citizenship in Canada” in Seyla Benhabib (ed.) Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) pp. 164-5. 17. I have not the space here to make the argument that procedural rights are always built upon, and cannot be severed from, cultural assumptions. This is, of course, a debated point in current political theory. 18. Day, pp. 30-1; Mackey, pp. 2, 64, 66. 19. Kogila Moodley, “Canadian Multiculturalism as Ideology” in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 6(3) 1983, p. 327. 20. Day, p. 34. 21. Ibid. The key reason that Day provides for this consequence is that multiculturalism is tied to the state, and thus, one supposes, is based on the claim that the modern state cannot be all-inclusive (42, 44). While this claim seems probable to me, it does not do the duty of dismissing multiculturalism outright unless it is argued that multiculturalism is necessarily tied to the state-form. That it has been so in Canada is unarguable; that it must be so seems to me rather to require extensive support. While Day does show the assumption of the ultimate legitimacy of the modern state in some authors that he discusses, this does not suffice as an argument that all authors committed to the social ideal of multiculturalism must make such an assumption. 22. Michel Foucault, quoted in Eva Mackey, p. 4.

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23. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” quoted in Day, p. 17. 24. Michel Foucault, “On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists” in Colin Gordon (ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972- 1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980). 25. J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975) p. 6. 26. The concept of constitutive paradox has been developed in my (Dis)figurations: Discourse/Critique/Ethics (London and New York: Verso, 2000) chapter 2. 27. See Ian Angus, “Post-Colonial Federalism: Social Citizenship and New Identities” in Constitutional Issues, Vol. 7, Special issue, edited by Claude Couture.

Marijke Huitema, Brian S. Osborne and Michael Ripmeester1

Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario

Abstract Principal discourses reveal that Euro-Canadian and First Nation claims to territory are a product of differing cultural perceptions of land, territory, and property, as well as a metanarrative of colonial expansion and appropriation of territory. However, current research is demonstrating that the reality was much more complex. In particular, Euro-Canadian contact often precipitated contestation between First Nation interests in areas where none had previously existed. This paper will examine the historical context of the Mississauga-Algonquin conflict of territorial boundaries in the 1783-1923 period. This issue is still central to ongoing land claims in eastern Ontario.

Résumé Les discours dominants révèlent que les revendications territoriales des Euro-Canadiens et des premières nations sont un produit de perceptions culturelles différentes de la terre, du territoire et de la propriété, de même qu’une méta-narration de l’expansion coloniale et de l’appropriation du territoire. Cependant, des recherches récentes tendent plutôt à démontrer que la réalité est beaucoup plus complexe. En particulier, le contact avec les Euro-Canadiens a souvent précipité l’émergence de contestations entre les intérêts de Premières nations différentes dans des régions où il n’y en avait jamais eu auparavant. Cet article étudiera le contexte historique du conflit sur des limites territoriales qui a opposé les Mississaugas et les Algonquins pendant la période de 1783 à 1923. Cette question continue à se situer au cœur même des revendications territoriales qui ont toujours cours dans l’est de l’Ontario.

Setting the Scene Euro-Canadian and First Nations’ claims to territory are a product of long-standing differences in their respective perceptions of nature, land and resources that represent different ontologies, cultural constructions and techno-economic systems. Further, these contested claims are usually interpreted in the context of a well-established metanarrative of colonial expansion and appropriation of territory.

However, the reality of land-conflict as it played out on the ground in particular places was much more complex than a simple monolithic explanation of Euro-Canadian and First Nations’ difference. In particular, Euro-Canadian contact often precipitated contestation between First Nations’ interests in areas where none had previously existed. This was certainly the case with the Mississauga-Algonquin conflict over territorial boundaries in the Lake Ontario-Ottawa River watershed region of eastern Ontario. Here, between 1783 and 1923, a formerly extensive territory that had long been viewed as a common resource base with locales of periodic occupancy—often with common campsites that were established points of social congress—became a contested space and a site of conflict. Nevertheless, these contestations have been paper-wars, expressed in the tropesofEuro-Canadianauthority,anddebatedintheadministrativespaces of colonial power. Accordingly, the Mississaugas and Algonquins directed their grievances to the Euro-Canadian forums of discussion where they exist as documented confrontations. At the ground-level of lived interactions, however, there is no evidence of personal hostility. Indeed, it would appear that they never communicated with each other directly concerning this issue of contested space or boundaries. These matters are still central to ongoing First Nations’ land claims in eastern Ontario. How did this come to be?

Dissonant Concepts European settlement of Canada was intricately connected to the transformation of material and ideological terrains. In particular, formerly unbounded space became limited by boundaries and appropriated as regulated territory. This was facilitated through different social constructions, usufructuary practices and mechanisms of control, all of which were grounded on particular sections of land and located in specific places. The usual assumption is that these different social constructions may be attributed to long-standing cultural—and even racial—categories of difference. Indeed, much has been written about the theological constructions of innocence, savagery and nobility.2 Whatever the lens, by the eighteenth century, Europe had positioned itself as the arbiter for assigning the relative hierarchy of stages of human development.3 This taken-for-granted position informed, and functioned, as imaginary geographies of other worlds, and as a template for agendas of power and place.4 What is significant, however, is that the eighteenth century Euro-Canadian world was itself undergoing re-conceptualization in the context of the Enlightenment’s transforming forces. The pre-modern world of feudal-communal dependencies was being challenged by the rationalizing concepts of property, profit, management and efficiency.5 From 1745 to 1845 in Britain, a series of Enclosure Acts attacked the

88 Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario putative chaos of communal land-use and customary obligations, and reorganized rural society by extending proprietary controls and imposing a geometrical cadastre.6 More effective state management—some would say a “culture of surveillance”—was facilitated by the introduction of a national census of the population and economy and a coordinated system of national mapping.7 Finally, increasing attention was directed to the social health of the “body-politic” by an evangelical zeal for converting those on the other side of the “great abyss”—be they Irish, Scottish, Welsh, poor English or exotic heathen—to the improved condition of industry, propriety and morality.8 These were the dominant values at the time Britain asserted imperial control over North America. The prevailing precepts of effective and rational administration encountered a chaotic wilderness occupied by a people who were noble to some, savage to others, and certainlypaganintheeyesofWesterntheologies.9 AssummedupbyPratt, The systematizing of nature represents not only a European discourse about non-European worlds … but an urban discourse about non-urban worlds, and a lettered, bourgeois discourse about non-lettered, peasant worlds … Subsistence societies of any kind appeared backward with respect to surplus-oriented modes, and as in need of “improvement.”10 This same impulse prompted the classification and fixing of Native peoples in ethnographic time and geographical space.11 European conceptualizations of political territory could not accommodate spatial overlap and, eventually, the initial assigned territories became ossified in official maps, Indian Department documents, and treaties and surrenders. The fundamental problem was that Euro-Canadian society did not comprehend what the meaning of land was to Native groups. Even more profoundly, the Euro-Canadian imagination could not accommodate a different Native ontological engagement with land as “hearth, home, the sourceandlocusoflife,andeverlastingnessofspirit.”12 ForNativepeoples, bonding to a particular space was the outcome of social obligations, kinship structures and spiritual constraints that transformed the material world into a moral space.13 There were no boundaries between the physical and spiritual aspects of Native culture. Territory and the physical environment were encompassed by, and integrated into, the spiritual realm by spatially grounded religious praxis. This gave meaning to their categories of land, residency and resource use. It followed from this that, for Native peoples, land and resources constituted a social relationship, not an individual one, and any “individual’s or a family’s rights to property were defined by the community which recognized those rights.”14 Moreover, there was a subtle differentiation between the concepts of shared occupancy of territories and joint-use of resources. Whereas use referred to an array of different activities such as hunting, trapping, fishing, gathering of medicinal plants and berry picking, occupancy referred to a particular group’s claim to an area because of continuous “habitation, naming, knowledge and control.”15 Thus, while the spatial differentiation of the limits of occupancy were likely

89 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes to be much more stable over time, the definition of the limits of use revealed temporal and spatial overlap.16 From the Euro-Canadian perspective, however well-entrenched in culture they were, Native customary practices of resource use did not necessarily constitute proof of legal possession and they believed that “Native cultures lacked the rationality to use their lands effectively.”17 In particular, effective use of these lands implied Western Euro-Canadian models of agriculture and industry and Native peoples’ retention of wild lands in their savage state would impede civilization, progress and agricultural expansion.18 The prevailing official view was that if Natives would cultivate their land it would then be considered their own property, because uncultivated land was like a “wild animal” and could not be protected from intrusion by those who were “hunting” for it in order “to cultivate it.”19 The issue of property was crucial. The Euro-Canadian perception of property and individual ownership underpinned the emerging economic system, the acquisition and control of capital, and a wage economy. It followed, therefore, that “it was difficult for Natives to join in the march of progress because they failed to conform to civilized norms … and they failed to treat land as a source of income.”20 The rejection of Native concepts of communal land-use practices and the assertion of Euro- Canadian concepts of ownership enabled the colonial authorities to categorize the land to facilitate colonial territorial expansion. Classified as wild, unproductive and unoccupied, Euro-Canadian concepts of economic praxis and social progress dictated that—in line with the prevailing improvement ethic in Britain—such lands were in need of development by European intervention. However, if lands were to be improved, they also had to be controlled. The conflicting conceptualizations of property, resources and territory became reified in the very tangible expressions of authority asserted by Euro-Canadian systems of naming, mapping, land recording, taxes, duties and obligations and census. Taken together, such strategies served to other, appropriate and spatialize Native people and their territoriality. On to one imaginative geography was superimposed another, more foreign one, with another vocabulary, different modes of representation and new purposes.21 Fauna and flora were assigned the names and categories of Western science and the indigenous peoples were appropriated by the taxonomic power of ethnography. The unknown was explored, surveyed and mapped.22 Euro-Canadian appropriation of large extents of territory by treaties was followed by the imposition of an all-encompassing system of districts, counties, townships, concessions and lots that constituted the Procrustean bed upon which the new system of land-control and ownership was developed. Land became reconstituted as parcels of property, fixed spatially on cadastres, legalized in Land Registries, and legitimated by periodic municipal tax-assessments and government censuses.23 All of this,

90 Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario together with the regime of civil and criminal law, served to further alienate and exclude the Native peoples, while also massively altering their long-standing spatial and temporal routines.24 Staking a claim to physical territory—a term as physically evocative as it is theoretically profound—was a concept foreign to Native peoples who, it was claimed, maintained “territorial integrity and access to resources” primarily through “the defence of social boundaries rather than of the territorial perimeter.”25 The principal weapon in this assault on the spatial conceptualization of Native life was the map. It formed the practical template and theoretical underpinning of an array of other mechanisms of control. Maps produced a space governed by “the demands of a field of knowledge,”26 “un espace de projection privilégié pour les désirs, les aspirations, la mémoire culturelle du sujet.”27 By the unstated exercise of cultural elision, the Native peoples were removed from their lived-in places in a rendering of an apparently empty space. Through the “sly rhetoric of simulation,”28 the lines on the map implied control of the ground and the promise of future development and control. The map focused attention on the matter of boundaries and edges of control: a different ontology of space that transcended the concepts of location and containment. The Euro-Canadian attempts to record boundaries on paper were incomprehensible to Native people.29 This is not to suggest that they did not possess a sophisticated appreciation of space, bio-geographical locations, or their own socially constructed ethno- geographies.30 While not recorded on paper, they were nevertheless crucial in their negotiation of their lived-in worlds. Indeed, “[s]ince the core of the territory, and especially its key resource sites, were the primary concern, boundaries were seldom physically demarcated and were apt to be somewhat permeable, according to social rules.”31 This being said, government officials were well aware that the cartographically established boundaries imposed by them were not well understood by the Natives in their ontology of space and place. As one official noted, “it is unlikely that the Natives of themselves would determine upon a line of latitude, or any imaginary line, as the boundary of their hunting ranges,” arguing further that “the boundaries of the Natives’ territories would be provided by lakes and rivers or heights of land.”32 But these were not perimeters or edges of their “homeland.” Rather, for them, they were integral parts of the total homeland and their mobile ecological existence marked by regularly used campsites, hunting and trapping ranges, and a well-established ecological knowledge. Certainly extensively occupied, and often overlapping with territories used by other Native groups, these peripheries were negotiated according to the mutual recognition of traditional usary rights and were, of necessity, permeable. Their mutability reflected variations in frequency and intensity of use because of shifting demands. Knowledge of their environment, along with systematic use and occupancy of an area, was considered sufficient by them to generate recognition of territorial rights by

91 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes outsiders.33 It was from this perspective that Native peoples negotiated with Euro-Canadians. Perhaps naively, they expected that the cultural, social, and moral obligations and constraints that defined the claims to the cores and edges of their domains would be respected by the colonial authorities and their subjects.34 Clearly, government policies were intended to impose order by transforming the wilderness into a place of proprietorial control and productivity, and converting the people to a civilized life. Ironically, the rhetoric of integration and assimilation was accompanied by the actual praxis of spatial and social marginalization motivated by a protocol of moral reform and social control. A cynical interpretation of imperial interests would locate motives of acquisition of territory ahead of the prevailing ideological motive of improvement. No doubt, the two were complementary premises. Certainly, the imperial gaze viewed the wilderness, Native peoples and their established practices of resource use as primitive and irrational. From the earliest instances of contact, this (re)presentation framed Native peoples and their lands in ways that served imperial interests by redefining Native territories and boundaries, and justifying the subsequent appropriation of their land.35 The introduction of the concept of private property, the enforcement of bounded spaces and the introduction of land-based systems of social control, governance and surveillance have been the principal mechanisms by which Native peoples have seen the erosion of their autonomy. The central thesis of this paper, however, is that these same processes also destabilized systems of mutual interdependence and understanding regarding resources and territory between Native groups.

The Mississauga-Algonquin Peoples: Contesting a Shared Space Historically, for the Algonquin and Mississauga peoples, like other Eastern Woodland groups, the “key to survival was access to, and control of, resources, rather than the control of land per se.”36 While Native groups recognized specific locales at which family units would assemble regularly for the social, religious, economic, and political functions that reinforced their cultural identity, at other times, family groups would disperse throughout the extensive forests to pursue their subsistence activities. Because of low people-to-land ratios, sporadic—albeit regular—resource use and mobility, the Native mode of livelihood challenged the Euro-Canadian concepts of permanent occupancy and fixed residence that underpinned proprietorial claims. They also facilitated Euro-Canadian intrusion into the seemingly unoccupied Native “homelands.”37

An Historical Ethnogeography of South-Eastern Ontario During the late prehistoric period, the region of southern Ontario was largely empty. Endemic warfare led to the region serving as a large buffer

92 Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario zone between powerful nations—most particularly, the Iroquois Five Nations, the Huron, the Neutral, the Petun, and the Algonquin and the Nipissing. Contact with Europeans and participation in the capitalist- driven fur trade altered Native geopolitics as well as social and cultural structures.38 Competition for furs and a middle position in the fur trade provided a powerful impetus to control the region. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, reciprocal raiding between the Five Nations and the Hurons was interspersed by tenuous peace agreements. The Iroquois engaged in a far-flung offensive against the Hurons, the Petun, the Neutral, and several Algonquian nations and by the early 1650s had displaced them from south-eastern Ontario. Some fled to the west and the region surrounding Lake Nipigon. Others drifted east to what would become Quebec. The consequence was that the Iroquois had gained almost exclusive control of south-eastern Ontario by the middle of the seventeenth century.39 Sometime around 1700, the Iroquois were replaced as the primary inhabitants of south-eastern Ontario following a massive Ojibwa offensive, with battles and skirmishes throughout south-eastern Ontario as far north as the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers.40 Ojibwa oral histories clearly recount how the Mississaugas came to occupy south-eastern Ontario after displacing the Iroquois: The Mississaugas then returned, and seeing that the land conquered by them from the Mohawks, who had dispossessed the Hurons, was full of game and an excellent hunting-ground, they came down from Lake Huron and settled permanently in the valley of the Otonabee, or Trent, and along the St. Lawrence as far east as Brockville …41 By the 1720s, the Mississaugas had become firmly entrenched in the region, with population estimates in 1736 reporting that there were 150 Mississauga warriors between the Bay of Quinte and the head of Lake Ontario.42 More contemporary estimates propose that there were as many as 2,700 Mississaugas inhabiting the region between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron where they adopted a middle position in the fur trade with the British, French and other Native peoples.43 The Algonquins had earlier been driven from the region and were concentrated in the area of the Lake of Two Mountains mission in Lower Canada. During these years, the boundary of the Ottawa River-Lake Ontario watershed became the essential divide between the Mississauga and Algonquin peoples (Figure 1). While a divide and a buffer zone, it increasingly constituted a shared territory and a common resource. For the Algonquins, access to the region was provided by the Ottawa River and its tributaries: Bonnechere, Petawawa, Mattawa, Rideau, Mississippi and Madawaska.44 The Mississauga of the Gananoque-Kingston-Bay region entered the interior lands via the tributaries to the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario: the Gananoque, Cataraqui, Napanee, Salmon, Moira and Trent.

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Figure 1. Algonquin and Mississauga Territories

The height of land between Lake Ontario and the Ottawa River comprised a vast extent of Canadian Shield covered by a mixed coniferous-deciduous ecosystem that supported their nomadic subsistence activities. In particular, the series of lakes at the height of land–the Rideau Lakes–served as a nexus of these waterways where, increasingly in the nineteenth century, some of the Algonquin and Mississaugan peoples gathered in shared or contiguous camps. From there, they made use of the spring runs of maple-sap, the early summer spawning of fish, fall crops of wild rice and game throughout the year. In addition, it was here that they acted out social and political practices by which they negotiated their relationships with each other.45 However, these long-standing practices were challenged by the introduction of Euro-Canadian values into the complex calculus of Native people-land relationships. In a series of somewhat opaque negotiations, the Euro-Canadians negotiated the cession of these Native lands and imposed a foreign system of land tenure, paper-boundaries and administrative praxis (Figure 2). Not only did these negotiations serve to marginalize the Native peoplesoftheregion,theyalsoprecipitatedacontestationoverterritoryand resources between Native groups where none had existed previously–at least on paper! It is important to emphasize that while there is considerable documentation of Algonquin complaints against the Mississauga, there is no evidence whatsoever of direct negotiations between the peoples themselves. What happened on the ground between the Algonquin and Mississaugas? When they met in their customary gathering places, sat around shared campfires, or intermarried, did they discuss the status of their respective land-claims, petitions and putative grievances that were being

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Figure 2. Mississauga Land Cessions: 1783-1923, and Present-Day Algonquin Claim Area46

considered and argued in the corridors of colonial power? In all probability, while they were primarily concerned more with such prosaic matters as family,huntingandsharedexperiences,theywereawarethatthediscourses of territory and boundaries being engaged at a higher domain of policy were increasingly crucial to their own negotiated resource sites and demarcated territories.

New Contacts, New Constructs: The Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence Front, 1783-1812 In honouring government’s promise of land and a new home for former American settlers and their Iroquois allies who had been loyal to the British during the American Revolution (1776-1783), the military turned to lands well known to them along the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario front.47 Designated by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 as “Indian Hunting Grounds,”theselandshadlongbeenthedomainoftheIroquoispeoples,but since the early eighteenth century had been occupied by the Mississauga.48 Accordingly, in 1783, Captain William R. Crawford met with the Mississaugas at Carleton Island and purchased from them “all the lands from Toniata or Onagara River [Jones Creek, below Brockville] to a river [Trent River] in the Bay of Quinte … including all the Islands, extending

95 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes from the lake [Ontario] back as far as a man can travel in a day.”49 It was here, centred on the former French post of Cataraqui—to be renamed, Kingston—that Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of the Province of Quebec (1778-1786), intended to locate the loyalist settlers and Mohawk allies. The 1783 acquisition of lands known as the Crawford Purchase is not accompanied by a documented deed, map or formal treaty. There is only a letter between Captain Crawford and the Indian Agent, John Johnson, and another between Johnson and Governor Haldimand. Indeed, the spatial and territorial tropes that delimited the territory in terms of river boundaries and distances that “a man can travel in a day” were expressions of associations with place very much in harmony with the imagined geographies of the Native peoples. Given the date, they may also reflect an early stage of Euro-Canadian conceptualization of place and territory before the implementation of the full apparatus of colonial control. Certainly, it was ambiguous in terms of both the nature of the concept of ownership, as well as the matter of exclusivity of claims to ownership and initiated a momentum that was to be the source of future dissatisfaction. What the Mississauga understood the Crawford Purchase to entail refers back to the whole question of Native conceptualizations of nature, land and property. Some would argue that there were profound conceptual misunderstandings over government purchases in Ontario: that Natives probably saw the payment in terms of tribute in order to settle dislocated peoples, a concept that had historical precedent among Great Lakes peoples.50 As for the matter of who were the rightful controllers of the lands, no doubt, government turned to the Mississaugas because they were one of the local Native allies based at Carleton Island, were resident in the vicinity of the proposed new town, Kingston, and claimed the lands fronting onto Lake Ontario as their traditional homelands. Apparently, the negotiating authorities did not investigate the propriety of these claims. Rather, they accepted the assertion of “old Chief Menas”[elsewhere, Mynas], a Mississauga, who had been “useful in facilitating the purchase of the lands from the Mississauga, and had sold his own lands including all the country between the River St. Lawrence and the Grand (Ottawa) River.”51 Few questioned the Mississaugan claim to negotiate the Lake Ontario front as their homeland. But it was their subsequent claim to the shared territories of the watershed divide of Lake Ontario and the Ottawa River as well as to all land south of the Ottawa River that was to prove to be contentious over the ensuing two centuries.

The Rideau Corridor, 1812-1832 In the decades following the War of 1812, attention was directed to settlement of the interior lands to the north of Lake Ontario. There were

96 Imagined Spaces, Constructed Boundaries, Conflicting Claims: A Legacy of Postcolonial Conflict in Eastern Ontario several reasons: land was needed to accommodate new settlers; lumbering companies were advancing into the territory along the tributaries of the Ottawa River; and, perhaps most importantly, there was a military imperative to settle and develop a corridor along the line of the Rideau. All of this activity was clearly beyond the limits of the Crawford Purchase—however vague they may have been! And, certainly, there was increasing tangible evidence of new, Euro-Canadian systems of spatial organization. Surveyors’ chain-men were cutting sight-lines through the forest; concessions and lots were being staked-out only to be pulled up by the Mississauga;52 and in the outskirts of Belleville, new survey-plats were even superimposed over a Mississauga burial place.53 Everywhere, Native concepts of place and social order were being constrained by geometry and the commodification of land. Confrontations between the Mississauga and government surveyors prompted William Claus, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to instruct the resident Indian Agent, John Ferguson, to investigate the Mississauga claims of intrusion into their lands north of the Crawford Purchase. It was noted that “although they were not certain, they believed they had not sold that part of their hunting grounds.” Further, they claimed that “no other Indians than themselves … have any claim to that area of land” and “that the claims of the Nipissings and Algonquins do not cross the Ottawa River.”54 On 31 May 1819, Ferguson negotiated a Provisional Agreement with the Mississaugas for a three million acre tract of land along the south shore of the Ottawa River between Pembroke and Ottawa, extending south and west. Because a number of Mississauga chiefs had not been present at the original signing, the agreement was ratified on 28 November 1822.55 This 1819-1822 negotiation was to be the basis for subsequent disputes between the Mississauga and their Algonquin and Nipissing neighbours. By this agreement, not only did the Mississauga cede lands in the southern section of the Rideau Corridor, but also throughout the watersheds of the Ottawa valley and, in particular, throughout the tributaries of the Madawaska and Mississippi. Whether or not these lands were part of the Mississauga traditional homeland is not at issue. The point is that the Mississaugas were not the only Native peoples with a long-standing claim to that region. In particular, it had also been the domain and hunting grounds of the Algonquins who had not been party to the Rideau Purchase. Why were they excluded? Was it because government negotiators were interacting more with the Kingston-centred Mississaugas, many of whom, incidentally, were being converted to Methodism at this time and, therefore, more accessible to government than the Roman Catholic Algonquins?56 Was it because the Mississaugas were under the control of Upper Canadian authorities while the Algonquins and Nipissings based at Lake of Two Mountains were the charges of Lower Canada? Indeed, it was also claimed that because Captain Charles Anderson, who was not only the “Indian Superintendent of Rice

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Lake,” but was also married to a Mississaugan woman, the government would look more favourably upon the Mississauga claim. Whatever the reason, apparently, the government did little to determine Native claims to this vast extent of territory—despite the fact that there was no evidence that the Upper Canada side of the Ottawa River belonged to the Mississaugas and that there was abundant proof that the Algonquins and the Nipissings, “from time immemorial, have considered this part of the country as their exclusive hunting grounds.”57 Accordingly, the Algonquins and Nipissings were not consulted during the Rideau cessions of 1819-22. Not surprisingly, they complained that their lands had been sold clandestinely by the Mississaugas and they continued to press their claims to their traditional homelands.58 Certainly, there is evidence of the reassertion of an Algonquin presence. As mentioned above, the Algonquins and Nipissings were among those groups displaced by the mid-seventeenth century expansion of the Iroquois into southern Ontario. However, it appears that they had begun to re-establish a presence: by the middle of the eighteenth century, they were making winter hunting trips along the Ottawa River; by the 1820s and 1830s, they had taken up permanent residence between the northern limit of European settlement and the Ottawa River. In 1830, such was the growing presence that the Mississaugas of Mud Lake and Rice Lake complained that the Algonquins and Nipissings were destroying their hunting grounds.59 Two years later, colonial officials noted that “the Indians of the Lake of Two Mountains and St. Regis have taken up residence in the Kingston backcountry and are collecting presents intended for the Mississaugas. This is reported as happening last year.”60 What factors prompted the Algonquin to reassert their territorial rights to hunting grounds in south-eastern Ontario? As noted by Major Darling in 1828, one factor appears to have been the considerable pressure on the limited space and resources surrounding the mission at Lake of Two Mountains where they had been congregating during the summer months since at least 1763: The result of the present state of things is obvious, and such as can scarcely fail in time to be attended with bloodshed and murder; for driven from their own resources, they will naturally trespass on those of other tribes, who are equally jealous of the intrusion of their red brethren as of white men. Complaints on this head are increasing daily, while the threats and admonitions of the officers of this department have been found insufficient to control the unruly spirit of the savage, who, driven by the calls of hunger, and the feelings of nature towards his offspring, will not be scrupulous in invading the rights of his brethren, as a means of alleviating his misery, when he finds the example in the conduct of his white father’s children practiced as he conceives towards himself.61 Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that they re-asserted their presence in their former homelands to the north and west, in the Ottawa

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River watershed. Moreover, by the 1820s, having claimed and ceded these lands, the Mississaugas were experiencing considerable social and cultural trauma: In about 1818, there were a great many hundreds of Indians of Kingston, Upper Canada, and at Belleville and Rice Lake. And they were all unhappy drunkards. I was well acquainted with these tribes of Indians. And in 1829 I do not think there were more than half the number; for they were dying very fast every year. Some of them were stabbed, some were shot, some were tomahawked, some were drowned, some were burned, and some were frozen to death. And thus were going to destruction at a great rate.62 Others left the region to join the Methodist sponsored mission at Grape Island, Bay of Quinte.63 Consequently, when Major Darling completed his survey of Native peoples in the Canadas, he could account for only eighty individuals inhabiting the back-country behind Kingston. It would appear that it was at this time, and under these circumstances, that the Algonquins and Nipissings increased their presence in a somewhat depopulated St. Lawrence-Ottawa watershed. In 1820, Algonquin and Nipissing Chiefs petitioned Sir George Dalhousie, Governor-in-Chief of Canada, requesting that he grant them written titles and patents to the unsold islands in the Ottawa River and other lands to which they were entitled for their hunting. Complaining that their territory was being intruded upon by hunting parties from other Indian groups and by squatters and lumbermen, they were recognizing that they had to have recourse to Euro-Canadian legal practices for protection. Dalhousie’s somewhat unhelpful and undiscriminating response was that he could not grant a specific tract of the country, however remote, to any particular tribe, or nation of Indians [since] the whole of these widely scattered regions, ought to be open to all those [Algonquins, Nipissings, Iroquois and Hurons] who choose to hunt, in the yet unsettled & uninhabited parts of them.64 In 1824, Sir John Johnson forwarded a similar petition on behalf of the Algonquins and Nipissings to the Military Secretary and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, Colonel Darling. This precipitated an investigation and the preparation of a map of the disputed area by Captain J.M. Lamothe of the Indian Department in Montreal. The memorandum accompanying the map is definitive, its assumptions based upon the “right of lengthy occupation” and “confirmation” by Royal Charter: The Algonquin and Nipissingue Tribes have from time immemorial occupied as hunting grounds the Lands on both sides of the Ottawa and little (Matawa) Rivers … to the height of land dividingthewatersofLakeNipissinguefromthoseofthesaidlittle (Matawa); as also the Countries Watered by all the streams falling into the said Ottawa and little (Matawa) Rivers, north and south to their sources. This tract is bounded to the southward by a Ridge

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dividing the waters which fall into the lakes and into the St. Lawrence from those falling to the Northward and into the Ottawa River.65 Accepting the basic premise of Lamothe’s map, Johnson warned Darling that as the Algonquin and Nipissings had not received compensation for grants made in their territory, it was a “[b]reach of His Majesty’s Royal Proclamation” and that as [they] possess no land from which a revenue is derived … and depend upon their hunting for support and of late the Settlement of the Country, and the indiscriminate and injudicious destruction, by the settlers, of the Beaver, and other animals, … is likely soon to deprive them of the means by which they have hitherto supported their families.66 Disputing the claim that these lands were shared by others and warning that he feared “some lives will e’re long be sacrificed,” Johnson went on to comment on emerging Native attitudes to land claims: the Hunting Grounds of the various tribes of Indians Inhabiting these Provinces were originally defined among themselves, and the boundaries of each Tract Perfectly understood by them; any encroachment by one Tribe upon the lands allotted for the use of another is viewed by them in precisely the same light as is, the Invasion of one Civilized state by another. Despite the compelling logic of Johnson’s arguments, the Algonquins and Nipissings received no redress. Over the next two decades, they continued to petition, albeit unsuccessfully, a succession of governments for compensation for lost lands and the protection of their remaining lands from encroachment. In 1827, Colonel Darling spoke to the “Grand Council” of Algonquins, Nipissings, Iroquois, and Abenakis and warned themthathecouldnotprevent“Whitepeople”fromhuntingintheirhunting groundsandthatiftheykilledanyofthemtheywouldbetriedandpunished. He concluded that while he could not grant them lands “to be kept in a wild state as Hunting Grounds,” Governor Dalhousie was ready to grant a small portion of land to those who were prepared to take up agriculture.67 Increasingly, government was reluctant to recognize the particulars of the Algonquin-Nipissing claim because of two somewhat contradictory assumptions: that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had recognized Native rights, in general, to hunt on ungranted Crown lands; and that the Mississaugas had surrendered the lands claimed by the Algonquins and Nipissings and had been compensated for their rights to them. Indeed, the conclusion reached in 1839 by Justice James Macauley would appear to have finally resolved the issue: The papers referred to do not enable me to express any opinion upon the merits of this Memorial [an Algonquin claim]. It seems admitted that the Algonquins and Nipissings have a valid claim to the North or Lower Canada side of the Ottawa River, their pretensions to the south side are more doubtful. They contend, not

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for the St. Lawrence as a boundary, but a line midway between the two rivers. The Mississaugas it is said, on the other hand, have from the beginning claimed the whole Territory south of the Ottawa and north of the St. Lawrence. The Government of this Province have by treating with this Tribe implicitly recognized their right as occupants, and there is no sufficient evidence to support the counter-claims of the Algonquins. If it exists it must repose in the early history of the Tribes frequenting the great Canadian Rivers.68 Notwithstanding this apparently definitive conclusion, the Algonquins continued to press their case that the Mississauga had “clandestinely” sold their lands. Indeed, it would appear that the Algonquin-Mississauga land claims were being presented in Euro-Canadian proprietorial tropes. In 1841, at a Council Meeting in Oka, the Algonquins presented the essence of their case to James Hughes, Superintendent of the Indian Department: The Mississauga never openly came and hunted on our waters nor we on theirs, this was according to an Indian treaty between the chiefs of the Mississaugas and us which the Iroquois Tribe are well acquainted ... [Theyaskedthat]theremunerationannuallypaidto the Mississauga be from henceforth retained from them and paid to us the Nipissings and Algonquins, the only Tribes entitled to receive the annuity above mentioned.69 Despite the judgment by the new Governor-General of British North America, Sir Charles Bagot, that there would be neither compensation nor land, the Algonquins insisted that an inquiry be made into their claim to a portion of the annuities paid to the Mississaugas for the Rideau Purchase in 1819-1822. Eventually, following several more petitions, in 1847, James Hughes presented his opinion to Lord Elgin that “the Mississauga clandestinely took upon themselves to sell this tract of land which they were well aware belonged and formed part of the hunting grounds of the Algonquin and Nipissingue Tribes.”70 Nevertheless, the Algonquins and Nipissings never received the annuities.

The Bedford Interlude Ironically, as if to underscore the internal discrepancies within the official documentary voices, one aspect of the lived reality on the ground tells a different story during this period of disputed land claims. The considerable engineering of the Rideau Canal had much altered the hydrography of eastern Ontario by linking the south-west flowing Cataraqui-Gananoque river system with the north-east flowing Rideau river systems to produce a through-route from Bytown [Ottawa] to Kingston. It also created an extended lake-system athwart the watershed that came to be known as the Rideau Lakes in the former shared land-use territories of the Algonquin and Mississauga. Indeed, the Bagot Commission of 1844-45 suggests that not only did they share the region’s resources but that some of them, at least, appear to have shared common camp grounds:

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Within a few years past, some stragglers from the Rice Lake tribe [Mississaugas] have settled in the Township of Bedford, about twenty-five miles north of Kingston; and recently they have been joined by a band of eighty-one Indians from Lower Canada, belonging to the post of the Lake of Two Mountains. As the settlement is of recent formation and the claim of these Indians upon the interest of the Department of Upper Canada has only been brought forward last year, they have not been visited by any officer oftheDepartment,andnoaccountcanbegivenofthesettlement.71 How did this come to be? In 1832, some nineteen Mississauga families were granted 2,680 acres close to Wolfe Lake [West Rideau Lake] in Bedford Township.72 Here they stayed until 1833 when they were ordered to move to the newly established reservation at Alderville, near Peterborough. While most complied, many continued to consider the Bedford region as part of their traditional homeland domain. Nearby, at Bob’s Lake, the Algonquin Chief, Peter Stephens,73 claimed lands for his people, arguing that they had “long been accustomed to spending the [winter] hunting season” there, returning to Lake of Two Mountains for two months in the summer to receive presents and religious instruction.74 In 1842, in response to the Algonquin petition for land, and upon receipt of a census furnished by Peter Stephens that enumerated the Algonquins at Bedford,75 an Order-in-Council awarded a “licence of occupation” to the Stephen’s group, “only during the pleasure of the Crown.”76 Indian Affairs then recommended 2,000 acres of secluded, if poor quality, land be set aside for them, “on the same terms and conditions that the Reservations in other parts of the Province” had been granted.77 Estimated to have some 96 persons in 1844, Peter Stephens group of Algonquins continually petitioned for protection from the intrusion of squatters and lumbermen.78 Their petitions were ignored but they stayed in the area until at least 1863.79 As the frontier of lumbering and pioneer agriculture intruded further into the Ottawa valley, many Algonquin people dispersed further north. However, these two short-lived experiments—together with evidence of co-residence in camps and intermarriage—suggest that on the ground, at least,theMississaugaandtheAlgonquinsco-existedonthemarginsoftheir respective claims. In all probability, they had shared areas of resource use in the past but the shared occupancy of this region and the close proximity of their camps may have been a reflection of the pressure of the times. The encroachment of settlers and lumbermen limited their options: remain in an ever-shrinking territory, relocate to the established reservation at Alnwick (Mississauga) or to reservations established at Golden Lake and in northern Quebec (Algonquin), or move to the north-west of those ceded by the 1819-22 Rideau Treaties.

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The Ottawa-Huron Tract By the 1860s, the Public Lands and Colonization Act (1853) and the Homestead Act (1868) had stimulated Euro-Canadian settlement of the Ottawa-Huron tract.80 Faced with new incursions, in 1869, George Paudash, a Mississauga Indian chief, submitted a petition suggesting that the land lying north of the 45th parallel belonged to the Mississaugas and had never been ceded.81 They were claiming this territory on behalf of the Mississaugas of Rice, Mud and Scugog Lakes. Paudash was a direct descendent of Charles and T.G. Anderson, both Indian Superintendents, Charles Anderson having married a Mississauga woman from Rice Lake. Accordingly, it has been suggested that not only did the Indian Department favour the Mississauga claim because of this connection but that it might even have assisted Paudash in compiling the claim.82 In any event, in 1870, the matter was brought before the Honourable Joseph Howe, Superintendent General. It was his opinion that the “[t]he Ojibways of the Upper Lakes had evidently no territorial rights extending through from Lake Huron to the Ottawa.”83 The claim was not considered again until 1878 when it was reported that “the Ontario Department of Crown Lands has searched the available documentation and failed to discover the evidence of any treaty showing that any part of the tract of land [claimed by the Mississaugas and Chippewas] has been surrendered by the Indians.”84 The Mississauga continued to press their claims, although the conclusions reached by A.E. Irving in 1893 must have displeased them. Essentially, Irving argued that “There is no reason why these Bands [Mississaugas and Algonquins] should claim together” and that “the lands in respect of which the Mississaugas claim compensation, belonged to other Bands, the Algonquins and Nipissings, and that they [Mississaugas] have been compensated.”85 Even more damningly, Irving goes on to assert that “parts of the Lands included in the Surrender of 28th November, 1822, were the Hunting grounds of the Nipissings and Algonquins,” and that “these Chippewas and Mississaugas were not aboriginal inhabitants of Upper Canada, they were immigrants, and possessed no rights to land therein.”86 Such was the growing support of the Algonquin position that an Indian Affairs confidential report in 1899 suggested that the department drop the Mississauga claim.87 But in 1909, Samuel Bray, Chief Surveyor of the Department of Indian Affairs, concluded “that the area claimed by the Mississauga had not been claimed by any other group of Indian people,” although he went on to suggest that they “seem to have made very little use of the area claimed.”88 Despite these apparent set-backs, the Ojibwa communities of Christian Island, Georgina Island, Rama, Mud (Curve) Lake, Rice Lake, Alnwick (Alderville) and Scugog continued to argue that they had never ceded their rights to the lands between Lake Ontario and Lake Nipissing.89 Indeed, they sustained a strong presence in the area with people from Rama and Christian Island retaining detailed knowledge of canoe routes to the north

103 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes and those from the Alderville community making references to lakes in the Algonquin Park region. There was also clear evidence of Algonquin and Nipissing having made long-standing use of these lands. Nevertheless, on 31 October 1923, government signed the Williams Treaty with the Chippewa of Christian Island, Georgina Island and Rama, and on 15 November 1923, with the Mississauga of Rice Lake, Mud Lake and Lake Scugog.90 By this agreement, in return for compensation amounting to $500,000 and $25 per capita, the Mississauga and Chippewa ceded their fishing, hunting and trapping rights to an area of about 17,600 square miles southofLakeNipissing,westoftheOttawaRiver,eastofGeorgianBayand north of 45 degrees latitude, and to an area of about 2,500 square miles in the Counties of Northumberland, Durham, Ontario and York. They also ceded all rights and privileges to all other lands situate in Ontario, apart from lands set aside as reserves.91 While this payment was intended to finally resolve claims of the Ojibwa peoples in this region, yet again, both the federal and Ontario governments had overlooked the claims of the Algonquin peoples of the Ottawa valley. Not surprisingly, the result has been continuing litigation to redress these long-standing claims to a long-standing disputed territory.

Conclusion: Connections and Disconnections Native and colonial societies possessed differing perceptions of the conceptualization of space as a defined territory. Colonial practices of mapping and codifying space resulted in bounded territories with imaginary lines that did not parallel the concepts of boundaries utilized by the indigenous inhabitants. When colonial authorities delimited and categorized indigenous territories as lines on paper, they did not take into account the necessity of permeable boundaries to enable the historically acknowledged freedom of movement of Native groups and the dynamic relationships between peoples and between themselves and the land. As this paper demonstrated, the assertion of colonial control occurred at a time when the Mississaugas and Algonquins were themselves renegotiating territories and boundaries. The thrust of colonial expansion precipitated legalistic contestation between these Native groups and initiated the process of individual claims to territory. The fact that there continues to be controversy regarding the Mississauga-Algonquin claims to former homeland territories throughout the Ottawa Valley watershed boundaries reflects past governments’failure to comprehend the grounded ethnographic realities of Native occupation of this region. In the watershed boundary areas, Mississaugas and Algonquins shared lands and campsites and frequently intermarried. As recently as the 1970s, they stood together at the barricades to block the commercial exploitation of their wild rice beds at Mud Lake, Ardoch.92 It would appear that colonial appropriation of Native lands by such vehicles as the Rideau

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Purchase and the Williams Treaty were concerned more with shortsighted legalisms rather than cultural verities. Moreover, there may have been another, purely bureaucratic factor. Rather than a simple metanarrative of contestation between a monolithic Euro-Canadian “government” and the “Native peoples,” there appears to have been a more nuanced intercolonial real-politic. Algonquin claims appear to have been supported by colonial authorities in Lower Canada but resisted by those in Upper Canada. Conversely, Upper Canadian authorities favoured the Mississaugas while attempting to deflect the Algonquins back over the Ottawa River to Lower Canada. Such positions may have been less than objective and more concerned with sidestepping responsibility. The Indian Department was, after all, a very expensive administrative appendage. Whatever the reason, the result has been some two centuries of intransigence, inaction and repetitive litigation. To date, the Algonquin and Mississauga claims to their “Northern hunting grounds” in the watersheds of the tributaries of the Ottawa River are still unresolved.

Notes 1. Huitema is an Independent Researcher, Osborne is in Geography at Queen’s University, and Ripmeester is in Geography at Brock University. They are currently collaborating on an SSHRC funded research project: “Homeland, Third Space, Identity: The Landscapes of the Alderville Mississauga.” 2. O.P. Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1954; see also Cornelius J. Jaenen. “Conceptual Frameworks for French Views of America and Amerindians,” French Colonial Studies, No. 2, 1978, pp.1-22. 3. Harry Leibersohn, “Discovering Indigenous Nobility: Tocqueville, Chamisso, and Romantic Travel Writing,” The American History Review, Volume 99, 1994, pp. 746-766; see also Victor Kiernan, “Noble and Ignoble Savages,” in G.R. Rousseau and R. Porter (eds.), Exoticism in the Enlightenment, Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1990, pp. 86-116. 4. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1979; see also M. Edney, Mapping and Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 5. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; see also Fernand Braudel. The Wheels of Commerce, Volume 2: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, New York: Harper and Row, 1979. 6. For enclosure, see J.M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. For an example of enclosure as a challenge of customary practices see Brian S. Osborne, “Commonlands, Mineral Rights and Industry: Changing Evaluations in an Industrializing Society,” Journal of Historical Geography, Volume 4, 1978, pp.231-249. For a further challenge to customary practices mounted by the “commutation” of church tithe income, duties and obligations by pecuniary payments, see Roger J.P. Kain and Hugh C. Prince, The Tithe Surveys of England and Wales, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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7. J.H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. 8. Of course, the “great abyss” is that emotive term referring to the divide between the classes in Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybill. For more on evangelicalism at home and abroad, particularly in its Methodist form, see J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, Chicago: Chicago Press, particularly Chapter Two: “British Beginnings,” 1991. pp. 49-85. 9. Consider the motives of the eighteenth century traveller, Dupaty, who declared, “mon imagination avoit passé en revue tous les maux de la civilisation; elle entroit dans les forêts du Canada, pour interroger, sur le bonheur, la vie sauvage”: Dupaty [Charles Marguerite Jean Baptiste Mercier]. Sentimental Letters on Italy, 2 Volumes, London, Volume 1, 1789, p. 186. 10. M.L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 34-35. 11. Several authors have suggested that the colonial imagination collapsed travel through space and time into a single process. Human difference was explained through recourse to evolutionary process. To travel beyond the bounds of Europe was, therefore, to travel before the time of Europe. See, J. Duncan, “Sites of Representation: Place, Time and the Discourse of the Other,” in J. Duncan and D. Ley (eds.) place/culture/practice, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 39-56; see also A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York: Routledge, 1995; and B. Christophers, Positioning the Missionary: John Booth Good and the Confluence of Cultures in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1998. 12. J.E. Chamberlain, “Culture and Anarchy in Indian Country,” in M. Asch (ed.), Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equality, and Respect for Difference, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997, p. 3. 13. J. Carson, “Ethnography, Geography, and Native History,” unpublished paper presented at Queen’s University, 29 January 1999. 14. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, New York: Hill and Wand, 1983, p. 58. 15. Terry N. Tobias, Chief Kerry’s Moose, A Guidebook to Land Use and Occupancy Mapping, Research Design, and Data Collection, Canada: Joint Publication of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and Ecotrust, 2000, p. 3. (Tobias states that these distinctions draw directly from Peter Usher’s work as one of the pioneers of land use and occupancy methodology). 16. Ibid. See also J. Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World, New York: Guilford Press, 1993; and L.C. Green and O.P. Dickason, The Law of Nations and the New World, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1993. 17. A.J. Sluyter, “Material-Conceptual Transformation in Sixteenth Century Veracrux,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, Volume 89, No. 3, 1999, pp. 377-401. 18. Canada, JLAUC, 1844-45, Report of the Affairs of the Indians in Canada, Section 1, unpaginated, hereafter, The Bagot Commission. 19. Canada, Indian Treaties and Surrenders from 1680-1902, Volume 3, Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Bond Head, cited in R.H. Bartlett, Indian Reserves and Aboriginal Lands in Canada: A Homeland, Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Native Law Centre, 1990, p. 2.

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26. Chloe Chard, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography, 1600-1830, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, p. 10. 27. Ibid., Chard quotes this statement by Christian Jacob in L’Empire des cartes: approche théorique de la cartographie à travers l’histoire, Paris: Albin Michel, 1992, p. 16. 28. J.B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” in T. Barnes and J. Duncan (eds.), Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text, and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 16. 29. M.E. Huitema, “‘Land of Which the Savages Stood in no Particular Need’: Dispossessing the Algonquins of South-Eastern Ontario of their Lands, 1760-1930,” M.A. Thesis, Queen s University, Kingston, 2001, p. 20. 30. See G.M. Lewis, “Indian Maps” in C.M. Judd and A.J. Ray (eds.), Old Trails and New Directions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980; See also G.M. Lewis, “Indian Delimitations of Primary Biogeographic Regions,” in T.E. Ross and T.G. Moore (eds.), A Cultural Geography of North American Indians, Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1987. 31. P.J. Usher, F.J. Tough, R.M. Galois, 1992, op cit., p. 112. 32. Archives of Ontario (AO), Sir A.E. Irving Papers, F 1027-1-8, Indian Land Dispute and Compensation Claims, A.E. Irving, lawyer and counsel for the Ontario government, to J.P. MacDonell, 1835-1911, 18 February 1893. 33. P.J. Usher, F.J. Tough, R.M. Galois, 1992, op cit., p. 112. 34. M.E. Huitema, 2001, op. cit.,p.18. 35. For recent formulations of these perspectives, see D. Clayton, “Captain Cook and the Spaces of Contact at ‘Nootka Sound’” in J.S.H. Brown and E. Vibert (eds.) Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1996, pp. 95-123; see also R.C. Harris, 1995, op. cit. 36. P.J. Usher, F.J. Tough and R.M. Galois, 1992, op cit., p. 112 37. O.P. Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 62. 38. See D. Clayton, Islands of Truth, The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2000. 39. See C. Heidenreich, Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians, 1600-1650, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. 40. P. Schmalz, The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. 41. Chief Robert Paudash, “The Coming of the Mississaugas,” Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records, Volume 6, 1905, p. 190. 42. “Enumeration of the Indian Tribes connected with the Government of Canada; the Warriors and Armorial Bearings of Each Nation, 1736,” Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, E.B. O’Callaghan (ed.), Albany: Weed, Parsons, and Company, Volume 9, 1856, p. 1056. 43. H. Hornbeck Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987, p. 66. 44. Duchesnay, 1829, cited in G.M. Day and B.G. Trigger, “Algonquin,” in B. Trigger (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15, Northeast, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978, pp. 794-5. The territory north of the St. Lawrence front had been the subject of an alliance between the Abenaki and Algonquin nations in the early 1700s, which recognized the St. Lawrence River as the dividing line, and the land north of the river as Algonquin country. Based on these assumptions, in 1791, the Algonquin nation held a council with

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Colonel John Campbell of Indian Affairs for the Province of Quebec, complaining of settlers encroaching on their hunting grounds and that the Iroquois were “pillaging” their hunting grounds. They asked Campbell to use his authority to ensure that “each nation hunt[ed] on the lands which Nature gave to them.” L.C. Hansen, Research Report: The Algonquins of Golden Lake Indian Band - Land Claim, (unpublished) Ministry of Natural Resources, Office of Indian Resource Policy, 1986, p. 17. 45. For more on the Mississaugan way of life see B.Osborne and M. Ripmeester, “Kingston, Bedford, Grape Island, Alnwick: The Odyssey of the Kingston Mississaugas,” Historic Kingston, Volume 43, 1995, pp. 83-111; B. Osborne and M. Ripmeester, “The Mississaugas between Two Worlds: Strategic Adjustments to Changing Landscapes of Power,” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Volume XVII, No. 2, 1997, pp. 259-292; M. Ripmeester, “Vision Quests into Sight Lines: Negotiating the Place of the Mississaugas in South-Eastern Ontario, 1700-1876,” Ph.D. Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; M. Ripmeester, ‘“It is scarcely to be believed...”: The Mississauga Indians and the Grape Island Mission, 1826-1836,” The Canadian Geographer, Volume 39, 1995, pp. 157-168. For the Algonquins, see M.E. Huitema, 2001, op. cit. 46. Huitman, M.E., “‘Land of Which the Savages Stood in no Particular Need’: Dispossessing the Algonquins of South-Eastern Ontario of Their Lands, 1760-1930,” M.A. Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, 2001, p. 75. 47. B. Osborne and D. Swainson, Kingston: Building on the Past, Westport, Ontario: Butternut Press, 1987. 48. See B. Osborne and M. Ripmeester, 1995 and 1997, op. cit., M. Ripmeester 1995 op. cit. See also Don Smith, “The Dispossession of the Mississauga Indians: A Missing Chapter in the History of Upper Canada,” in J. Johnson and B. Wilson (eds.) Historical Essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives, Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989, pp. 23-52. For contemporary accounts, see Rev. Peter Jones, [rpt. 1970]. History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference to their Conversion to Christianity, Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1861; Peter Jones, The Life and Journals of Kah-ke-wa-quo-na-by, (Reverend Peter Jones) Wesleyan Methodist Missionary, Toronto: A. Green, 1860. 49. Captain Crawford to Haldimand, Papers of Sir Frederick Haldimand: Unpublished Papers and Correspondence, 1758-1784, Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, 9 October 1783. 50. G. Snyderman, “Concepts of Land Ownership among the Iroquois and their Neighbours,” in W. Fenton (ed.), Symposium on Local Diversity in Iroquois Culture, Washington. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 149, 1951, pp. 15-34. 51. NAC, MG21, Add. Mss., 21818, f1-425v, “Report from Sir John Johnson to Governor Haldimand,” 17 November 1783, p. 186. 52. Queen’s University Library, Government Documents, Department Lands and Forests, Surveyors’ Letters, Volume 37, p. 93, Samuel Wilmot to Thomas Ridout, 26 August 1818. 53. Ontario Ministry Natural Resources, Survey Records Branch, “Ammended replica of a Plan shewing the relative situation of the Indian Burying Ground in the Township of Thurlow, Surveyor General’s Office, 5 August 1816.” 54. NAC, RG10, Volume 32:18918-19, letter from Ferguson to Claus, 8 March 1816. 55. Canada, Indian Treaties and Surrenders: From 1680-1890, Volume 1, Ottawa: Brown Chamberlain Printers, 1891, pp. 62-3.

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56. For more on this conversion see B. Osborne and M. Ripmeester, 1995, 1997, op. cit., and M. Ripmeester 1995, op. cit. 57. A.E. St. Louis, “Memorandum: Ancient Hunting Grounds of the Algonquin and Nipissing Indians: Comprising the Watersheds of the Ottawa and Madawaska Rivers.” Unpublished manuscript. Dominion Archivist, Canada, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Treaties and Historical Research Centre, 1951, p. 15. 58. Much of what follows derives from Hanson, 1986, op. cit. 59. NAC, RG10, Volume 499, p. 15, C-13341, “J. Givens to T.G. Anderson, York,” 22 April 1830. 60. NAC, RG10, Volume 51, pp. 56769-56770, C-11017, “J.B. Clench to Col. Givens, Kingston,” 15 September 1832. 61. Copy Despatch and Enclosures from Lord Dalhousie to Sir George Murray, London, 27 October 1828. Enclosure, Major-General Darling’s Report to Lord Dalhousie. Quebec, 24 June 1828, Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers: Correspondence and other Papers Relating to Aboriginal Tribes in British Possessions, 1834, Anthropology, Aborigines, 3 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1969), p. 24. 62. CA&J, Volume 10, 43, 17 June 1836, p. 179. 63. Of course, there were other Ojibwa/Mississauga groups in the Peterborough, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay areas. These too were undergoing similar processes, being relocated to such places as Mud Lake, Rice Lake, the Credit, Coldwater and the Narrows. Despite such dislocations, they too retained an interest in, and claim to, lands throughout the Ottawa Huron tract. 64. NAC, RG10, Volume 494, Governor Dalhousie to Colonel Darling, Military Secretary and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, August 1822, pp. 31073-75. 65. NAC, RG10, Volume 494, Captain Lamothe, Indian Department, to Sir John Johnson Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 29 October 1824, pp. 31066-67. 66. NAC, RG10, Volume 494, Sir John Johnson to Colonel Darling, 5 November 1824, pp. 31028–29. 67. NAC, RG10, Volume 20, Colonel Darling to the Grand Council, 5 October 1827, pp. 14240-53. 68. NAC, RG10, Volume 117, Report on Indian Affairs: Mr. Justice B. Macaulay to Lieutenant Governor Arthur, 22 April 1839, pp. 65660-64; also AO, Sir A.E. Irving Papers, MS 1780, F 1027-1-2, Report of Mr. Justice B. Macaulay, Toronto: pp. 81-86. 69. NAC, RG10, Volume 6, Proceedings of Council at Lake of Two Mountains, 4 September 1841, pp. 2915-22. 70. NAC, RG10, Volume 604, Report: James Hughes for Lord Elgin, 30 September 1847 pp. 49937-39. 71. JLAC, 1844-45, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Indian Affairs to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, Section 2, Part 16. (Hereafter known as “The Bagot Commission.”) 72. NAC, RG10, Volume 48, correspondence between M. Macauley and Col. J. Givens, pp. 54381-55027. 73. Peter Stephens was also known as Piershawanapinessi, Pierchaw-wi-ni-pi-nessi, Peter Shaw-we-ne-pi-nai-see, Peter Shawanipinessi, Pshawainonpininisi and Chawanibenisi. Stephens was also variously spelled as Stevens (M. E. Huitema, op cit. Ftn. 312, p. 117).

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74. NAC, RG10, Volume 186, pt. 2, Petition of Peter Shawanipinessi for Licence of Occupation entitled Petition No. 115, 17 July 1842, pp. 108566C-566F. 75. NAC, RG10, Volume 138, Peter Stephens, Chief at Bedford, to Col. Jarvis, Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 14 March 1844, pp. 79150-51. 76. NAC, RG10, Volume 119, Order-in-Council #1467, Licence of Occupation, Wm.H. Lee to the Commissioner of Crown Lands, 21 March 1844, pp. 522-23. 77. NAC, RG10, Volume 186, Lieutenant Colonel Jarvis (Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs) to Indian Affairs Department, 29 October 1843, pp. 45607-09, also Volume186, pt. 2, pp. 108566. 78. NAC, RG10, Volume 186, pt. 2, Pierchaw-wi-ni-pi-nessi, Bedford Chief, Petition No.127, 6 January 1846, unpaginated; also NAC, RG10, Volume 186, Report of W.R. Bartlett, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Toronto to C.J. Wated, Accountant, Indian Department, 26 January 1861, pp. 155409-10. 79. Canada, 1861 Census: Bedford, Kennebec, Olden, Oso Townships in Frontenac, indexed by Russ Waller, Documents Library, Queen’s University; also J. Holmes and Associates Inc., “Report on Non-Status Algonquin Communities: Antoine First Nation, Ardoch Algonquins, and Bonnechere Métis Association, First Draft,” unpublished, Ottawa, Ontario, 20 October 1999, p. 61 80. Brian S. Osborne, “The Settlement of Kingston’s Hinterland,” in G. Tulchinsky (ed.) To Preserve & Defend: Essays on Kingston in the Nineteenth Century, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976, pp. 63-79, 351-353; Brian S. Osborne, “Frontier Settlement in Eastern Ontario in the 19th Century: A Study in Changing Perceptions of Land and Opportunity,” in David Harry Miller and Jerome O. Steffen (eds.) The Frontier: Comparative Studies, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997, pp. 201-226. 81. NAC, RG10, Volume 2329, File 67071-1, Wetongwe to William Spragge, (signed by George Paudash) 22 December 1869, unpaginated. 82. A.E. St. Louis, 1951, op. cit., pp. 15, 30. 83. AO, Sir A.E. Irving Papers, MS1780, Folio 1027-1-8, Indian Land Dispute and Compensation Claims, Joseph Howe, Department of Secretary of State, Indian Branch, to Commissioner of Crown Lands, p. 2. 84. NAC, RG10, Volume 2328, File 67071-1, Secretary of the Province of Ontario to Secretary of State (Canada), 17 July 1878, unpaginated. 85. AO, Sir A.E. Irving Papers, MU 1464, Indian Land Dispute and Compensation Claims, Summary of Claim, 9 February 1893, unpaginated. 86. Ibid. Irving claims that this was communicated by Vankoughnet, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to Sir John A. McDonald on 2 October 1884, together with an array of supporting documentation. 87. NAC, RG10, Volume 2545, File 111834, Report: J. A. McKenna and R. Rimmer (Law Clerks for the Department of Indian Affairs) 20 March 1899, unpaginated. 88. NAC, RG10, Volume 2329, File 67071-2, Memo: Samual Bray (Chief Surveyor of the Department of Indian Affairs) to the Deputy Minister, 26 April 1909, unpaginated. 89. Edward S. Rogers, “The Algonquian Farmers of Southern Ontario, 1830-1945, in E.S. Rogers and D.B. Smith (eds), Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1994, pp. 122-167. 90. L.C. Hanson, op cit. 1986, p. 62. 91. Hansen, ibid, pp. 62-63. See also Williams Treaties, NAC, RG10, Volume 1853, pt. 1, Treaty #1080 and Treaty #1081. See also R.C. Daniel, A History of Native Claims Processes in Canada 1867-1979, Ottawa, 1980, pp. 64-76; and R.J. Surtees, The Williams Treaties, Treaty Research Report, Ottawa, 1986.

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92. Susan Delisle, “Coming out of the Shadows: Asserting Identity and Authority in a Layered Homeland: The 1979-82 Mud Lake Wild-Rice Confrontation.” M.A. Thesis, Queen’s University, 2001.

112 Patrick J. Smith*

Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion?

Abstract Cascadia is an emerging global region in the U.S. Pacific NorthWest/ Canadian West. Cascadia is not a new notion, but efforts to institutionalize this region have had to confront and resolve rather different definitions of Cascadia: these vary from which jurisdictions make up Cascadia to whether its focus should be essentially economic or environmental. This article explores the nature of the alternative conceptions of Cascadia; it looks at the range of organizations and entities that have emerged as part of the institutionalization of Cascadia; and it poses the argument that lack of definitional clarity hindered early development of this region. A brief comparative look at a newer global region within the European Union–Oresund, linking parts of Denmark and Sweden–provides a basis for two lessons: (1) that definitional clarity is helpful in building global regions–at least more niche-based ones like Oresund; and (2) that taking longer to arrive at a conceptual consensus, like Cascadia, might produce a broader, more globalist definition of such regions.

Résumé « Cascadia » (Cascadie) est le nom que l’on donne à une nouvelle région mondiale qui se dessine dans l’Ouest canadien, la côte du Pacifique et le Nord-Ouest des États-Unis. Sa notion même n’est pas neuve, mais les efforts déployés pour lui conférer un cadre institutionnel se sont affrontés au besoin de résoudre les problèmes posées par des définitions plutôt contrastées qu’on a tenté d’en donner : c’est ainsi que l’on a pu se demander quelles entités administratives composaient la Cascadie ou encore si la région devait être essentiellement définie en termes économiques ou environnementaux. Dans cet article, on s’interroge sur la nature des différentes conceptions de la Cascadie; on examine la gamme d’organismes et d’entités qui ont vu le jour en conséquence des efforts déployés pour lui donner une existence institutionnelle; et, enfin, on formule une thèse selon laquelle le manque de clarté de la définition même de la Cascadie a initialement entravé le développement de cette région. Un bref coup d’œil comparatif sur une région mondiale apparue plus récemment au sein de l’Union européenne, soit l’Oresund, qui lie des parties de la Suède et du Danemark, permet de tirer deux leçons : (1) qu’il est utile de commencer par se donner une définition claire quand on cherche à créer des régions mondiales, à tout le moins des régions dont le développement est fondé sur des créneaux précis, comme c’est le cas de l’Oresund; et (2) le fait de prendre plus de temps à en arriver à un consensus conceptuel, comme ce fut le cas au Canada, peut déboucher sur une définition plus large, plus mondialiste, de telles régions.

Thinking about the territory called Cascadia, which straddles the Canada-US border in North America’s Pacific Northwest, assumes that there is any agreed definition, real or virtual. It suggests possible notions of any ‘post-Canada’ reconfiguration in the Americas, and it also raises questions about whether this still-emerging subnational, binational, international region is a territory or something more. In considering Cascadia—which is not as obvious a matter as might first appear from the name and notion—one must first ask: what is Cascadia? This article explores how this subnational, binational, international Cascadia region defines itself. It assesses whether differences in defining Cascadia represent a strength or weakness. In answering such queries, it suggests that there are comparative lessons on regional institution-building from other such territories, such as the Oresund region linking parts of Denmark and Sweden in the EU. Initial research conclusions are that some territorial definitions of Cascadia matter more than others and definitional coherence may have an impact on global “niche-ing.” As the Oresund comparison suggests, competing conceptions of a region can affect processes of institutionalization, agenda setting and developing regional policy-making capacity. The phenomenon of new, emerging global regions that are simultaneously subnational, bi(or multi)national and international, challenges traditional “nation-state-centric” notions of territory. Cascadia is one such emerging global region. This research examines the growth of what John Kincaid has termed “constituent diplomacy,” by subnational actors, particularly at the provincial/state level, in Canada’s West and the U.S. Pacific NorthWest. It evaluates the impact of such activity–both governmental and non-governmental–on newer notions of territory. It identifies the interests most central to Cascadia’s redefinition of global region and the institution-building inherent in this project; and it provides some comparative lessons on policy/institutional diffusion and new region- building by a brief examination of the Oresund region of Copenhagen/ Zealand and Malmo-Lund/Scania in Europe. Apart from different definitions (discussed below), there are two ways of looking at Cascadia: (i) externally–with a focus on activities by subnational governmental and non-governmental actors within the region but directed at linkages internationally, beyond the Cascadia region; and, (ii) internally–emphasizing activities directed primarily within the West/Pacific NorthWest, which impact more directly on the increasing institutionalization of this “Cascadia” region. This research considers the implications of the emerging Cascadia case for what Bayless Manning has called “intermestic” (“simultaneously … both domestic and international”) policy development1 and for providing some understanding of global regions and the processes of institutionalization within them.

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The Cascadia region is perhaps the most active in North America, indeed more generally, in establishing micro-regional linkages–across national borderlines in a broad array of policy areas–from the economy to the environment. This West/Pacific NorthWest region is also very active in promoting macro-regional connections with some of the world’s fastest growing economies in Europe and the Asia Pacific, including, for example, a co-operative arrangement between the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER, one of Cascadia’s iterations) and the Oresund Region in Zealand, Denmark/Scania, Sweden.2 The range of subnational, binational, international activities in the Cascadia region extends from municipal paradiplomacy3, through state- provincial interactions–in a host of governmental, quasi-governmental and non-governmental iterations, to federal-provincial/state intergovernmental involvements.4 These examples suggest both narrower and broader definitions of the West/Pacific NorthWest Cascadia territory itself. And while much of this activity in Cascadia is cooperative–often with the encouragement of senior authorities–some of it is competitive and conflictual (both amongst subnational actors and between local/ regional-senior jurisdictions). Finally, as the title suggests, there are differencesoffocusaswellasdefinitionfortheCascadiaregionitself;these raise questions about whether this conceptual complexity represents a strength or dilemma for anyone thinking about new global regions and the increasing malleability of borders. On this latter point, EU comparisons–for example, with the Oresund region, discussed below–suggest other ways of thinking about global regions and their importance. In seeking to understand and generalize about the Cascadia experience, there are at least three features which stand out as pre-conditions of the Cascadia option: · There has been a long-standing experience in constituent diplomacy. While much of this is within the region, a good deal of such activity–as with municipal twinnings in the 1940s and 1950s–is not directed at or through the region. However, the policy learning and institutional capacity developed by jurisdictions through such international activity were not insignificant factors in subsequent regional developments. · This experience, and a long history of trade, particularly in resources, has led to an increasing global perspective within Cascadia. The shift from resource dependent economies to increasingly tertiary (and some continuing significant secondary, e.g. Boeing) manufacturing sectors, in regional jurisdictions, has coincided with a more internationalist outlook; British Columbia, for example, despite a significant U.S. trade link, has the least North American-oriented economy in Canada. Territorial location and inclination have made the whole region very much part of the Asia Pacific

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economy, even while much of its history links it to Europe. This finds translation in various Cascadia “joint ventures” (such as the “two-nation vacation” within Cascadia), in attempts to sell a regional environmental cleanup capacity, by firms across all of Cascadia, as a single package within the EU and Asia, and in support for each other’s Olympic bid efforts as an aid to regional infrastructure building, such as fast trains and easier border crossings. · There has also been an increasing interdependence, both internationally and regionally, for Cascadia. Although British Columbia is Canada’s third largest province and Washington State ranks 20th in state population, the main “Peace Arch” border crossing between Vancouver and Seattle is one of the busiest in North America. Vancouver’s Port is the second busiest in volume in the Americas. Such traffic is indicative of both international and intraregional trade and economic linkages: trade between Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, for example, is now close to $20 billion. It grew by approximately 50% in the five years between 1989 and 1994, and has continued to grow since. Terms such as paradiplomacy, micro-diplomacy and constituent diplomacyareincreasinglyusedtodistinguishtheinternationalactivitiesof subnational governments from the more traditional nation-state diplomacy.5 John Kincaid has suggested that constituent diplomacy is preferred, as “such terms as micro-diplomacy and paradiplomacy imply thatconstituentdiplomacy5 isinferiortonation-statediplomacyandexhibit a nation-state bias. … Constituent diplomacy is intended as a neutral descriptor, one that avoids the implication that the activities of constituent governmentsarenecessarilyinferior,ancillary,orsupplementaltothe‘high politics’ of nation-state diplomacy.”6 This constituent activity in Cascadia has grown substantially in recent years. While it has grown, its form has changed. This expansion in degree and the development of differing forms represent a maturing of such a subnational global regional diplomacy. What explains the emerging region referred to as Cascadia? What are some of the lessons for rethinking the significance of such global regions? In assessing the determinants of these changes, examples are drawn from a review of different policy phases in state and provincial jurisdictions, as well as private initiatives, within Cascadia. Before that analysis, however, a review of definitional differences of the territory called Cascadia is useful.

How The Region Defines Itself: What Is Cascadia? The initial notion of Cascadia was of that portion of West/Pacific NorthWest North America between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific

116 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion?

Ocean; its name was taken from the waters which ‘cascaded’ down from the mountains to the ocean. And while there are other conceptions, such as Ecotopia, the Left (or West) Coast and Pacifica–perhaps four different territorial definitions of Cascadia currently stand out–each one a larger concentriccircleintheWest/PacificNorthWestcornerofNorthAmerica.7 Georgia Basin / Puget Sound: This is a bioregional definition centred on the Gulf waters of the Pacific–British Columbia’s Strait of Georgia, including much of the east side of Vancouver Island, with the provincial capital, Victoria and the Vancouver-centred “Lower Mainland,” combined with the Washington State waters of Puget Sound, including Seattle, Tacoma and the state capital of Olympia. This definition has an official status, with, for example, B.C.’s Georgia Basin Initiative (GBI), and has been given policy emphasis by B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt (1991-1996), focussing on the environmental sustainability of this largely urban region. MainStreetCascadia:Thisisalsoasmalldefinitionoftheregion, emphasizing that the essential components of Cascadia include the megalopolis along the Highway 99 / I-5 corridor from the Whistler ski resort, just north of Vancouver, though Seattle and Olympia in Washington to Portland, the Willamette Valley, Salem and Eugene in Oregon. It is also sometimes called the Cascadia Corridor. Eight million people live within this definition of the region. Its proponents include some with the strongest economic/ trade concerns.8 Iterations such as those espoused by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute - High Speed Train Link and PACE–the Pacific Corridor Enterprise Council–stand out here. Traditional Cascadia: This conception includes the three jurisdictions of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. In this iteration, Cascadia contains approximately 13.5 million citizens and has a GDP of more than $250 billion, just about the size of Australia’s economy.9 Pacific NorthWest Economic Region: This definition is certainly the largest. It includes British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon Territory in Canada, and Alaska, Washington, Oregon, plus Idaho and Montana in the United States. The population of PNWER is around 18 million, and its economy–at more than $350 billion–would place it as the 10th largest national economy in the world. Neighbouring California, with a population of over 25 million, is the 9th largest economy in the world. That is not insignificant as some efforts to define the region even more broadly now include a notion of an I-5 “Pacifica” region from Whistler/Vancouver to Tijuana and Baja, Mexico.

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Within these four basic conceptions of the region are other variants such as that included within PACE, which is made up of members from Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. The first question posed by this variety of definitions of the region, from the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound and Mainstreet Cascadia to the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region, through to “Ecotopia” and “Pacifica,” is whether the conceptual multiplicity represents confusion or strength: essentially, “do the different territorial definitions matter?” To begin to answer this query, some assessment of how these definitions play out on the ground would seem appropriate. To initially confront this task, an assessment of activities within the (however-defined) Cascadia region is undertaken in this paper with a particular emphasis on British Columbia and Washington–at the international border. Then a brief comparative analysis of the European Oresund region is provided. Here definitional clarity was the first order of business and this may have contributed to the relative success of Oresund, despite a more recent history than Cascadia.

Policy Forms and Policy Phases in Cascadia: A Brief Backgrounder In this section, some of the determinants of subnational global policy- making and policy-making capacity in Cascadia are examined through analysis of a series of policy phases. The focus here is primarily on international policy activities within the province of British Columbia and Washington and Oregon states. While not entirely new–nor covering all definitions of the region–the global policy thrust of B.C., Washington and Oregon’s constituent actors has expanded rapidly, both in terms of extent and type. In extent, for example, with the state of Washington and the province of B.C., transborder issues and international policy choices date from the last century and include matters of trade, offshore usage such as the fishery and more recently significant growth management and environmental concerns (such as the 2000/2002-3 ongoing debates over a Sumas II electrical generating plant across the U.S. line in Whatcom County near B.C.’s Fraser Valley).Like many issues, these interactions have expanded in number and cross the national border, transcending local/provincial/state perspectives. Similarly, with regard to city-based intermestic policy-making, there has been a significant expansion in activity; for example, between 1944 (when the first Canadian city, Vancouver, was twinned) and 1967, only nine Canadian municipalities had twinned themselves with non-Canadian communities. Over the past thirty-five years, this pattern has accelerated considerably to include several hundred such formal subnational, international exchanges,10 and many more less formal linkages. In the United States, there are currently over 1,000 cities with more than 2,000 sister city affiliations, most of this extension since the mid-1970s.11 Seattle

118 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion? alone has twenty such formal twinnings, and was one of the first U.S. cities to engage in such activity.12 Vancouver has five formal “sister city” relationships, as well as other strategic links. More importantly, as the number of subnational governments involved internationally has grown, so too have the types of global activity and exchange;whiletheyareoftenculturalandeducational,theyhaveshiftedto more strategic, business-oriented forms and increasingly to a broader globalist policy phase. This development of differing, and subsequent, forms represents a maturing of regional subnational constituent diplomacy and suggests that these Cascadia redefinitions matter. Apart from the changing number and type of international activity within Cascadia, four policy phases stand out in examining the subnational internationalist policy making in state/provincial jurisdictional settings in the region:13 i) the first is an ad hoc phase, indicative of relatively immature policy intent and capacity, running incrementally, in early instances, from the First World War (and even before) and continuing into the 1960s and early 1970s; ii) subsequently there were efforts to develop a more rational approach to–and institutional support for–such international activities in the 1970s and early to mid-1980s, at the provincial/ state and local levels; iii) when assessment was undertaken of the benefits and costs of such formal linkages, the development of a more strategic subnational, internationalist policy position in many jurisdictions ensued in the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s; and, iv) as global efforts to implement more sustainable development have emerged, a globalist policy stance, a developing fourth phase more indicative of the 1990s and 2000s, and a broader, more prescriptive policy alternative beyond earlier iterations, have pushed themselves onto public policy agendas, in Cascadia and beyond. Each policy phase has reflected a series of choices by appropriate subnational governmental and non-governmental actors and a different set of policy objectives in keeping with shifting policy determinants. Each also has represented different policy implications for senior jurisdictions. The shift from incremental to more rational forms–and then to more mature strategic and globalist responses–also has been reflected in a growing institutionalization of the subnational global policy-making process and form. This institutionalization of global activity in the West/Pacific NorthWest has occurred in support of both broadly-based external, international linkages beyond the region, as exemplified by much of the city-based twinnings and “within region” responses such as those exemplified in variations of the Cascadia option, such as the GBI and

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PNWER. Aspects of both are examined here at the state/provincial level and in terms of local jurisdictional responses.

Jurisdictional Settings BC and the Vancouver Region British Columbia is Canada’s third most populous province (4.04 million citizens)14,representingapproximately13.2%oftotalCanadianpopulation (31,000,000+). Despite being Canada’s third largest province (948,600 square km), 83% (about 3.34 million) of the provincial population resides in 154 incorporated municipalities encompassing less than one percent of provincial territory. Over half of the citizens of the province (2.1 million people or 54.4%) reside in the Lower Mainland, comprised of two regional districts along the Fraser River Valley adjacent to Vancouver. This Lower Mainland (bounded on the south by the U.S. border, on the north by mountains which extend virtually without interruption to Alaska, and on the east at Hope by similar mountain ranges, with its western extremity, including the City of Vancouver, the gulf waters of the Pacific Ocean) represents the economic centre of the Province.15 Politically, the region elects just over half (50.7%) of the Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province. In Jacobs’ terms, this Vancouver-centred ‘Lower Mainland’ forms one coherent city region.16 Trade statistics clearly demonstrate the degree to which British Columbia is affected by global interdependence.17 International exports are directly responsible for over one in three B.C. jobs and for about one-quarter of the province’s gross domestic product.18 Although exports of value-added products have increased in recent years, they accounted for about 15% of British Columbia’s total exports in 1998; thus, the province is still substantially an exporter of semi-processed or unprocessed natural resource products. Forest products continued to account for almost two-thirds (63%) of the total value of B.C. exports in the 1990s ($17 billion) and represent one dollar for every five in the provincial treasury19, with minerals and energy products accounting for another 15%.20 In the decade of the 1980s, B.C. exports grew at a real average annual rate of 4.6%, and were valued at $17.76 billion in 1989. Provincial exports fell by 9.2% in 1990 and by a further 8.6% in 1991. The falling export earnings during this period reflected declining international commodity prices and a slowdown in economic activity in major markets, and served as a reminder of resource-dependent economies’ vulnerability in the new global economy. In the mid-1990s, however, B.C. export earnings grew by 77% (up 20% in 1994, and 17% in 1995). The current situation showed a slow recovery from the late 1990s “Asian Flu”; this accelerated more recently, particularly with regard to hydro-electric power sales to California in 2001, and then dropped with problems in California’s energy sector and with the Canada-U.S. Softwood Lumber dispute. Resources make up 11% of the B.C. economy and forestry still accounts for the second-largest goods sector in B.C.21

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Since the end of World War II, there have been major changes in the destinationofB.C.exports. WhiledependenceontheAmericanandBritish markets has gradually declined, the share of exports to Asia and the European Community has generally increased. Thus, Asia Pacific economies today account for almost as large a share of B.C. exports as the United States, and the European Union is now British Columbia’s third largest export market after the United States and the Asia Pacific. In the mid-1990s, the U.S., Asia Pacific and the EU combined accounted for about 97% of British Columbia’s export revenues (over $26.9 billion). British Columbia exports proportionately more to the Asia Pacific and the European Community, and less to the United States, than the Canadian average. In the 1990s, for example, half of B.C. exports were directed to the United States, 36.7% to the Asia Pacific Region, and just under 11% to the European Union. In contrast, 79% of total Canadian exports were sent to the U.S., 10% to Asia Pacific countries, and 6.4% to the EU. Within the Asia Pacific, Japan is British Columbia’s most important trading partner, taking 68.5% of the province’s total exports to that region (and representing approximately one quarter [25.1%] of all B.C. exports); the Republic of KoreacontinuestoplaceasBritishColumbia’sthirdmostimportanttrading partner, having replaced the United Kingdom in that position in 1991. By the 1990s, Korea took 3.6% of B.C.’s international exports; Germany was fourth (2.6%), China fifth at 1.9%, followed by Taiwan, at 1.8%, the UK (1.4%), Australia at 1.1%, and Hong Kong with a 1% share.22 It should be noted, however, that the province’s diversified trading pattern is primarily limited to resource commodities. The United States was by far the major destination for British Columbia’s value-added exports in the 1990s, taking about 75% of the total, up 5% from the start of the decade. In contrast, only about 7% of B.C.’s value-added exports were sent to Japan. That pattern has a strong Cascadia emphasis. Just under half of total provincial exports to the United States is destined for five Western states: Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, and Idaho. In the 90s, the three Pacific NorthWest states–Washington, Oregon, and Idaho combined– purchased more B.C. exports (in dollar value) than all of Europe ($4.8 billionvs$3billion),andWashingtonstatealoneimportedeighttimes($3.2 billion) the amount of B.C. goods imported by Britain ($386 million) and 4.6 times ($694 million) the amount imported by Germany. Cascadian territorial connections are very significant in matters of trade. British Columbia’s dependence on foreign investment has also increased in recent years. Together with Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, these four provinces account for almost 95% of foreign investment transactions in the country (Ontario 51%, Alberta 21%, Quebec 15% and BC 8%). The major sectors of foreign investment activity in B.C. in 1991 in terms of value include manufacturing (39%), wholesale and retail trade (22%), real estate (15%), and tourism services (9%). By the latter 90s, manufacturing was at 33.6%, wholesale/retailing at 14.8% and (a redefined) all business/service

121 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes sector with 46.6%. As is the case with trade, British Columbia has tended to be relatively more dependent on investment from the Asia Pacific, and less dependent on U.S. investment than the rest of Canada. Thus, the United States accounts for a majority of foreign investment in the Prairie provinces and Ontario, a little less than half in Quebec and the least in British Columbia. While France is the major non-U.S. source of investment in Quebec, the major non-U.S. sources in B.C. are from the Asia Pacific (including Hong Kong and Japan). British Columbia’s share of revenues earned by Asia Pacific-controlled corporations in Canada has been far in excess of the relative size of the B.C. Economy.23 The province’s trade and investment profile helps to explain some of its motivations for international activity–and its Cascadia orientation–in the policy phases that British Columbia has developed over time. Greater Vancouver is Canada’s third largest metropolis. It is one of the four fastest growing urban areas in North America, and Canada’s fastest.24 The Greater Vancouverregion’s population has grown to over 2 million (as of July 1, 2001)25–and is expected to reach 2.5 million by 2025. It is the core of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. The Vancouver census metropolitan area now essentially corresponds with the recently redefined Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD).26 Established in 1967, the GVRD is now an amalgam of twenty- one municipalities and one unincorporated electoral area, covering 3250 km2. The Greater Vancouver Region contains virtually half of the provincial population and a majority (eight of twelve) of the largest local authorities in the province (over 50,000 people). At the Spring 2001 B.C. General Election, the Vancouvermetropolitan region had thirty-nine of the seventy-nine legislative seats, almost half of the provincial total. Whateveritssubstantialgrowthpotential,thefastestgrowingareasinthe Vancouver metropolis are in the Fraser Valley suburbs within and beyond the eastern boundaries of the GVRD. By 2010, for example, GVRD projections have the Greater Vancouver suburb of Surrey surpassing the central city Vancouver in population. (The City of Vancouver’s population is now 560,000, close to Seattle’s 570,800.)27 Adjacent non-GVRD outer suburbs, such as Mission, Abbotsford/Matsqui and Chilliwack are the fastest growing areas in the province; indeed, Abbotsford is “in” the GVRD for Parks functions. One byproduct of this rapid growth is that the ethnic makeup of the Vancouver-centred region’s population has become increasingly multicultural; for example half of the public school population of Vancouver has English as a Second Language, and other municipalities are not far behind. This translates, increasingly, into politics around who will represent these communities. In metropolitan Vancouver, that has produced new representatives for the Indo-Canadian communities, and the first provincial representative from the Chinese community (in the May 1996, B.C. General Election); other representatives were elected in the 2001 B.C. election. The November 2000 Canadian General Election also

122 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion? included an increased number of ethnic/visible minority community candidates as well. In terms of the development of metropolitan Vancouver’s economy, there has also been a growing dichotomy between the Lower Mainland and the rest of the province; much of the B.C. economy is resource extractive, with heavy reliance on logging, mining and fishing, and a limited manufacturing component. The economic base of the Lower Mainland, on the other hand, is increasingly service-oriented, with a strong reliance on personal and corporate services, including tourism, and province-wide distribution of goods and services.28 Combined with its significant internationalist population, a more interdependent–and internationally oriented–regional economy, and its Pacific port location (the Port of Vancouver is the second busiest in North America, and the busiest on the west coast of the Americas),29 metropolitan Vancouver has become an “international city”30 and the provincial economy has become even more internationalist.31 One additional factor that impacts on economic development decision-making in the Vancouver-centred region is the fact that most of the best arable land in the province is found in the Lower Mainland. Only one- quarter of the land in the province is suitable for any form of farming–and most of this prime agricultural land is in the Vancouver-centred region. Thus, the potential for policy conflicts and the necessity of devising regional solutions, including cross-border issues like air quality, to resolve urban development problems as part of any economic development strategy, domestic or international, become immediately apparent.32 Cross-line disputes such as the one created by current proposals for a Sumas II electrical generator in Washington state, approved after several rounds of hearings in Washington in late summer 2002 suggest regional activity can beanirritantaswellascooperative.Thesealsodemonstratetheneedtolook beyond existing territorial boundaries to find solutions: the Cascadia option–variously defined–has provided a new territorial dimension for problem solving on a range of economic and environmental issues. Examples such as the Cascadia Mayors’Council, which meets on issues of regional concern, and meetings of the three regional/metropolitan authorities for Vancouver, Seattle and Portland attest to the growing interest in Cascadia-based solutions to regional policy dilemmas. U.S. Regions Oregon,boundedbytheColumbiaRiverandWashingtonStateinthenorth, California(andNevada)inthesouth,IdahototheeastandthePacificOcean on the west, is America’s 10th largest state in area (253,720 km2/97,949 mi2); its population is 3,400,00033–almost 3 million fewer than its Washington neighbour, and 2/3 million fewer than British Columbia. Geologically, it is divided by three mountain ranges: the Siskiyou, near the California Border in the south; the Coast Range, along the west/Pacific;

123 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes and, like Washington and British Columbia, the Cascades which run the length of the state, just east of Portland and the Willamette Valley. Only three cities have a population of over 100,000: Portland (530,000), Eugene (140,557), and the state capital, Salem (139,320). All three are in the Willamette Valley–along the I-5 MainStreet Cascadia corridor. Over 70% ofthestatepopulationliveineightofthetenmostpopulouscountieswestof theCascadeRange;moreover,almost75%ofthestatepopulationliveinthe ten counties closest to the Portland/Salem/Eugene conurbation along the Willamette Valley. These ten counties (from north to south, Columbia, Washington, Multnomah, Clackamas, Yamhill, Marion, Polk, Linn, Benton and Lane) elect 20 out of 30 state senators (67%) and 39/40 out of 60 state House Representatives (66%). Essentially the same region elects three of the five members to the U.S. House of Representatives. These, along with the two Senators sent to Washington D.C. are not unimportant in a state where over half of all land is owned by the federal government. In total, 85% of Oregonians reside in the 18 counties west of the Cascade Mountains.34 Employment growth has been strongest in the state in this Willamette Valley, particularly in the Portland metropolitan area–with employment, much of it high tech, up over 11% between 1995-1998. While this has flattened across the US, the Portland region has continued to draw an increasing share of high tech jobs.35 The economy of Oregon has been predominantly forestry- and agricul- turally-based. Almost half (44.8%) of the state’s 61.4 million acres is forested; 61% of this is publically owned, 57% by the federal government. A decreasing amount of this remains available for the forestry industry. In 1955, almost 60% of the state economy was based on lumber; by the late 1990s, this had decreased to approximately 25%.36 Agriculture and agriculture-related services account for a further 140,000 jobs, approximately 18% of the state economy. Eighty per cent of farm production goes out of state, with more than half being sold internationally. In Portland, the busiest state Port, over 60% of all exports are agriculture. Like forestry, however, there has been a decline in the role of agriculture in Oregon’s economy: in 1955, food production accounted for about 14% of the economy;bytheendofthe1990sthishaddroppedtoapproximately11%. The growth areas in the state economy in the forty years between 1955 and 1995 were in metals/minerals/energy including natural gas, up from 5% to 10%; high tech, up from about 3% to almost 25%; and in related other/service jobs, now at 30% of the state economy, up from about 20% since 1955. Much of this high tech/service growth has been in the I-5/Cascadia Mainstreet Portland-Salem-Eugene corridor. That growth has made Oregon’s economy much more diversified; over the past decade, it has become one of the top ten most diversified economies amongst U.S. states. In total, the combination of a relatively robust American economy, strong semi-conductor industry investment plans for the state, strong export activity, population growth at nearly double the national average,

124 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion? and a relatively weaker California economy all combined to support a relatively strong Oregon economy. Portland (2001 population, 530,000) is in three counties: Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington (2001 population, 1,467,300). The Portland Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA) which includes Clark County in southern Washington state, plus two adjacent Oregon counties (Columbia and Yamhill) has a metropolitan population of 1,918,000, just slightly smaller than Greater Vancouver.37 “Greater” Portland is governed by the only elected regional government in the U.S. Initially established in 1979, “Metro” has responsibility for a wide range of services–from regional land use and transportation planning to any matter “of metropolitan concern.” Between 1990 and 1992, the state gave up direct control with allowance of a Home Rule Charter (again a U.S. “first”); this was subsequently approved by the region’s voters and amended in 2000. Metro, with a current population of 1.4 million, has enhanced regional initiatives to ensure metropolitan livability, with clear support from its citizens.38 Metropolitan Portland serves as the economic, commercial and service centre for Oregon and southwest Washington. The region has a highly educated workforce and the majority of employment in the region (60%) is in the City of Portland itself.39 It also has a significant internationalist outlook, as there are nine international twinnings: four with Asia (Kaohsiung, Taiwan/Sapporo, Japan/Suzhou, China and Ulsan, Korea), North/Central America (Corrinto, Nicaragua and Guadalajara, Mexico), Africa (Mutare, Zimbabwe), Russia (Khabarovsk) and the Middle East (Ashkelon, Israel).40 Regional connections include “Mainstreet Cascadia” initiatives such as the fast train connector and Cascadia cooperation between Metro and the Greater Vancouver Regional District and Greater Seattle’s Puget Sound Regional Council. Washington is located in the NorthWest corner of the United States, adjacent to British Columbia. Washington State ranks 20th of the fifty United States in both size (68,192 mi2) and population (6,335,630, 2000 Census)41. The State ranks first in per capita exports in the United States, with one in three state jobs now tied to international trade.42 Divided by the Cascade Mountains, approximately two-thirds (3,500,000) of the state population resides in ten of thirty-nine counties in the Seattle-centred Puget Sound Basin.43 Seattle (pop. 570,000, in King County, pop. 1,600,000, 1999) and Tacoma (pop. 158,900, in Pierce County, pop. 530,800) are two of the three state cities with over 100,000 residents. Together with Everett/Snohomish County (pop. 381,600) and Snohomish County immediately to the north, and Kitsap County, Greater Seattle includes 3,275,847 persons; with the state Capital, Olympia/Thurston County (pop. 142,200) to the south, these fivemetropolitancountiesmakeupabout60%ofWashington’spopulation.

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The Puget Sound metropolis elects 64 of 98 State Representatives (65.3%) and 31 of 49 State Senators (63%). It also returns five of eight U.S. House Representatives.44 The State economy has been centred around manufacturing, forest products, fishing and agriculture. Almost one-third of manufacturing is in aerospace production, much of this with Boeing Aircraft (34.5% of all manufacturing); forest products account for 20.3% and food products an additional 11%. Together with agricultural trade, particularly with the Asia Pacific region, aircraft, wood products, metals and fish products accounted for $30 billion in state exports in 1990. By the end of the 1990s, services represented the largest sector of the state economy, 27.7%, with a further 22% in trade, an additional 6.1% in government and an equal 6.1% in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) sector–over half of all state employment.45 The Pacific location also supported $23 billion in foreign imports. Five of the state’s top ten trading countries are Asia Pacific based (Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan), and three are from Europe (U.K. in second place, Germany in fourth and France in eighth). Canada ranked third. Seven of the state’s major customers are also from the Pacific region. In both categories, Canada ranked as one of Washington’s top five most important trading partners, behind Japan ($6.4 billion to Canada’s $2.8 billion in 1998)46, with Cascadia partners B.C. and Alberta topping the list. International exports accounted for approximately a quarter of gross state product, “twice the U.S. average and higher than any other U.S. state.”47 Only California, Texas and New York ranked higher in the total value of exports by the end of the 1990s–with Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser at the top of the list.48 The state’s metropolitan core, Seattle/King County accounts for 31% of the state population. It is the 19th largest metropolitan region in North America. Its economy is made up of 13.1% manufacturing and 10% goods [primarily transportation/aircraft, wood products, electronics, agricultural/ food production, etc.; and 87% non-manufacturing (e.g.: 24% retail, 30.4% service sector, 15.2% government, and between 5%-7% for each of finance/insurance/real estate, transportation/public utilities and construction)].49 TheU.S.militaryisalsothesecondlargestemployerinthe Puget Sound region (accounting for 60,000 of 1,136,400 regional/ governmental jobs). Seattle’s Port–the fifth largest container port in the U.S.–had $36 billion U.S. in import/export business in 1999.50 Seattle’s internationalist outlook is shown by its Sister City program–the second largest in the United States and one of the oldest, beginning with Kobe, Japan in 1957. Since then it has added eight Asian twins, seven European, two African and a few others for a total of twenty.51 The Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle, a partnership of the cities of Seattle and Everett, the counties of Snohomish and King County, the Port of Seattle, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and local trade unions,

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“promotes Greater Seattle as one of North America’s premier international gateways and commercial centers.”52 The policy implications of these changing economies within the Cascadia region–and their links to the increasingly interdependent global political economy–is apparent in both the United States and Canada–particularly in the state/provincial territorial interactions and constituent global policy making.53

Institutionalizing Cascadia: Early Ad Hoc to Rational Efforts The capacity of provinces and states to challenge nation-centric foreign policy-making would appear to be increasing. British Columbia, Washington and Oregon cases suggest that such challenges are long- standing, and increasingly regionally focused, within Cascadia. Under W.A.C. Bennett (1952-1972), the province of B.C. exerted pressure on national policy discussions with the U.S. on a range of issues such as the negotiations over the Columbia River Treaty through direct international action and vis-à-vis the province’s constitutional powers.54 The policy interaction over regional issues was largely ad hoc, however. The election of a leftist New Democratic Government in 1972 represented the arrival of more rational approaches to policy-making. Apart from beginning to develop central agencies beyond the rudimentary structures that have served B.C. since 1870,55 Premier Dave Barrett made a number of excursions into international relations, many with a regional emphasis.56 With an overt nationalist emphasis, three cases stand out as illustrations: i) The B.C.-U.S. Natural Gas Dispute, where the province took control of the resource through creation of a crown agency, raised foreign (that is, U.S.) prices in a series of quick stages by more that 300% in two years, producing Ottawa consternation, U.S. Government anger and Washington State outrage. It also produced some U.S. retaliation–for a short time, on Canadian access to American aviation fuel, for example.57 ii) The Trans Alaska Pipeline (TAPS) dispute, where again the Barrett Government intervened to oppose an American plan to transport Alaskan oil by ship to Washington state. B.C.’s policy involved efforts at direct provincial access to President Nixon (these failed because of Canadian Government intervention) and an alternative provincial plan unveiled in D.C. without prior Ottawa consultation. This failed to get Ottawa support and Barrett was criticized by the senior authority for breaching foreign relations protocol. B.C.’s response was to suggest “laxity and timidity” on the part of Ottawa.58

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iii) The B.C. attempt to have the Columbia River Treaty and the High Ross Dam agreement renegotiated; Barrett called the mid-60s Columbia River Treaty “the biggest skinning since the selling of Manhattan Island.”59 He failed to get Ottawa to renegotiate a better deal. Threats of American retaliation and lawsuits were part of this policy discourse. Consistent with the Barrett Government’s more rational provincialist/ nationalist goals, B.C. also sought to redirect its trade away from the U.S. to the Pacific Rim. Here there was a shift of 10% from the U.S. to Japan between 1972 and 1974, Barrett’s last full year in office. In 1975, the NDP was replaced by the rightist Social Credit Government of Bill Bennett. Between then and 1986, the son of former B.C. Premier W.A.C. Bennett built on the preliminary, more rational structure initiated by Barrett, including a significant expansion of the Premier’s Office, related Cabinet support structures and the creation of an Office and then Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations. Bennett also emphasized a Global Economic Strategy–for example, through the expansion of provincial trade missions in Europe and the Pacific, under a Ministry of Economic Development–rather than seeking stronger U.S. regional ties. Bennett’s bunker internal policy style, particularly between 1983-1986 contributed to his resignation60 and the October 1986 election of his Social Credit successor, Bill Vander Zalm (1986-91). The latter period of the Bill Bennett administration reflected a more strategic policy phase; beyond the development of more rational capacity, the stance of the B.C. Government took on a specific economic development focus in its international dealings. And while Vander Zalm represented a dramatically different policy style from the more truncated pose of his predecessor, many of the strategic economic initiatives, started under Bennett, continued. Under Vander Zalm’s administration, several key international initiatives arose that reflected a developing strategic position, much of it with a Cascadia focus: i) The Canada-U.S. Softwood Lumber Dispute: under Vander Zalm, B.C. took a stronger stance on developing U.S. regional links. (“We really are one region with much in common.”)61 To do so, the province cooperated with other western Canadian provinces and U.S. states to create the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (B.C., Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska), an initial grouping of 16 million people and $300 billion U.S. in gross regional product. This PNWER alliance has sought to sell the region and its products as one–whether to Europe or the rest of the global market. In 1989, B.C. and Alberta were also accorded “honourary status” at the Western Legislative conference (WLA is a formal grouping of U.S. Western states). Despite this subnational international cooperation,

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the 1986-7 softwood lumber dispute strained Canada-U.S., and subnational relations. B.C.’s interventions ran counter to the federal government position; B.C.’s offer of concessions on stumpage cut Ottawa’s negotiation stance. This was followed by direct B.C.-American talks at the regional level, unilateral B.C. proposals, Ottawa securing American agreement to not allow B.C. to make its case directly to the U.S. Government and, finally, to a voluntary 15% Canadian duty to keep the tax benefits in Canada.62 ii) B.C.’s interventions on west coast fishery issues–from arguments over driftnet fishing to landing rights under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement–recognized federal paramountcy but sought a mediating role in national positions through international coalition building. These stances were partly a reflection of provincial frustration with perceived Ottawa neglect of B.C. concerns.63 (Subsequent efforts on this file by NDP Premier Glen Clark (1996-1999), particularly with B.C.’s neighbour Alaska, strained Cas- cadia-based relations, including with Washington, to the point that regional first minister meetings had to be cancelled.) iii) Perhaps the most significant provincial initiative under Vander Zalm was the provincial response to the December, 1988 Gray’s Harbor, Washington oil spill. The loss of 1,048,740 litres of Alaskan crude became B.C.’s worst coastal environmental problem. It resulted in international protests and lawsuits, provincial criticism of the federal government’s response and ultimately direct regional substate attempts at solutions. Initially, this involved a joint B.C.-Washington State Committee. When the Exxon Valdez spill occurred in Alaska one day after this initial agreement, Premier Vander Zalm travelled immediately to Alaska and got that Governor’s signature to create a four-partner Task Force involving Washington, Oregon, Alaska and B.C.64 California subsequently joined. This subnational Task Force was created over Ottawa’s objections. B.C.’s response was best expressed by the then-Environment Minister, John Reynolds: “They are looking more at the diplomatic old stand-by rules of what you should do. We can’t afford to worry about what some diplomat in Seattle thinks or a bureaucrat working for the federal government. We’re concerned about spills and we’re going to work with our American neighbours.”65 Despite Department of External Affairs objections, B.C. concluded the Task Force Agreement; this Task Force has more recently had discussions on offshore drilling issues and alternative regional sittings for oil landing.

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Institutionalizing Cascadia: Developing a Subnational, Binational, International Regional Response In October, 1991, former Vancouver Mayor Mike Harcourt led the leftist NDP to provincial power. Rather than immediately recall the B.C. legislature, Harcourt: (a) led an extended trade mission to Japan, Hong Kong and other Pacific Rim countries; (b) travelled to New York City to meet U.S./international money managers, including Standard and Poors, the B.C. bond rater; (c) participated in international economic meetings in Davos, Switzerland, with other European trade stops such as London; and (d) commenced the Georgia Basin Initiative (GBI). All these provincial initiatives reflected a strong strategic internationalist element. At the same time, the very first Cabinet decisions under Harcourt were environmental, such as preservation of farmland, stronger controls on international pulp and paper companies, on resource extractive industries and land use, including a commitment to expand provincial parklands to 12% of B.C.’s land mass. Given the past Harcourt record in Vancouver, this combined economic and environmental strategy was the major policy focus of the B.C. government (1991-1996). That initially continued under Harcourt’s NDP successor, Glen Clark. However Glen Clark found himself facing an array of conflict allegations and his regional interactions were much more fractious–witness the Pacific salmon dispute–than Harcourt. His successor B.C. administrations, interim Premiers Dan Miller and then Ujjal Dosanjh, made modest efforts to repair such territorial relations, though electoral time was very limited here. B.C.’s Spring 2001 General Election, with an overwhelming Liberal majority, opened new possibilities for Cascadia relations, particularly business-friendly ones. Despite occasional and recent hiccups, a whole series of subnational provincial (and state) initiatives in the Cascadia region support the contention that a more regional policy phase is emerging in Cascadia and its determinants have shifted from ad hoc, low level and relatively infrequent political interaction with Canada/U.S. neighbours (and broader international linkages such as B.C.’s twinning with Guandong Province in China) to rational, high level and more intense relations over a broad range of economic, environmental and social well-being policy needs for the regionasawhole.TheseallfitwithinthevariousdefinitionsofCascadia. Many of the early Cascadia notions reflected ecological definitions of the region such as Ecotopia66, as noted above; it has also been referred to within the eco-cultural movement as Cascadia67 and Pacifica68. Cascadia has more recently developed more economic organizations such as PACE (Pacific Corridor Enterprise Council), which, according to a former Chair, Peter Manson, is “devoted to promoting mid-sized businesses in the region.”69 Manson, whose definition of the region includes Alberta/ Montana/Idaho, and Alaska, also stated that “[now a region with a population of 18 million] begins to get the attention of people elsewhere in

130 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion? the world [and] that [it] is a region worth looking at to do business with.”70 As described by former PACE President Peter Fraser, the organization represents “the private-sector pioneers of bilateral free trade in the … Pacific Corridor B.C. and Washington … region … [by] giving priority to cross border networking … By their membership in PACE, they have agreedtosharetheirexperienceandknowledgewithotherfreetraders.”71 It has also produced organizations such as the Cascade Corridor Commission (CCC)–“an advisory body of the governments of Canada, the United States, the Province of British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon … [to] develop a strategic plan for environmentally-sound economic development and urban management in the Cascadia region.”72 The idea for CCC membership is to include “representatives from … regional planning agencies, municipal county/city governments; and port districts in the urbanized Cascadia region” as well as from the national/state governments. The CCC’s mandate is to “address environmental, transportation, growth and trade issues in the Portland- Seattle-Vancouver corridor.”73 As such, it corresponds to the Mainstreet Cascadia definition. Other Pacific NorthWest regional initiatives have included the High Speed Ground Transportation Committee (HSGT) and related initiatives: this committee recommended to the state Governor “that Washington, in cooperation with Oregon and British Columbia, begin immediately designing a system to haul passengers at high speed between Vancouver, B.C. and Eugene, Oregon.”74 It also stated that “Studies to date have concluded that HSGT is compatible with a regional transportation plan, is environmentally friendly, has significant ridership potential, would support an international northwest economy and would cover costs within 12 to 15 years, but not capital costs.”75 Prior to the creation of the 240 km/h rail transportation link, in related developments AMTRAK has reintro- duced its conventional rail link to Vancouver.76 These have not been introduced without cross-border issues such as train speed through urban areas. However, more environmentally-friendly transportation improvements are central to a variety of organizations, governments and initiatives within the region. For example, groups such as the Pacific North West Economic Region and the Discovery Institute in Washington State have worked on a Transportation NorthWestAction Plan–a so-called “evergreen document”–as a basis for promoting re-authorization of the earlier U.S. IntermodalSurfaceTransportationEfficiencyAct(ISTEA).“Gateways”to efficient transportation/trade within and external to the region are central here.77 As the Pacific NorthWesthas more than a million more vehicles than drivers,78 getting a handle on the transportation issue is central to efficient movement of goods and trade for the region. It is also essential in resolving air quality concerns. These urban iterations of Cascadia have also attached themselves to Olympic bids–initially by Seattle and then by Vancouver, hoping to grab infrastructure dollars for their transportation projects.

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Other international/regional subnational policy initiatives stand out as the best current expression of a more globalist policy phase, initially under B.C. Premiers Mike Harcourt and local state gubernatorial counterparts in Washington, Oregon and beyond. Some are primarily economic, others include significant environmental policy dimensions; each reflect larger or smaller geographic definitions of Cascadia.

PNWER: The Pacific Northwest Economic Region This initiative, informally established in 1989, was aimed at making “the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region … a world economic force by the year 2000”.79 Washington Senator Alan Bleuchel, the prime mover on PNWER south of the 49th parallel, argued that “economics are taking a front seat to political boundaries. We have no interest in political union or anything pertaining to the politics of either country, except to make it easier for us to work together. The political entities are irrelevant.”80 PNWER was formally established in 1991 by the legislatures of British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Its structure was a 35 member Delegate Council, a 28 member Private Sector Board of Directors and an Executive Committee, made up of the PNWER Governors and Premiers (or their delegates), and one legislator and one private sector representative from each state or province.81 It is self-described as “a statutory public/private … non-partisan … partnership designed for the public sector to open the door so that the private sector can make the sale.”82 This PNWER region had a combined gross regional product of more than $350 billion U.S. and a population of over 18 million people. For Bluechel, PNWER never sought short term political gains. Instead, “what we’re trying to do is prepare all of us for the next century.” Having achieved the first step–creating a structure–the second step was to bring in the private sector which would complete the work. Bluechel added that “All we can do is provide the platform for the private sector to be competitive in the global market. The third step is to produce saleable products or concepts to the rest of the world. For example, if we can sell the northwest as the best place to get your environmental technology, that’s a saleable concept.”83 The region currently has several thousand companies involved in environmental issues. PNWER’s objective includes taking “these companies in a packaged form to the EU” where individually these companies could not easily crack that market.84 PNWER’s definition of ‘the Cascadia region’ is one of the broadest.

The Georgia Basin Initiative and ECC The B.C./Washington Environmental Cooperation Council represents globalist phase subnational policy initiatives by the province (and the states) of a much smaller sort. According to Seattle Sociologist David McCloskey, “I would put ecology as the foundation of a new social order–and not power, politics or economics.”85 This ecological dimension

132 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion? often cuts across what some have seen as potential downsides of increased B.C. economic integration with larger U.S. neighbours. For McCloskey, “if the primary concern of Cascadia is to integrate the economies–branch offices, for instance–that’s the old story. … I think a lot of people aren’t interested in imperialism being extended under a new guise. We have to restore the eco-system, that’s the first obligation.”86 The Environmental Cooperation Agreement, produced “excellent technical work … [through the] joint study … [on] Puget Sound/Fraser River water quality, … Columbia River and Lake Roosevelt water quality, regional air quality,” and according to Discovery Institute Cascadia project Director Bruce Agnew, “an alliance between the two countries addressing such issues as suburban sprawl and auto-oriented transportation policies needs to be formed to deal with the root causes of these air and water quality problems.”87 A variety of Cascadia initiatives have reflected this environmental agenda. For example, through the B.C. Roundtable on the Environment and The Economy, and the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound Initiatives, interests and governments in the region have sought to find solutions to the concerns of a sustainable economy. From the B.C. perspective, “Georgia Basin-Puget Sound is a diverse bio-region, which runs north-south along a coastal corridor … from Campbell River and Powell River, B.C. in the north to Olympia, Washingtonin the south.”88 According to the Round Table, it is “a vital economic region … and a very attractive place to live.” It is also the fourth fastest growing region in North America. The Initiative’s policy goals, established under Mike Harcourt–consistent with the broader “global policy phase”–include creating: (a) “a common vision around a shared resource–the land, water and air. …”; (b) integrating “sustainability principles in decision-making, which recognizes that issues concerning the environment, economy and social well-being are inextricably linked and that solutions to problems in any one of these areas will likely impact on the others”; and (c) “define priorities and take strategic steps on a broad front toward a viable sustainable future for the Region.”89 In part of a mid-90s Round Table Report, Alan Artibise and Jessie Hill outlined several potential models of governance for this bio-region. While none of these have been implemented beyond the regional governmental cooperation noted above, they do represent a possible next phase in Cascadia regional intergovernmental cooperation a: · Georgia Basin Regional Government · Regional Council · Georgia Basin Ministry · Regional Commission · Georgia Basin Sustainability Act · Management Program.

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Artibise and Hill’s reflections on the institutional implications of such a sustainability strategy, in terms of democratic, jurisdictional, geographic, environmental, social and economic factors/conditions, suggest a range of options from soft cooperative structures–some of which already exist–to firmer governmental forms.90 The growing Cascadia regional concern on the environment and resource use has emerged from increasing recognition of the limits to growth–both urban as in air quality and resource-based such as forestry. On resource use, it found reflection in local idioms such as Brazil of the North–a critique of B.C. and U.S. forest practices.91 It has also been reflected in the work of the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin International Task Force–a B.C.-Washington state initiative establishing an Environmental Cooperation Council, out of a 1992 Environmental Cooperation Agreement between the two jurisdictions. The Task Force mandate was to “promote and coordinate mutual efforts to ensure the protection, conservation and enhancement of … shared marine environment.”92 By the mid 90s, the Task Force had established and considered reports of a Marine Science Panel,93 obtained federal funding for a variety of transboundary projects, done research on habitat classifications and exotic species, met with interests such as the Sound and Straits Coalition, developed sampling and analysis protocols as well as a number of other initiatives.94 Such environmental cooperation built on earlier work such as the States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force.95 Policy antecedents of this ecological dimension included the 1989 Gray’s Harbor/Nestucca Washington and Prince William Sound/Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spills, which led to the creation of the Oil Spill Task Force, which was “formed to develop plans for oil spill prevention along the coast and in the Georgia Sound/Puget Basin.”96 The latter reported in 1990; due to jurisdictional and other issues (e.g., “lack of federal resources for the Coast Guard”97), many of the recommendations were not implemented. In terms of provincial/state foreign policy-making, the other interesting feature of this initiative was that the Canadian government objected to B.C. proceeding in the way it did with its U.S. regional neighbours. As noted above, the Vander Zalm B.C. government went ahead despite these federal government reservations.98

Irritants as Opportunities The Chinese speak of dangerous opportunities. In “within regional” relations several of these stand out. Work on the Columbia River Treaty in the mid- to late 1990s focused on more than downstream energy benefits. While energy concerns are important and have been irritants,99 environmental considerations now compete for agenda space. The Columbia River has spawned legal action–such as by Oregon’s NorthWest Environmental Defense Center, initiated in 1994. On this front, more cooperative efforts are possible, however. Transborder environmental cooperation, such as with the development of a North Cascades International Park, stand out.100

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Binational regional consensus on this component of the Northern Cascades Ecosystem has been promoted by a variety of Pacific NorthWest interests on both sides of the 49th parallel line.101 In a different forum, Canada and the U.S. have cooperated on a Canadian initiative from 1989, a proposal on establishment of an Arctic Council. In August, 1996, Canada joined seven other Arctic states102 in its creation; the Council focuses on environmental protection and economic development in the Arctic.103 Across a variety of policy fronts–forestry, the fisheries, air and water quality and others–there are what George Hoberg has called “threats and opportunities.”104 On softwood lumber, despite NAFTA, a range of issues have remained unresolved, and are currently on the regional–and bi-national–agendas.105 Despite rulings by several binational arbitration panels under the NAFTA, the American International Trade Commission re-established punitive tariffs against Canadian softwood lumber imports into the U.S. in 1993.106 Asanissue,softwoodwasanagendaproblemforthepreviousdecade.Ithas also been at the centre of B.C.-neighbouring States relations. U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor has called it the United States’ “biggest trade problem with our biggest trading partner.” With 86% of all U.S. softwood coming from Canada, the largest share from British Columbia, it isalsoaprimaryCanadianandB.C.concern.AnumberofAmericanPacific NorthWestinterests have suggested more important roles for provinces and states in the region in resolving this dispute.107 U.S. positions were reflected in the current agreement, about to expire. Canadian interests object to the 14.7 billion board feet duty-free restrictions. In 2001, the softwood issue came back onto the agenda with a thud: a 27% countervailing duty on B.C.–and other Canadian–lumber has crippled the provincial industry and become the most serious regional irritant.108 On air and water quality, transborder transmissions of pollutants have long provided irritation on both sides of the border. In the Pacific NorthWest, the impact of Greater Vancouver’s CO2s across northern Washington state counties has been one example. Between the Canada-U.S. Agreement on Air Quality, efforts such as the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, and local/regional governmental cooperation on efforts to improve air quality in the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound such issues had become relative successes in binational and regional cooperation, even where air and water quality issues remain.109 The recent Washington state decision for electricity generation by Washington state, such as Sumas II, has thrown those calculations off and demonstrated that regional air quality issues run both sides across the line. On the fishery, perhaps the second most irritating binational issue, a number of regional dimensions stand out: across various fisheries–salmon, halibut, hake–Canada has faced contrary perspectives from its U.S. Pacific Coast neighbours.110 The Pacific Salmon Commission, created in 1985 under the authority of the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty was to deal with the prevention of overfishing and cooperation in management,

135 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes research and salmon enhancement. On this issue, the Province of British Columbia under Harcourt (1991-1996) was largely content to play a mediating role, leaving the “front-line” work to the Canadian Federal Government and its representatives. In the U.S. case, however, subnational actors, in particular the State of Alaska, have played a central role in the work of the Commission–for example, by using its technical committees to thwart Commission efforts to make decisions that would significantly affect the Alaska state fishery in a negative way.111 Following the election of Glen Clark as B.C. Premier in May 1996, B.C. efforts vis-à-vis both the region and B.C.-Federal initiatives on the salmon fishery came to the top of the B.C. agenda. Clark was highly critical of federal efforts, suggesting stronger action against the Americans. At the same time, Canada’s approach to Pacific fishery conflicts involved dealing at the regional level (particularly through its Consulate General in Seattle) and through more informal or public channels, such as using specific Fishery Management Councils. After Canadian imposition of transit fees in 1994, for example, government to government negotiations in 1995 failed; after subsequent September 95 to February 96 efforts at mediation failed in 1996, Canada appointed John Fraser, Canada’s Ambassador for the Environment, to take over negotiations in April 1996. Despite this, the Pacific Salmon Treaty has not produced a Cascadia solution.112 Now raised to “a major irritant,” inter-regional efforts were posed as a way out of this policy dilemma. In late August 1996, the Governors of Washington, Oregon and Alaska suggested that “discussions to develop measures [on the salmon fishery on] a regional basis may make success more likely.”113 Their proposals on allocation and equity did not provide a solution, though in spring 1997, the Canadian government agreed to hand over some responsibility of west coast fishery management–though not jurisdiction–to B.C. The lack of progress on regional fishery issues in B.C., under Glen Clark, resulted in escalating negative reactions and receiving negative regional U.S. responses. Early in the 21st century, despite a new provincial government interested in better regional business relations, the fishery issue remains unsolved. On the non-governmental front, environmental organizations such as “People For Puget Sound” and the “Save The Georgia Strait Alliance” formed by the early 90s. In 1992, these groups signed “The Sounds and Straits ‘92 Agreement.” This agreement called “for holding the governments of Canada, the United States, the province of British Columbia and the state of Washington accountable for such issues as the timely, effective implementation of environmental regulations, restoration of salmon habitat, etc. …, Promoting … conservation, recycling, etc., [and] promoting the prevention of pollution and habitat destruction. …”114 One other note of a more cooperative nature revolved around the failed Seattle bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics and has re-emerged with the 2010 VancouverWinter Olympic bid. The 2008 U.S. proposal considered a Vancouver component–the first such “binational” bid in Olympic history.

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The current 2010 Vancouver Whistler bid on the Canadian side of the line is seen by many as a potential catalyst for Cascadia fast train implementation. Even the suggestion supports a notion of more “within Cascadia” cooperation on major regional infrastructure building.115 As proponents argued with regard to the Seattle bid, “even if the … bid comes to naught, it could prove valuable in the long-term if it provides an opportunity for Seattle and Vancouver leaders to develop a working relationship and creates a better sense of mutual interests.”116 The Vancouver 2010 bid has held the same promise regionally. Indeed, both might be termed Cascadia bids. Overall, the more globalist policy stances and entities within Cascadia have demonstrated an emphasis broader than a simple economic, or environmental, focus. Economic matters continue to be a part of this more globalistnotionofCascadia; however,inthiscurrentphase,theemphasisis on sustainable economic development. This is coupled with significant policy concern for environmental and social well-being in the region. As Artibise and Hill concluded, the “models of regional policy-making, policy-implementing, and policy-advising bodies must … be evaluated for their capacity to promote a sustainable society. … [A]chievement of sustainability in the Georgia Basin requires the discovery of new ways of living in the region … [and] governance–itself a process of making choices–is necessarily a crucial consideration if a sustainable Georgia Basin is to be achieved. … A new, innovative governance system [for the Georgia Basin] must be developed in the near future.”117 With regard to international efforts, the Cascadia experience supports a conclusion that provincial/state foreign relations will continue to exhibit an increasing independence. The failure of constitutional reform efforts in Canada in 1987 and in 1992, the emergence of the WTO and FTA/NAFTA driven trade policy problems/issues, and the continuance of ecological sustainability questions that offer the prospect of new perspectives on regional Cascadia issues, all support such a conclusion. That Cascadia has taken so long to find a melding of its various definitions suggests that conceptual clarity from the beginning offers lessons in global region institution-building. Here the experience of the EU’s Oresund region is illustrative.

The Oresund/EU Comparative Lessons The first comparative thing to say about Europe is that the European Union is not NAFTA. In terms of thinking about lessons for, and from, new global regions, national borders (unless they are the English Channel) have become quite insignificant in terms of local/regional cooperation within the EU. When French (Menton) and Italian (Ventimiglia) cities can provide local services such as common garbage collection and a shared local bus service as if the national border that separates them does not exist to solve local policy dilemmas, then borders as factors limiting cooperation have been rethought. For multi-definitional Cascadia, a significant comparative

137 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes lesson may be gained from a brief examination of the Oresund region–a binational, subnational, international region–linking Copenhagen/ Zealand, Denmark and Malmo-Lund/Scania, Sweden; the regional centrepiece here is a bridge/tunnel across the Oresund linking the two subnational components. When local interests began to contemplate ways to develop more regional cooperation and establish a clearer niche for their region in both European and broader global terms, they confronted several obvious obstacles: · economic: little pre-existing interdependence in the Danish and Swedish urban economies existed before regional entrepreneurs started to discuss links and cooperation as well as ways to develop a global niche. · geographic: little infrastructure to facilitate extensive regional interaction–and a major body of water, Oresund– stood between the Zealand and Scania areas. · political: this initially included the jurisdictional fact that Sweden was not a member of the EU while Denmark was. · definitional: how to define a new region in terms that placed it well in European and world standings was an important initial consideration.

The major political obstacle was overcome with Sweden’s recent entry into the EU. That EU umbrella allowed for more significant cross-border rethinking than NAFTA has for Cascadians. In North America, national borders remain important factors, more so since September 11, 2001.118 In Oresund, the geographic obstacles were overcome next with major investment in infrastructure improvements. Here two stand out: 1) the mega-project construction of the Oresund Bridge–a 3.5 billion $CDN, 12km bridge/tunnel to link “the first cross-national integrated large-city region outside the European centre”119; and 2) another 25 billion $CDN in other area improvements, mostly on air, rail, transit, road, bridge and transportation improvements (including another new fixed link with Scandinavia and the European continent) and a new airport and university.120 The economic obstacles were grounded in two subregional economies with relatively little interaction. For Matthiessen and colleagues, the shift centred on “transformations from politics to economics, from welfare orientation to market orientation, and from spatial equalization policy to a focus on metropolitan competition.”121 In population size, the Zealand region of Denmark, including Copenhagen, is about 1.8 million; the Malmo-Lund area in Scania, South Sweden has just 3/4 million, a total of over 2.3 million, slightly larger than Greater Vancouver and metropolitan

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Portland but over one million smaller than Greater Seattle. In European population tables, the combined Oresund urban agglomeration was only 27th in Top 30 rankings, well behind Moscow (12 million), Dortmund/ Dusseldorf/Cologne (10.8 million), Paris (9.6 million) and London (9.6 million). Individually, neither Copenhagen or Malmo-Lund made the top 30. Thus a strategic decision was made to develop more commonalities and synergies economically. This decision led to a search to overcome what Oresund advocates saw as definitional obstacles: a conscious effort was made to make sure conceptual ducks were lined up in one row. To do so, Oresund proponents examined a series of comparative European standing lists. That included population where the new region ranked near the bottom of a top 30 Euro-list; and the then top 30 Urban Agglomeration “Gross Agglomeration Product” where Oresund moved up to 11th, between Rome and Madrid (above) and Stuttgart and Brussels-Antwerp (Below). Oresund’s GAP was $77 billion US. Dortmund-Dusseldorf-Cologne, Paris and London were all (in mid-1990s figures, when the project was earlier in development) above $200 billion US, with the Dortmund region close to $300 billion US. Copenhagenbyitselfwouldhavebeenranked19thintheEU;Malmo-Lund would not have made the top 30 list.122 Seeking comparative advantage by definitional certainty, other lists were consulted, such as International Air Traffic: on this Top 30 Euro list, London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam regions ranked as the top four. Oresund landed in ninth place, with virtually all (96.4%) of their numbers based on Copenhagen air traffic.123 Further urbanization lists considered included rankings by firms, jobs, infrastructure, finance, culture, meetings and the press, among others. Combining many of these, Copenhagen fell into a fourth class set. The one area–given a heavy concentration of university/research facilities in Copenhagen and Lund–where the Oresund region came out well was as a research centre. The combined Oresund research output placed Oresund as 5th in Europe’s top 30, behind London, Paris, Moscow and Amsterdam-Hague-Rotterdam-Utrecht.124 Perhaps, not surprisingly, this research emphasis became a major component of the new Oresund self-definition. There is one other aspect–size–which raises questions about the variety of definitions of Cascadia. The Oresund region contains approximately 2.4 million people. The Oresund conurbation lies within 50 kilometers of Copenhagen airport; and the distance between Copenhagen and the main urban areas of Scania are only 18 kilometers125. As one proponent of buildingthisregionsuggested,thebridgewasmoreimportantsymbolically than in reality, but it would not have been built without agreement on what the new region was to be. Greater Seattle’s geographic size is 217 km2; GreaterVancouveritselfisjustunder3000km2.Perhaps,moreimportantly, there was no counter-definition which challenged this central conception of the Oresund region as one of the EU’s major research centres. Some of the

139 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes definitions of Cascadia, from Alaska to the California border cover thousands of kilometers. Even small definitions such as the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound and Mainstreet Cascadia take over eight hours of motorway driving to cross. These Cascadia definitions are not only based on different jurisdictions, but also include ones which began with different foci–from environmental to economic.

Conclusions: Global Region Lessons The Oresund is just one EU global region. The range of such entities vary considerably. However, what the Oresund case suggests is that definitional clarity helps with early institution building. Oresund University is one example of what definitional clarity can produce; with over 120,000 students, this virtual university is made up of the post secondary research centres in Oresund–making it the largest university in the EU. To sustain itself, regional initiatives such as Cascadia seem to have learned much later than Oresund the value of definitional integrity; entities such as PNWER which began as economic conceptions of the Cascadia region now espouse the environmental focus of the GBI and others, and those with an ecological focus recognize the value of a sustainable economic base. Global region-building successes would appear to depend on developing either broader globalist policy stances as in Cascadia or narrower market niche’s such as in Oresund. In either case, definitional clarity has its benefits. As a general point, regional involvement has now become commonplace within Cascadia; while it does not occupy significant amounts of Guber- natorial/First Ministerial energy, public and private sector engagement through organizations such as PNWER, PACE, the GBI, the Cascade Corridor Commission, Mainstreet Cascadia and the BC/Washington Environmental Council, have placed Cascadia options high on the state, provincial and regional agendas. This growing institutionalization of the Cascadia region has been fostered by a melding of earlier definitional alternatives. It finds further expression in the global activities of the region’s three principal cities: Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. What is perhaps most interesting about the emergence of a more unified Cascadia orientation is that these intermediate jurisdictions–state/provincial and local–have become more pro-active in their policy stances. On issues such as resources, the economy and the environment, state-provincial and regional cooperation–or at least efforts at problem-solving–may be the most significant outgrowth of Cascadia’s global region building.

Notes * The author is grateful for the very helpful comments of the two anonymous reviewers and those of the editor.

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1. Bayless Manning, “The Congress, the Executive and Intermestic Affairs,” International Journal, vol. 55, 1977, p. 306-24. 2. See, for example, “Letter of Intent: Cooperation Between PNWER and the Oresund Region,” April 4, 1997; the letter provided a base for initiating economic and social cooperation between the two regions. 3. On municipal activities within Cascadia see, for example, T. Cohn and P.J. Smith, “Developing Global Cities in the Pacific Northwest: The Cases of Vancouver and Seattle” in Peter Kresl and Gary Gappert, eds, North American Cities and the Global Economy: Challenges and Opportunities (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, Urban Affairs Annual Review, vol. 44), p. 251-285. 4. On federal-local Cascadia cooperation, see for example, Frank Luba, “Border Crossing to Be Renovated: (Greater Vancouver) Translink Boss,” The Province, September 11 2002, p. A20, on reconstruction of Cascadia’s main B.C.-Washing- ton state link, the Peace Arch crossing. 5. See, for example, Earl Fry et al., eds., The New International Cities Era: The Global Activities of North American Municipal Governments (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young, 1989), Hans J. Michelmann and Panayotis Soldatos, eds., Federalism and International Relations: The Role of Subnational Units (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), Douglas M. Brown and Earl H. Fry, eds., States and Provinces in the International Economy (Institute of Governmental Studies Press, University of California, Berkeley and Institute of Intergovern- mental Relations, Queen’s University, 1993), and Brian Hocking, ed., Foreign Relations and Federal States, (London: Leicester University Press, 1993). 6. John Kincaid, “Constituent Diplomacy in Federal Polities and the Nation State: Conflict and Cooperation,” in Hans J. Michelmann and Panayotis Soldatos, eds., Federalism and International Relations: The Role of Subnational Units, Oxford University Press, New York, (1990), p. 54-75. 7. This concentric circle imagery is from Alan Artibise; see his “Redefining BC’s Place in Canada: The Emergence of Cascadia as a Strategic Alliance,” Policy Options, vol. 17, no. 7, September 1996, p. 27-30. Michael Goehring; see his “Transborder Regionalism in the Pacific NorthWest: Cascadia – Fact or Fiction?,” paper for the British Columbia Political Studies Association conference, North Vancouver, May, 1997, p. 22. 8. See, for example, The Greater Seattle Datasheet: 1999-2000, (Seattle: City of Seattle, Office of Intergovernmental Relations, 1999), p. 1. 9. See Seattle Datasheet: Demographics and International Commerce, http://www.cityofseattle.net/oir/datasheet/demographics.htm; accessed Sept. 10, 2002. 10. On city-based constituent diplomacy in Canada, see P.J. Smith, “The Making of a Global City: The Case of Vancouver,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 90-112. 11. Sister Cities International, Virginia, (1991). 12. See Passport to Seattle’s Sister Cities (Seattle: City of Seattle, Intergovernmental Relations Office, 1998). 13. For a full discussion of these policy phases, see P.J. Smith, “Policy Phases, Subnational Foreign Relations and Constituent Diplomacy in the United States and Canada: City, Provincial and State Global Activity in British Columbia and Washington,” in Brian Hocking, ed., Foreign Relations and Federal States, (London: Leicester University Press, 1993), p. 211-35. 14. Ministry of Finance, Province of British Columbia, B.C. STATS, October 2000.

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15. See David Bond, “Sustaining the Metropolitan Economy,” in P.J. Smith, H.P. Oberlander and T. Hutton, eds., Urban Solutions to Global Problems: Vancouver–Canada–Habitat II, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Centre for Human Settlements, 1996), Ch. 12, p. 68-71. 16. H. Peter Oberlander and Patrick J. Smith, “Governing Metropolitan Vancouver: Regional Intergovernmental Relations In British Columbia,” in Donald Rothblatt and Andrew Sancton, eds., Metropolitan Governance: America/Canadian Inter- governmental Perspectives, University of California, Berkeley/Institute of Governmental Studies, Berkeley, California, (1993), p. 329-73. 17. The trade data in this section are taken from B.C. Ministry of Economic Development, British Columbia Facts and Statistics, selected years; B.C. Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations, British Columbia Economic and Statistical Review, selected years; B.C. Ministry of International Business and Immigration, British Columbia: Trade 1989; B.C. Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations, British Columbia International Exports – 1990 and subsequently. B.C. Ministry of Employment and Investment, Trade Policy Division, 1991-1995; Ministry of Economic Development, Small Business and Trade, British Columbia International Exports, 1991; B.C. Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations, BC STATS, March 1993, 1994 and 1995; BC STATS, 2002 and Industry Canada, 2002, as well as Pacific Northwest Economic Region, Spring, 1994 and passim. 18. The authors are grateful for the assistance of Don White and Tim Gallagher, Senior Policy Advisors, and Ross Curtis, Manager, Trade Policy, Ministry of Employment and Investment, British Columbia for providing trade figures used in this section; BC STATS information is from the BC Ministry of Finance 2000; BC STATS is now maintained by the B.C. Ministry of Management Services. (www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca – accessed September 2002). 19. George Abbott, MLA, “Forest Policy Review,” seminar presentation, Simon Fraser University, February 12, 2001. 20. On this continuing B.C. resource dependency, see, for example, David Baxter and Andrew Ramlo, Resource Dependency: The Spatial Origins of BC’s Economic Base, (Vancouver: Urban Futures Institute, September 2002; Doug Ward, “Rural Regions Driving Force in BC: Study,” Vancouver Sun, September 9, 2002, p. B1-2; and Editorial, “Rural BC’s Resource Sector an Economic Engine for All,” Vancouver Sun, September 10, 2002, p. A14; the significant economic impact of the Canada-U.S. Softwood lumber dispute on B.C. makes a similar point. See Peter O’Neil, “Ottawa Rejects Rescue Package for Softwood Lumber Industry,” Vancouver Sun, September 6, 2002, p. A1 and A8. 21. See www.guidetobceconomy.org/dep3; accessed September 7, 2002. 22. Specific statistics on trade and investment for this section are also drawn from BC STATS, Ministry of Finance, Province of British Columbia, up to 1995; many are recompiled from Statistics Canada sources for B.C. specifics; and available also through Ministry of Employment and Investment, B.C. or Ministry of Finance. 23. “Investment Performance in Canada: Understanding the Big Picture,” Canada 2000, Canada West Foundation, June 1992, p. 10-11; Statistics Canada, Annual Report of the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology under the Corporations and Labour Unions Return Act, Part I - Corporations 1988, p. 70. See also Peat Marwick Thorne, 1992/1993 British Columbia Inbound Investment Study, and KPMG’s 1993/94 Inbound Investment Survey, (Vancouver: KPMG, Pacific Rim Publication: Investment, 1995). See also Industry Canada, at www.strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrkts/tdst …; accessed August 31, 2002.

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24. The Canadian Dicennial Census of 1991 confirmed the Vancouver CMA as the third largest metropolitan region in Canada, and the 29th largest in North America. It remained so in 1996 and 2001. [In comparison, the Toronto metropolitan region, Canada’s largest, is 8th in North America; Vancouver’s neighbour Seattle is 19th.] 25. BC STATS, October 2000, Canada 2001 Census, Statscan: Ottawa, 2002 and www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/pop.pop.htm; accessed September 1, 2002. 26. In July 1995, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows–1996 population 75,000–were formally added to the GVRD. They had previously been members for water/sewers (both) and parks (Maple Ridge only). Langley Township and Langley City–1996 population, 106,395–had also joined the GVRD in 1989. All current population figures from BC STATS, a division of the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations, Province of British Columbia. Only Matsqui, outside the GVRD, continues to participate in GVRD functions, for Parks. 27. Statistics Canada, 2001 Canadian Census, Ottawa, (2002); “About Vancouver” at www.city.vancouver.bc.ca and Seattle, Datasheet, (City of Seattle,2002) at www.ci.seattle.wa.us (both accessed Sept.11, 2002). 28. On the changes in the Lower Mainland and B.C. economies see M. Howlett and K. Brownsey, “British Columbia: Public Sector Politics in a Rentier Resource Economy,” in Keith Brownsey and Michael Howlett, eds., The Provincial State: Politics in Canada’s Provinces and Territories, (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1992), p. 265-295; and P.J. Smith, “British Columbia: Public Policy and Perceptions of Governance,” in James Bickerton and Alain-G. Gagnon, eds, Canadian Politics, (Peterborough: Broadview, 1994), p. 506-526 and current stats from B.C.’s Ministry of Finance, e.g., BC STATS, September 2002. 29. For a more extensive discussion of this, on Vancouver, see P.J.Smith, “The Making of a Global City: Fifty Years of Constituent Diplomacy: The Case of Vancouver,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research, vol. 1, no. 1, June 1992, p. 90-112. On the significance of the Port of Vancouver, see also David Bond, “Sustaining the Metropolitan Economy,” in P.J. Smith, H.P. Oberlander and T. Hutton, eds., Urban Solutions to Global Problems: Vancouver–Canada–Habitat II, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Centre for Human Settlements, 1996), Ch. 12, p. 68-71. 30. See, P.J. Smith and T.H. Cohn, “International Cities and Municipal Paradiplo- macy: A Typology for Assessing the Changing Vancouver Metropolis,” in Frances Frisken, ed., The Changing Canadian Metropolis: A Public Policy Perspective, (Berkeley, Ca: Institute of Governmental Studies Press, University of California, 1994), vol. 2, Ch. 19, p. 725-750. 31. See Theodore Cohn, David Merrifield and Patrick Smith, “North American Cities in an Interdependent World: Vancouver and Seattle as International Cities,” in Earl Fry, Lee Radebaugh and Panayotis Soldatos, eds., The New International Cities Era: The Global Activities of North American Municipal Governments, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, (1989), p. 73-117; and Theodore Con and Patrick Smith, “Constituent Diplomacy Policy Determinants In British Columbia: Developing a Global Region in the Pacific NorthWest.” BC Studies, no. 110, Summer 1996. See also BC STATS, (Victoria: Ministry of Finance, 2002). 32. On recent efforts to develop a strategic plan for Greater Vancouver see Patrick Smith, “Urban Governance and Growth Management: Greater Vancouver and British Columbia,” in P.Smith, et al., Urban Solutions to Global Problems …, op. cit., p. 156-168; and P.J. Smith and H. Peter Oberlander, “Restructuring

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Metropolitan Governance: Greater Vancouver–British Columbia Reforms,” in Metropolitan Governance Revisited: American/Canadian Intergovernmental Perspectives, (Berkeley, CA: IGS Press, University of California, 1998), p. 371-406. 33. Oregon Blue Book, 2002, www.sos.state.or.us/BlueBook/2002/facts/economy, accessed September 11, 2002. 34. Much of the information for this backgrounder on Oregon is from the Oregon Blue Book: 1997-98, (Portland: Secretary of State, 1997 and 2002 version), the latter accessed September 4-6, 2002. 35. Ibid., (2002), “Employment,” accessed September 11, 2002. See also Overview of the Portland Economy, www.portlanddev/programs/ed/strategy/PDFs/ appendix 2-2; accessed September 7, 2002. 36. See http://bluebook.state.or.us/facts/economy; accessed August 29, 2002. 37. All population figures from Overview of Portland Economy,at www.portlanddev.org/programs/ed/strategy, accessed September 11, 2002; and Portland Community Profile, at www.ci.portland.or.us, accessed September 11, 2002. 38. See www.metro-region.org/article/Article. cfm?D-211, accessed September 9, 2002. 39. Overview of the Portland Economy, at www.portlanddev/programs/ed/strategy/ PDFs/appendix2-2, accessed September 7, 2002. 40. Author interview, Office of the Mayor, City of Portland, March 8, 2002. 41. Seattle Datasheet, 2002, at www.ci.wa.us/datasheet/demographics.htm, accessed September 11, 2002. 42. Seattle Datasheet, 2002, at www.ci.wa.us/datasheet/international.htm; accessed September 8, 2002. 43. Washington Yearbook, Sisters, Oregon, (annual). 44. See Ibid.; and Seattle Datasheet, 2002, at www.ci.wa.us/datasheet/ demographics.htm, accessed September 11, 2002. 45. See, for example, John Ryan and Aaron Best, “NorthWest Employment Depends Less on Timber and Mining,” in New Indicator, (Seattle: NorthWest Environment Watch, November 30, 1994), p. 1-4; and Washington, Yearbook, 2001, op. Cit. 46. United Kingdom was second: $4.7 billion; China, third: $3.3 billion; and Saudi Arabia, fourth: $3 billion. See The Greater Seattle Datasheet, (Seattle: City of Seattle, Intergovernmental Relations Office, 1999), p. 5. 47. Seattle, Datasheet, (1992); See also Datasheet 2002, cited above. 48. See Office of Financial Management, State of Washington at www.ofm.wa.gov/ longterm/2001/longtermtoc.htm. 49. See www. ci.wa.us/datasheet/economy.htm, accessed September 11, 2002. 50. See The Greater Seattle Datasheet, (Seattle: City of Seattle, Intergovernmental Relations Office, 1999), p. 5. 51. Author interview, Keith Orton, International Office, City of Seattle, March 4, 2002. 52. www.cityofseattle.net/tda, accessed August 29, 2002. 53. The two largest components of the Pacific NorthWest economy are Washington and British Columbia. See, for example, John Ryan and Aaron Best, “NorthWest Employment Depends Less on Timber and Mining,” in New Indicators, (Seattle: NorthWest Environment Watch, November 30, 1994), p. 1-4. 54. Neil Swainson, Conflict Over the Columbia, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979).

144 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion?

55. See Paul Tennant, “The NDP Government of British Columbia: Unaided Politicians in an Unaided Cabinet,” Canadian Public Policy, vol. 3 (1977), p. 367-382; and Walter Young and Terence Morley, “The Premier and the Cabinet,” in T. Morley, et al., eds., The Reins of Power: Governing British Columbia, (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntrye, 1983). 56. See James P. Groen, Provincial International Activity: Case Studies of the Barrett and Vander Zalm Administrations in British Columbia, M.A. thesis, Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada, (1991), for a more extensive discussion of the Barrett examples. 57. Ibid., p. 82-99. 58. Ibid., p. 100-25. 59. Ibid., p. 124-53. 60. Patrick J. Smith and Laurent Dobuzinskis, “The Bloom is Off the Locus: Job Creation Policy and Restraint in British Columbia,” in J.S. Ismael, ed., The Canadian Welfare State: Evolution and Transition, (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1986), p. 212-44. 61. J. Groen, op. cit., p. 192-217. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., p. 224-64. 64. Ibid., p. 218-44. 65. Ibid., p. 234. 66. See for example, Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia, 1975; and Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America, 1981. 67. For example, by David McCloskey, Chair, Department of Sociology, Seattle University. MacCloskey produced a map of Cascadia, see Ian Gill, “A Green Island in a Sea of Envy: Welcome to Cascadia, the West Coast Ecotopian’s Dream State,” The Georgia Straight, June 5-12, 1992, p. 7-9. See, for example, Mark Moseley, “Welcome to the Republic of Pacifica,” Vancouver Sun, March 7, 1991, p. A11. 68. See, for example, Mark Moseley, “Welcome to the Republic of Pacifica,” Vancouver Sun, March 7, 1991, p. A11. For a recent reference see Warren Gill, “Region, Agency and Popular Music: The NorthWest Sound, 1958-1966,” The Canadian Geographer, vol. 37, no. 2, 1993, p. 120-131; on regional culture and music, see also the inaugural edition of the journal The New Pacific. An early edition developed a contest for a Cascadia flag. One was agreed upon. 69. Cited in Ian Gill, op. cit. 70. Quoted in Ian Gill, “A Green Island in a Sea of Envy: Welcome to Cascadia, the West Coast Ecotopian’s Dream State,” The Georgia Straight, June 5-12, 1992, p. 7-9. 71. See, for example, Peter J. Fraser, “Washington Companies Can Find Many Potential Trade partners,” in Puget Sound Business Journal, August 16-24, 1996, p. 24. PACE has offices in Vancouver and Seattle. 1996 PACE President Peter Fraser is a retired Canadian foreign service officer. 72. Bruce Agnew, “Overview of Washington State and Perspective on Cross-Border Issues,” Discussion paper for the British Columbia Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (henceforth B.C. Round Table), December 1992, p. 9. 73. Dick Nelson, Washington State Representative, “Puget/Georgia Basin Forum: A Proposal,” Discussion paper, B.C. Round Table, November 30, 1992, p. 12.

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74. See John Magnano, Committee Chair/Clark County Commissioner, “Trans- portation: Faster than a Speeding Bullet - Will the Pacific NorthWest Ever Be Linked by High-Speed Rail,” Vancouver Sun, January 19, 1993, p. A15. 75. “Sustainability in the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound Region,” Background paper, B.C. Round Table, December 1992, p. 15. 76. On initial discussion on the restoration of Amtrak service, see Harold Munro, “Train Travel: Amtrak Woo-Wooing B.C. for Seattle-Vancouver Run,” Vancouver Sun, March 30, 1992, p. A1, A16. 77. Final Report of the Transportation Working Group, PNWER, Summer 1996. 78. See Alan Durning and Christopher Crowther, “Vehicles Outnumber Drivers in NorthWest,” New Indicator, (Seattle: NorthWest Environment Watch, January 11, 1995). P. 1-4. 79. See, for e.g. Peter Brow, “Trade: Pacific NorthWest Aims For Global Economic Status,” The Vancouver Sun, October 9, 1991, p. D2. 80. Cited in Ibid. 81. PNWER Profile, (Seattle, PNWER, 1995). 82. PNWER Profile, (Seattle, PNWER, 1995). PNWER’s objective is “to put together the necessary critical mass for the region to become a major player in the new global economy.” In Ibid. As a “nation” by GDP, the PNWER unit would rank 10th in world economies, just behind Canada, at ninth. 83. Cited in Brow, op. Cit. 84. Ibid. 85. Cited in Gill, op. Cit. 86. Ibid. 87. Bruce Agnew, op. cit., p. 8. 88. Sustainability in the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound Region, (Victoria: B.C. Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, December, 1992, p. 1, hereafter Sustainability/92). 89. Ibid., p. 1-2. 90. Alan Artibise and Jessie Hill, Governance and Sustainability in the Georgia Basin: A Background Paper, Victoria: B.C. Round Table, 1993. 91. In a 36 page Greenpeace Newsletter, Vancouver, B.C., 1990; see also Natalie Minunzie, The Chainsaw Revolution: Environmental Activism and the BC Forest Industry, M.A. Thesis, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, June 1993, for a discussion of environmental-resource organizations and public policy in B.C. 92. Puget Sound/Georgia Basin International Task Force, Brochure, July 1996. 93. See, for example, The Shared Marine Waters of British Columbia and Washington, (Report to the B.C./Washington ECC, August 1994), p. 120; and Shared Waters: The Vulnerable Inland Sea of British Columbia and Washington, (B.C./Washington ECC Marine Science Panel Report, November 1994), p. 26. 94. Puget Sound/Georgia Basin International Task Force, Work Group Status Report, June-August 1996, pp. 1-5. 95. For example, David Anderson’s Report to the Premier on Oil Transportation and Oil Spills (Victoria, November 1989), p. 162; and Final Report, States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force, October 1990, p. 127. 96. Bruce Agnew, op. cit., p. 8. 97. Ibid., p. 9. 98. Interview, B.C. Government Official, Office of the Premier, February 1990. 99. For example, on disputes between Bonneville Power Administration and B.C. See, for e.g., “Bonneville’s Bad Diplomacy,” The Sunday Oregonian, May 28,

146 Cascading Concepts of Cascadia: A Territory or a Notion?

1995; “BC Threatens to ‘inflict damage’ on BPA,” The Oregonian, June 2, 1995; “Harcourt Blasts US ‘Sharp Practices’ in Treaty Talks,” Globe and Mail, May 18, 1995. 100. See, for example, Nature Has No Borders: A Conference on the Protection and Management of the Northern Cascades Ecosystem, (Washington, DC). 101. See Nature Has No Borders, Newsletter of the Cascades International Alliance, 1994 through 1996, various. 102. Canada, USA, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden. 103. See “News Release: Canada to Host Arctic Council Inauguration,” no. 140, (Ottawa: Foreign Affairs and International Trade, August 14, 1996). 104. George Hoberg, “Environment and Resources in Canadian-American Relations,” in Neil MacFarlane, ed., Problems and Opportunities in Canadian-American Relations, (Ottawa: Foreign Affairs, Report, 1994), p. 37-42. 105. See, for example, “Gordon Wilson (BC Employment Minister) to Oversee Softwood Lumber Negotiation,” Vancouver Sun, October 14, 2000, p. C5. The existing Canada-U.S. Softwood Lumber Agreement, which sets duty-free exports to the U.S. of 14.7 billion board feet expired on March 31, 2001. B.C.’s provincially-set stumpage rates and restricted log exports remain U.S. Irritants. 106. See, for example, John Saunders, “US Upholds Tariffs on Canadian Lumber,” Globe and Mail, October 19, 1993, p. A1-2. See also Peter O’Neil, “Ottawa Rejects Rescue Package for Softwood Lumber Industry,” Vancouver Sun, September 6, 2002, p. A1 and A8. 107. See, for example, Dick Rohl, General Manager, Swanson/Superior Forest Products, Noti, Oregon, “Trade Talks with Canada over Timber Crucial to NW,” The Oregonian, (date unavailable, 1993-4). 108. According to Charles Widman, a B.C. forestry industry spokesman, it is likely to remain so for some years to come, despite appeals and suits before the WTO and under NAFTA. CBC News, The National , September 13, 2002. 109. On this issue in Greater Vancouver, see David Bates, “Sustaining Clean Air,” in P. Smith et al., Urban Solutions To Global Problems …, op. cit., p. 20-26. 110. For an extensive treatment of this, see Arthur Goddard, “Canada-United States Fishery Conflicts on the Pacific Coast: A View from the Trenches,” Western Social Sciences Association paper, Corpus Christi, Texas, April, 1993, p. 36. 111. On this issue, see, Robert Gould, Policy Formulation and Decision-Making on the Pacific Salmon Commission: Evaluating Public Policy Decision-Making in the Pacific Salmon Fishery, M.A. thesis, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, March 1993, 149 p. 112. See “US/Canada Salmon Wars: Why the Pacific Salmon Treaty Has Not Brought Peace,” in New Directions in Marine Affairs, (Seattle: School of Marine Management, University of Washington, Report No. 1, January 1996.) 113. See “Governors Ask for Salmon Talks,” Seattle Times, August 26, 1996. 114. Sounds and Straits ‘92 Agreement. 115. See Mike Flynn, “Use Olympics Bid to Build BC Relations,” Puget Sound Business Journal, August 7-15, 1996. 116. Ibid. 117. Alan Artibise and Jessie Hill, op. cit., p. 27-28. 118. On some of this discussion of post-September 11 borders in North America see P.J. Smith, “Anti-Terrorism and Rights in Canada: Policy Discourse on the Delicate Balance,” in Tareq and Jacqueline Ismael, eds, September 11 and Terrorism: Myth and Realities, The Review of International Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2, Winter 2002.

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119. See Christian Matthiessen, Annette Winkel Schwartz and Bengt Streiffert, “Copenhagen and Malmo-Lund United by the Oresund-Bridge: An Integration Project on the European Metropolitan Level,” in World Class Cities: Can Canada Play?, Caroline Andrew, Pat Armstrong and André Lapierre, eds (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), p. 321. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid., p. 322. 122. Ibid., p. 325. 123. International Civil Aviation Yearbook, 1996. 124. See, Matthiessen, et al., Table 4, p. 329ff. 125. Ibid., p. 332-334.

148 Julie Rak

Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black

Abstract What happens when Conrad Black, until recently an indisputable member of Canada’s business elite, writes an autobiography and enters the marketplace of ideas himself? Black’s work A Life in Progress is used to discuss how popular memoir participates as a commodity which serves to fetishize autobiographical identities in a mass-market environment, despite the best efforts of writers such as Black to participate in the literary tradition of memoirs written by powerful, public men. Karl Marx’s figure of the commodity fetish in Capital and Philippe LeJeune’s discussion of autobiography and production show how subject and object switch within popular autobiographical discourse.

Résumé Qu’est-ce qui se produit lorsque Conrad Black, jusqu’à récemment un membre incontesté de l’élite du monde des affaires canadien, écrit son autobiographie, faisant ainsi lui-même son entrée sur le marché des idées? On se sert ici de l’ouvrage de Black, A Life in Progress, pour discuter de la façon dont des mémoires destinés à un grand public jouent le rôle d’une marchandise qui sert à fétichiser des identités autobiographiques dans un environnement de marché de grande diffusion, et ce en dépit des efforts déployés par Black pour inscrire son ouvrage dans la tradition littéraire des mémoires rédigés par des hommes publics et de pouvoir. La figure de la marchandise fétiche esquissée par Karl Marx dans Das Kapital et les analyses de l’autobiographie et de la production de Philippe Lejeune montrent comment le sujet et l’objet se substituent l’un à l’autre dans le discours autobiographique de masse.

“If Conrad Black didn’t exist, he would invent himself. His critics claim he has.” PeterC.Newman,The Establishment Man, 273

In Shades of Black, Richard Siklos relates the following anecdote about a book signing Conrad Black did to promote his 1993 memoir A Life in Progress. The book signing took place in the menswear section at the Toronto Eaton’s Centre: A grey-haired, bespectacled announcer barked into a loudspeaker that a “special guy” would soon arrive. “This very special guy is, of course, Conrad Black, a special Canadian. … You are welcome to

meet one of the world’s most enormously successful financiers, C-on-r-ad, B-lack. … Conrad Black will not ignore you today, folks” (Siklos 328). Black subsequently arrived and began to sign books. He answered a question about his voting habits by replying, with a smile, “I’m just an author, you know”(328). A teenager asked if this is the guy who owns Eaton’s. When he was told by a shocked saleswoman that Black is an entrepreneur, the teenager asked, “He’s just a big dude?” The saleswoman confirmed this (329). This scene highlights the cultural capital Black’s name carries (he does draw a large crowd in the Eaton’s menswear section), while it undercuts the power of that name. Although Black has a reputation as one of the most powerful and ruthless Canadian financiers, here he is presented as a sideshow attraction who peddles his books in Eaton’s along with other goods for sale which men might want to purchase, an “author” whose name means little to a teenager passing by. In order to sell his autobiography, Conrad Black has had to become a commodity himself, a commodity who must act as if he is not a member of the elite in order to be marketable. This makes him, temporarily, a figure of fun because the abrupt shift of power away from him is comic. Something inherently contradictory in autobiography discourse is activated when Conrad Black, Canada’s best- known and most-reviled owner of the means of production, produces an autobiography, which participates in the economics of Western-style popular culture. What happens ideologically to the writer of memoir for a mass market, or more to the point, what kind of subject must s/he turn into when identity becomes a commodity that can be bought and sold? Why would Conrad Black wish to engage in these contradictory practices, which constructandthenundercutidentity’sabilitytosignifyinthemarketplace? In this paper I argue that the study of autobiography needs to turn to examinations of autobiographical books published by mainstream publishers for mainstream audiences. Critics and theorists of autobiography who are interested in the impact of various types of life writing in popular culture could then see how autobiography operates not just as a genre, and not only a discourse of identity-making, but as a product which uses the idea of genre to make identity into a commodity fetish, as KarlMarxfirstcalledit,sothatidentityitselfcanbemarketed. Specifically, I would like to argue that the memoir form, a type of autobiography which traditionally involves a foregrounding of historic events in the life narration of a person (Oxford English Dictionary n.p.), is the way in which most autobiography for mass audiences is written. As Helen Buss has pointed out, the word “memoir” has become so well known in the popular realm that it is now substituted for “autobiography” in many cases (7). In part, I think that this occurs because those who write memoirs are either public figures that are already connected closely to certain historical events, or wish to be connected to larger events. This popularity of the memoir form, then, suits

150 Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black mass marketing, because it is not dependent on literary merit as a major criterion; instead, its audience reads for the specific connection between the private and the public which memoir provides. For critics of autobiography who deal with autobiography as a literary form with artistic merit, memoir has been neglected or minimized until very recently. But the study of autobiography in recent years has moved away from the need to delineate its limits as a genre (like that of the novel, for example) to an understanding that autobiography is a distinct discourse of self-making which in itself has a history and a set of ideologies associated with it. Therefore, it is possible to see an interesting discursive battle being fought in the production and reception of Conrad Black’s autobiography A Life in Progress. On the one hand, there is the discourse of autobiography as its critics had imagined it until the 1980s: a record of a creative personality in the Romantic tradition where the personality contributes to narrative unity (Marcus 148-149); on the other, there is what Georg Misch, one of the first critics of autobiography, called the “passive relation to the world” found in memoir writing, where the subject is merely an observer of events (qtd in Marcus 149). As an autobiographer, Conrad Black wishes to be considered in the first category, a great man who writes the story of his life so that others may admire and learn from it. But what I call “popular memoir” is the form which Black must use in order to sell his story to us, and this form activates the mechanism of the commodity fetish, where the writer becomes an object, then a commodity, within his or her own narrative. Rather than escaping the laws of the marketplace and the laws of genre,Blackmustabidebythem,becauseinthecaseofthepopularmemoir, which is sold generically in most mainstream bookstores, genre cannot be occluded. Even Conrad Black, and perhaps especially Conrad Black, cannot take hold of the forces of autobiographical production and simply turn the diffuse ideologies at work within mass cultural consumption to his own ends.

Memoir, Autobiography and Mass Marketing Buss points out that memoir has not been studied thoroughly by critics of autobiography, in part because memoir has been thought to belong to historical rather than to literary study, and because most studies of autobiography since the 1970s have been literary in nature (2). When James Olney dreamed of “capturing” autobiography from the territory of historical studies for literary studies in 1980 (Olney 22), he continued a tradition, developed from the work of Georg Misch, Georges Gusdorf, Ray Pascal and Karl Weintraub, of thinking of autobiography as primarily one literary genre among others, but with its own special features (Marcus 135). Although Misch did think that memoir had a place in the study of autobiography, as I indicated above, he concluded that the study of autobiography is more interesting because its writers present themselves as actively shaping or interpreting events (7). Until recently, this is the view

151 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes that has prevailed in autobiography criticism. Moreover, the study of autobiography has been deeply influenced by Romanticism, in particular because theorists of autobiography tend to trace its modern lineage in the Western world from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Confessions, often regarded as the first secular autobiographical work (Buss 8). Rousseau is one of the architects of the ideology of Romanticism, and so it is unsurprising that Rousseau’s construction of himself as a unique person who rebels against authority and purports to tell the whole truth about himself and his life has become the touchstone for humanist and phenomenological autobiography criticism. Within the last decade, autobiography theory has constructed a basis for politicized readings of autobiographic practice, particularly in the areas of feminist and African-Americanist inquiry in American Studies.1 Indeed, feminist, African-Americanist and post-structural autobiography critics have attacked these Romantic ideas about the self and experience as excluding those without power. In Canada, politicized inquiry has also begun to emphasize alternatives to the way in which the subject is constructed within autobiographical narrative, proposing other ways to understand subjectivity and representation (Neuman, 9-10). In most autobiography theory that takes the subject’s relationship to discursive formations into account, the issues surrounding the uniqueness of the autobiographic subject have been subjected to rigorous critique about its androcentric assumptions and most recently, for assumptions about race and ethnicity.2 But for the most part, the unity of the intention of the writing/speaking autobiographical subject has been left unexamined even in these critiques because the ideology of autobiography is so dependent on the Romantic evocation of a single subject’s “presence” in a text. For example, critics who find fractured strategies of identity placement and displacement in autobiographical work by women and ethnic minority writers often evoke, but do not work out, how a subject can have the agency to choose or construct resistance narratives in the first place. There is also much discussion of the multiple sites of resistance which a minority subject can occupy in order to construct subjectivity in a variety of autobiographical forms.3 But there has been little discussion so far about the conditions which transform autobiographic narrative into a mass-marketed product. There has also been little discussion of mass-marketed memoir in any case, which is due perhaps to the tendency of autobiography critics to assume that popular memoir is part of mass-market hegemony. Best-selling memoirs, particularly by a writer known for right-wing or conservative views, are often assumed to be part of discourses which are so dominant, and so well known, that they do not require analysis. But the opposite should be true when the issues at stake include the contradictory

152 Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black position of a figure such as Conrad Black on the Canadian scene. Black is indisputably a member of Canada’s business elite, but he has also chosen to exercise his authority within a popular medium, namely, that of newspaper publishing for Canada’s middle-class readers. Black’s decision to write a memoir before he reaches retirement age signifies his desire to enter the field of identity production for other reasons than a desire to document his achievements or to make (yet more) money. Black’s motivations, and the preoccupations of his memoir A Life in Progress, will highlight the contradictions involved when identity must function as commodity fetish within autobiography.

Popular Memoir as Commodity Fetish When we talk about popular memoir and Conrad Black, we need to fashion new critical tools in order to get at the meaning of identity in this particular type of popular autobiographical discourse. One of these tools is the commodity fetish, Karl Marx’s figure for the way in which the desire to consume more than we need works in a capitalist economy. In the commodity fetish, the forces of production and consumption come together, along with a mysterious (to Marx) change in the agency of consumers of objects and in the producers of them. When the idea of the commodity fetish is linked to Philippe LeJeune’s idea of the autobiographical pact, the “contract” between reader and writer which guarantees that the reader is getting a “true” autobiography, we will see that popular memoir is itself a commodity, and identity within it functions fetishistically, in ways that Conrad Black cannot control. In his “Introduction to the Grundrisse” of 1857, Marx states that production and consumption are not only interdependent, but they also imply each other dialectically. In the case of cultural representations, consumption involves a desire for the object which shifts its status from object to subject because it now seems to have a kind of power over the one who desires it. As Marx says, “production accordingly produces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object” (137). The slippage between production and consumption occurs between inside and outside: production creates an “external” object for consumption, as consumption “createstheneedasaninnerobject,asthepurposeofproduction”(138). In Capital, Marx looks closely at the ability of a commodity to contain within itself that slippage between subject and object, which is what he refers to as the hallmark of the fetish. The commodity, which is supposed to be the objectification of human labour, reverses this relation so that it becomes the subject. The forces of production, which made the commodity and therefore should be the subject, are masked. Marx refers to this quality in almost mystical terms, since the exteriority of the commodity is what creates the switch between production and consumption, but exteriority serves to simultaneously hide labour. Therefore, the commodity takes the place of subjectivity, and objects become endowed with their own life

153 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes within the fetish. Marx calls this switching of places “mysterious,” because objects become “sensuous things” which have their own life, while the life of the producers disappears (Capital 164-165). If memoir is thought of as a commodity rather than as a work of art, the slippage between subject and object which drives commodity fetishization can be seen as its hallmark. Mass-marketed autobiographical discourse in the memoir form turns on the conflation of subject and object, where the writing subject turns into written commodities which can be bought and sold due to the assumption, within the discourse itself, that each narrative is predictable, yet original. In this sense, Walter Benjamin’s description of an object’s “aura” which involves the conflation of authority with authenticity is exactly what is required to sustain the identification of an autobiographic subject as an identity product (221), as if, and then only if, the writing subject were the written object. Philippe LeJeune’s figure of the autobiographical pact in fact relies on this very relationship between production, commodification and consumption.4 This pact between writer and reader legitimates the autobiography by guaranteeing that the author and the subject depicted are the same person (44). The legitimization occurs at the level of the proper name, which takes the place of the signature in a contractual situation: the author’s name on the front cover and the “I” must match, or the reader is not reading an autobiography. LeJeune’s stress on the role of the reader as a consumer who uses the book’s cover to authenticate the product demontrates how expectations of consumption do in fact condition autobiographical production. With this, LeJeune moves discussions of autobiographical genre away from the content of a narrative, to the relationship between the author’s name and legally verified status. Autobiography becomes a product in the publishing system: In printed texts, the whole utterance is assumed by a person whose name is customarily placed on the cover of the book, and on the flyleaf, above or below the title … an author is not just a person, he is a person who writes and publishes. With one foot in the text, and one outside, he is the point of contact between the two” (LeJeune 11; trans. Marcus 252) [italics LeJeune’s]. Here, autobiography appears less as an artifact than as a product which requires readers to scrutinize flyleafs, covers and titles, rather than content. At the level of the “signature” of autobiography, the consumer “signs” a pact with a purchase which underscores the importance of autobiography as a product. Believability does not rest with the author’s promise of truth, but with the text, since the material guarantee of the signature itself is what activates its aura. In a later essay, “Autobiography of Those Who Do Not Write,” LeJeune says that autobiographical consumption must posit such a cemented subject/object relationship so that consumption can return its guarantee of

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“truth” back to production. But the power to disable the authenticity of a narrative rests with the consumers rather than with the producer, and is only kept in check by the public’s desire not to see how authenticity is constructed. This relationship, for LeJeune, is as tricky as it is dynamic, for the absolute identification of subject with object must mask the problems of narrative production in order for the product to be consumable as autobiography: What the public consumes is the personal form of a discourse assumed by a real person, responsible for his writing as he is for his life. We consume the full-fledged “subject,” which we want to believe is true … the public finds itself in an ambiguous situation, a situation of bad faith, always ready both to suspect the authenticity of a text and to yell “scandal” … and at the same time always prepared to lend itself to the games of illusion and not see through the transparent veils that cover the production of the text, the essential being to enjoy it” (LeJeune 194). Popular memoirs, therefore, must have two incommensurate characteristics: in order for a memoir to be a saleable product it must appear to exhibit the trappings of subjectivity which consumers demand. But the taking-on of narrative subjectivity in the text means that the writing subject of autobiography must become an object in order to package his or her identity for consumption. To do that the subject must conform to autobiographical conventions which require it to have the freedom, mobility and autonomy of a subject, while denying subjectivity’s basis. This is how, as Smith and Watson observe, “only certain kinds of stories need be told in each narrative locale. Only certain kinds of stories become intelligible as they fit the managed framework, the imposed system. The recitation is, in effect, prepackaged, prerecited. In this way, the institution writes the personal profile, so to speak, before the person enacts and experiences it as “personal” (11) [italics the authors]. Thisisalsohowthesame“story”canbetoldcontinuouslyinmemoirsfor mass consumption without questions being raised about the ability of a subject to invoke a unique, original subjectivity in the format. Therefore, Peter C. Newman’s observation that “if Conrad Black didn’t exist, he would have to invent himself” is not all that improbable. Black’s memoir A Life in Progress highlights how Black not only must come to rely upon the few narratives available to him in this format, but also must participate in an economy which inevitably leads to the disappearance of himself as an autonomous subject within his own narrative, despite his efforts to resist this.

Conrad Black: A Self-Made Man Let us return to the scene of Conrad Black signing copies of his memoir in the Eaton’s menswear department. Here is the reversal implicit in commodification at work: Black, who has made his reputation as someone

155 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes who has power and authority over his own life and over the lives of many others, must sign what displaces him: his autobiography becomes a subject which he, its object, must serve. The discourse of autobiographical mass-production means that Conrad Black, who surely has no financial reason to require that his autobiography sells well, must still enter the marketplace with a commodified identity and allow himself to be misrecognized. He even performs this misrecognition himself when he jokingly says that he is “just” an author, for the levelling rhetoric of the carnival barker will not allow him to “ignore” anyone. Conrad Black’s cultural position in Canada is already unusual. His relatively straightforward endorsement of the pursuit of power and influence have earned him comparisons to Citizen Kane (Barlow and White 5), which he himself has evoked (Black 36). He is famous for his hostile takeover of Argus Ltd. when he was not yet forty, and for his sell-off to American interests of Massey Ferguson–once Canada’s oldest and largest multinational company. Black is notorious for his decision to dismantle the unionized workforce at Dominion Stores Ltd. via a controversial move to appropriate the employee pension fund: this sealed his reputation as a financial enfant terrible who is respected but not trusted by more conservative members of the Canadian business establishment (Newman 13, 259). Black’s dominance of the Canadian newspaper industry after a flurry of acquisitions in less than ten years forms the foundation of his image, what Bob Rae, former Premier of Ontario, has called “‘bloated capitalism at its worst’” (Barlow and White 84). By 1997, Black controlled morethanthirtydailiesthroughSoutham,andthroughthatcompanyowned 60 out of 105 Canadian daily papers. Through a series of interlinked companies, he also owns large international papers such as the London UK Daily Telegraph, The Jerusalem Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Through Hollinger International Inc., he has most recently purchased a large number of smaller newspapers in the United States (Damsell B3). He wasthelastownerofSaturdayNightMagazineanduntiltheyear2001hada controlling interest in The National Post and The Financial Post. (Barlow and White 10). Before the year 2000 sell-off of Southam Inc., Black’s views potentially reached every newspaper in the country except four. Black’s opinions were this widespread due to the extent of Southam’s holdings, particularly when this was coupled with Black’s indirect influence on those newspapers that subscribe to the Canadian Press (CP), in which Black also had a controlling interest.5 He still owns part of Chapters as well as literally hundreds of small dailies in the United States (Barlow and White 6-7), which extends his potential arena of control still further. The philosophy of central control at Southam means that all of these papers under Black were relatively right-wing, dependent on large amounts of advertising and relatively little local news reporting. Some, such as the Montreal Gazette and The Ottawa Citizen, shifted to the right after Black acquired them (Barlow and White 10-12). Members of the Canadian left

156 Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black and left-of-centre strongly oppose Black for a number of things, including his steady building of monopolies in information industries, his hatred of journalists (Barlow and Winter 1), his anti-labour policies and his tendency to sue or to publicly write against those who oppose his views on an ideological basis (Siklos 337). Most recently, for example, Black tried to sue Jean Chrétien for allegedly blocking his quest for a British peerage (Macleans 4), and has decided to give up his Canadian citizenship in order to become a British Lord. He defended this decision, characteristically in an op-editorial in The National Post, by saying that Canada does not deserve to keep its best and brightest citizens, although in his heart he would “always be Canadian” (Black, n.p.). Until recently, Black had this influence over Canadian public opinion simply because he owned so many Canadian newspapers and had a controlling interest in the Canadian Press agency. But Black was also a Canadian public figure in ways which show that he would like to be considered an ideologue as well as business tycoon: Black often writes about politics in newspapers controlled by his companies or he writes vitriolic letters to the editor which attack central or left-wing ideas in newspapers he did not directly control. He embodies the face of New Right ideology as grasping, ruthless, intelligent and without loyalties. Despite the fact that Black no longer controls as much print media as he once did–he sold his interest in Southam Newspapers along with fifty percent of The National Post to CanWest Global in 2000 (Gillis n.p.) and then he sold the remaining interest in The National Post to the Asper family in 2001 (Freeze & Howlett A1)–Black still represents publicly what big business entrepreneurship is, even in his decision to participate more fully in global acquisitionsratherthannationalones.Hisname,whereveritisused,evokes a discourse inflected by other figures who have come to signify a similar type of capitalism of the 1980s, people whom Black openly admires such as Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney and Margaret Thatcher. Black’s 1992 marriage to Barbara Amiel, former publisher of the Toronto Sun and outspoken right-wing columnist for Macleans, has served to underscore this reputation. What is most important for this discussion is not whether Black ever exercised direct control over much of the press in Canada, but that he has been seen to do this. Black’s name recognition as the face of pro-American market-driven capitalism in Canada is not, however, the result of his acquisitiveness or the power he holds. It is the direct result of careful image management, and of attempts–with varying success–to be taken seriously asapublicfigurewithintellectual,ratherthanpurelyfinancial,talents. This is what drives the often contradictory and awkward narrative production of A Life in Progress: Black’s life already is narrative product and his career consists of acquiring and then producing narrative products for Canada’s middleclass.Therefore,BlackentershisowntextasBlackthehistorianand political commentator, but he does so via the memoir form in the hopes that

157 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes through it he will be considered an intellectual figure, a “great man” like his heros, Charles deGaulle, Napoleon or Maurice Duplessis. Black’s project is elitist in the sense that he is not deliberately making a work to be mass marketed. However, Black is a public person, and this is what will sell his book. Since the exteriority of memoir relates it directly to mass production, the memoir form in fact turns Black’s identity in the text into a commodity fetish, because the product must depend on the aura of the writer’s name in order to make the book saleable. As a best-selling memoir in Canada which may have sold more than 25,000 copies in hardcover6 and was nominated Canada’s business book of the year (Siklos 330), A Life in Progress is a product with mass appeal, an appeal which ironically turns on the elite cachet of Black’s name as part of the autobiographical pact. The position of A Life in Progress in the marketplace underwrites Black’s desire to depict his personality and motivations as less than elite. As someone who had already “made a name for himself” Conrad Black uses the memoir form as a way to record that naming. However, Black does not follow the “classic” memoir form whereby the author writes about himself when he is older and his career is at an end. Nor does he write a narrative of “conversion” from one point of view to another, in the way that his wife Barbara Amiel recorded her conversion from socialism to right-wing ideas in her 1980 autobiography called Confessions. Instead, for five of twelve chapters, A Life in Progress invokes the discourse of the successful entrepreneur about the building of the Black empire, but ALife in Progress also invokes a “self-made man” discovery narrative for the other chapters so that Black may talk about his growth as an intellectual, and about his current ideas. This is why Black gives a number of different reasons for writing the book. In his preface, he indicates that he knows he is not writing a classic memoir: There may not be any acceptable excuse for a person of my age and position to write a book principally about himself. My explanation for writing this book now is that it is largely a comment on Canada. … I owe my countrymen a statement of why I am not now mainly resident in Canada and of my hopes and concerns for that country (v). Black adds that he is also writing in order to reply to charges that his business dealings were inappropriate. Finally, he writes this book as an encouragement to those who might be facing “one or more of the obstacles encountered by the author” (v). One of these challenges later turns out to be anxiety attacks, an aspect of Black’s life about which few people knew, as one reviewer pointed out (World Press Review 4). Black’s rationale, therefore, combines several disparate elements which mix public and private. He claims that the book is not about himself, but about Canada, a move which pushes his subjectivity out of the narrative. If his story is to be read literally as the story of Canada, this would seem to position him as an “ordinary” Canadian, except that Black subsequently writes about himself

158 Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black as exceptional in most ways. However, he also answers accusations about his dealings in A Life in Progress, an act which reinstates him as a public figure and brings himself back into view as an agent. His decision to delineate a private difficulty–anxiety attacks—as a public obstacle appears to send this book into the realm of inspirational narrative, even if the passages about Black’s anxiety attacks are relatively short. Although Black delineates a number of motivations for writing A Life in Progress, he leaves out the strongest. Inspired by what he thought was a well made PBS documentary on the American Civil War, he decided to write a book himself and began it on a flight from Tokyo to London (Siklos 329). Black was reportedly unsure whether he should publish his completed manuscript, but was convinced when he heard that a reporter was going to write his biography. Significantly, A Life in Progress was not published through one of Black’s own companies, but through Key Porter Books, because Black did not want to be seen as a vanity press writer. He wanted to be able to tell his own version of his life story, but he also wanted to be taken seriously as an intellectual. For example, Black has said that his memoir “would not be ‘Conrad Black with’ some writer, like so many business autobiographies” (Siklos 330). Black’s desire here is clearly to be awriter,sinceheisinspiredbythecraftofthePBSdocumentary.Buthealso writes his autobiography to contest the tendency of popular business memoirs to be ghostwritten by older successful men (ALife in Progress was published when Black was 49). Instead, A Life in Progress features an alliance between the discourses of successful business dealings made popular by ghostwritten autobiographies about Donald Trump and Lee Iaccocca, for example, and the narrative found in more literary autobiographies of the downtrodden young man who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps and succeeds due to luck, intelligence and perseverance. Black’s decision to not only write himself into his version of history but also to cast himself as a misunderstood intellectual in the business world produces his textual presence as an intellectual one which authorizes his ideas. The marketability of Black’s name would not have been affected by ghost writing, as Trump’s and Iacocca’s were not. Therefore, Black must be taking up another autobiographical narrative possibility in order to make a spaceforright-wingintellectualdiscourse.SiklosquotesBlackassaying: because intellectuals do dominate the power of the word, the conservative philosophy of capitalists, until recently made a very poor showing in the history of ideas. Businessmen largely have been unable or unwilling to defend themselves with words; and even when they tried, they long tended to bellow ultra-right clichés like wounded dinosaurs, much to the amusement of the intellectual left (Siklos 397). Therefore, much of A Life in Progress is devoted to making sure that Black appears to be an independently-minded intellectual of the right, a self-made man who learned his craft from studying the lives of other great meninordertocontestthedominanceof left-wingviewsinintellectuallife.

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ThecuriousthingaboutALifeinProgressisthatBlackclearlyhaslivedthis storyoutasatext,andthetextitselfcarriesthefreightofalifewhichmustbe made to look like a struggle and a learning process. However, details in the text clearly work against this, clearly without the author’s awareness of their irony. As Black’s first wife Joanna observes, Black lives his life as public narration rather than as private existence: “See, Conrad is very quotable because I think he’s living in a book. … Conrad had written his life and he’d had it all planned out. And everything he spoke was quotable” (Barlow and White, 41).

Reading A Life in Progress In the chapter called “An Unconventional Youth” in A Life in Progress, Black portrays himself as a rebel who will not be restrained by authority, particularly that which represents the business elite to which he in fact has always belonged. For example, he takes revenge for the beatings he received at Upper Canada College by stealing and then selling examination papers to the entire school. This activity gets him expelled. He comments that his actions were in some part justified, because the system was unfair, saying that: “I am neither proud nor ashamed of what happened. It was an awful system whose odiousness was compounded by banality and pretension” (Black 15). Here, Black presents himself as someone who plots and carries out a scheme directly inspired by military campaigns he has read about. In this case, Black is inspired by the actions of the French at Algiers (Black 13-14). This pattern will be repeated many times in A Life in Progress, where Black constantly uses militarism, particularly the strategy of Napoleon, as a metaphor to help him vanquish non-metaphoric enemies. For instance, in Black’s eyes throughout the sixties, Charles de Gaulle, rather than Martin Luther King or Mao, was “the great political rebel of the time.” Black’s admiration of de Gaulle served a purpose: de Gaulle functions symbolically as an alternative both to the anglophile establishment of Toronto represented by his father’s views as well as to leftists, who Black believes are “the … phony, envious, and mediocre bleeding hearts whining and snivelling about meritocratic Darwinism” (Black 20-22). The image of de Gaulle sustains Black in his battle against Upper Canada College (21) because Black thinks of de Gaulle as the prototypical great leader who returns from obscurity to lead France, just as Black felt himself to be equally intelligent, misunderstood, underestimated and wanting to be free from the parochialism of anglo-Ontario. A comment in Peter C. Newman’s biography of Black, this time about Duplessis, indicates the same alignment of powerful leadership, misunderstanding and rebellion. When one of Black’s teachers at Upper Canada College comes to class depressed because Maurice Duplessis had won a Quebec election, Young Black put up his hand to ask, “If Duplessis’s so bad, why does he always win?” Bitter laughter was all that LaPierre could

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muster in exchange, though it seemed a fair question. “I felt for Duplessis, even then,” says Conrad, ‘the way I felt toward the New York Yankees and the Montreal Canadiens. It was the pride of champions.” (Newman 39) Black presents his stay at Carleton University as a type of bohemian period, but slippages occur which indicate that his stay there was marked by privileges to which most students would not have access. He lives in the Savoy hotel with back-bench MPs, senators and members of the Ottawa RoughRidersfootballteam(22).Blackmentionsthathelivesinabasement apartment with only the view of automobile hubcaps outside his window. This serves to show that Black was willling to live the underprivileged life of a student. But Black adds that the sight of a hubcap from “a rare Cadillac or Lincoln was a good omen,” (23) indicating that the apartment was probably not in a lower-class district, and that he feels connected to the cars of the rich, even when he takes up the lifestyle of someone who is poor. His friend and future business partner Peter White works for Maurice Sauvé, the minister of forestry and natural resources, which gets him an invitation to Atlantic City, where he meets “all the uncrowned heads of the American state,” including Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey (30). Eventually, this period comes to an end when Black says that he decided to stop doing little at school and began “reading … the lives of great men” (33). In other words, Black narrativizes his decision to stop reading the lives of “great men” as the beginning of his self-making when he, too, would be a great man–intellectually and politically. This is familiar territory for memoir, except that Black’s invocation of change indicates that he has much invested in portraying himself not as a member of Canada’s elite, but as someone who is active rather than passive (which is how Black sees Canada’s anglophone business establishment), particularly where his own history and future are concerned. Black activates the trope of the great man who is a Romantic outsider rather than portraying his own life in terms of political events. His life, therefore, becomes driven by tropic figures rather than by politics so that he can maintain himself as a subject in the autobiographical form. For example, Charles de Gaulle and Maurice Duplessis lead him to Quebec, where he actively pursues Trudeau’s bi-culturalist ideal by becoming fully bilingual and by fraternizing with rich and powerful Quebeckers. He remakes himself in their image, and can place himself within the Quiet Revolution as an outsider who shares in the victory. Newman’s observations about this are worth quoting in their entirety: Black grew particularly attracted to Montreal’s French-speaking business leaders because they were nearly all self-made, having worked their way up against tough odds. He constantly stressed his identification with these arrivistes rather than with Westmount’s inheritors of wealth. He insisted on explaining to anyone who would listen that he wasn’t daddy’s boy, that he had madeitonhisown,thatwhilehemighthavebeenborntoprivilege,

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he’d started his own business and its success had been based on his own merit, his own brain, his own ability to function (Newman 48). Black’s obsession while he was in Quebec with writing a biography of Maurice Duplessis, a powerful right-wing francophone whom Black also believed had been unfairly treated historically, is another indication of his tendency to invoke the self-made man trope both for himself and for the figurewhomhewaschampioningorinthiscase,rehabilitating.Here,Black can also portray himself as an intellectual, a historian interested in exploring the tenor of Quebec politics before the advent of separatism. This experience proves to be formative for him because at the end of his researches, as he starts his first newspaper company, Black achieves a sense of his position in Canada, and of his own views about religion, economics and of Canada itself: Almost all my guiding principles were in place. I believe in God and human freedom, including economic freedom, the right of people to most of their incomes, other than during great national or social emergencies. The only basis for a successful economic system was individual incentives. The process of taking money from people who had earned it and giving it to people who hadn’t earned in exchange for their votes had to be approached with great caution. … Canada’s future and even survival depended, I was sure, on the relationship of the English and the French becoming a source of strength and not weakness. I had the beginnings of both a purpose and an occupation (Black 106). What is significant here is that Black’s “guiding principles” have been developed largely from contact with the written stories of powerful men, just as his decision to become a Roman Catholic was influenced by two more powerful men: Cardinal Léger in Quebec and Archbishop Emmett Cardinal Carter of Ontario. Black’s view of the world, as it is presented in A Life in Progress, is almost completely conditioned by the tropes of biography and the belief that special, individual lives can shape history. But Black will not pursue this view by becoming an academic, as demonstrated by his struggle with Ramsay Cook in the public press over Duplessis (182-183). Ramsay Cook was Black’s external examiner at McGill for his M.A. thesis about Maurice Duplessis. Cook condemned the thesis in no uncertain terms, but passed it after Black made some revisions. Black never forgot what he saw as a major offense. When Cook later wrote a negative review of Black’s book on Duplessis in The Globe and Mail, Black complained to the paper’s publisher personally and began a letter-writing campaign against Cook which resulted in what Peter C. Newman has called “one of Canada’s minor but obdurate literary feuds” (61). (See Newman 60-64 for a full account.) Instead, he becomes at first a newspaper editor who, with a partner, buys and runs a small Quebec paper and proceeds to dispense conservative opinions about the Quebec situation. Again, however, there is the slippage of privilege: when Black, disgusted with separatism, returns to Toronto in 1974 he spends time with his old friends

162 Autobiography and Production: The Case of Conrad Black the Eatons, who later will become major financial backers in his empire (141). He receives a membership in the prestigious Toronto Club (144). Finally, he joins the family business in its part ownership of Argus corporation, the holding company which was the scene of Black’s hostile takeover a few years later, and the beginning of Black’s rise to corporate prominence. Although much of the book from then on discusses the details of his business deals, the earlier tone of the book sets the stage for Black the soldier-capitalist who has the power to alter events, and who can depict himself as a rebel against the Canadian elites and their suspicion of American-style business manoeuvring. His evaluation of them, presumably not counting himself among them, “has not changed very much since my unhappy, far-off days at Upper Canada College” (515), which indicates that Black still sees himself as a gadfly amongst elites, despite the real fact of his power and inherited privilege which helped him to gain access to power. The early material also explains why Black’s image as a credible historian is so important to maintain later, when he spends much time describing his letter-writing campaign against anyone who disliked his book Duplessis. Black’s position as an intellectual in much of the book also underwrites his assessment at the book’s end of the Canadian federal government as “pander[ing] to every social imperfection” which makes the country “banal, self-righteous, and unable to convince the world or itself of its nationality” (515). Therefore, Black is able to state that he lives in exile from Canada because Canada is simply too left-wing and not adventurous enough to adopt the two-nations formula for Quebec and English-speaking Canada, which would in turn permit Canada to have closer relations with the United States (515).

Conclusion: “Progress” and Mass Marketing In the end, Black’s attempts to write himself differently into memoir discourse are not successful. The book was popular not because of Black’s ideas about Quebec politics, for example, but because Black criticized prominent Canadians such as Allan Fotheringham and Brian Mulroney, neither of whom appreciated Black’s treatment of them, particularly Mulroney, whom Black had strongly supported in the past (Siklos 337). In all probability, the aura surrounding Black’s name activated the autobiographical pact, which lent the authenticity and uniqueness to the narrative and made it a best-seller. The commodity most readers would have known and purchased would have been Black the financier, rather than Black the intellectual. This is why Black’s efforts to invoke the self-made discourse do not ultimately succeed in turning him from the object of his own life to the subject of it. His own identity must be part of a market-driven economy when people shop at Coles or Chapters for his book, and so the switch from subject to object in the commodity fetish has the effect of masking that Black has any agency inside the narrative. Like

163 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes his open veneration of de Gaulle, Duplessis and most recently, Napoleon, Black must overdetermine the sign of his identity in order to make it work as a narrative. Therefore, inside a discourse which does not, ultimately, easily favour elite musings, Black’s autobiography shifts from political observations to famous people he has seen. Its minute descriptions of the Argus takeover and defences of Dominion Ltd. and Massey-Ferguson never make Black’s narrative fit into the rebellious frame he wants, and which he wants to maintain even when it appears that he has little to rebel against. As someone who has so much invested in “self-making” and the mentorship of great men through their “exemplary” lives in biography, Black has ultimately been forced to package his autobiography as a business narrative about elite privilege rather than as a philosophic narrative by another “great” mind. Peter Newman’s comments in 1982 about Black’s plans for the future are a telling reminder of the discursive fields which Black as commodity cannot negotiate: The problem Black faces is that, because of their own advanced chronology and circumstances, the widening circle of his detractors and supporters tend to view him as a finished product. He is still far removed from that state of grace and has yet to pick his favourite role model–not being certain whether he wants to be another Howard Hughes, another Napoleon Bonaparte, or both. (Newman 274) Essentially, Black cannot easily move away from the scene of the Eaton’s menswear department, in a store once owned by his friend and business associate Fred Eaton, and he cannot escape the misrecognition that the scene must construct for his own identity. He is a finished product, and cannot write “A Life in Progress.” Even if the title suggests Black’s determination to work against this, the discourse in which he has chosen to discuss his favourite topics literally returns him as an object to his own narrative, as a finished product whose career trajectory depends on new role models and the discursive possibilities they promise in order to create narrative progression, in text and life. When these fail, the self-made Black disappears into his narrative and his efforts to activate that discourse remain unconvincing. At the level of production and consumption then, A Life in Progress illustrates how commodification can act on the written subject of memoir in order to turn it, even when the author attempts to resist this, into a commodity fetish which must enter mass culture as an autobiographical product to be bought and sold.

Notes 1. For a detailed discussion of the impact of feminism on autobiography theory and autobiography theory’s contributions to feminism, see the chapter “Auto/biographical Spaces” in Laura Marcus, 273-296. William J. Andrews believes that

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autobiography is now considered the central area of enquiry in African-American studies, 195-196. 2. Although a number of feminist critics argued for the inclusion of women authors in the autobiography canon, Sidonie Smith was responsible for shifting the focus of criticism to the status of the androcentric subject in A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography, 16-17 and in her discussion of the “universal subject” in the first chapter of Subjectivity, Identity and the Body. Recent work on ethnicity and autobiography follows this line of critique and links it to generic transgressions. See, for example, Caren Kaplan’s discussion of “outlaw genres,” gender and ethnicity 115-138, Anne E. Goldman’s discussion of autobiography, gender and ethnography ix-xv or Genaro Padilla’s discussion of “autobiographical consciousness,” 8. 3. See articles by Michael M.J. Fischer, Betty Bergland and Leigh Gilmore in Autobiography and Postmodernism (1994), and Liz Stanley in The Autobiographical I (1997). 4. See the humanist outline of this debate in Olney 23-24 and Gusdorf, 958. Paul de Man’s indictment of Olney and Gusdorf included a critique of LeJeune’s autobiographical pact as an excessively mechanistic alternative, 919-920. This set the tone for subsequent treatments of autobiography as a discourse of the subject, rather than as a discourse about production. LeJeune’s work has not been widely read for this by English-language critics due to his position within other debates about humanism and deconstruction’s readings of the presencing of subjectivity in autobiography. 5. Barlow and White say that these are The Times-Globe and Telegraph-Journal of Saint John, New Brunswick, the Sherbrooke Record and the Sentinel-Review of Woodstock, Ontario. 6. It is not known where Siklos got the hardcover sales figure for A Life in Progress. Key Porter Books, the book’s publisher, has refused to release paperback sales figures to me.

Works Cited Andrews, William L. “African-American Autobiography Criticism: Retrospect and Prospect.” Eakin, Paul John, ed. American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. 195-215. Barlow, Maude and James Winter. The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., 1997. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt, Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 217-252. Bergland, Betty. “Postmodernism and the Autobiographical Subject: Reconstructing the ‘Other’.” Kathleen Ashley et. al. Eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism. Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P., 1994. 130-166. Black, Conrad. A Life in Progress. Toronto: Key Porter Books Ltd., 1993. ——. “I Will Always Be Canadian.” The National Post. May 19, 2001. N.p. Buss, Helen. Repossessing the World: Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2002. Damsell, Keith. “Hollinger unit buys stake in small U.S. newspapers.” The Globe and Mail June 28, 2002. B3. De Man, Paul. “Autobiography as De-facement”. MLN 94 (1979), 919-930. Freeze, Colin and Karen Howlett. “Black abandons his Post, sells out to Aspers.” The Globe and Mail. August 24, 2001. A1, A6. Goldman, Anne E. Take My Word: Autobiographical Innovations of Ethnic American Working Women. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1996.

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Gillis, Charlie. “Black to Renounce Canadian Citizenship.” National Post Online. May 19, 2001. (http://www.nationalpost.com) Gilmore, Leigh. “The Mark of Autobiography: Postmodernism, Autobiography and Genre.” Kathleen Ashley et. al. Eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism. Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P., 1994. 3-20. Gusdorf, Georges. “De l’autobiographie initiatique à l’autobiographie genre littéraire”. Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 75 (1975), 957-994. ——. “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography.” Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Ed. James Olney. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980. 28-48. Kaplan, Caren. “Resisting Autobiography: Out-Law Genres and Transnational Feminist Subjects.” Eds. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. De/Colonizing the Subject: the Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 1992. 115-138. LeJeune, Philippe. Trans. Katherine Leary. On Autobiography. Ed. Paul John Eakin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Marcus, Laura. Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 1994. Marx, Karl. Capital: a Critique of Political Economy. vol. I. Trans. Ben Fowkes. London, UK: Penguin Books, 1976. ——. “‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse.” Later Political Writings. Ed. and Trans. Terrell Carver. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1996. 128-157. Misch, Georg. A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Trans. E.W. Dickes. 2 vols. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950. First published as Geschichte der Autobiographie, 1907. Neuman, Shirley. “Introduction: Reading Canadian Autobiography.” Essays on Canadian Writing 60 (Winter 1996), 1-13. Newman, Peter C. The Establishment Man: a Portrait of Power. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. 1982. Olney, James, ed. Studies in Autobiography. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Oxford English Dictionary Online. (http://dictionary.oed.com) June, 2002. Padilla, Genaro. My History, Not Yours: the Formation of Mexican American Autobiography. Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. “Pray, Has Anyone Seen His Peerage?” Maclean’s. 8 Aug. 1999: 4. Robinson, Gail. “Talkative Tycoon.” World Press Review. Jan. 94: 45. Schenck, Celeste. “All of a Piece: Women’s Poetry and Autobiography.” Life/Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography. Ed. Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988. 281-290. Siklos, Richard. Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World’s Fastest Growing Press Empire. Toronto: Reed Books Canada Ltd., 1995. Smith, Sidonie. A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1987. Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, eds. Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 1996. Walker, Nancy. “‘Wider Than the Sky’: Public Presence and Private Self in Dickinson, James, and Woolf.” The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings. Ed. Shari Benstock. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. 272-304.

166 Open-topic Articles

Articles hors-thèmes

João Fábio Bertonha

Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective*

Abstract The objective of this article is to compare the reception of Italian fascism within Italian communities inside Brazil and Canada during the period between the First and Second World Wars and of the effect of the fascist presence on the history of these two communities. The article emphasizes the issue of Italian fascist and anti-fascist popularity within Brazilian and Canadian society, and highlights an analysis of how support from Italian communities and action from the government in Rome was or was not important in the development of local fascist movements.

Résumé L’objet de cet article est de servir d’étude comparative de l’accueil réservé au fascisme italien au sein des communautés italiennes du Brésil et du Canada pendant la période entre les deux guerres mondiales et l’incidence de la présence fasciste sur l’histoire de ces deux communautés. L’article offre principalement une analyse de la façon dont l’appui des communautés italiennes et les actes posés par le gouvernement de Rome ont ou n’ont pas joué un rôle important dans le développement des mouvements fascistes locaux.

The Italian communities scattered around the globe experienced a unique situation in the period between the wars. On the one hand, they were the target of extreme propaganda from the fascist regime, which tried to reinforce ties between Italy and its emigrants. This effort, in turn, provoked reaction and militancy from anti-fascist groups, which struggled for years to keep Italians outside of Italy immune to Mussolini’s propaganda. All of the countries to which Italians immigrated—Brazil, Canada, France, the United States, and so on—experienced this conflict between fascism and anti-fascism. It is important to note, however, that the situation in each country was not necessarily the same: local specific circumstances should be highlighted in order to better understand the general process. This paper seeks to address precisely these differences and similarities with regard to fascism in Italian communities in Brazil and Canada. The elaboration of these differences and similarities seems vital to us, both to identify the different avenues of Italian immigration in the two countries andtounderstandthephenomenonoffascismoutsideofItalyasawhole.

Obviously, a work of comparative history cannot offer a final and definitive answer to the questions raised herein, and it seems unlikely that one work could do more than contribute to identifying topics for further study. In this effort, however, comparative history is unsurpassed, permitting us to go beyond the limits of national histories and create a more integrated history. We have undertaken to achieve this in other works (Bertonha 1999d and 2001) with positive results. Elements that previously appeared specific to one reality showed themselves to be common to various realities, while those that seemed general have proven adaptable to the analysis of particular experiences. Following this line of reasoning, a comparative work on countries with such different cultural, political and social traditions as Brazil and Canada should prove particularly fruitful. Although Italian immigration is very similar in Canada and the United States, it unquestionably assumed distinctive characteristics in the former country. The uniqueness of the experience of Italian immigrants in Canada, as well as the richness and originality of its historiography, opens up the possibility for a useful comparison of some dimensions of the life of Italian immigrants in the English-speaking world and in Latin America. As Donna Gabaccia (Gabaccia 1997, 1998 and 1999) demonstrates, comparing the Italian experience in similar cultural areas—like the United States, Canada, and Australia—can reinforce our knowledge of the Italian experience in the countries studied and throughout the world. It seems obvious, therefore, that nothing will broaden our understanding more than comparing the national experiences of countries situated in different cultural areas of the Italian diaspora, like the English-speaking or Germanic (Germany, Switzerland, etc.) regions, and the Latin universe (Brazil, Argentina, France, and others). Again, a comparison of Brazil and Canada might fill an unexplored and potentially fruitful lacuna in this area. This the justification for this study. The first point we must mention is the difference between foreign policy objectives and fascist emigration in Brazil1 and Canada. On the one hand, there was a common objective of recuperating Italian immigrants and their children for Italy2 in fascist ideology and policy and the use of those immigrants as instruments for acquiring prestige and power. On the other hand, the actual conditions in which Italian foreign policy acted, Rome’s different objectives in each country that figured in Italian migration, and the diverse policies enacted in these countries, created incredibly different nuances in the relationship between Italy and the emigrants from region to region. InthespecificcaseofLatinAmerica,theissueisrathercomplicated. The Italian fascist regime intensely debated the question of what it could expect fromthetwomillionItalianslivinginBrazil,Argentina,Uruguay,andother countries. Apparently, the dominant opinion was that it should not expect

170 Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective support from many of them, and that the most it could do was to try to slow down the de-nationalization of the colonies and use them to spearhead the diffusion of fascist ideals into public opinion and to obtain the maximum possible Italian influence in the region. This general framing of the situation in Latin America also applies to individual national contexts (Bertonha 1999d). For instance, while Paraguay was virtually ignored, the fascist government believed that it could increase its influence in Peru through the small, but rich and influential, Italian community and through good relations with the Benevides government. In Brazil, the Italian government focused its hopes for drawing the country into the Italian camp through its relationship with the Vargas government and, in particular, through the strong local fascist movement, Integralismo (Bertonha 1999 and 2000). The Italian community in Brazil was considered a supporting force for “subversive diplomacy,” including an involvement in Brazilian politics apparently unparalleled in Canada. This is a topic for further investigation, but may be related to the non-existence of a strong local fascist party. We will return to this topic further on. Other factors also contributed to the much less ambitious Italian fascist objectives in Canada in comparison to Brazil. In fact, while the efforts made to attract Brazil to the Axis zone of influence were reasonably consistent, the same efforts in Canada represented little more than a generic defense of Italian interests (Perin 1982, 1983, and 1984). The fact that Canada is a country of absolute strategic importance to the United States certainly contributed to the Italians’ modest objectives, another subject which deserves further investigation. Nonetheless, this difference between fascist objectives in relation to Canada and Brazil does not reflect a substantial variation in the means used by Rome to reach out to and indoctrinate the Italian communities in the two countries. In both cases, great effort was put into distributing the fasci all’estero, the Dopolavoro, the Casa d’Italia and all of the National Fascist Party (PNF) paraphernalia throughout local Italian communities. One can see that the fascist network was able to expand further in Brazil than in Canada,3 but the return in terms of real support was very small in both countries (Perin 1982 and 1984; Liberati 1983, 1984, 1989, and 1999; Robin 1992; Bertonha 2001a; Pennacchio 2000). The Dopolavoro and Casa d’Italia sessions were more successful than the fasci all’estero in both countries (Molinaro 1996) and once again their expansion was numerically superior in Brazil, which confirms the fascists’ greater ability to reach out to the immigrant masses. Their popularity, however, was also rather limited. The poor quality of the human resources used by the fascists, the continual reorganizations of the fasci all’estero and their financial and organizational difficulties (especially in the 1920s) were also identical in both contexts.

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The consulates’acts of propaganda and control were also similar within thetwocommunities, withaconsular network receiving significant support both in Canada and in Brazil. In both cases, the consulate served as the focus of fascist propaganda and the nucleus of vigilance over the communities in general and against the anti-fascists in particular. The degree of similarity between the performance of the so-called “fascist consuls” in the two countries, moreover, is impressive, as demonstrated by a comparison of the actions of consuls Serafino Mazzolini in São Paulo and Manfredo Chiostri in Porto Alegre with those of consuls Luigi Petrucci in Ottawa, Giorgio Tiberi in Toronto, and Giuseppe Brigidi in Montreal (Pautasso 1976; Perin 1982and1984;Liberati1983,1984;Bertonha2001a;Pennacchio2000).4 The style of fascist propaganda, except for a few small variations, was equivalent in both contexts: huge demonstrations choreographed by the fascists, meetings, parades, etc. Transoceanic flights also caused a commotion among Italians in both countries, and it remains curious that Italo Balbo led two of the flights that made the greatest impression in Brazil aswellasinCanadaandtheUnitedStates(in1931and1933,respectively).5 Again, this provides a strong indication that the subject of this study can only be understood in a transnational context. With regard to the indirect instruments of fascist action in Italian communities outside of Italy, the situation again does not differ much between countries. In Brazil, after a few upsets in the 1920s, the fascists systematically controlled the overwhelming majority of the established Italian newspapers (including São Paulo’s vitally important Fanfulla,atthe time the foremost Italian newspaper in Brazil), associations, and schools. They also created various other journals and associations in an attempt to reverse the decline of Italian community life in Brazil (which resulted from the continuing assimilation and aging of the colony) and to spread more vigorously the fascist message. In Canada, something similar occurred. The fascist advance into the associations and other organs of community life met resistance in the 1920s, but proceeded with some success in that period, especially with the support of the war veterans’ associations (Pautasso 1976; Liberati 1983; Pennacchio 2000), consolidating in the following decade (Liberati 1983 and 1984; Molinaro 1989; Principe 1989 and 1999; Pennacchio 2000). In contrast with what happened in Brazil, however, some anti-fascist associations, or at least non-fascist associations, continued to survive, like the Famee Furlane in Toronto, among others (Pautasso 1976; Perin 1982; Fainella1984;Giana1989;Principe1989,1990,and1996;Temelini1993). Fascism was, overall, very successful in general terms in its efforts to control the associative life of Italians in the two countries.6 In terms of the press, more established newspapers like L’Italia, created in 1916, were conquered by co-opting methods very similar to those used in Brazil (Perin 1982), and many other papers were created (Principe 1999).

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Schools and children’s groups were given special attention (Pennacchio 1989 and 2000) and fascism seems to have had reasonable success in both contexts. More important than understanding the diverse objectives of fascism in each country and the instruments used to achieve these goals, however, is discovering any significant differences in the responses of Italian communities in Brazil and Canada to the fascist message. For this, we must go inside the social fabric of these communities in the period between the wars. In so doing, one must be careful not to view these communities, which encompassed some two million people, as one united front. In particular, one must not try to elide differences of class, region, and generation, among others, which strongly divide such communities and consequently affect their view of fascism. Applying this theoretical framework to the two communities, we can see various similarities. One of these is the elites’firm adherence to fascism in both communities and the importance of this bond in influencing the majority of Italians and their descendents in the two countries toward pro-fascism. In both contexts, the members of the elite refused to be mere instruments of fascism, but the defense of their interests and the value they placed on fascist ideology and nationalism linked them tightly to the Italian consuls (Harney 1981 and 1984; Zucchi 1988; Bertonha 1999a). While considering the elites, we should note two key figures in the Italian communities of Brazil and Canada in the 1920s and 30s: Conde Francesco Matarazzo and Vicenzo Franceschini of the Dufferin Construction Company of Toronto (Pautasso 1976), respectively. Potentially, the similarities and differences between the trajectory, social ascent, and ideological and political positions of these two men could reveal a great deal about Italian experiences in Brazil and Canada.7 The situation of the Italian and Italian-descended middle classes in the two countries is more complex than that of the elites. There are indications that, in addition to the members of the elite already mentioned, these middle classes formed the majority of those actually converted by fascism (that is, enrolled in the fasci all’estero, the Dopolavoro, etc.) in both countries (Painchaud 1988; Temelini 1993). In addition, it seems reasonable to believe that these people did not become fascists solely because they had a more intimate relationship (given their education and social position) with fascism’s nationalist ideals, but also because fascism represented a vehicle for expression to a middle class of Italian origin in the process of social ascent both in Brazil and in Canada. In this regard, Ângelo Principe (Principe 1980 and 1999) is right in seeing a connection between the support given to fascism by the middle class of Italian origin in Canada before 1938, the decline of support in later years, the effort to gain prestige and respectability, and ways that the Canadian elites viewed this community. As we will see, this latter element helps to explain the

173 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes continuation of pro-fascist sentiments among the Italian elites and middle class in Brazil long after 1938. In Brazil, however, we must consider two important specific conditions. The first is the existence of a more favourable climate for ideas from the extreme right than in Canada, which made sectors of the Brazilian middle class (including those made up by Italians and their descendents) turn with particular conviction to fascist or fascist-inspired movements. The second, and more important, is the existence of a strong national fascist movement, Integralismo, which stole adherents from Italian fascism. In fact, while in Canada, the most right-leaning segment of the Italian middle class concentrated on the manifestations of Italian fascism present in the country, its Brazilian equivalent was divided, with one portion preferring to march in the files of Integralismo. Despite a great deal of contact between the two movements, this division of segments of the Italian middle class in Brazil into fascists and integralists is curious and can only be explained by considering ethnicity: those who accepted fascist ideology and felt Italian became adherents of fascism, while those in a similar situation who felt Brazilian (usually children of Italians) became adherents of Integralismo (Bertonha 2000). This difference is probably due, first, to the lack of a strong fascist party indigenous to Canada, which might have gained the support of part of this population, as well as to the greater isolation of Italians in Canadian society. We will return to the issue of local fascisms later. The situation of the workers appears to have a certain similarity in the two countries. In fact, in both cases, workers of Italian origin turned out to be, if not entirely a unified bloc of anti-fascists, at least the group least affected by fascist propaganda, where there were few real adherents and where anti-fascism received the most support. In the Canadian context, this can be inferred from the importance of the Italian segments of unions like ACWA (Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America), ILGWU (InternationalLadiesGarmentWorkersUnion),andUWA(UnitedWorkers of America), and from the Italo-Canadian workers’ leagues (like the Lega Operaria Italo Canadese in Montreal and the Alleanza Operaria Italo Canadese in British Columbia) in the maintenance of anti-fascism (Spada 1969; Principe 1980 and 1989). It is also evident in the particular difficulty encountered by fascism in attempting to establish its institutions in primarily working-class areas like the mining region of Alberta (Fainella 1984). In Brazil, the data also confirm Italian workers’ greater resistance to openly siding with fascism (in spite of their real sensitivity to fascism’s patriotic appeal and the fact that they never really became a foundation for anti-fascism, as occurred, for example, in France [Bertonha 1999c]). Compared to Canada, the most substantial difference is possibly one of scale;whileItalianworkersinCanadawereintheminorityandexperienced

174 Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective discrimination within local workers’ movements (Principe 1984; Ramirez 1990; Iacovetta and Radforth 1996), São Paulo, the center of Brazilian industry, was truly dominated by Italian and Italian-descended workers (Bertonha 1998b). The comparative weakness of Italian anti-fascism in Brazil is also evidenced by the fact that even with this large potential base of support, it still did not develop as it could have (Bertonha 1998a). Leaving behind the issue of social divisions, we should mention the importance of generational divides, or rather, the divisions between Italians and children of Italians born in the New World. Here, it is evident in both countries that while the Italian-born were more likely to participate directly in local fascist and anti-fascist struggles, people of Italian descent, who had integrated to a greater degree, engaged in these struggles in more discrete ways. The latter undoubtedly had fully-formed opinions about Italian fascism and anti-fascism,8 but they became involved in these movements in a proportionally smaller number, which demonstrates the strength of their integration, even in the second generation. The biggest difference between the two countries in this regard is that the majority of Italian immigration in Canada occurred about a generation later than in Brazil. Canada’s Italian community was, therefore, affectively and culturally closer to Italy than the Brazilian community, a fact which can not help but affect its appreciation for fascism. In 1940, for example, Canada’s Italians numbered about 115,000 (Liberati 1983, 1989, and 2000; Perin 2000), many of whom were Canadian-born. In Brazil during the same period, the Italian community had more than two million members, of whom barely 300,000 had been born in Italy. The Italian community in Brazil, therefore, was older and more assimilated than the Canadian, a fact obviously reflected in a lesser interest in Italy’s problems. Equally important to the exercise of establishing the degree of adherence to or rejection of fascism in various sectors of Italian communities in Brazil and Canada is discovering to what degree a general and diffuse feeling of support for fascism or anti-fascism (different from direct support or refusal of either movement) flourished in both communities during the 1920s and 1930s. It is rather curious, in fact, to glance over the international bibliography related to the reaction of Italian communities outside of Italy to fascism. We candistinguishhowtheItaliancommunitiesinsometransoceaniccountries like the United States, Canada, Australia and Peru showed greater receptivity to fascism, while in various European countries (like France, Belgium and Luxemburg) and in Argentina and Uruguay, anti-fascist efforts garnered more attention, though they did not completely efface fascism. Without a doubt, neither fascism nor anti-fascism were able to completely conquer emigrant Italian communities. There were politicized minorities side-by-side confronting an overwhelming apolitical popular

175 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes mass that wavered just in general and diffuse terms between fascism and anti-fascism. In fact, what we can identify are places where the fascist minority was stronger and the anti-fascist minority was weaker, and a diffuse fascism (that is, more emotional than ideological in form and less definite) that spread through much of the Italian community, and others where the anti-fascist minority was stronger and succeeded at least in breaking the fascist consensus, if not at spreading a diffuse anti-fascism among Italians. The former instance is seen more in the Anglo Saxon countries.9 International historiography has been excessive in emphasizing that the adherence (usually diffuse and not ideological) of Italians and their descendents to fascism was not a result of ideological conversion but of “defensive nationalism.” In other words, taking pride in fascist Italy’s achievements and conquests served as an instrument among Italians and their children for regaining self-esteem and forming an “ethnic bloc,” which may even have aided their integration into their new societies. The available empirical data about Brazil reveal that there was a positive response on the part of the Italian community to fascist efforts to create the myth of “great and powerful Italy” and that Italians and children of Italians were known to use this myth as a means of recovering their self-esteem. But the differences should also be enumerated. Although it is true that discrimination and prejudice existed against the Italians in Brazil (Ribeiro 1985; Font 1990), these did not last long compared to the profound ethnic tensions that marked Italians’entrance into Anglo Saxon societies (Di Tella 1994; Harney 1985; Ciccocelli 1977). This should have resulted in a lesser need to use fascism as a means to “recover self-esteem.” Given these differences, it may be possible to state that the “diffuse” fascism of Italo- Canadians (and of Anglo Saxon populations in general) made somewhat more sense than that of the Italo-Brazilians, as reflected in a strong fascist presence in the lives of North American Italians. Even so, both communities had, in general and in spite of different gradations, good receptivity to fascism. Another point that merits discussion is how pre-fascist nationalism supported the slow transformation of Italian immigrant regional identities into an Italian identity and how this facilitated the fascist regime’s later actions. According to authors like Harney, Zucchi, and Salvatore (Harney 1981 and 1984; Zucchi 1988; Salvatore 1996), without the growth of ethnic identity in Canada’s “Little Italies” starting at the turn of the century, fascism’s later efforts would have been significantly more difficult. In the case of Brazil, we also have indications that the strong regional and local identities of São Paulo’s Italians in the 19th century were beginning to give way in the initial decades of the 20th century to an Italian identity. The Brazilian tendency to use the term “Italians” for Italian immigrants and their descendents undoubtedly contributed to this shift, putting many Italo

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Brazilians in situations which stimulated a common identity and an emigrant psychology that seems to need to recreate and symbolically deify the distant Homeland. Clearly, regional identities were not completely obliterated by Italian identity, but it is evident that, in the first decades of the 20th century, Italian national celebrations and festivals began to attract increasingnumbersofpeople.Atthesametime,localItalianelites(and,toa lesser degree, the Italian government) set out to construct cultural and linguistic unity among Italians outside of Italy. One of the methods used to try to construct this new identity was genuinely Brazilian: creation of a soccer team, the “Palestra Italia,” in São Paulo in 1914, which became one of the most popular teams in Brazil, especially among Italians and their descendents. Apart from some notable exceptions, this nationalism was important for the spread of fascism through the Italian community. This can be proven by a simple verification of the number of war veterans and members of old Italian nationalist associations from São Paulo that appear in the rolls of the local fasci all’estero. Overall, in general terms, Italian nationalism (and the fusion of nation and regime that fascism achieved in the minds of immigrants) was undoubtedly important for the popularization of fascism in both countries. With regard to this subject, Ângelo Principe (Principe 1989) raises interesting points of consideration. To him, it would be incorrect to say that Italian immigrants were completely devoid of national sentiment before the beginning of the 20th century. He finds that Italian immigrants in the period before World War I exhibited regionalist and local feelings for their towns, combined with a certain amount of cosmopolitanism (usually identified with the Catholic religion) and the typical nationalism of the 19th century, risorgimento, pluralist, and non-exclusive. This special sort of Italian immigrant nationalism, to him, explains the diversity and immense number of ethnic associations (which signal the strength and vitality of an identity expressed along regional and national lines) which would have supported the growth of fascism in later years. Thus, the roots of Italian nationalism would have stronger bases than traditional historiography suggests. It is difficult to disagree with Principe and we can extend his suggestions into other contexts. Nonetheless, it is problematic to accept his conclusions that Canada’s Italians for the most part continued to think in terms of risorgimento Italy at the same time that they supported fascist Italy. As Principe himself indicates, the elite members of Italian communities outside of Italy in the period before World War I and the emissaries of fascism in particular dedicated immense efforts to the work of transforming Italian immigrants’existing risorgimento-based nationalism into an ethno- linguistic nationalism (to use Eric Hobsbawm’s term [Hobsbawm 1990]). The success of this effort, to which Principe fails to dedicate due attention, was absolutely fundamental to fascist popularity in the later period. Comparison with other contexts indicates that without this effort, the

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Italians in Canada and Brazil, especially members of the popular classes, would have been less susceptible to national ideals and to the appeal of fascism’s mythic “great and powerful Italy.”10 The temporal evolution of the relationship between Italo-Canadians or Italo-Brazilians and fascism also generally followed similar itineraries. In both countries, fascism was relatively unknown in the 1920s,11 but gradually acquired greater power and prestige in the colonies (thanks to continuous propaganda, its nationalist appeal, and the support of the Church and local elites) until it peaked with the intense mobilization of both communities during the Abyssinian War in 1935/36 (Pautasso 1978; Liberati 1983, 1984, and 1984a; Principe 1989; and Salvatore 1995). Canadian historiography has been unable to reach a consensus about the period after 1935, when the fascist regime moved toward expansionism and totalitarianism (racist and anti-Semitic laws, Spanish War, alliance with Hitler). According to Luigi Bruti Liberati (Liberati 1982, 1983, 1984, and 2000), for example, fascism’s prestige remained intact and grew within the community while the Anglo-Saxon elites turned against it. But Ângelo Principe (Principe 1989 and 2000) believes that the increasing discredit given to fascism by the Anglo-Canadians after 1935 and the anti-Semitic12 laws were fatal to fascism, which lost its popularity in Canada’s Italian communities at that moment. It is difficult to say precisely which of these analyses is correct. Using the resources of comparative history, we can see how, in Brazil’s case, the fascist regime’s new directions after 1936 displeased Italo-Brazilians, though not sufficiently to decrease the popularity of fascism in the community. In this context, we certainly cannot overlook the importance of continued sympathy for fascism and Il Duce in public opinion and in the Brazilian government through the beginning of the 1940s (Bertonha 2000c). If we can extrapolate from Brazil’s case to that of Canada, it may be possible to conclude that the progression of anti-fascism in Canada’s English-language public opinion certainly should have affected the regime’s prestige in the colonies at least to some degree. If we keep in mind that the French-Canadians continued to support the regime, at least in general terms, until the end, and that the majority of Italians lived in Quebec in those years, it seems reasonable to conclude that fascist prestige could have been affected among the Italo-Canadians, but not to the point of breaking with fascism or converting to anti-fascism. Apart from the temporal question, another interesting point to consider is geography. It would be erroneous to imagine that in two continental countries like Brazil and Canada there would not be immense regional variations between Italian communities scattered through different parts (with social, ethnic, and other differences within local communities) of both countries. In Brazil, for instance, the Italian community can be divided into three large blocs. First are the rural workers (especially Venetians)

178 Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective living on small rural properties in the southern part of the country, influenced by the Catholic Church (Giron 1994; Bertonha 1998). The second group consists of rural and urban workers living in the state and city of São Paulo (where the Italian and Italian descended community had expressive numbers and was highly socially differentiated, even though most of the Italians were workers or members of the urban proletariat). Third comes the small middle class of artisans and businessmen residing in the large capitals of the North and Northeast and in Rio de Janeiro. This latter group was closely tied to fascism precisely because of its circumstances (De Andrade 1993; Bertonha 2001a). In the Canadian context, one can note differences not just between Ontario and Quebec, for instance, but between Italians living in these areas (the overwhelming majority) and other smaller communities scattered around the country. This is demonstrated in the regional Canadian historiography (Brandino 1977; Pucci 1988; Erasmi 1993; and Cumbo 2000). It is also evident that in both contexts, perceptions of the problem of fascism varied enormously from region to region within the same country. We can certainly note differences in thought between fascist groups in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver (Principe 1999) and different styles of propaganda used by different consulates (Perin 1982 and 1984). But we can also pinpoint “fascist areas,” where a rural colony with a strong Catholic presence of a numerical domination of middle-class groups and the continual support of the local population allowed for the special success of fascist propaganda. Examples would be the Winnipeg region (Carbone 1988)and,undoubtedly,Quebec(Bayley1939;Principe1989and2000). The opposite is also true. We can identify true “anti-fascist areas,” where fascism encountered immense difficulties in establishing itself. This is the case in British Columbia, where the greater strength of the local left, the lesser presence of the Catholic Church, and the strong presence of Italian workers (Fainella 1984; Wood 1995; Culos 1998; and Principe 1999) came together to block the fascist message. The same can be said of the mining region of Alberta (Palmer 1998) and, in particular, the Windsor industrial area, which could be considered a true “Italian anti-fascist city,”13 along the lines of Patterson or Tampa in the U.S. or Longwy in Belgium. The number of internments and the level of aggression against the Italians in 1940 also had considerable regional variation (Ciccocelli 1977). In this regard, the case of Quebec deserves special attention. According to Filippo Salvatore (Salvatore 1995), Italians in this region suffered fewer reprisals due to the sympathies of the French Canadians. Still, there are indications (Ramirez 1988; Liberati 1989 and 2000, p. 90) that there was a slightly higher number of Italians imprisoned in that region. The fact that Quebec was a “fascist area” certainly influenced this discrepancy, but perhaps comparative history can shed some light by bringing up the case of Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul.

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At the end of the 1930s, the overwhelming majority of Italo-Brazilians lived in the state of São Paulo, with the second largest concentration living in Rio Grande do Sul. It was in the latter state that the anti-foreigner measures taken by the Brazilian federal government most strongly affected the Italian community. The fact that the Italians in this region were considered less assimilated, their location close to the sensitive Argentine border, and that German communities (viewed with particular suspicion by theBraziliangovernment)wereconcentratedinthisregioncertainlyhelped to explain the Brazilian government’s special rigor. Moreover, the fact that the Brazilian fascist movement, Integralismo, had its principle bases in Brazil’s south (and that the Brazilian government feared its links to the fascists and the Nazis) was also important in explaining the government’s firmness in this region. It might therefore be useful to consider whether the factthatCanadianfascismhaditsbaseinQuebec(Betcherman1978;Robin 1992) and that many Canadians identified Adrien Arcand (leader of a facist political party before the war) with Mussolini and the Italian community (Ciccocelli 1977) could have contributed to the Canadian government’s special preoccupation (and particular severity) with the region in 1940. In connection with this, some attention should focus on the role of the Catholic Church. In the case of Italians in Rio Grande do Sul, the support of Italian priests was key in popularizing fascism (Bertonha 1998). Likewise, in other parts of Brazil, Italian missionaries and the Brazilian Catholic Church were firm supporters of fascism (and of Integralismo) (Bertonha 1997). In Canada and the other Anglo-Saxon countries, Catholic support was also fundamental to the success of fascist propaganda among Italians and within local communities (Perin 1982 and 1984; Liberati 1983 and 1984; Carbone 1988; Principe 1989 and 1990; and Salvatore 1992, 1995, and 1996). In the Anglo-Saxon world, however, this collaboration took on special characteristics as Italian priests and the fascists developed an especially close alliance to achieve the common goal of maintaining the Italianness and Catholicism of Italian immigrants (Pautasso 1993; Pennacchio 1993 and 2000). The limits of this effort are evident (Pautasso 1978; Tomasi 1991), but it allied Italian missionaries with fascism to a greater degree than in the Latin and Catholic countries.14 This occurred to such an extent, paralleled in Brazil, that many of the fascist Italian leaders in Canada were of Catholic extraction (Principe 1999). Within the English-language sphere, what distinguished Canada was a strongly Catholic population in Quebec that identified with latinité, thus permitting the exploitation of these links by fascists.15 Quebec’s ecclesiastical leadership, although increasingly disillusioned by Nazism, continued in its general support of fascism until the War, at which point English-language Catholics clearly expressed their displeasure at the anti-British aggression of Italy’s fascist regime, racial laws, and alliance with Nazi Germany at the end of the 1930s. (Pennacchio 1993 and 2000; Principe 1999). A similar disgust with the regime’s directions after 1938,

180 Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective coupled with continued support, was also experienced in Brazil’s Catholic Church, in what was perhaps a Latin pattern. Leaving the issue of the Italian communities, it is interesting to enter the world of fascist propaganda intended for Canadians, Brazilians, and descendents of Italians. The systems were very similar. Propaganda was divided into one very direct form (articles mailed to newspapers,16 distribution of pamphlets, film screenings, and ceremonies [Perin 1982 and 1984; Liberati 1983 and 1984; Bertonha 2001a; and Pennacchio 2000]) and a second cultural form, where the fascist message was more camouflaged and focused on the intellectual elites. With regard to this last point, Italian intellectuals living in each country, like Emilio Goggio in Toronto or Ferruccio Rubbiani in São Paulo, played a key role (Molinaro 1989 and 1996a; Kuitnen 1996). The available Canadian bibliography seems to indicate that Canada’s fascists concentrated on cultural propaganda. This contrasts with the author’s investigation of Italian records relating to Italian propaganda directed at Brazil, which had a very relevant cultural side, but which also included an extremely strong propaganda component that was more directly ideological, fascist. Whether this difference in tone really existed remains to be learned through further research. Should the difference prove true, it would be noteworthy that the fascist government preferred to be more discreet in its activities in Canada than in Brazil. This would likely be due to fascism’s greater interests in the latter country and to the Brazilian political climate in the 1930s, which was more tolerant of fascist ideological propaganda. Brazilian and Canadian response to this propaganda is better documented. The Canadian government and political and intellectual elites tended to see fascism as a sign of Italian stability, and in spite of mistrust and conflict resulting from fascist foreign policies, they supported the fascist regime at least until the second half of the 1930s (Harney 1981 and 1984; Liberati 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985; Salvatore 1996; Pennacchio 2000). In the later period, fascist expansionism and totalitarianism caused Mussolini’s regime to lose its credibility in the eyes of Ottawa and the English-language population in general. This even led to an increased police vigilance over the fascists.17 In Quebec, the issues of Latinness, Catholicism,andoppositiontoEnglandledtoanevenmoremarkedsupport of the Ethiopian War. Some debate regarding the later period between those who believe that support for fascism declined even among French Canadians (Principe 1989 and 2000; Perin 2000) and those who assert that support continued intact (Liberati 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985; Salvatore 1996; Pennacchio 2000). The available data indicate more evidence to support the second option, but it would be a mistake to overlook the fact that Italy’s alliance with Germany against France could not have pleased the Québécois. Also, the prestige of extreme rightist movements was in decline

181 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes in Quebec at the start of the 1940s, and this trend was hardly reversed by the start of the war (Sanders 1996). In Brazil, the situation is similar. Fascism enjoyed great popularity in the governmental and Catholic sectors, as well as in large sectors of public opinion, which were only annoyed by fascist efforts to impede the absorption of Italians and their children into Brazilian society. This was seen as an intolerable interference in national affairs. The really curious aspect of Brazil’s situation is that the decline in fascist popularity from the mid-1930s on also occurred, but with much less intensity than in Canada. Figures from within the government machine and expressive sectors of public opinion demonstrated admiration and respect for fascism and for Mussolini until at least the start of the 1940s, something unparalleled in Quebec. Interestingly, this manifestation of fascist prestige in the country occurred at a time when this same government and this same public opinion vigorously rejected Nazism and experienced a quasi-hysteria at the prospect of a German invasion. This is one peculiar aspect of Italian fascism’s relationship with Brazilian public opinion (Bertonha 2000b). In spite of some differences, then, Italian fascism could generally count on solid support in Canadian and Brazilian societies and also among the principal economic and cultural leadership of Italian communities. With all of this support; with the nationalist appeal hitting its mark among Italians in both societies (although with greater emphasis in Canada and other Anglo-Saxon countries); with the lack of any progressive ideology within the Italian community to serve as an antidote to such appeals (like Garibaldism in the Plata River countries [Bertonha 1999d]), and especially with the weakness of Italian anti-fascism in the two nations,18 it was improbable that Italians in either context could have escaped at least a generic adherence to the regime, as in fact occurred. Having established reasons for the different results of the struggle between fascism and anti-fascism among Italians in the two countries, it remains to lay out the possible effects of these results on the political evolution of these countries in the period between the wars. In this regard, we believe that comparative history furnishes us with excellent instruments to better understand the relationship between Canadian fascism and the actions of Italian fascists in Canada. Let us first examine the Brazilian experience. In Brazil, the actions of Italian fascism were fundamental in the creation and development of both thenationalfascistmovement,Integralismo,andalso,indirectly,ofGetúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo (New State). The Italian fascists furnished the integralists with financial resources (covertly, to avoid problems with Brazilian public opinion and government). The Italian fascists counted on the integralists to bring Brazil into the Axis orbit, because mutual sympathies were very strong, demonstrated through joint ceremonies, mutual favours, and other signs of friendship. At the same time, the Italian

182 Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective community (as well as the German community) responded strongly to the appeals of Integralismo, with a substantial number of the descendents of Italian and German immigrants appearing on integralist rolls (Bertonha 2000). In Canada, on the other hand, the situation was very different. Local Italian fascists19 sympathized with Canadian fascists,20 and the sympathies were reciprocal, as the latter were notorious admirers of Italian fascism (although they also appreciated Nazism and Mosley’s British fascists) and believed that young Italians living in Canada would join their movements. The Canadian fascists directed appeals to the young Italians21 and also to the government in Rome in search of support and financing. There are not many data to evaluate the response of Italians and the children of Italians to Canadian fascist appeals. Apparently, there were Italians or descendents of Italians around Arcand, and especially in the Canadian Union of Fascists (CUF), but it is difficult to establish any sort of quantification or even whether this was real support or just “generic.” The fact that the CUF was apparently the nucleus of Italian participation in Canadian fascism can certainly provide some indications of their motivations for joining the movement since this party was closer to fascism than Nazism and had scant traces of anti-Semitism. Drawing a connection with Brazil, then, perhaps we can think about the potential importance of the political participation of the children of immigrants. In Brazil, for example, one factor that led the children of Italians and Germans to give solid support to Integralismo, apart from sympathy for the movements in their countries of origin, was their conviction that this movement would be a means for them to participate in a political structure that affirmed them as Brazilians rather than as children of foreigners (Bertonha 2000). It is worth considering the hypothesis that the participation of the children of Italians in Canadian fascist movements (as well as descendents of Germans and Ukrainians in Western Canada [Betcherman 1978]) may be linked to their effort to participate politically and question a political system dominated by Anglo- and French- Canadians. Regarding Rome’s response to appeals for aid from Canadian fascists, the answers are clearer. Apart from one or two attempts,22 the Italian government did not support Canadian fascists (Bertcheman 1978; Liberati 1984). This resistance was due simply to the awareness that they were too weak to give real help to Italian interests in Canada (an assessment shared by Berlin’s government [Mount 1993]). Rome was unable to take advantage of a strong fascist movement like Brazil’s, and unable to effectively use the weapon that voters of Italian origin represented, as occurred in the United States (Principe 1999 and 2000; Luconi 2000). Therefore, its options were to exploit both Quebec’s resentment against the rest of the country (Perin 1982; Luconi 2000) and the regime’s prestige

183 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes among Canadian governmental elites, at least until 1935, to defend its aspirations in the country. Supporting local fascism would mean associating itself with the losers, and Rome, demonstrating what it really thought of inter-fascist relations and its bias toward Italian national interests (Bertonha 1999d and 2000c), preferred not to do that. This likely saved local Italians from added problems during the war. The Italians’ problems in the two countries during the war permits us to understand some of the details of ethnic and academic issues within the countries. In Canadian historiography, the debate about the legitimacy and justice of the Canadian government’s imprisonments and internments is intense, including topics like the role of women and juridical questions.23 Even without wanting to enter into this debate, it is impossible not to consider the enormous contrast with the situation in Brazil. Brazil’s entrance into the war on the side of the Allies in 1942 transformed the traditional benevolence of the Brazilian government and Brazilian public opinion toward fascism. As a result, Italians had to adapt to policerepression,riots,andvariousformsofpersecution,whichmadedaily lifedifficultforItalianslivinginBrazilduringthatperiod.Therearevarious records, in fact, of monuments and even tombs with Italian markers being destroyed; of the prohibition of written and spoken Italian; of the economic persecution of Italian agriculture, business, and trade; of riots, plundering, and attacks against Italian-owned properties throughout the country and so on. It is important, however, to put these aggressions in perspective and to see how the Italians, perceived as more integrated into the country and therefore a lesser menace, suffered less than the Germans and Japanese on account of the war (Bertonha 2001a; Seyferth 1999). In one of the first waves of imprisonments of foreigners in São Paulo in 1942 undertaken by the Brazilian police, for instance, only 20 Italians were detained, in contrast with142Germansand112Japanese. EventheItaliangovernment admitted thatnotonlywastheItalians’situationmuchbetterthanthatofotherforeign communities, but their condition visibly improved after the Italian armistice of 1943. It goes without saying that this contrasts with the situation of Italians in Anglo-Saxon countries, who obviously had much greater problems. It is very interesting to note how the two key variables used by Canadian historiography to try to explain the wave of anti-Italian hysteria in Canada in 1940 (“a war against a non-dominant minority” or “a defense of the state”) are, used proportionally, perfectly applicable to the Brazilian context. It is certainly not by chance that the Japanese and the Germans werethegroupsmosttargetedforrepressionbytheBraziliangovernmentin the 1930s and 1940s. They were the groups that appeared to resist the “Brazilianness” that the Brazilian State was trying to impose at the time (although this resistance was questionable [Gertz 1987]), in addition to

184 Fascism and the Italian Immigrant Experience in Brazil and Canada: A Comparative Perspective being war enemies (Seyferth 1999). Nonetheless, even though the scale of repression of these groups, especially of the Japanese, is consistent in the two contexts, including the removal of coastal populations, imprisonment and confinement, and the considerable volume of individuals involved,24 Brazilian historiography has not dedicated attention to the issue at a level comparable to Canadian historiography.25 In the same way, other than voices from academia defending some form of government retraction of those actions, there has been no organized campaign to request an official apology or indemnification from Japanese or German groups, let alone from Italians. This is an indication of the different ways that problems of cultural diversity and coexistence of different ethnic groups are treated in the two countries (with their consequent reflections in academic production) as well as a sign of the potential value of comparative studies of two such distant (yet similar) realities as the issues we have tried to address herein suggest.

Notes * This article was made possible by the International Council for Canadian Studies, which awarded a short-term research grant to allow me to do research in Toronto and Montreal in August and September 2000, and by Bruno Ramirez, Angelo Principe, Marcel Martel, Gabriele Scardellato, Franca Iacovetta and, especially, Roberto Perin who made the trip and the research viable. Grazie, amici!. This article was translated by Jennifer Rodgers thanks to the International Journal of Canadian Studies. 1. Unless otherwise indicated, the information relating to the Brazilian case discussed in this article was taken essentially from Bertonha 1999c and 2001a. 2. In reality, in the period between the wars, various governments tried to organize their citizens living outside the country in defense of their interests. In Canada’s case, this occurred with the Finns, Hungarians, Poles, Germans, and other groups (Perin 1983). In Brazil, the huge Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Japanese communities, among others, were affected by the foreign policy of their nations of origin. That which set Italy apart was the strength and importance of its mobilization of communities outside the country as an instrument of Italian foreign policy. See Bertonha 1999b and 2001b. 3. See the data gathered in Gagliardetti (1934), which mentions 10 fasci all’estero (with two more isolated sections) in Canada, in contrast with 75, with 7 more isolated sections, in Brazil. The explanation for the greater expansion of fascist organizations in Brazil obviously derives from the substantially greater number of Italians residing in the country at that time. 4. One can note the impressive uniformity of the “fascist consuls” even in small acts. Mazzolini, for example, achieved great popularity among Italians in the state of São Paulo by visiting small cities and ranch towns never before visited by a consul. This is identical to the actions of Consul Brancucci in British Columbia in 1939, suggesting that the new fascist representatives left Rome with at least some basic directives in mind. For more on this subject, see Bertonha 2001a and Principe 1999. 5. For more about the importance of Italian transatlantic flights in the two countries, see Pautasso 1981; Liberati 1983 and 1984; Principe 1989; and Bertonha 2001a.

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6. The most significant, specific Canadian (and North American in general) example of fascist intrusion into associations is the Order of the Sons of Italy, an important organ of Italian Communities in North America, and for this precise reason, deeply linked to fascist efforts. Fascism managed to control the association, provoking a split with the anti-fascists who created rival societies. For more about this society, see Spada 1969; Perin 1982; Erasmi 1993; Principe 1980 and 1989; Biagi 1961; Painchaud 1988; and Scardellato 1995. 7. The absence of more in-depth studies of individual members of the Italian bourgeoisie in both Canadian and Brazilian historiography is remarkable. If this lack is impoverishing in Canada, it is even more so in Brazil, where the bourgeoisie of Italian origin (which did not primarily originate from the “padroni” system as it did in North America) was much larger and more powerful, controlling a substantial portion of Brazilian industry in the 1930s. Its major representative, Conde Francisco Matarazzo, was the owner of a huge Brazilian industrial empire at the time, with dozens of factories, hundreds of thousands of employees, and revenues that rivaled those of the largest Brazilian states. This is an unpardonable absence in Brazilian historiography which we have tried to diminish in Bertonha 1999 and 2000a. For references on the North American “padroni” and observations regarding the lack of studies on them, see also Gabaccia 1998. 8. Let us not forget the enormous effort put forth by the fascist government to reach out to young people of Italian descent throughout the world through schools, trips to Italy, summer camps, etc. See Principe 1989 and Pennacchio 1989 for more on the Canadian context. One point specific to Canada is that the slightly more evolved anti-fascist movement was able to establish at least a few anti-fascist youth groups to oppose fascism. This did not occur on the same scale as in Switzerland, for example, but it remains significant in contrast to the total inability of anti-fascist groups in Brazil to do any such thing. 9. Regarding the specific case of Canada, see Brandino 1977; Liberati 1983, 1984, and 1990; Perin 1983; Harney 1985 and 1989; Ramirez 1988; Zucchi 1988; and Salvatore 1995 and 1996. 10. We could say that ethnicity-based nationalism, typical of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, supported the spread of fascism in more diverse areas like Brazil and Canada and the maintenance of a nationalism more focused on the political and the “people-citizen-nation” relationship. Risorgimento,onthe other hand, typical of the first part of the 19th century, permitted, in the Plata River countries, the configuration of an ethnic Italian identity based on anti-fascism rather than fascism. See Hobsbawm 1990 and Bertonha 1998b and 1999d. 11. At this point, the figure of Mussolini is much better known than fascist doctrine itself. For more on this with relation to Canada, see Liberati 1982 and Salvatore 1996. 12. According to Principe and other authors (Levitt 1987), the strong bonds of friendship and solidarity that traditionally brought Italians and Jews together in Canada were determinants in turning local Italians against Mussolini’s anti- Semitic laws. We do not have data to verify the existence of a similar situation in São Paulo, although we can say that Italians in Brazil in general certainly rejected anti-Semitism. 13. According to the available information, even though fascism won the loyalty of most urban Italians (especially due to the firm support of local Italian elites), it was not until 1937 that the fascists managed to plant a faction in the city. This

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demonstrates a certain degree of resistance. See Temelini 1993 and Principe 1999. Moreover, according to Italian policy, there were more active anti-fascists in Windsor than in Toronto or Montreal, an enlightening fact. See Giana 1989 and Iacovetta 1996. 14. The fascism/Catholicism connection in the English-speaking world also managed to generate a degree of anti-fascist support unknown in the Latin universe, and especially in Brazil: Protestant churches. These Protestant churches included the Italian United [Methodist] Church, which decisively supported anti- fascist activities (supporting the Order of Italian Canadians, creating anti-fascist groups in various places, and publishing an Italian language newspaper, La Favilla, to combat fascism). These churches’ defense of the assimilation of Italian immigrants into Canadian society through Protestantism and abandon- ment of their ties to Italy really gave them no choice but to be the top-level enemies of fascism and Italian Catholics. See Spada 1969; Pautasso 1978a; Principe 1980, 1988, and 1999; and Pennacchio 1993 and 2000. 15. In the case of a Latin country like Brazil, obviously, exploitation of the theme of “Latinness” could not have been so well received as among the Québécois in Canada or the Walloons in Belgium. At most, we find brief references to “Latin solidarity” in some of the fascist propaganda directed at Brazil. See Liberati 1982, 1983, 1984, 1984a; Perin 1982; Principe 1999 and 2000; and Bertonha 2000b. 16. In this effort to gain the widest publication, there was no lack of efforts to organize camouflaged systems of control and propaganda directed at newspapers (through, for instance, the Brazilian Journalistic Union in São Paulo and the International Press Service in Montreal) to overcome the resistance of the largest newspapers (like the Toronto Star and O Estado de São Paulo) to fascism. See Pautasso1978; Liberati 1990; and Bertonha 1999c and 2000b. 17. As much in Brazil as in Canada, the police carefully watched the anti-fascists and members of other Italian leftist groups starting in the 1920s. The fascists, which garnered more sympathy from the state, were not considered a direct threat to that state. The police only started watching the fascists around the middle of the 1930s. See Liberati 1984, 1984a, 1984b, 1985, 1989, and 2000; McBride 1997; Whitaker 2000; and Bertonha 1999c and 2000b. 18. The strength or weakness of anti-fascism is really one of the keys in explaining the victory of fascism in both countries and its defeat in areas like France, Belgium, and the Plata River countries. A discussion of this topic will occur in a future article. For general information about Italian anti-fascism in Canada, see, in addition to those texts already cited, Principe 1984; Gaggino 1990; Liberati 1984b and 1985; and Iacovetta 1996. For general comparisons of Italian anti- fascist movements around the world, see Bertonha 1998a and 1999c. 19. Il Bollettino Italo Canadense of Toronto, for example, sympathized with the CUF (Canadian Union of Fascists) and used its printer to edit some publications for the fascist group. The famous writer Mario Duliani also worked both for Arcand’s newspaper and for the Italian Consulate, and he asserts that it was an Italian fascist who helped to organize a section of Arcand’s blueshirts in Windsor. There are also indications that some young Italians linked their militancy in the Partito Nazionale Fascista and the Canadian Union of Fascists in meetings of Arcand’s National Unity Party, which took place in Italian churches in Quebec. That is to say that there are indications that at least some sort of inter-fascist collaboration occurred. See Betcherman 1978; Robin 1992; and Principe 1999. 20. For more on fascism in Canada, see, among others, Bertonha 2002; Betcherman 1978; Delisle 1992 and 1998; and Robin 1992.

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21. The CNP, for example, had a division for Italians in Winnipeg. See Robin 1992, pp. 230-231. 22. Consul Brigidi, for instance, sent publications to the Fédération des clubs ouvriers and Consul Petrucci appreciated the Union nationale. Other than this, the St. Dennis section of the Canadian Nationalistic Party functioned alongside the local Casa d’Italia in 1938, and there are indications that members of Arcand’s party attended meetings of Toronto’s Casa d’Italia, which could scarcely have happened without approval from the Consulates. See Betcherman 1978; Robin 1992; and Principe 1999. 23. See Salvatore 1991, 1995, and 1996; Whitaker 2000; Scardellato 2000; Iacovetta 2000; Le Conte 1982; Ramirez 1988; Duliani 1994; Mazza 1994; Perin and Iacovetta 2000; Palmer 1998; Liberati 1983, 1989, and 2000; Cumbo 2000; Dreisziger 1989; Venturini 1989; Fainella 1984; Ciccocelli 1977; McBride 1997 and 2000; and Principe 2000, among others. 24. In the 1940s, the Japanese community in Brazil was already the largest Japanese community outside of Japan, as it has remained to date. At that time it totaled approximately 300 thousand people. Germans and their descendents numbered 1 million in 1940, the largest group of Germans in Latin America. For these numbers and recent information about Axis groups during the 1940s, see Getz 1987; Morais 2000; and Cytrycnowicz 2000. 25. For bibliographical information about the repression of Germans, Japanese, and other groups in Canada, see Hillmer 1988; and Perin 2000.

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193

Review Essay

Essai critique

Guy Beauregard

Diaspora Studies: Scattered Speculations

Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (Routledge, London, 2001) Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (Doubleday, Toronto, 2001) Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1999) Fred Wah, Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity: Critical Writing 1984-1999 (NeWest, Edmonton, Alberta, 2000)

In a concise definition, Radhika Subramanium defines diaspora as “[a] term traditionally associated with the Jewish exile, but now used in cultural theory to cover a range of territorial displacements, either forced, such as indenture and slavery, or voluntary emigration.” Subramanium goes on to underline that “[r]ecent formulations have stressed not only the complex ties of memory, nostalgia, and politics that bind the exile to an original homeland, but also sought to illuminate the lateral axes that link diasporic communities across national boundaries with the multiple other communitiesofthedispersedpopulation”(1996:144).Indeed,questionsof diaspora, understood in this rather loose sense, have played a pivotal role throughout the 1990s for scholars and cultural producers involved in the project of rethinking questions of identity, community and belonging. Important early work by British cultural studies scholars such as Stuart Hall (1990) and Paul Gilroy (1993) has been taken up and extended by US-based scholars such as Rey Chow (1993), James Clifford (1994), R. Radhakrishnan (1996) and Gayatri Spivak (1996) as well as Australia-based scholars such as Ien Ang (1994) and Vijay Mishra (1996). Collectively, these scholars have produced a dynamic body of work that speaks to the project of rethinking how cultural identities have been and continue to be reworked across a range of geographical locations. Diaspora studies should matter to scholars in Canadian Studies interested in the complexities of cultural identities within and beyond the boundaries of the Canadian nation. An important attempt to address such concerns appeared in the 1998 special issue of the International Journal of Canadian Studies on the topic of “Diaspora and Exile.” As Isabel Carrera

Suarez wrote in the Introduction, the essays collected in this special issue “coincide with recent theory in conveying a dynamic notion of diaspora as a process of constant change, constructed through remembrance and (re)creation, a process which generates an ever more complex and dialogic definition of Canadian nationality and identities” (1998: 5). Of particular interest in this important special issue is an extensively researched essay by Alan Anderson (1998) that seeks to articulate a theoretical framework for understanding a wide range of “diaspora minorities” in Canada and elsewhere. As such, Anderson contributes to a growing body of overviews on diaspora (e.g., Cohen, 1997) while usefully intervening in prevailing models of Canadian ethnic studies. As Anderson states: “Canadian scholars have contributed very substantially to a comprehensive understanding of diasporas, although … they have not attempted to provide an overarching, theoretical framework” (1998: 27). The books under review in this essay are part of recent attempts in Canada and elsewhere to come to terms with the implications of diaspora for variously situated communities and cultural producers. These books—and especially the two books published in Canada—do not attempt to provide the sort of “overarching, theoretical framework” called for by Anderson. Indeed, the two books published in Canada address the discontinuities of diasporic experiences precisely through discontinuous structures and narratives. They thereby participate in the process of what Diana Brydon has elsewhere described as “exploring the resonances of metaphor and abandoning the linear logic of argument for the discontinuous and apparently eclectic logic of associative linkages, verbal play and a mixing of methodologies” (1997: 247).

***

Aihwa Ong’s Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transna- tionality and Ien Ang’s On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West are long-awaited, book-length elaborations of important articles published in the 1990s (Ong, 1993; Ang, 1994; see also Ong and Nonini, 1997). Together, these books investigate (among other topics) what Rey Chow (1998) has called “Chineseness as a theoretical problem.” Flexible Citizenship is, in some respects, the most substantial of the four books under review. Ong argues that “in the era of globalization, individuals as well as governments develop a flexible notion of citizenship and sovereignty as strategies to accumulate capital and power” (1999: 6). She defines the notion of flexible citizenship as “the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation, travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions” (1999: 6); the notion refers particularly to “the strategies and effects of mobile managers, technocrats, and professionals seeking to both circumvent and benefit from different nation-state regimes by selecting

198 Diaspora Studies: Scattered Speculations different sites for investment, work, and family relocation” (1999: 112). Through an elaboration of this key term, Ong builds upon and extends David Harvey’s influential notion of “flexible accumulation” (1989: 141-72) as a defining feature of late capitalism by arguing that “[n]ew strategies of flexible accumulation have promoted a flexible attitude toward citizenship” (1999: 17). In pursuing this line of inquiry, Ong explicitly distances herself from “decline of the nation-state” accounts that have proliferated over the past decade. Indeed, as Ong argues, transnationality has stimulated “a new, more flexible and complex relationship between capital and governments” (1999: 21), a thesis elaborated most convincingly in what she calls systems of “graduated sovereignty” (1999: 215) and forms of “variegated citizenship” (1999: 217) in Southeast Asia. In this respect, Ong follows, as few scholars can, Gayatri Spivak’s injunction to keep our focus on transnational migrancy and export processing zones in Asia to account for conditions of late capitalism (Spivak, 1999: 414). This last point is crucial. InherfocusonformsofmodernChinesetransnationality,Ongisnotputting forward a “culturalist” explanation that locates the cause of “flexibility” in “Chinese” or “Asian” cultures; she is in fact highly critical of what she calls “contemporary diasporan-Chinese chauvinism” (1999: 56) and the “reified Confucian values” that “operate as normalizing truth claims to regulate the newly affluent populations” (1999: 74). As she concludes in her chapter on what she calls “the Pacific Shuttle”: “there may not be anything uniquely ‘Chinese’ about flexible personal discipline, disposition, and orientation; rather, they are the expressions of a habitus that is finely tuned to the turbulence of late capitalism” (1999: 136). In this manner, Ong contributes to our understanding of the processes of globalization. Through her attempt to produce “an ethnography of transnational practices and linkages” (1999: 5), she rigorously distinguishes her approach from US-centred accounts of migration, from ungrounded theoretical accounts of transnational “flows” (e.g., Appadurai, 1996), and from celebratory accounts of diasporic subjectivities that will somehow produce “progressive political subjects who will undermine or challenge oppressive nationalist ideologies (and global capitalism?)” (1999: 14). These important interventions in the field of transnational cultural studies are, however, undercut by the book’s rather strident concluding call for anthropologists to take their rightful place in current debates about globalization, a call that rests on what strikes me as an overly rapid dismissal of cultural studies and postcolonial studies—and the humanities in general!—as “anemic” (1999: 242). Ong’s insistence on linking political economy and culture in understanding transnationality is trenchant and deserves a wide multidisciplinary readership. But her wholesale dismissal of transnational cultural studies as a potentially generative field of inquiry unnecessarily criticizes the multidisciplinary audience that has taken her ideas seriously throughout the 1990s.

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On Not Speaking Chinese is the result of what Ang calls “an almost decade-long engagement with the predicaments of ‘Chineseness’ in diaspora” (2001: vii). Echoing the work of Stuart Hall, Ang asserts that “Chineseness is a category whose meanings are not fixed and pregiven, but constantly renegotiated and rearticulated, both inside and outside China” (2001: 25). What distinguishes “Chineseness” from other forms of diasporic identity are “the extraordinarily strong originary pull of the ‘homeland’ as a result of the prominent place of ‘China’ in the Western imagination” and “an equally strong and persistent tendency within Chinese culture itself to consider itself as central to the world” (2001: 32). In this context, Ang attempts to develop what she calls a critical diasporic cultural politics that would “privilege neither host country nor (real or imagined) homeland, but precisely keep a creative tension between ‘where you’re from’and ‘where you’re at’” (2001: 35). But despite arguing for the potential productivity of diasporic positioning, Ang goes on in subsequent chapters to argue that “a narrow focus on diaspora” hinders “a more truly transnational, if you like, cosmopolitan imagination of what it means to live in the world ‘as a single place’” (2001: 77). In short, Ang insists that “the discourse of diaspora is authorized in principle by a fundamental notion of closure: it postulates the existence of closed and limited, mutually exclusiveuniversesofethnicsameness”(2001:83). Angadmirablyrefuses what Rey Chow has called “the myth of consanguinity” (1993: 24). But one may well wonder how her theorization of “ethnic sameness” as a necessarily constitutive feature of diasporas may account for non-eth- nically imagined diasporas such as the Macanese, for whom, as Debora O has discussed, ethnicity “has always been a troubling and multifarious thing” (2001: 85). Scholars of Canadian Studies will find Ang’s chapters on “negotiating multiculturalism” of particular interest. Despite some unnecessary repetition in the essays collected in this section (especially in passages analyzing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party), Ang’s analysis of Australian multiculturalism—particularly its “ambivalent and apparently contradictory process of inclusion by virtue of othering (2001: 139)—de- servestheattentionofscholarsworkingthroughsimilarconcernsinCanada (as does, I should add, similarly powerful work produced by other Australia-based scholars such as Ghassan Hage [1994]). The problems inherent in multiculturalism (as an attempt to spatially manage forms of cultural difference within the framework of a nation-state) lead directly to Ang’s concluding section on hybridity and what she calls the problem of living “together-in-difference” (2001: 193). At this point in her argument, and indeed throughout the book, Ang suggests that the deployment of the concept of hybridity can help to “problematize the concept of ethnicity which underlies the dominant discourses of both ‘diaspora’ and ‘multiculturalism’” (2001: 199). In her concluding remarks, Ang adeptly analyzes the appropriation of the concept of hybridity—what she calls “liberal hybridism” (2001: 195)—to warn against “the depoliticization

200 Diaspora Studies: Scattered Speculations involved in the reduction of hybridity to happy fusion and synthesis” (2001: 197). One can remain suspicious of the gesture “beyond identities” used to frame the concluding section of the book while still admiring Ang’s commitment to addressing “complicated entanglement” (2001: 194) and “the fundamental uneasiness inherent in our global condition of togetherness-in-difference” (2001: 200).

***

Fred Wah’s Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity and Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, both of which are published in Canada, differ from Ong’s and Ang’s books in terms of the potential audiences to whom they speak and the scholarly fields to which they contribute. Ong’s and Ang’s critical investigations of aspects of the Chinese diaspora are published by major multinational presses (Duke University Press and Routledge, respectively) and draw their symbolic capital from their contributions to transnational cultural studies (Ong’s dismissal of this field notwithstanding). Wah’s and Brand’s books, by contrast, are published by Canadian presses (in Wah’s case, by a small press in Edmonton) and address the topics of hybridity and diaspora in a more literary, personal, and explicitly discontinuous style. Wah and Brand have won the Governor General’s Award for their poetry and have recently produced powerful and fully realized literary prose works that investigate the complexities of diasporic experiences: Wah’s “biotext” Diamond Grill, which focuses on a Chinese-operated cafe in the interior of British Columbia in the 1950s (Wah, 1996), and Brand’s novel At the Full and Change of the Moon, which focuses on the lives of the descendents of a rebelling slave in Trinidad in the 1820s (Brand, 1999). Faking It and A Map to the Door of No Return are perhaps best thought of as complementary shadow texts to these important recent works of diasporic literature published in Canada. Wah’s Faking It is the most stylistically and methodologically eclectic of the books under review: it contains, as Wah writes, “a mixture of forms: essay, interview, review, poem, letter, journal” (2000: 2-3). The spine of the book consists of a series of essays, which date from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s, whose titles riff on the word poetics: “Strang(l)ed Poetics,” “A Poetics of Ethnicity,” “Half-Bred Poetics,” “Racing the Lyric Poetic,” “Poetics of the Potent,” “AMolecular Poetics.” Wah does not use the term “poetics” to designate “the study of or theory about literature”; he instead uses it to refer more generally to “the tools designed or located by writers and artists to initiate movement and change” (2000: 51). These essays establish Wah as a serious reader of contemporary writing, through which he develops evolving responses to theories of language, genre, subjectivity, ethnicity, and “race.” As Wah writes, “[p]olitical and social frames have surfaced that enable a broad range of poetic singularities, particularly for marginalized writers (and their histories)” (2000: 44). The essays in Faking

201 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes

It analyze this broad range of poetic possibilities, ranging from “an alignment with mainstream and traditional strategies” to “tactics of refusal and reterritorialization” (2000: 51). Wah clearly aligns himself with the latter possibilities, in the process emphasizing “the unsettled and dissonant noise outside the hypocrisy of permanence and purity” (2000: 260). The eight short “Strangle” pieces that are interspersed between the more stylistically conventional essays are significant in this respect as attempts to “push at the boundaries of more intentional compositions” (2000: 1). These forms of dissonance signal Wah’s critical commitment to “keep things open (and alive)” (2000: 231). Amidst the dissonance, readers will also find generative, open dialogues in interviews with Ashok Mathur and P.K.Leung; an expansive, open seriality in the “China Journal”; and a marvelous short “biotext” Wah calls “Was Eight.” Evident throughout is Wah’s commitment to the ethics of reading and writing. “To write is to move,” writes Wah. “Dispersal of a presumed and constructed world” (2000: 18). Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return is less eclectic than Wah’s book in mixing genres of writing but equally committed to producing a discontinuous narrative structure. As apersonal memoir mixed with critical observations, it consists of an extended series of short meditations on being part of the African diaspora in the Americas in the aftermath of transatlantic slavery. The Door of No Return refers to the ports on the west coast of the African continent through which enslaved Africans passed. In Brand’s book, the Door takes on enormous significance as a point of passage and as an imagined marker of irrevocable historical discontinuity: There are maps to the Door of No Return. The physical door. They are well worn, gone over by cartographer after cartographer, refined from Ptolemy’s Geographia to orbital photographs and magnetic field imaging satellites. But to the Door of No Return which is illuminated in the consciousness of Blacks in the Diaspora there are no maps. This door is not mere physicality. It is a spiritual location. It is also perhaps a psychic destination. Since leaving was never voluntary, return was, and still may be, an intention, however deeply buried. There is as it says no way in; no return. (2001: 1). As a poetic notebook with an emphatically serial structure, A Map to the DoorofNoReturnmovesmetaphoricallyandellipticallythroughquestions of diaspora. In one of the many powerful passages that follow, Brand narrates a simple exchange between a Black man driving a bus and a Salish womanaskingfordirectionsonGranvilleStreetindowntownVancouver: she asks the driver through lost paths to conduct her through her own country. So the driver through lost maps tells the woman of a lost country her way and the price she should pay, which seems little enough—$1.50—to find your way. The woman with no countrypaysandsitsdown. Themanwithnocountrydriveson.

202 Diaspora Studies: Scattered Speculations

ItisonlytheGranvillebus,surely.Butabuswherearaggedmirage of histories comes into a momentary realization. (2001: 220-21) In reading passages like this, the point readers should recognize is not merely Brand’s “literary” exemption from producing a singular, linear, scholarly argument; readers should instead recognize the ethical writerly imperative undertaken by Brand (and also Wah) to represent, in the very structureofthebook,theformsofhistoricaldisplacementanddiscontinuity that characterize diasporic experiences. The gaps and points of incomple- teness in Brand’s narrative, alongside the passages of considerable beauty and insight, form an extended invitation to its readers to collect fragments and rethink the ethics of reading representations of diaspora: its profound losses and, as Brand represents in the exchange on the Granville bus, its possibilities for imagined and actual social solidarities.

***

Contemporary diaspora studies does not lend itself to a simple synthesis. Contributions to transnational cultural studies continue to generate symbolic capital internationally even when the significance of the field is disavowed. Recent literary works produced in Canada cannot tap into this source of capital but nevertheless speak powerfully about the complexities of various diasporic histories and imaginings. Late capitalism continues to displace people, migrant and indigenous and descendents of enslaved populations, in the North and in the South. Diaspora continues to signify profound sadness and loss for many members of diasporic communities but also potential moments of connection and solidarity. Contemporary diaspora studies asks scholars in Canadian Studies and elsewhere to rethink the ethics of discussing the often violent rearrangements of communities and collective identifications in what Spivak (1996) calls the transnational world.

Note Thank you to Debora O for reading and generously commenting on an earlier draft of this essay.

Bibliography Anderson, Alan B. “Diaspora and Exile: A Canadian and Comparative Perspective.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 18 (1998): 13-30. Ang, Ien. “On Not Speaking Chinese: Postmodern Ethnicity and the Politics of Diaspora.” New Formations 24 (1994): 1-18. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Brand, Dionne. At the Full and Change of the Moon. Toronto: Knopf, 1999. Brydon, Diana. “Sliding Metaphors: Rethinking the Nation in Global Contexts.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 16 (1997): 247-51. Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora: Tactic of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.

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—. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” Boundary 2 25.3 (1998): 1-24. Clifford, James. “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9.3 (1994): 302-38. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCLP, 1997. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Hage Ghassan. “Locating Multiculturalism’s Other: A Critique of Practical Tolerance.” New Formations 24 (1994): 19-34. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Dif- ference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. 222-37. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Mishra, Vijay. “The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian Diaspora.” Textual Practice 10.3 (1996): 421-47. O, Debora. “Of Portable Identities and Para-sitic Homes: Macau in Diaspora.” West Coast Line 34.3 (2001): 83-100. Ong, Aihwa. “On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora.” Positions 1.3 (1993): 745-78. Ong, Aihwa and Donald M. Nonini, eds. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism. New York: Routledge, 1997. Radhakrishnan, R. Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Diasporas Old and New: Women in the Transnational World.” Textual Practice 10.2 (1996): 245-69. —. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999. Suarez, Isabel Carrera. “Présentation/Introduction.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 18 (1998): 5-11. Subramanium, Radhika. “Diaspora.” A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Ed. Michael Payne. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. 144. Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton, AB: NeWest, 1996.

204 Authors / Auteurs

Ian ANGUS, Department of Humanities, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6. Guy BEAUREGARD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of English, University of British Columbia, 397-1873 East Mall, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 1Z1. João Fábio BERTONHA, Departmento de História, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Topo Avenida Colombo, 5790 - CEP 87020-900 Maringá, Paraná, Brasil. Marijke HUITEMA, 4837 Petworth Road, R.R. #1, Harrowsmith, Ontario, K0H 1V0. David JEFFERESS, PhD Candidate, Department of English, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L9. Brian S. OSBORNE, PhD. Professor, Department of Geography, Queen’s University, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D201, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6. Michael RIPMEESTER, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Room C - 324, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, St. Catharines, Ontario, L2S 3A1. Julie RAK, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Alberta, 3-5 Humanities Centre, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E5. Patrick J. SMITH, Department of Political Science, Institute of Governance Studies, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6. Cynthia SUGARS, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5.

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Le Conseil international d’études canadiennes lançait en 2000 un projet de recherche portant sur les transferts culturels et qui fera l’objet d’une conférence en mai 2003. La RIÉC entend consacrer son numéro 27 à cette question et invite toute personne intéressée par cette question de nous soumettre un texte. Ce thème pourrait comprendre, entre autres sujets, les mécanismes des transferts culturels au Canada et à l’étranger; l’impact de ceux-ci sur les cultures dites nationales, en particulier la culture canadienne, selon des perspectives historiques et contemporaines; le métissage culturel et son impact sur l’identité nationale canadienne ou étrangère, au présent, au passé et à l’avenir; l’efficacité ou de l’inefficacité des politiques protectionistes en matière de culture au Canada et à l’étranger; ou l’influence de la culture canadienne sur le marché mondial des cultures au XXe et XXIe siècle. La RIÉC accueillera toute autre soumission reliée à ce thème. S.v.p. faire parvenir votre texte et un résumé (100 mots maximum), avant le 28 février 2003, au Secrétariat de la RIÉC : 75, rue Albert, S-908, Ottawa, Canada, K1P 5E7. Tél. : (613) 789-7834; téléc. : (613) 789-7830; courriel : [email protected]. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES

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Health and Well-Being in Canada

Volume 29 (Spring 2004)

The Canadian State has, from time to time, come to the defense of “real” Canadian values, based on public involvement and a sense of community. Over the past several years, however, health care has become an area of confrontation between the federal government and one provincial government in particular. The Government of Alberta has proposed nothing less than an attempt to reshape Canadian identity by developing a new health care system patterned on the U.S. model that leans heavily toward private sector involvement. In this confrontation, we see how the issue of health touches on a variety of complex questions that go far beyond the specific dimension of managing health care services insofar as two sometimes contradictory logics of Canadian identity are at loggerheads.

The issue of health also extends to the concept of well-being in the broader sense. What do we mean when we say that someone is “doing all right” in Canada? On the other hand, is it possible to speak of Canadian malaises? In what ways do discourses on Canadian rights, immigration, ageing, youth, leisure, women’s health issues, sexuality, and work relate to the overall issue of health in a Canadian context? In what ways are these issues of health and well-being represented through academic, political, and cultural (including literature, the media, and the visual arts) channels?

The IJCS invites submissions that address issues of health and well-being in a variety of dimensions, including comparative studies that evaluate the Canadian experience in relation to other experiences throughout the world.

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La santé et le bien-être au Canada

Numéro 29 (printemps 2004)

L’État canadien s’est parfois porté à la défense des « vraies » valeurs canadiennes, fondées sur l’engagement public et un sens de la communauté. Or, le domaine de la santé a fait l’objet au cours des dernières années d’un affrontement entre le gouvernement fédéral et une province en particulier, l’Alberta. À l’opposé de la vision du fédéral, le gouvernement provincial de l’Alberta prétend ni plus ni moins renouveler l’identité canadienne en développant un nouveau système de santé inspiré du modèle américain où le recours au secteur privé deviendra une voie importante.

Cette question de la santé touche donc des aspects complexes qui débordent la seule dimension de la gestion des services de santé dans la mesure où deux logiques identitaires « canadian » parfois contradictoires s’y affrontent. Puis elle s’étend au bien- être dans le sens le plus large. Qu’est-ce qu’est « être bien dans sa peau » au Canada? En revanche, y a-t-il des « malaises » canadiens ? Comment les discours sur les droits, les loisirs, la jeunesse, le vieillissement, l’immigration, la santé des femmes, la sexualité et le travail visent-ils la santé dans le contexte canadien ? Quels sont les modes de représentation de ces questions de santé à travers la production culturelle (littérature, médias, arts visuels), scienti- fique et étatique question.

La RIÉC invite donc les soumissions qui s’adressent à la question de santé dans ces multiples dimensions, y compris les études comparées qui mettent l’expérience canadienne à l’épreuve d’autres expériences autour du monde.

S.v.p. faire parvenir votre texte (et un résumé de 100 mots max.) d’ici le 1er août 2003 au Secrétariat de la Revue internationale d’études canadiennes : 75, rue Albert, S-908, Ottawa, Canada, K1P 5E7. Tél. : (613) 789-7834; téléc. : (613) 789-7830; courriel : [email protected]. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES

Call for Open Topic Articles

The Editorial Board of the IJCS has decided to broaden the format of the Journal. While each future issue of the IJCS will include a set of articles addressing a given theme, as in the past, it will also include several articles that do not do so. Beyond heightening the general interest of each issue, this changeshouldalsofacilitateparticipationintheJournalbytheinternational community of Canadianists. Accordingly, the Editorial Board welcomes manuscripts on any topic in the study of Canada. As in the past, all submissions must undergo peer review. Final decisions regarding publication are made by the Editorial Board. Often, accepted articles need to undergo some revision. The IJCS undertakes that upon receiving a satisfactorily revised version of a submission that it has accepted for publication, it will make every effort to ensure that the article appears in the next regular issue of the Journal. Please forward paper and abstract (one hundred words) to the IJCS at the following address: 75 Albert, S-908, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5E7. Fax: (613) 789-7830; e-mail: [email protected].

REVUE INTERNATIONALE D’ÉTUDES CANADIENNES

Soumission d’articles hors-thèmes

La Revue internationale d’études canadiennes a adopté une politique visant àmodifierquelquepeusonformat.Eneffet,laRevuecontinueraàoffrirune série d’articles portant sur un thème retenu, mais dorénavant elle publiera aussi des articles hors-thèmes. Le Comité de rédaction examinera donc toute soumission qui porte sur un sujet relié aux études canadiennes indépendamment du thème retenu. Bien entendu comme toute soumission, celle-ci fera l’objet d’une évaluation par pairs. La décision finale concernant la publication d’un texte est rendue par le Comité de rédaction. Une décision d’accepter de publier un texte est souvent accompagnée d’une demande de révision. Une fois qu’elle aura reçu une version révisée qu’elle jugera acceptable, la Revue essaiera, dans la mesure du possible, d’inclure cet article dans le numéro suivant la date d’acceptation finale. S.v.p. faire parvenir votre texte et un résumé (100 mots maximum) au Secrétariat de la RIÉC : 75, rue Albert, bureau 908, Ottawa, Canada, K1P 5E7. Téléc. : (613) 789-7830; courriel : [email protected]. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES REVUE INTERNATIONALE D’ÉTUDES CANADIENNES

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