breen, Alberta=s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board by Sean Goulas 94 cruikshank, Close Ties: Railways, Government, and the Board of Railway Commissioners, 1851B1933 by J.J.B. Forster 97 tomblin, Ottawa and the Outer Provinces: The Challenge of Regional Integration in Canada by Garth Stevenson 99 kealey, Workers and Canadian History by David Montgomery 101 waldram, herring, and young, Aboriginal Health in Canada: Historical, Cultural, and Epidemiological Perspectives by Hartmut B. Krentz 103 mouat, Roaring Days: Rossland=s Mines and the History of British Columbia by David Frank 105 steedman, suschnigg, and buse, eds, Hard Lessons: The Mine Mill Union in the Canadian Labour Movement by Jeremy Mouat 108 bumsted, The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: An Illustrated History by Gregory S. Kealey 110 cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay: Merchant-Settler Relations in Newfoundland, 1785B1855 by David Monod 111 crellin, Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience by Colin D. Howell 114 hiller and harrington, eds, The Newfoundland National Convention, 1946B1948 by David MacKenzie 116 mackenzie, ed., Documents on Canadian Relations / Documents relatifs aux relations extérieures du Canada, vols. 14 and 15 by J.L. Granatstein 118 pickersgill, Seeing Canada Whole: A Memoir by D.J. Bercuson 120 sharp, Which Reminds Me B A Memoir by D.J. Bercuson 120 laforest, Trudeau and the End of a Canadian Dream by H. Blair Neatby 122 mccall and clarkson, Trudeau and Our Times, vol. 2: The Heroic Delusion by H. Blair Neatby 122 struthers, The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920B1970 by Shirley Tillotson 125 clarke, The Siege of Fort Cumberland 1776: An Episode in the American Revolution by Olaf U. Janzen 127 williams, First in the Field: Gault of the Patricias by Carman Miller 129 waiser, Park Prisoners: The Untold Sory of Western Canada=s National Parks, 1915B1946 by Leslie Bella 130 greenhous, harris, johnston, and rawling, The Crucible of War, 1939B1945: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, vol. 3, by Dean F. Oliver 132 christie, Ocean Bridge: The History of RAF Ferry Command by Marc Milner 134 http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 beeby, Cargo of Lies: The True Story of a Nazi Double Agent in Canada by Larry Hannant 137 whitaker and marcuse, Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945B1957 by Gregory A. Johnson 139 lunan, The Making of a Spy: A Political Odyssey by Larry Hannant 141 94 The Canadian Historical Review
gourdeau, Les délices de nos coeurs: Marie de l=Incarnation et ses pensionnaires amérindiennes, 1639B1672 by Kathryn A. Young 143 gallat-morin, Jean Girard: Musicien en Nouvelle-France, Bourges, 1696BMontréal 1765 by Gordon E. Smith 145 lavallée, La Prairie en Nouvelle-France, 1647B1760: Etude d=histoire sociale by Catherine Desbarats 147 lamonde, Louis-Antoine Dessaulles: un seigneur libéral et anticlérical by Colin M. Coates 149 choquette, The Oblate Assault on Canada=s Northwest by Jacqueline Gresko 151 fraser, Church, College, and Clergy: A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844B1994 by Marguerite Van Die 153 burkinshaw, Pilgrims in Lotus Land: Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917B1981 by Elsie Watts 155 prang, A Heart at Leisure from Itself: Caroline Macdonald of Japan by A. Hamish Ion 157 seager, The World=s Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893 by Ramsay Cook 159 diamond, cronk, and van rosen, Visions of Sound: Musical Instruments of First Nations Communities in Northeastern America by Thomas Vennum Jr 161 snow, The Iroquois by Conrad E. Heidenreich 164 reid, Myth, Symbol, and Colonial Encounter: British and Mi=kmaq in Acadia, 1700B1867 by Charles A. Martijn 165 peers, The Ojibwa of Western Canada, 1780B1970 by Toby Morantz 167 mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America by J.A. Brandão 169 pettipas, Severing the Ties That Bind: Government Repression of Indigenous Religious Ceremonies on the Prairies by Mary-Ellen Kelm 171 pagden, Lords of All the Worlds: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c.1500Bc.1800 by Olive Patricia Dickason 173 mcclintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest by Carolyn Strange 175 young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race by Mariana Valverde 177 barman, sutherland, and wilson, eds, Children, Teachers & Schools in the History of British Columbia by Rebecca Priegert Coulter 179 knafla and binnie, eds, Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal History by Philip Sworden 181 phillips, loo, and lewthwaite, eds, Essays in the History of Canadian Law, vol. 5: Crime and Criminal Justice by Nancy Parker 183
Alberta=s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board. david h. breen. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1993. Pp. lxii, 800, illus. $39.95
This hefty tome describes effectively Alberta=s attempt to rationalize its most lucrative natural resource. The province=s first oil producers worked under the
conservation efforts to reduce this waste experimented with a number of methods, including minimum well spacing, common carrier and purchaser provisions, >unitization= (which treated all reservoirs as a single producing unit), and improved recovery techniques. These first rationalizing attempts, introduced primarily in Texas, Indiana, and Oklahoma, found their way into Canadian conservation efforts. The creation of Alberta=s Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board (pngcb) in 1938, later called the Oil and Gas Conservation Board (1957B71) and later still the Energy Resources Conservation Board (1971B), concentrated the province=s petroleum conservation expertise into one regulatory body and serves as the subject for Breen=s discussion. The book=s introduction, the first of five sections, provides a brief overview of the historiography of oil conservation and introduces the reader to a number of the engineering terms. The second section recounts the beginnings of oil conservation in Alberta from the first bituminous fountains discovered in the late nineteenth century until the founding of the pngcb in 1938. The largest part of the book chronicles the efforts of this board to educate the oil industry on efficient drilling and conservation techniques before and after the immense Leduc discovery in 1947. A well-structured, concise con- clusion summarizes Breen=s argument. A glossary, conversion tables, bibliography, and ten appendices, including a lengthy description on field management of the conservation board from 1948 to 1958, round out the book. Breen attributes the success of Alberta=s oil conservation board to four factors. First, the legal and structural environment in Alberta was unique. Unlike similar conservation efforts in Texas and Oklahoma, the wide-ranging mandate of the pngcb was
Close Ties: Railways, Government, and the Board of Railway Com- missioners, 1851B1933. ken cruikshank. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen=s University Press 1991. Pp. xvi, 287, $49.95 http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 Ken Cruikshank has written a decisive book about the dynamics of regulating business. The example he explores is of particular im- portance to the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries B railways. He makes it clear, however, that his conclusions have ana- Book Reviews 97
lytical importance outside the scope of this first big Canadian busi- ness. The drive for regulating railways arose out of the regional monopolies that railways exercised and the often legitimate fear that the freight- rates charges were monopolistic in character. Such fear arose conjoined with many towns= and cities= desire for entrepôt status, as promised by early railways. As railways shifted to integrated systems in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, such fear evolved into concerns over differential freight rates. Municipalities and larger governing units, shippers, manufacturers, consumers, and railways themselves were bound into interest-group struggles over rates. When some groups became dissatisfied with existing mechanisms for the resolution of conflict, new mechanisms were sought or created. A complex of overlapping, potentially conflicting institutional structures was created over time: competition was encouraged, contractual agreements were struc- tured to control rates, arbitration mechanisms were established by railways, the Railway Committee of the Privy Council was given limited regulatory powers in 1888, and the Board of Railway Commissioners was ultimately established in 1904 B all were crowned by the core political processes of the federal government. Described in this way, the argument confirms some existing per- spectives B but Cruikshank does unexpected things with it. His clarity of exposition is remarkable. Chapter 2 provides, for example, a superb explanation of the railways= complex (compare his with Darling=s, for example), innumerable considerations in the setting of freight rates, superimposed on a good discussion of efforts at regulation through contractual obligation. Setting freight rates was experiential, rooted in railway managers= sense of competition and what the market for any particular product would bear. No wonder the disputes arising out of those rates were so tendentious! The Board of Railway Commissioners surely seemed the crowning achievement of regulation for contemporaries. Shaped in the progressives= expectation of expert government, designed by an economist (Simon James McLean) with all the latest of that craft=s tools at his disposal, structured to be independent of political and judicial interference, the board was the best disputes resolution mechanism that could be devised at the turn of the century. Yet this, too, as Cruikshank describes, did not suffice. Whatever the expectations, the board did not function as a court of law but as an office of arbitration or mediation, seeking to reach compromise decisions among myriad conflicting interests. Regulating freight rates emerged as a political art, rather than a science. This approach http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 functioned until the First World War, when the railways faced rapidly escalating costs B and losses and failure B under a controlled revenue environment. The board, under some political prodding, significantly increased rates without seeking its usual via media, and 98 The Canadian Historical Review
thus delegitimized itself. In an environment where freight rates were increasingly viewed as tools for regional economic development, this initiative was unacceptable both to the West and to the Maritimes, and the regions and interests turned to government to right the perceived wrongs of the board. In this way, the regulatory process became layered, and from these disjointed, unintegrated layerings of regulatory structures Cruikshank derives the notion of regulatory pluralism B that several evolutionary, coexisting regulatory organizations were useful or necessary in dealing with a dynamic and multifaceted regulatory problem. Although regulatory pluralism is an intriguing concept, there are some uncertainties in the way Cruikshank deals with it. The theory implies institutional concurrency; in describing the processes of the development of railway regulation, he essentially describes sequential institutions meeting new challenges, and some institutions atrophying in time. The only two institutions that do appear to have genuine concurrency in dealing with freight rates are the Board of Railway Commissioners and the federal government B a situation that leads to tensions that the board has difficulty in enduring. The pluralism he describes, in electrician=s terms, is more serial than parallel. Moreover, his presentation has a proscriptive tinge, and some readers may have the unhappy feeling that he is defending institutional complexes made passé by current economic pressures: fiscal cutbacks, rationalization, and deregulation all militate against regulatory pluralism. Do these distinctions deny the validity of his argument? I think not. Legal and regulatory frameworks remain as functional entities and in evolutionary change as long as they are used and perform distinct functions, even as they overlap. In that sense the attack one might posit against the structure of institutional regulation that Cruikshank proposes, based on assumptions about the efficiency of unified, tightly integrated structures, simply cannot hold. The organizations that model this efficiency, corporations in the private sector, are constantly in flux, reorganizing, shedding parts, acquiring new ones, and layering over each other in partially competitive systems out of which arise both enormous waste and what we know as progress. Should regulatory systems be much different? At the same time, Cruikshank delivers a sharp attack on the capture theory of regulation, insofar as conflicting business and community interest groups effectively prevented capture of the regulatory process by the railway industry. Indeed, what Cruikshank traces are some of the early manifestations of a pluralistic, interest-group-driven system of government in Canada. http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 A regulatory structure was simply a powerful expression of this groundswell. Effectively, this is a book of social science, though it does not explicitly claim to be. It is history, of course, in its careful attention to detail, in its building of sequences of events and human interactions Book Reviews 99
over time, and in its view of the order and chaos of human activity. But its theoretical approach is directed to a broad range of social scientists B historians, sociologists, political scientists, economists, and students of organization and governance. Typographical errors are relatively few, though there is a sentence at the bottom of page 22 that should have a
Ottawa and the Outer Provinces: The Challenge of Regional Integration in Canada. stephen g. tomblin. Toronto: Lorimer 1995. Pp. viii, 214. $19.95
Regionalism remains an important aspect of the Canadian experience, despite the emergence of post-industrial politics and the growing preoccupation with gender, race, and other social cleavages associated with section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Although familiar as a concept, regionalism is not always easy to define or explain, and the efforts of social scientists and historians to cast light upon the phenomenon of regionalism in Canada have not moved very far beyond the insights provided by Harold Innis more than sixty years ago. Stephen Tomblin=s book is an interesting contribution to the lite- rature on regionalism by a political scientist with western roots who now teaches at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Despite a misleading title, which may well have emanated from the publisher=s marketing division, the book is not primarily about federal-provincial relations. Quebec, to come to terms with regionalism, and the impact of regionalism on their own behaviour. Tomblin argues that
Willy-nilly, it seems to give provincial governments a relatively larger role in
Workers and Canadian History. gregory s. kealey. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen=s University Press 1995. Pp. xxiv, 458. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper
Gregory S. Kealey is an insightful and influential interpreter of the working-class experience in Canada. As author of two path-breaking books about Ontario workers, editor of several important collections of essays, and editor/director of Labour/Le Travail, he has left his http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 imprint clearly on the creatively contentious terrain of Canadian labour history. In Workers and Canadian History, Kealey has collected twelve essays, which he had published between 1981 and 1990, each of Book Reviews 101
which represents part of an effort to conceptualize Canadian working-class development in a way
http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 from craftsmen=s self-regulation, through struggles for control by union rules, to the embattled collective bargaining under the direction of the international union that was evident in the eight- hour-day struggle of 1903B8. Here, as in his discussion of iron- moulders= unionism elsewhere in the book, Kealey reveals the way 102 The Canadian Historical Review
that international markets and organizations interacted with decisive Ontario events, such as the 1872 movement for the nine- hour day. The second case-study examines the Orange lodges of Toronto. Although Kealey=s earlier book on Toronto=s workers had already demonstrated the preponderance of working-class membership in those lodges and their legacy of fraternalism, the 1984 article reproduced here traces the links of the Orangemen to the governing corporation, explains the role of these particular workers in the often violent repression of reformers after 1837, and illuminates the complex political controversies surrounding efforts to suppress violent crowds in Toronto. There is no trace of
Aboriginal Health in Canada: Historical, Cultural, and Book Reviews 103
Epidemiological Perspectives. james b. waldram, d. ann herring, and t. kue young. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995. Pp. xii, 334. $50.99 cloth, $18.95 paper
This book uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine health and health-care issues among contemporary Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The authors contribute their particular perspectives and expertise in investigating this complex issue. They discuss how past biological, cultural, political, and economic conditions have contributed, and still do contribute, to the status of health among Aboriginal populations. The current health conditions of these populations can only be appreciated and understood in the context of this historical perspective. The authors go further than simply supplying a historical look at past and present conditions; they suggest future directions for Aboriginal health. Given the complexity of all the issues, the authors generally succeed in providing a readable, comprehensive review of this topic. The book is organized into a number of major themes. The first one is often overlooked in discussions of Aboriginal health, but shouldn=t be. Defining who is
governments have tried to assimilate Aboriginal individuals into mainstream culture. The resurrection of traditional cultural values is accompanied by the resurgence of medical beliefs, treatments, and healing rituals. Since many of these treatments go beyond simply healing the individual but also heal the community, the increased influence of these traditions has been quite successful in many areas of treatment (e.g., alcoholism). Contact between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations created opportunities and problems. This issue is discussed in the book=s next theme, covering the contact period between traditional and introduced medical systems, and the subsequent period of government control of Aboriginal health care. Health and medical concerns have played a key role in the interactions of Native and non-Native peoples, especially in regard to treaty rights. What is the responsibility of the government in providing medical care for Aboriginal populations? How much health care should be provided, and who should control it? The answers to these questions are related to changing political and economic climates of any given time, and they have a significant impact on Aboriginal health. For example, the rise of self-determination among many Aboriginal groups has had a major influence on health-care issues (e.g., what kinds of treatments are allowed or not allowed within a biomedical setting such as a clinic or hospital), and continues to be a key element in this change. The final theme of the book addresses new ideas and new directions for Aboriginal health and health care. The authors demonstrate how past studies, although well intended, have often perpetuated rather than dismantled stereotypical beliefs of Aboriginal health. They suggest a broader view of health and health care, advocating where future changes could be made and could contribute to a better understanding for both the professional and the non-professional concerning Aboriginal health-care issues. This book attempts a broad, multidisciplinary overview of the past, present, and future conditions of Aboriginal health care in Canada. For the most part, it succeeds. Although I feel that more attention should have been placed on the political and economic aspects of health among Aboriginal populations, this book does address the issues surrounding Aboriginal health in a readable and understandable manner. It contributes to the knowledge base needed to address this complex and difficult problem. hartmut b. krentz Memorial University of Newfoundland
http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 Roaring Days: Rossland=s Mines and the History of British Columbia. jeremy mouat. Vancouver: UBC Press 1995. Pp. xviii, 236, illus. $39.95
Some years ago I interviewed the eldest daughter of a well-known Book Reviews 105
labour leader who immigrated to Nova Scotia at the turn of the cen- tury. She recalled that in the family home in Scotland there had been talk of Australia, and also of a place in British Columbia that she then believed was named for its roses, and she still pronounced the name as if this were so. Certainly the reputation of Rossland (named for an early settler) was riding high in Britain at the end of the 1890s. Mineral resources figured prominently in the rhetoric of imperialism, and the gold-copper ores of the Kootenays had given southeastern British Columbia the reputation of a new Johannesburg. In this well-researched study of the boom years of Rossland, Jeremy Mouat has constructed a thoughtful account of one local chapter in the global story of mineral resource exploitation. Over the course of three decades, the Rossland district made a difficult transition from the pioneer stages of mineral exploitation to the apparent stability of the modern industrial corporation. In three chapters, Mouat ably analyses the development strategies of the various protagonists in the business world and demonstrates the financial and technological conditions of their success. In the early 1890s, following the discovery of the ores by French-Canadian prospectors, there was an upsurge of American interest in the district which included the building of the first smelter at nearby Trail. By the end of the decade, however, the Canadian Pacific Railway, with the assistance of the dominion government and the enthusiasm of Wilfrid Laurier, had succeeded in capturing the local economy for Canada and the empire. Such developments attracted enormous speculative interest among British investors who bought large tracts of mining stock and lusted after profits on the scale of the Rand. The investment boom collapsed at the end of 1900; one of the more sensational casualties was the financier James Whitaker Wright, organizer of the British America Corporation, who committed suicide in a London courtroom following his conviction on charges of falsifying company books. Reconstruction followed under the aegis of Toronto and Montreal business and particularly the cpr, which resulted by 1906 in the creation of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada. Cominco applied new flotation and electrolytic-refining methods to the extraction of lead, zinc, and silver from lower-grade ores. Although it took time, and the support of the Canadian state under the stimulative economic conditions of the First World War, Cominco succeeded by the 1920s in giving Canada a productive, world-class industry. Economic developments have social consequences, and Mouat draws a detailed portrait of the evolution of the local mining community. Far from being the primitive mining camp sometimes http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 associated with the western frontier, Rossland by 1901 was a substantial town of some 6000 people. The prevailing culture was male and white, and there were important divisions of gender and ethnicity. Women, who made up one-third of the population, were excluded from the most remunerative employment opportunities 106 The Canadian Historical Review
(although one sturdy young woman disguised herself as a man in order to earn a wage of $2.50 a day). Chinese men were excluded from the mines and subjected to routine victimization, but the dominant British and American mining culture was more successful in integrating Italians, Swedes, and a substantial number of French Canadians. Under the advantageous conditions of the 1890s, Rossland also developed many of the hallmarks of a labour town: the first Canadian local of the Western Federation of Miners was formed here in 1895, and its union hall, built in 1898, still stands today as a local labour landmark. By 1899 the miners had won an eight-hour-day law and seemed well placed to protect their political and economic interests. But the financial crash of 1900 introduced a period of increased class conflict, including a lengthy strike that began in July 1901 and proved a revealing practical test of such recent legislation as the Alien Labour Act and the Conciliation Act. In subsequent years the wfm pursued relatively moderate, even loyalist, objectives (despite the increasingly radical reputation of its parent organization). Cominco was not challenged directly until the time of an unsuccessful wartime strike led by Ginger Goodwin in 1917. By 1919 the miners were voting for the One Big Union, but what they received was a representation plan and a restructured industry that had no more need for Rossland ore. Despite the vigorous sources of social solidarity in the mining community, Rossland did not survive the success of the industry. It no longer guaranteed a stable future for the community that was called into being in the 1890s. Like most historians of mining, Mouat judges the outcome to be inevitable, on the grounds that resource exhaustion leads in due course to shut-down. As he notes, however, to a limited extent Rossland since that time has managed to make a transition to an alternative economic base, both as a tourist centre and as a residential community for Trail. As a case-study in the integration of local resources into the global economy, Roaring Days offers a constructive perspective on mining history in Canada. Although mining history is always intensely local, a principal strength of Mouat=s study is that he demonstrates how local developments in that small corner of a single province belonged to the larger worlds of business, finance, technology, labour, politics, and social history. In earlier work, Mouat has challenged the idea that the development of social relations on the western industrial frontier followed a unique logic of exploitation and confrontation. In this study, he has given a measured account of the conditions that affected the behaviour of both capital and labour in this particular setting, and we can expect http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 larger generalizations to be based on similar well-grounded and sophisticated local studies. Meanwhile, this is an excellent example of how well mining history can be written. Moreover, the book is composed with a careful sense of style, with attention to telling detail and documentation, and it is illustrated with a score of well- Book Reviews 107
observed photographs. david frank University of New Brunswick
Hard Lessons: The Mine Mill Union in the Canadian Labour Movement. Edited by mercedes steedman, peter suschnigg, and dieter k. buse. Toronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press 1995. Pp. x, 325, illus. $24.99
This book brings together papers presented at a conference held in Sudbury in 1993. The gathering commemorated the first hundred years of the North American hard-rock miners= union, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Mine Mill). It was held against the backdrop of the New Democratic Party government=s social contract legislation in Ontario, and as the last Mine Mill local (Sudbury=s no. 598, cosponsor of the conference) contemplated joining the Canadian Auto Workers Union. Like the illustration on the cover, the book is a collage, a series of essays and oral history that illuminate both the role of Mine Mill and broader issues confronting all working people. Admittedly, some sections of the book are more thoughtful and more informed than others, but this variety in style and depth is often engaging. For example, the two contributions on health and safety adopt very different approaches to the subject, but work surprisingly well when read together. The subsequent discussion, which includes comments from the audience as well as both authors, helps to contextualize these chapters.
a result, Mine Mill was largely moribund until the Depression. In the 1930s, Communist organizers helped to breathe new life into the union, one of the reasons for the red-baiting of the postwar years. Partly as a result of its neglect of the early years, the book has an Ontario bias: there is very little mention of Mine Mill=s history and membership in western or northern Canada. The struggles to unionize mines before and during the Second World War earned Mine Mill a reputation as a radical and Communist-led union, and in the charged atmosphere of the Cold War this fact was used to attack its right to represent mine workers. These attacks ended only in the 1960s, when almost all the Mine Mill locals in Canada became part of the United Steelworkers of America, the culmination of more than two decades of raiding and hostile interunion rivalry between Steel and Mine Mill. The merger remains for some a bitter memory, as a number of people recall in this volume. Throughout the years of raiding, the mainstream media aided the Steelworkers, publicizing charges that Mine Mill was 2 under Communist leadership and control. Mine Mill may have lost its right to represent mine workers, but the battles that engaged its membership remain with us today. Hard Lessons is worth reading just to learn that obvious point. But it is also valuable for the diverse views it brings together, from organizers and rank-and-file unionists to academic labour specialists. The text provides an unconventional but valuable perspective on the postwar years, part labour history and part social history. The concluding two chapters in the book B by Madeleine Parent and Utah Phillips B are reminders of Mine Mill=s feisty rank-and-file tradition, a membership determined to continue fighting in progressive causes, whatever the likelihood of success. Joan Kuyek, another activist who played a role in the conference on which the book is based, reflected a similar determination in her well- publicized speech at Laurentian University=s convocation in 1995. In accepting an honorary doctorate at the same time as the chairman and ceo of Inco, she drew xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 2For examples, see Pierre Berton,
Book Reviews 109
The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: An Illustrated History. j.m. bumsted. Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer 1994. Pp. 144, illus. $19.95
This handsomely illustrated volume appeared on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike. Intended for a general readership, author Jack Bumsted of the University of Manitoba has combined some eighty photos, primarily from the L.B. Foote collection at the Provincial Archives of Manitoba, a seventy-three- page narrative and analysis of the strike, and two appendices. Appendix 1 provides a fifty-three-page glossary containing biographies of major actors, places, and institutions related to the strike. Appendix 2 is a six-page bibliography that is both comprehensive and up to date. Although the Winnipeg General Strike has commanded more his- toriographical attention than any other event in Canadian labour history, it continues to merit further study. Despite David Bercuson=s recent ahistorical assertions to the contrary in his ill-tempered
state repression in Winnipeg and the formative role that Winnipeg and the labour revolt of 1917B20 played in creating the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and especially its Security Service. The Cold War in Canada did not await the Gouzenko revelations; it was present from at least the fall of 1918 when C.H. Cahan, at the behest of Prime Minister Borden, set up his Division of Public Safety within the Department of Justice. Unfortunately for him, the fruits of his efforts passed to Commissioner A.B. Perry, who built on the events of Winnipeg to save the Royal North-West Mounted Police from the ash heap of history to which it had been destined until the events of the spring and summer of 1919. The labour revolt of 1917B20 continues to command considerable historiographic attention, and we can look forward to more work in the near future. Tom Mitchell of Brandon continues to mine the new sources with great success, and Craig Heron and a team of authors have recently completed an excellent study looking at these key years in a series of regional studies that push the new interpretations further than does Bumsted. The Winnipeg General Strike occurred seventy-five years ago, but its legacy remains subject to lively debate. Like many crusades, even those of children, the legacy of struggle lives on in the bleakest of times. gregory s. kealey Memorial University of Newfoundland
Hope and Deception in Conception Bay: Merchant-Settler Relations in Newfoundland, 1785B1855. sean t. cadigan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995. Pp. xiv, 242. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper
That Newfoundland has been the subject of some of the country=s finest historical writing over the last couple of decades is one of our best-known secrets. Those fond of caloric (and sometimes peppery) canapés can relish the masterful creations of David Alexander; for connoisseurs of political red meat there are the weighty satisfactions of Peter Neary=s Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Triangle; while for the dessert-lovers among us, there is Gerald Pocius=s A Place to Belong, a millefeuille of a book, where slightly flaky (and very French) ideas structure the unaffected sweetness he makes of outport life. And now a treat for the political economists, a real mixed grill: Sean Cadigan=s Hope and Deception in Conception Bay. Cadigan explores four aspects of merchant/settler relations in early nineteenth-century Newfoundland. First he addresses B largely through a history of labour law B the problem of why
http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 is given short shrift. It is, further, somewhat strange for a book about historical misrepresentation to itself suffer from somewhat misleading packaging. Despite the title and jacket description, this is not a local history; in fact, the work offers very little sense of place and uses 112 The Canadian Historical Review
Conception Bay in a largely illustrative way. Nor is it an investigation of credit or trade practices or of the fishery as a form of work or culture. Instead, it is primarily a study of the three-way relationship between servants (fishery-workers), planters, and merchants. Much of the book deals with the legislative framework supporting that relationship. And a goodly proportion is concerned with the political debate surrounding Newfoundland=s wage-and- lien law. These problems do not, of course, make the book any less interesting or significant. It is an exemplary study of the structure of labour relations, of colonial economic policy, and of the politicization of the idea of merchant power. It provides fresh insight into the paternalism and deference underpinning pre-industrial British-American society, and it clearly illustrates the reluctance of early nineteenth-century people to conceive of economic relationships in labour-market terms. It also advances still further the historiographical redemption of Torydom at the expense of the once sanctified
Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience. john k. crellin. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen=s University Press 1994. Pp. viii, 280, illus. $44.95 cloth, $17.95 paper
At a time when the Canadian health-care system has fallen under the jaundiced eye of social conservatives demanding a frontal assault on public indebtedness, a careful analysis of self-treatment and its relationship both to professional medicine and to the ever- shifting character of the market-place is obviously welcome. Drawing heavily upon a vast collection of material on ailments and home cures in Newfoundland housed at the Folklore and Language Archive at Memorial University, John Crellin looks at the relationship between self-treatment, the nature of the Newfoundland resource-based economy, and the impact of the shift from a non-market to a market economy. Self-treatment in Newfoundland, he concludes, was by no means a static or unchanging phenomenon. Rather, the inexorable march of http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 commercialism and increased reliance on professional medical advice, especially after the Second World War, have altered patterns of self-cure, and, in the process, undermined existing traditions of self-sufficiency to a certain extent. Modernization has by no means meant the end of self-treatment, however. Crellin shows how Book Reviews 113
successful Newfoundland entrepreneurs like Gerald D. Doyle drew upon traditional notions of bodily purification that accompanied the early twentieth-century purity movement when they marketed a series of commercial products such as Dodd=s Kidney Pills, Carter=s Little Liver Pills, Cystex, and Sal Hepatica that were supposed to purify the internal organs, scour lazy intestines, and filter poisons from the bloodstream. Juxtaposing Newfoundland folklore with skilful advertising, Doyle was instrumental in bringing these remedies, as well as cod-liver oil, Minard=s linament, and the products promoted in the popular Dr Chase=s almanacs, into the Newfoundland home-treatment repertoire. Since Newfoundland=s entry into Confederation, and the postwar establishment of Canada=s medicare edifice, the reliance on home cures has no doubt diminished, as has the popular resistance to the claims of modern medicine about its own therapeutic efficiency. Yet traditions of self-treatment remain, connected to the informal economy, to various religious and magical beliefs and a stubborn fatalism, to the maritime environment, to notions of manly independence, and to prevailing beliefs about the nature of diseases. In short, the complex interface between professional medicine and home cures in Newfoundland suggests a distinctive culture.
Newfoundland (such as the use of fish maggots in the cleaning of wounds, or various remedies for snow- or ice-blindness) are the over-the-counter tonics, ointments, drugs, and analgesics that are now part of the home-cure regimen. Taken collectively, this com- pendium reinforces many of Crellin=s assertions about the intertwining of home cures, patent remedies, and professional medical treatment B as well as his understanding of the importance of the cultural context of medical treatment B both in the past and in contemporary Newfoundland. That said, Crellin leaves many issues unresolved. There is little here about the relationship between class, ethnicity, gender, or even age, and the reliance on traditional remedies. Nor is there serious attention given to the connection between popular therapy and the accessibility of professional medical services in rural communities. Nevertheless, those interested in pursuing these questions in the future will profit greatly from Crellin=s efforts in compiling this useful study. colin d. howell Saint Mary=s University
The Newfoundland National Convention, 1946B1948. Edited by j.k. hiller and m.f. harrington. Montreal and Kingston: Published for Memorial University of Newfoundland by McGill-Queen=s University Press 1995. 2 vols. Pp. vol. 1, xxxii, 1469; vol. 2, 552, illus. $240.00 set
When the Newfoundland National Convention opened in September 1946, it immediately became a central part of the process that transformed Newfoundland from a dominion into a Canadian province. It was established by the British government to enable a small group of elected Newfoundlanders to study and debate the issues facing Newfoundland at the end of the Second World War and to recommend choices to be placed before the people in a referendum. By the time the National Convention closed its doors at the end of January 1948, millions of words were spoken and hundreds of pages of reports and papers were produced. These debates and reports have often been the focus of research, and now they have been gathered together for publication. The result is The Newfoundland National Convention, 1946B1948, edited by J.K. Hiller, an established Memorial University historian, and M.F. Harrington, a retired journalist and former member of the National Convention. The editors provide a useful introduction in which they explain the context for the creation of the http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 National Convention, its committee structure, and assess its importance in Newfoundland history. Harrington also provides an interesting personal memoir of his experiences in the convention. The editors are cautious in their assessment of the convention=s Book Reviews 115
accomplishments, but they do credit it with reviving political debate in Newfoundland after more than a decade of rule by the appointed Commission of Government. The set is typical of document collections: the volumes are substantial, imposing, and somewhat unwieldy. Moreover, the photographs and biographical entries add to our understanding of the National Convention. Overall, the two volumes appear to have been produced more with the editor=s logic of content in mind than the publisher=s desire for symmetry and sales. Volume 1 contains almost 1500 pages of debates, while volume 2 is 550 pages and looks more like an appendix than a companion to the first volume. In some ways it is better to begin with volume 2, which includes the reports and papers used or produced by the committees set up in the National Convention. There is a remarkable variety of material, including reports on the forestry industry, on education, agriculture, mining, local industries, and the fisheries. These reports will appeal primarily to Newfoundland scholars and specialists in the field, but outsiders might also find material of value. For example, there is a long section on tourism in the Transportation and Communications Committee=s report and it would be of interest to all scholars in this growing field. Similarly, the
subsequently, the leading anticonfederates), and the authors argue that the conditions for the return to responsible government had been met. Not only was Newfoundland self-supporting, they conclude, but Newfoundland=s prosperity and budget surpluses were not merely the result of the wartime economic boom as the British feared:
Documents on Canadian External Relations / Documents relatifs aux relations extérieures du Canada. Edited by hector mackenzie. Vols. 14 and 15: 1948B49. Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade 1994B5. Pp. vol. 14, xliv, 1907; vol. 15, xlii, 1870, illus. $99.95 per volume
The Documents on Canadian External Relations series is one of the great publishing enterprises in our history. The huge, red-jacketed volumes march forward, from the establishment of the Department http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CHR.78.1.93 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:59:07 PM University of Saskatchewan IP Address:128.233.13.216 of External Affairs in 1909 to 1953; still more are to come, federal budget cuts permitting. While the published documents do not and cannot contain all the vast material in the department=s files, in those of related departments, and in the files of the key politicians and Book Reviews 117
bureaucrats, they present more than enough to allow a student or researcher in Kamloops or Kinshasa to get a very good sense of what Canadian policy was and from whence it came. What more can one ask of a series of documents volumes? A few things, in fact. These volumes all contain terrible indexes: I have never been able to find what I was looking for in any one of the DCER without flipping through seemingly endless pages. The footnotes sometimes offer assistance to readers, but usually there are too few to be useful. Moreover, the introductions are invariably too brief to truly set the material into context and, while there are sometimes references in them to the secondary literature, there are never enough to assist the non-specialist in Brockville and, more significantly, in Berlin. These comments B they are not complaints! B are all applicable to the two volumes covering 1948 and 1949 compiled by Hector Mackenzie, the department=s senior historian. Mackenzie was fortunate in the volumes that fell to him B 1948 saw the abortive free- trade negotiations with the United States, scuppered by the rapidly aging and increasingly erratic Mackenzie King, and the culmination of the