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Reports on awards
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Report on BACS travel award, May 2008
I went to Ottawa for the
International Council for Canadian Studies conference (27-29 May), whose title,
Canada Exposed!/ Le Canada à découvert was
the inspired choice of Chris Rolfe. I also spent three days in the National
Archives of Canada, looking at the papers of Canadian writer John Glassco
(1909-82).
The conference is the subject of another report in this
newsletter, but for me, one of the highlights was the session on visual
culture, which included papers on representations of Canada in Seagram's
adverts (Lisa Sumner, McGill), Kryn Taconis's Photojournalism (Christl Verduyn,
Mount Allison), Canadian printmaking (Christopher Rolfe) and street children in
the work of Saint John painters (Kirk Niergarth, UNB).
Some of the painters discussed in Kirk's paper are in the National Gallery in
Ottawa, and it was exciting to go and see them the next day. It was also very
good to be able to hear Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller's keynote
lecture; they centred their discussion of Canadian literary history on the new Cambridge History of Canadian Literature,
which they are co-editing.
The banquet at the end of the conference was most enjoyable,
and I was glad to be able to see Leigh Oakes
and Jane Warren receive their Pierre Savard award, as well as Robbie
Schwartzwald receiving his Governor General's Award for Canadian Studies.
In my own paper, "John Glassco, Canadian erotica and
the 'lying chronicle', I read Glassco's most famous book, Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970) in the context of his pornographic
writing. I was very pleased with the useful feedback and ideas which I received
from the audience for the session. I
was able to gather a large amount of additional material on Glassco in the
archive. I was particularly interested in his diary and his correspondence with
publishers and editors, as these revealed a great deal about his practices in
relation to pseudonyms, literary hoaxes, and self-censorship of material which
might be liable to prosecution for obscenity. These were the initial concerns
of my research on Glassco, but having had access to the papers, I have
identified several further themes for my future work. I was extremely grateful
to have this opportunity to attend the ICCS conference (which I had not been to
before) and visit the archive, and would like to thank BACS for the travel
award.
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Research trip to Ontario, Allan Craigie, University of Edinburgh
Due to the generosity of the
British Association for Canadian Studies and the Foundation for Canadian
Studies, I had the opportunity to visit Canada
during the summer of 2008 to conduct research at the Statistics Canada Research
Data Centre (RDC) at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
The purpose of the trip was
threefold. The primary objective was to
access Statistic Canada's
Ethnic Diversity Survey. This survey
analysis was undertaken to support my research into territorial identity
mobilization in Nova Scotia. The information is not available to the
public due to privacy concerns. To
access the data I first had to make a peer reviewed application to the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Upon the success of this application, I had
to undergo security clearance by Statistics Canada, which was complicated by
not being based in Canada. Fortunately the clearance came through, but
only on the day the research was scheduled to commence. Once at the RDC, I signed the security
clearances and became a ‘deemed employee' of Statistics Canada, subject to all
the statutory regulations governing Statistics Canada.
The research conducted at the RDC
was fruitful, but was impacted by two of Statistics Canada's rules, which
protect the privacy of the respondents in the data sets. The first rule is that no data can leave the
RDC without being examined by the RDC's Research Analyst. If any cell in an unweighted table is less
than 10 it is not allowed to leave the RDC and is not available for public use.
As the research was testing the sense of belonging people have to their
provinces relative to Canada as a whole in relation to political attitudes, it
meant that many of the results were not able to leave the RDC due to extremely
high rates of belonging to Canada and the provinces-so few Canadians have weak
attachments to either their province or the federation. The second rule is that to ensure no data
leaves without being examined, no portable storage devices such as memory
sticks or MP3 players are allowed in the RDC.
As such, I was forced to spend my days running statistics programmes
without music from my iPod to keep me sane.
The other purposes of the trip
were to meet with academics at Queen's University who are experts in aspects of
my research to discuss my work and gain feedback, and to access secondary
sources not available in the United
Kingdom.
Both of these proved extremely successful, and the feedback I received
will help inform my PhD Thesis.
This research contributed to my
PhD Thesis and established the groundwork for future articles, which will
expand upon my PhD research. I am
extremely grateful to the Association for their continued support of my work.
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Canada’s Past and Current Realities: Studying the Country’s Dynamic
Sixteenth European Seminar for Graduate Students in Canadian Studies
27-29 September 2007, Saint Petersburg, Russia
A conference discussing past and current realities could have not been set in a more appropriate city than the kaleidoscope of history and innovation that Saint-Petersburg provides. The conference was held in the building that houses the Saint-Petersburg Association for International Collaboration, which itself was in the process of having its facades renewed to its state of former glory. This organization, which houses the Russian Association of Canadian Studies, provided a beautiful and central location near the corner of the historic Nevsky Prospect and Liteyny Prospect.
Attended by many of the presidents of various European Canadian Studies Associations, this conference provided an excellent opportunity for the participant graduate students to experience the best that Canadian Studies has to provide. The participation of senior Canadianists such as BACS President Rachel Killick, the Italian Association’s President Luigi Bruti Liberati, the Irish Association’s President Vera Regan and the European Network’s President Serge Jaumain provided an excellent opportunity for the graduate student attendees to form relationships with long-time Canadianists. In addition, the attendance of Jean Labrie, the Head of Canadian Studies Section, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, provided an interesting addition to the discussions of Canada’s role in an International context.
This conference, which brought together participants from 17 countries, provided the basis for a broad and diverse exploration of Canada’s past and current realities. Topics such as Canadian multiculturalism, Canadian heritage, Canada’s First Nations, and both domestic and international Canadian politics incited interesting and thoughtful debate that proves that Canadian Studies, as an area of study, is alive and well in Europe. Indeed, the diversity of topics and approaches that were presented in this conference promises to add new and innovative dimensions to Canadian Studies from emerging Canadianists in Europe. Of particular note were papers given by Maria Shtiglitz on “Educational Programs and Canadian Foreign Policy”, and Olga Rosa Gonzales Martin all the way from the University of Havana discussing recent changes in ownership of “The Canadian Media.”
The British Association of Canadian Studies had three participants this year that demonstrated that emerging scholars in Britain are also engaging in exciting research on Canada. Thomas Snell presented on the representations of Aboriginal people in French-Canadian literature. His paper explored ways in which works by authors from First Nation backgrounds ‘represent’ their people’s past and present realities in both senses of the word (i.e. ‘to portray’ and ‘to speak for’) and discussed how this allowed for a re-establishment of cultural heritages. Will Smith presented an engaging paper on contemporary writing from Atlantic Canada that questioned the tensions of readership, publication and traditional regional conceptions. Tracie Scott presented on the influence that historiographical approaches has had upon Aboriginal land claims jurisprudence in Canada.
Ultimately though the success of the conference should be attributed to Dr. Vassily Sokolov and his team of dedicated volunteers. An event particularly enjoyed by the attendees was a boat trip on the canals of Saint Petersburg that provided a beautiful and scenic view of the city.
Tracie Scott, William Smith, and Thomas Snell
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Report on Travel Award made to Joy Porter, School of Humanities, Swansea University, Wales, UK
My sincere thanks to the BACS for this award which allowed me to consult archives at the University of Toronto to support a new archival monograph under contract with the University of Toronto Press entitled The Indian Poet of the First World War: Modernism and Indian Identity in the Life of Frank “Toronto” Prewett, 1893-1962.
The award also allowed me to deliver a paper on the above topic at the 2007 Biennial ACSUS (Association of Canadian Studies in the United States) and to take part in a roundtable on “International Views on Canadian Studies” organised by the Association’s Executive Director, David Archibald. It is intended that this panel session will be significantly expanded in future years at the ASCUS event – to broaden the UK voice I read out a statement on Canadian Studies in the UK from Professor Heidi MacPherson in her role as spokesperson for the British Association for American Studies. The impetus of the conference overall was to encourage and develop links between Canadian and American Studies. We were encouraged to convert American Studies departments where possible to American & Canadian Studies Departments and the event benefited from a series of instructive plenary talks given by significant players within the current Canadian government. |
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Research Trip to Ottawa
Liam Blanc, King's College London
I am currently conducting doctoral research at King’s College London, looking into the Canadian fur trade and its links to the global economy between 1760 and 1820. This 60 year period was a critical one for the later development of Canada as a trans-continental state. Following the British capture of New France in 1760, fur traders from the St. Lawrence Valley swarmed into what is now western Canada, establishing a durable and lasting trading network that stretched as far as the Pacific slope in the west and the Mackenzie River basin in the north. The rapid expansion of this trade based in Montreal caused conflict with the English Hudson’s Bay Company which was only ended in 1821 by the merger of the HBC with the largest Canadian concern, the North West Company. The construction of a continent-spanning fur trading network after 1760 was the critical factor in ensuring that the northern half of the continent was drawn into the British sphere of influence and was not absorbed by the United States.
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