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As Canadians, we remember the stories told to us in high-school history class as condensed images of the past—the glorious Mountie, the fearsome Native, the Last Spike. National Dreams is an incisive study of the most persistent icons and stories in Canadian history, and how they inform our sense of national identity: the fundamental beliefs that we Canadians hold about ourselves. National Dreams is the story of our stories; the myths and truths of our collective past that we first learned in school, and which we carry throughout our adult lives as tangible evidence of what separates us from other nationalities. Francis examines various aspects of this national mythology, in which history is as much storytelling as fact. Textbooks were an important resource for Francis. "For me, these books are interesting not because they explain what actually happened to us, but because they explain what we think happened to us."

For example, Francis documents how the legend of the CPR as a country-sustaining, national affirming monolity was created by the company itself—a group of capitalists celebrating the privately-owned railway, albeit one which was generously supported with public land and cash—and reiterated by most historians ever since.

Similarly, we learn how the Mounties were transformed from historical police force to mythic heroes by a vast army of autobiographers, historians, novelists, and Hollywood filmmakers, with little attention paid to the true role of the force in such incidents as the Bolshevik rebellion, in which a secret conspiracy by the Government against its people was conducted through the RNWMP.

Also revealed in National Dreams are the stories surrounding the formation and celebration of Canadian heroes such as Louis Riel and Billy Bishop.

Not to mention the myth of the canoe, which has emerged as the mother image of our national dreamlife, the symbol of our oneness with a rugged northern landscape, a vehicle borrowed from our Aboriginal forebears and exploited by explorers such as Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, David Thompson, and Hudson's Bay Company's Governor George Simpson.

And as for Canada: our geography gives us a unique place in North America, provides an identifiable marker for Canadianness, even though most of us never travel "north."

National Dreams is a fascinating document that allows us to see the past in a shocking new light. Includes 50 b&w images.

Now in its 4th printing.

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This fifth volume in the distinguished series on the history of Canadian law turns to the important issues of crime and criminal justice. In examining crime and criminal law specifically, the volume contributes to the long-standing concern of Canadian historians with law, order, and authority.

The volume covers criminal justice history at various times in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. It is a study which opens up greater vistas of understanding to all those interested in the interstices of law, crime, and punishment. ... Read more

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First published in 1991, The Unmaking of Canada offers a concise overview of the main currents of Canadian political economy in the period since 1945.

The focus is on providing background to the key issues facing English Canada in the last decade of the twentieth century: relations between Quebec and the rest of Canada; relations between Canada and the U.S.; regional tensions within English Canada; relations between Native peoples and the Canadian state; and Canada's economic development problems.

The authors make wide use of the literature on the Canadian economy and recent political history, and address current Canadian political issues in a straightforward and informative manner. ... Read more

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On Strike focuses on six important--but largely unknown--strikes where Canadian workers fought the combined forces of capital and government for basic union rights and for decent wages and working conditions.

The strikes described--the Winnipeg 1919 general strike, Estevan 1931, Stratford 1933, Oshawa 1937, the Ford Windsor strike of 1945, and Asbestos 1949--were all major events in Canadian labour and political history. They demonstrate the strength of the labour movement, and the willingness of governments to use police, troops, intimidation and violence in attempts to break strikes and crush unions.

First published in 1974, On Strike is a seminal work in Canadian labour history. ... Read more

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In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his crew, in the stout ships Erebus and Terror, fortified against ice and provisioned for a three years' journey, set off into the Arctic in an attempt to be the first to sail the North West Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. They were never seen again.

Twelve years later 14-year-old Peter Griffin joins the crew of the tiny steam yacht Fox on an expedition to discover their fate. Peter resolutely endures the close quarters on board ship, the cold and the dark, and the dangers of the forbidding Arctic landscape. As they travel further and further from home they find strange fragments, traces of men who have travelled before them. Soon they make discoveries that suggest the terrible fate suffered by Franklin and his men.

Based on historical accounts, Mystery in the Frozen Lands offers one boy's perspective of one the greatest of all Canadian disasters. ... Read more

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Through the last half of the nineteenth century, numbers of Canadians began to regard the West as a land of ideal opportuniy for large-scale agricultural settlement. This belief, in turn, led Canada to insist on ownership of the region and on immediate development.

Underlying the expansionist movement was the assumption that the West was to be a hinterland to central Canada, both in its economic relationship and in its cultural development. But settlers who accepted the extravagant promises of expanionism found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the assumption of easstern dominance with their own perception of the needs of the West and of Canada.

Doug Owram analyses the various phases of this development, examining in particular the writings - historical, scientific, journalistic, and promotional - that illuminate one of the most significant movements in the history of nineteenth-century Canada. ... Read more

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The Dictionary of Canadian Biography calls this work 'probably the greatest Canadian biography yet published in English.' Donald Creighton's two-volume account of Canada's first Prime Minister was originally published in the 1950s as 'John A. Macdonald: The Young Lion' (1952) and 'John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain' (1955). Each of the volumes won a Governor General's Literary Award. Creighton's rare combination of rigorous scholarship, magnificent literary style, and romantic and heroic vision gives this work extraordinary power and wide appeal.

Sir John A. Macdonald's flamboyant personality dominated Canadian public life from the years preceding Confederation to the end of the nineteenth century, and the political structures and national policies which developed under his leadership continue to shape public issues today. Creighton's first volume takes Macdonald from his childhood and early years as a young lawyer in Kingston, Ontario, through his swift rise in political life to positions of influence, to the great achievement of uniting the colonies of British North America in Confederation. The second volume traces Macdonald's often tumultuous subsequent career in the context of a growing and often recalcitrant nation. He was Prime Minister from 1867 to 1873 and then again from 1878 until his death in June, 1891. The spectacular and evocative epilogues with which Creighton concludes each volume are widely recognized as having a place among the great passages of literary prose.

P. B. Waite's introduction to this new one-volume republication provides an illuminating account of the impact that Creighton and his biography of Macdonald had on a whole generation of historians and readers. ... Read more

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Drawing on archeological evidence, paintings, photographs, census records, case files, and parish rolls, the contributors to this collection of original essays draw a fascinating portrait of the lives of Canadian children from the seventeenth century onward, describing child labor practices,the many different models of child-rearing, the family structure and economy and the lives of children in and outside of institutions.Together, these articles constitute a strong, rich addition to Canadian social history. ... Read more

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In this concise and sharply focused study, the author draws upon his extensive background in Canadian and British colonial and imperial history, to eloquently propose that the study of history be comparative rather than national. In this series of three revised lectures he examines the frontier experiences of Canada and the United States; the idea of Mother Dominion and the idea of American imperialism. Originally published by Macmillan of Canada in 1979. ... Read more

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The years between 1870 and 1939 were a crucial period in the growth of industrial capitalism in Canada, as well as a time when many women joined the paid workforce. Yet despite the increase in employment, women faced a difficult struggle in gaining fair remuneration for their work and in gaining access to better jobs. Discounted Labour analyses the historical roots of women's persistent inequality in the paid labour force. Ruth A. Frager and Carmela K. Patrias analyse how and why women became confined to low-wage jobs, why their work was deemed less valuable than men's work, why many women lacked training, job experience, and union membership, and under what circumstances women resisted their subordination.

Distinctive earning discrepancies and employment patterns have always characterized women's place in the workforce whether they have been in low-status, unskilled jobs, or in higher positions. For this reason, Frager and Patrias focus not only on women wage-earners but on women as salaried workers as well. They also analyze the divisions among women, examining how class and ethnic or racial differences have intersected with those of gender. Discounted Labour is an essential new work for anyone interested in the historical struggle for gender equality in Canada.