Creating Postwar Canada showcases new research on this complex period, exploring postwar Canada's diverse symbols and battlegrounds. Contributors to the first half of the collection consider evolving definitions of the nation, examining the ways in which Canada was reimagined to include both the Canadian North and landscapes structured by trade and commerce. The essays in the latter half analyze debates on shopping hours, professional striptease, the "provider" role of fathers, interracial adoption, sexuality on campus, and illegal drug use, issues that shaped how the country defined itself in sociocultural and political terms. This collection contributes to the historiography of nationalism, gender and the family, consumer cultures, and countercultures.

Traces the making of Canadian English, both as concept and global variety, throughout the twentieth century to the present.

What has it meant to be a man in Canada? Alexander Ross, fur trader; Percy Nobbs, architect, fisherman, fencer; Andy Paull, residential school survivor and athlete; Yves Charbonneau, jazz musician and commune member; “James,” black and gay in postwar Windsor. Who were these men, and how did they identify as masculine? Populated with figures both well known and unknown, Making Men, Making History frames masculinity as a socially and historically constructed category of identity, susceptible to variation across time, place, and social context. This examination of historical Canadian masculinities reveals the dissonance between hegemonic ideals of manhood and masculinity and the everyday lives of men and boys. The volume showcases some of the best new work in masculinity studies. With an introduction that contextualizes the international origins of the field, Making Men, Making History is the first book to explore these themes entirely in Canadian historica settings.

During the Second World War, the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Canada grew from a handful of members to more than a quarter-million. What was it about the "good war" that brought about this phenomenal growth? Labour Goes to War argues that both economic and cultural forces were at work. Labour shortages gave workers greater economic power in the workplace. But cultural factors � workers' patriotism, ties to those on active service, and allegiance to the "people's war" � also fueled the CIO's growth. The complex, often contradictory, motives of workers during this period left the Canadian labour movement with an ambivalent progressive/conservative legacy.

It was a megaproject half a century in the making -- a technological and engineering marvel that stands as one of the most ambitious borderlands undertakings ever embarked upon by two countries. The planning and building of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project is one of the defining episodes in North American history. The project began with transnational negotiations that spanned two world wars and the formative years of the Cold War and included a failed attempt to construct an all-Canadian seaway, which was scuttled by US national security fears. Once an agreement was reached, the massive engineering and construction operation began, as did the efforts to move people and infrastructure away from the thousands of acres of land that would soon be flooded. Negotiating a River looks at the profound impacts of this megaproject, from the complex diplomatic negotiations, political manoeuvring, and environmental diplomacy to the implications on national identities and transnational relations.

In Equality Deferred, Dominique Clément traces the history of sex discrimination in Canadian law and the origins of human rights legislation. Focusing on British Columbia - the first jurisdiction to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex - he documents a variety of absurd, almost unbelievable, acts of discrimination. Drawing on previously undisclosed human rights commission records, Clément explores the rise and fall of what was once the country's most progressive human rights legal regime and reveals how political divisions and social movements shaped the human rights state. This book is not only a testament to the revolutionary impact of human rights on Canadian law but also a reminder that it takes more than laws to effect transformative social change.

In The Centennial Cure, the second volume in the Studies in Atlantic Canada History series, Meaghan Elizabeth Beaton critically examines the intersection of state policy, cultural development, and commemoration in Nova Scotia during Canada’s centennial celebrations. Beaton’s engaging and insightful analysis of four case studies­– the establishment of the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum, the construction of Halifax’s Centennial Swimming Pool, the Community Improvement Program, and the 1967 Nova Scotia Highland Games and Folk Festival­–reveals the province’s attempts to reimagine and renew public spaces. Through these case studies Beaton illuminates the myriad ways in which Nova Scotians saw themselves, in the context of modernity and ethnic identity, during the post-war years. The successes and failures of these infrastructure and cultural projects, intended to foster and develop cultural capital, reflected the socio-economic realities and dreams of local communities. The Centennial Cure shifts our focus away from the dominant studies on Expo’67 to provide a nuanced and tension filled account of how Canada’s 1967 centennial celebrations were experienced in other parts of Canada.

Ring Around the Maple is about the condition of children in Canada from roughly 1850 to 2000, a time during which “the modern” increasingly disrupted traditional ways. Authors Cynthia R. Comacchio and Neil Sutherland trace the lives of children over this “long century” with a view to synthesizing the rich interdisciplinary, often multi-disciplinary, literature that has emerged since the 1970s. Integrated into this synthesis is the authors’ new research into many, often seemingly disparate, archival and published primary sources. Emphasizing how “the child” and childhood are sociohistoric constructs, and employing age analytically and relationally, they discuss the constants and the variants in their historic dimensions. While childhood tangibly modernized during these years, it remained a far from universal experience due to identifiers of race, gender, culture, region, and intergenerational adaptations that characterize the process of growing up. This work highlights children’s perspectives through close, critical, “against the grain” readings of diaries, correspondence, memoirs, interviews, oral histories and autobiographies, many buried in obscure archives. It is the only extant historical discussion of Canadian children that interweaves the experiences of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children with those of children from a number of settler groups. Ring Around the Maple makes use of photographs, catalogues, advertisements, government publications, musical recordings, radio shows, television shows, material goods, documentary and feature films, and other such visual and aural testimony. Much of this evidence has not to date been used as historical testimony to uncover the lives of ordinary children. This book is generously illustrated with photographs and ephemera carefully selected to reflect children’s lives, conditions, interests, and obligations. It will be of special interest to historians and social scientists interested in children and the culture of childhood, but will also appeal to readers who enjoy the "little stories" that together make up our collective history, especially when those are told by the children who lived them.

During WWII, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, nutritionists warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished women and children to “Eat Right, Feel Right” because “Canada Needs You Strong” while cookbooks helped housewives become “housoldiers” through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Food Will Win the War explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent during the war and the profound social, political, and cultural changes that took place in the 1940s. Through official food guides and policies, the state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, transforming the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for their postwar future.

"Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisive and insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadian historian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has added reflective introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in the context of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied an introduction to the collection in which she reflects on the themes and theoretical orientations that have shaped the writing of women's history over the past thirty years. Approaching her subject matter from an array of interpretive frameworks that engage questions of gender, class, colonialism, politics, and labour, Sangster explores the lived experience of women in a variety of specific historical settings. In so doing, she sheds new light on issues that have sparked much debate among feminist historians and offers a thoughtful overview of the evolution of women's history in Canada."--Pub. desc.