Anglophone Canada Research Articles

Urban Environmental History in Anglophone Canada: Omissions and Opportunities

Part of a larger forum on the state of urban history in Canada, this article surveys recent literature in Canadian urban environmental history. The authors conclude that the city remains an important frame of analysis for Canadian historians. Recent work by Canadian environmental historians demonstrates that historians continue to address urban developments, but their contributions are less likely to appear under the umbrella of “urban history” and even less likely to be framed nationally as “Canadian urban history.” A preference for single-city studies over comparative works and a bias against recency has constrained examinations of rich histories of urbanization in Canada over the past 40 years.

Partners’ Relative Income and the Risk of Union Dissolution in Two Institutional Contexts

AbstractThis article investigates the link between union stability and women’s contribution to the family income in married and cohabiting couples. Using a data set linking survey data to information from respondents’ annual tax records over a period of nearly 30 years, the study explores the changes over time and the role of institutional context by comparing Quebec and Anglophone Canada. The analysis showed that the risk of dissolution was lowest when men’s and women’s incomes were similar. The U-shaped pattern held for marriage and cohabitation, and for both regions. If the couple deviated from the equality pattern, women’s greater income constituted a more destabilizing factor than men’s greater income. Overall, the observed U-shaped link between relative income and union instability did not change over the study period of 30 years.

English language ability and discursive agency: the case of Canadian adult English language learners on facebook

ABSTRACT This study provides a suggestive reassessment of the extent to which levels of English language ability among adult English language learners impact their ability to get things done in talk and text as discourse in a Canadian context where English is the lingua franca. The data are drawn from a Facebook Group for linguistic minority parents who attend a beginner level adult ESL class. Interpreting the data from within a pragmatics-oriented framework informed by lexical priming, conversation analysis and discursive psychology, microanalysis of a twelve-turn discussion thread is conducted with a view to implications for Canadian citizenship. Findings highlight the capacity of migrants with lower thresholds of English language ability to get substantive discursive work done in English in Anglophone Canada. The study qualifies a prevailing narrative that migrants to English dominant societies are empowered by language ability in English. By focusing on what adult English language learners are able to do rather than on what they cannot say, an implied connection between thresholds of English language ability and discursive agency in English is interrupted. The study advances a vision of Canadian citizenship premised not on benchmarks of English language skills but rather on the actual deployment of rhetorical potential.

Plurilingualism, teaching and learning, and Anglophone higher education: an introduction Anglophone universities and linguistic diversity

In this Special Issue, we present a series of articles on plurilingual approaches to teaching and learning in two Anglophone higher educational settings, the UK and Anglophone Canada. Universities ...

Connected Struggles: Catholics, Nationalists, and Transnational Relations between Mexico and Quebec, 1917–1945 by Maurice Demers

Reviewed by: Connected Struggles: Catholics, Nationalists, and Transnational Relations between Mexico and Quebec, 1917–1945 by Maurice Demers Robert Curley Connected Struggles: Catholics, Nationalists, and Transnational Relations between Mexico and Quebec, 1917–1945. By Maurice Demers. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2014. Pp. xii, 290. $100.00. ISBN 978-0-773-543560.) Connected Struggles is about Québécois nationalists and their relations with Mexican Catholics during the decade of the 1940s. From the outset, Demers plays with the unlikely pairing these two groups might seem to make. They found themselves at opposite ends of a North American cultural and geographical expanse, but found affinity and forged friendship against the backdrop of the fall of France to Nazi Germany and the "neo-colonial" powerhouses of Great Britain and the United States of America. The author sets out a historical context that ranges broadly, signaling out the importance of social revolution and religious rebellion in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the often tense and uncomfortable relationship between Anglophone Canada and its Francophone minority. This makes for a challenging and complex argument that spends equal time examining the internal politics of two sovereign nations and international relations as imagined, constructed, and played out between subaltern groups within each country. These histories are connected on several levels. First of all, as a study of international relations it consciously shifts the focus from government to organized groups in civil society that crafted policies at the margins of the state with an eye toward the advancement of their own political interests. Demers characterizes French Canadians as Catholics in a nation where Protestant faith and English language were hegemonic in state and society. Similarly, Mexican Catholics were subject [End Page 134] to, or subjects of, a post-revolutionary state that was actively, at times radically, anticlerical in its politics. These two groups built an unlikely friendship and alliance in the 1940s with the dual objective of achieving greater influence at home and channels of cultural diplomacy that might strengthen each one. Chapters 1 and 2 cover the general history of each country during the generation leading up to World War II. This background is crucial because most readers will be familiar with only one national history. The two chapters do a good job of laying out the key moments and figures, as well as a basic historiography for each side. The following three chapters tell separate but intertwined stories about how the two groups forged international bonds of friendship and political alliance with the goal of strengthening their lot domestically. Chapter 3 covers the Union des Latins d'Amérique as it developed a Pan-American Hispanism that relied on Roman Catholic identity and the general idea of a Latin tradition. Latinité might appeal to Quebec and Mexico as a shared "civilization" distinct from and opposite to Anglo-Saxon culture. Chapter 4 tells the story of student exchanges that brought Canadians, particularly young women, to visit Mexico City and its national university, as well as some Mexicans to visit Montreal between 1943 and 1945. Chapter 5 is about the 1945 crowning of Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe as patron saint of the Americas. Canadian Catholics sent a large diplomatic delegation to the jubilee, and the week-long event played out as a test of the relations of good faith between the Catholic Church and Mexico's post-revolutionary state. All these events are meant to tell a more general story about the construction of the modern public sphere in secular society. They show political minorities in both nations as they attempt to practice citizenship in an expanding public sphere. Demers sees them as "stakeholders" who actively play diverse roles in civil society through the lens of identity politics, be it Canadian Franco-Nationalism or Mexican Catholicism. The concept of stakeholder is insufficiently parsed and problemetized. However, it serves Demers as a primary organizing concept to explain the faces of modern citizenship across two nations, languages, and cultures. It also pro-vides a way of explaining the affinities between these groups as they built bridges of friendship and informal channels of diplomacy across the continent during the Second World War...

The two solitudes of Canadian nativism: Explaining the absence of a competitive anti‐immigration party in Canada

AbstractCanada has been celebrated in popular and academic work for its relative immunity to nativist populism. No competitive nativist party has recently emerged in federal politics that challenges the mainstream consensus around mass immigration, unlike virtually every other postindustrial democracy. This paper argues that existing explanations for this “exceptionalism” are lacking. In particular, they fail to appreciate the importance of Quebec nationalism in contributing to this outcome. Quebec nationalism fractured the stronger anti‐immigration sentiment found in rural and smaller urban areas in both Quebec and Anglophone Canada and thereby prevented right‐wing parties from mobilising that sentiment in a way that could feasibly win elections. This forced such parties to moderate their message and court “ethnic voters” in suburban ridings around Toronto and Vancouver. We illustrate this argument using novel data which permit a comparison of the Canadian experience with nativist politics in Australia and New Zealand.

The Internationalization of Higher Education: National Interpretations of a Global Model

Internationalization is a rapidly growing trend among higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. This article situates internationalization within comparative education by theorizing it as processes of global diffusion and localization. It analyzes survey data from administrators at 1,439 HEIs in 137 countries to understand their interpretations of the benefits of internationalization. Findings show that administrators at HEIs in knowledge-intensive economies, and those in the United States and Anglophone Canada in particular, are more likely to frame benefits in terms of enhancing students’ international awareness, while revenue generation is much more likely to be cited in other Anglophone contexts. It argues that in Anglophone North America, higher education is being leveraged to combat histories of parochialism; in knowledge-intensive economies, it is seen as supporting pipelines of skilled labor; and in Anglophone contexts outside of North America, it is framed as an economically valuable export. Understanding where discursive repertoires resonate sheds light on how local actors understand the role of international higher education. The findings point to ways in which an Anglophone context mediates understandings of the benefits of internationalization and also how understandings of internationalization are influenced by nations’ positions in larger global contexts.

Social Status: The Last Bastion of Discrimination

Despite the increasing inequality between rich and poor, there is resistance towards proscribing discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic status. This resistance is marked in Anglophone countries, namely, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, the US and South Africa, countries that are located in the high inequality/low mobility extreme in terms of socioeconomic status. This article argues that the resistance is associated with the embrace of neoliberalism, a political value system that extols the free market, individualism and profit maximisation. The commitment to competition policy necessarily produces inequality in contradistinction to equality, which informs the philosophical underpinnings of anti-discrimination legislation. Even in the comparatively few jurisdictions where legislation on the basis of social status or a cognate attribute exists, the legislative model is restrictive and the number of complaints minuscule. Most notably, an overview of the Anglophone countries reveals that there is a dearth of complaints involving national and multinational corporations, the primary wealth creators of the neoliberal state that are also major employers. Although employment generally gives rise to the preponderance of discrimination complaints on grounds such as race and sex, it is suggested that the resistance to social status discrimination serves to protect private corporations from scrutiny.

At the Age of Twelve: Migrant Children and the Disruption of Multicultural Belonging

This paper troubles seductive discourses of Canadian multiculturalism and the centrality of whiteness to national belonging, highlighting how migrant children understand and navigate assimilation. Evolving out of childhood migration stories shared by 12 interviewees in the documentary Twelve, the article addresses the ways ‘childist’ logics are used to separate childhood from the realities of race and racism. In working towards anti‐racist praxis, we address how storytelling challenges adult–child power hierarchies, exposing how childhood continues to be framed as a time of innocence, disconnected from the violence, danger and pain involved in migrating to Anglophone Canada.

The spatial knowledge politics of crisis mapping for community development

Crisis mapping, the combination of software-as-a-service mapping and reporting aimed at large numbers of individuals, is proposed for chronic problems as well as acute issues; it is universalized for global south disasters as well as global north community development. It supposedly affords a new spatial knowledge politics (SKP) that unfolds in local communities. We tested the role of spatial knowledge politics in crisis mapping for community development by co-developing, with local organizations, four applications based on the prominent mapping-telecommunications crisis platform, Crowdmap by Ushahidi. We assessed crisis mapping’s effectiveness in North American community based activities in Francophone and Anglophone Canada. We found persistent technical challenges, consistent with the literature, although crisis mapping allowed increased opportunities for the developer to insert their knowledge. Analysis of the contributions illustrated the use of crisis mapping to report on place-based features that enabled contributors to connect, but also limited the ability to express location and place in 160 characters. It revealed tensions in conceptualization of local spatial knowledge politics as witness versus political influence. Crisis mapping could simultaneously aid and disrupt traditional place-based politics of community based organizations. Our critique serves as a test of crisis mapping’s universality for other fields and its promise of a new SKP.

Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives ed. by Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley

Reviewed by: Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives ed. by Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley Olga Michael Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley, eds. Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives. Wilfrid Laurier up, 2016. 305 pp. $29.99. Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives is a collection of ten essays edited by Candida Rifkind and Laura Warley. Together with Rifkind and Warley's introduction, these essays shed light on the alternative comics scene in Canada, focusing on print book-length graphic life narratives produced from 1980 to 2011, created by five white men, three white women, one Indigenous man, and one Black Canadian man (Rifkind and Warley 4). Because of its inclusivity in terms of creators' backgrounds and subject matters, the collection provides access to a diverse body of Canadian [End Page 199] graphic life narratives, offering nuanced readings that foreground the richness and complexities of the comics representation of issues both specific to the Canadian culture and extending beyond it. The collection is a much-needed tool for students and scholars interested in life writing and comics studies because it successfully demonstrates how and why comics is a fertile medium for verbalizing and visualizing unspeakable stories. These concern relationality and the deconstruction of identity through Alzheimer's, trauma and loss, failed white masculinity, masculinity and military culture, abject female sexuality, the suffering of Indigenous populations, and the role of gender in colonial Canada. In addition, we come across an analysis of an alternative re-presentation of (Martin Luther King as) a political figure, the image of the child in relation to the Canadian nation, and the educational potential of graphic biographies for young people. Canadian Graphic is groundbreaking not only in its variety of analyses that successfully blend various theoretical backgrounds and examination of the verbal and visual components of these texts but also in how it opens the door into controversial issues as those are depicted via the language of comics. Rifkind and Warley's introduction situates Canadian Graphic in life writing studies and sets the comics scene in Canada in a very detailed and insightful way, starting by naming Sylvie Rancourt's Mélodie, her semi-fictionalized comics about her life "as a nude dancer in [Montreal's] infamous strip clubs," as "a first, if not the first, Canadian comics autobiography" (1–2). While acknowledging female contribution in the field and foregrounding Rancourt's controversial subject matter, the introduction never feels like it focuses on a specific aspect of the Canadian graphic life narrative. Contrarily, it provides information about the development of comics both in Francophone and Anglophone Canada, its web and print outputs. Additionally, it refers to the history of the Canadian comics publishing industry as well as to the reception of comics within and outside academia, mentioning university courses devoted to the medium, gallery exhibitions, the establishment of the bilingual Canadian Society for the Study of Comics, and the annual international conference attached to the Toronto Comics Art Fair (6–7). After providing an overview of the development of Canadian comics, Rifkind and Warley proceed to aptly state what the following essays illustrate: that "remembering in comics can extend beyond the personal and can be a pedagogical project connected to constructions of nation, gender, and race" (11). The collection is composed by three sections, each starting with a cover page including its title and a comics illustration—an excerpt from [End Page 200] one of the primary texts analyzed in the following chapters. This, together with its cover, makes the book as attractive in terms of presentation as it is thought-provoking in terms of contents. The first part, "Confession and the Relational Self," starts with an essay by Kevin Ziegler that introduces "a category of formal composition [called] comics confession," a genre that renders the reader an intimate listener of shameful stories (23). Closely reading excerpts from Chester Brown's Yummy Fur (1983–94), Julie Doucet's My New York Diary (2013), and Sarah Leavitt's Tangles (2010), Ziegler foregrounds "comics confession" as "a distinct model of personal address" that "engages readers and asks them to participate in a dialogue through a strategy of formal intimacy" expressed via the visuality of comics, which evokes affect in the relationship...

Shakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation by Jennifer Drouin (review)

Jennifer Drouin. Shakespeare in Quebec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2014. 286 pp. $45.50. Taking up francophone Shakespearean adaptations that are rarely presented outside of Quebec, Jennifer Drouin's monograph is at once informative and quirky. In connecting francophone Quebecois creative material anglophone critical work, Drouin's goal is to bridge Canada's 'two solitudes' (vii), and she is largely successful in this pursuit. Noting that Quebecois authors have been busy adapting William Shakespeare's work since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Drouin counts over thirty relevant creative works written in French, not mention translations. While she points a Quebecois pride in maintaining 'la langue de Moliere,' the output of francophone Shakespearean material far outstrips any attention paid the former author (3). Importantly, Drouin suggests that while the Quebecois recognize Shakespeare's cultural cachet they do not venerate his work; this level of appreciation allows authors a great deal of flexibility in reworking the playwright's material. Weaving through the author's study of textual hybridity, adaptation, and appropriation is her recognition that Quebec itself is a cultural nexus. Indeed, the region has a long history of colonization and appropriation, changing hands from France Britain Canada, simultaneously exerting colonial control over First Nations groups and also witnessing influxes of immigration from specific international sites. The result is a region with colonial, anti-colonial, neocolonial, or postcolonial situations developing at various points in its history (13), and as a concept becomes at once textually, politically, and socially inflected. According Drouin, Shakespeare's works are capable of spurring new conversations of specific relevance modern Quebec. Indeed, since the Quiet Revolution, plays focusing on gender, sexuality, nationalism, the 1970 October Crisis, the referenda of 1980 and 1995, and aids have all been produced. Chapter 1 tracks postcolonial discourses in contemporary Que bec, comparing Quebecois nationalism iterations found in anglophone Canada and other English Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland. As she makes a case for differentiating postcolonial culture in Quebec from that in Canada, Drouin notes that Canadian anglophones often treat Shakespeare with what readers and playgoers take be an appropriate level of gravitas, yet anglophone productions and adaptations have also been more willing take up questions of culture, gender, and sexuality. At the same time, the author acknowledges that Canada's 'well-entrenched cultural institutions' may allow for more self-reflexive critique: 'a society that feels threatened by its marginality in a global context,' on the other hand, could feel pressure focus on a sense of nationalism before other concerns (15). Drouin's first chapter is an ambitious study of Quebec's national identity, and it tracks several relevant influences and concerns. This makes for an informative chapter but, unfortunately, one that also reads as slightly hodgepodge. The nationalist thread (or threads) in the chapter must hold together Shakespeare in Canada, Quebec, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Catalonia, and India; British colonialism as metaphorical cultural rape; clerical nationalism in the Catholic Church; the Quiet Revolution; and feminist and queer positive political initiatives. The number and scope of concerns is thoughtprovoking, but the larger nationalist study occasionally gets lost. Chapter 2 is more focused and takes up the issue of adaptation, analyzing the need alter what is alien, thus fitting older work within a new context and social use, and Drouin crucially connects this understanding of adaptation larger postcolonial processes (43). The author notes the capaciousness and plasticity in Quebecois, adaptation, and Shakespeare, the three terms that establish a foundation for her book. …

Print advertising in anglophone and francophone Canada from a critical discourse analytical point of view: establishing different relations between the producer and viewer of advertisement images

This article investigates whether marketers use different visual designs in Canadian magazine advertisements to establish different types of contacts to, on the one hand, anglophone and, on the other hand, francophone viewers. The results of the content analysis, which is based on the Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design (2006) model by Kress and Van Leeuwen, show that there are significant differences between the English and French advertisements regarding the relationship between the image-producer and viewer. In particular, there are differences concerning both the social distance and power relations between the image-producer and viewer as well as the involvement and detachment of the viewer.

Divided by a Common Language? Transnational Insights into Epistemological and Methodological Approaches to Strategic Management Research in English-Speaking Countries

In this study, we examine what is important to strategic management researchers in different countries and investigate whether or not there is a demarcation between North American-based scholars and those established elsewhere in the native English-speaking world. We advance data in support of the argument that there is a difference of approach to strategic management research between scholars and leading journals based in North America (USA and Anglophone Canada), compared with the rest of the world. We further argue that this has implications for strategic management teaching and practice. Our analysis of strategy research in the leading journals of the strategic and general management field found that – at a methodological level – North American-based scholars and journals have a quantitative, statistically-driven partiality, whereas scholars and journals based elsewhere in the English-speaking world favor qualitative, case-based research. At an epistemological level, North American research displays a managerialist inclination, concerned with improving the management of organizations. In contrast, research conducted in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK in particular exhibits a sociological partiality, interested in scrutinizing organizational meaning and social interactions. The implications may be evidenced in a more critical perspective on general management development and practice in these countries, and a performance optimizing approach in North America.

Building a Law of Human Rights: Roncarelli v. Duplessis in Canadian Constitutional Culture

This article reveals how audiences, especially in anglophone Canada, initially received and interpreted Roncarelli v. Duplessis as a case, above all, about human rights. Ignoring the judgment’s myriad complexities, commentators eagerly situated the case within the Supreme Court of Canada’s “implied bill of rights” jurisprudence then taking shape. Part of the reason for the emphasis on Roncarelli’s rights can be traced to the manner in which Frank Scott and Louis Stein argued the case, and the language of rights employed by Justice Ivan Rand’s iconic judgment. But Roncarelli’s meaning also took shape in press accounts and editorials, radio broadcasts, case comments, and law school lectures. Exploring these often-neglected sources, this article exposes the role of constitutional culture in creating jurisprudential meaning. In turn, it also calls for greater recognition of the pre-Charter Supreme Court of Canada in contributing to Canada’s intellectual history of rights.

Some Thoughts about Theater Translation in Francophone and Anglophone Canada

Some Thoughts about Theater Translation in Francophone and Anglophone Canada

Book Reviews: The Bowdler Shakespeare, the Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's History Plays, Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640, Rhetoric, Theatre and the Arts of Design. Essays Presented to Roy Eriksen, Shakespearean Metaphysics, Representing France and the French, Tragicomic Redemptions: Global Economies and the Early Modem English Stage, Œuvres complètes, the Whirligig of Time: Essays on Shakespeare and Czechoslovakia, the

Book Reviews: The Bowdler Shakespeare, the Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's History Plays, Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640, Rhetoric, Theatre and the Arts of Design. Essays Presented to Roy Eriksen, Shakespearean Metaphysics, Representing France and the French, Tragicomic Redemptions: Global Economies and the Early Modem English Stage, Œuvres complètes, the Whirligig of Time: Essays on Shakespeare and Czechoslovakia, the

Building long-term orientation in buyer–supplier relationships: The moderating role of culture

This research investigates buyer–supplier relationships in international markets. Research and practice have shown that buyer–supplier relationships benefit when partners to the relationship exhibit a long-term orientation. The extant literature suggests that a buyer's trust of a supplier and the supplier's performance affect the buyer's long-term orientation toward the relationship. We propose that the relative effects of trust and performance on long-term orientation are moderated by culture – specifically the individualism/collectivism dimension. Hypotheses are tested on data from two individualist and two collectivist cultures, using responses from over 600 purchasing professionals in the United States, Anglophone Canada, Francophone Canada and Mexico. Taken together, empirical findings suggest that cultural differences warrant consideration in developing successful purchasing strategies.

The regression hypothesis as a framework for first language attrition

In an attempt to explain first language attrition in emigrant populations, this paper investigates the explanatory power of a framework that has – until now – received little attention: the regression hypothesis (Jakobson, 1941). This hypothesis predicts that the order of attrition is the reverse of the order of acquisition. The regression hypothesis was tested in relation to the loss of morphology and syntax in Dutch immigrants in Anglophone Canada. Evidence in favor of regression was found, but mainly in the morphological domain. Syntax, on the other hand, was mostly characterized by L2 influences from English. As it is problematic to treat regression as a theory in its own right, these findings are then explained in the light of both generative and usage-based approaches, as well as the more recent Dynamic Systems Theory.

The effects of contact on native language pronunciation in an L2 migrant setting

The primary aim of this study was to determine whether native speakers of German living in either Canada or the Netherlands are perceived to have a foreign accent in their native German speech. German monolingual listeners (n = 19) assessed global foreign accent of 34 L1 German speakers in Anglophone Canada, 23 L1 German speakers in the Dutch Netherlands, and five German monolingual controls in Germany. The experimental subjects had moved to either Canada or the Netherlands at an average age of 27 years and had resided in their country of choice for an average of 37 years. The results revealed that the German listeners were more likely to perceive a global foreign accent in the German speech of the consecutive bilinguals in Anglophone Canada and the Dutch Netherlands than in the speech of the control group and that nine immigrants to Canada and five immigrants to the Netherlands were clearly perceived to be non-native speakers of German. Further analysis revealed that quality and quantity of contact with the native German language had a more significant effect on predicting global foreign accent in native speech than age of arrival or length of residence. Two types of contact were differentiated: (i) C−M represented communicative settings in which little code-mixing between the L1 and L2 was expected to occur, and (ii) C+M represented communicative settings in which code-mixing was expected to be more likely. The variable C−M had a significant impact on predicting foreign accent in native speech, whereas the variable C+M did not. The results suggest that contact with the L1 through communicative settings in which code-mixing is inhibited is especially conducive to maintaining the stability of native language pronunciation in consecutive bilinguals living in a migrant context.