Canadian Officials Research Articles

Canadian Orientalism: Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East in the ‘Golden Age’ of Canadian Foreign Policy

Beyond the issues of Palestine’s partition and the Suez crisis, the Middle East has received little attention within the history of Canadian international relations. And yet, in 1947 and in 1956, Canadian officials undertook fateful actions that shaped this region’s politics. This paper examines Canadian foreign policy toward the Middle East during the 1940s and 1950s, the so-called golden age of Canada’s international influence. In this period, and despite a reputation as honest brokers, Canadian officials came to identify with and support Israel, a country they viewed favourably because they saw it as a fellow Western state that stood out from its Oriental neighbours. Examining how Canadian foreign policy elites viewed Israel, Palestine, the wider Arab world, and the people of these regions during the 1940s and 1950s, this paper traces Orientalism’s important influence on Canada’s relations with the Middle East and stance toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Territorial Expansionists and Troublesome Locals: Daniel Clark at New Orleans and John Christian Schultz at Red River

Abstract The United States and Canada began major efforts to acquire territory in North America’s interior in the nineteenth century. In 1803, the United States purchased approximately 827,192 square miles of territory from France. Canada began to govern 1,409,900 square miles of territory known as Rupert’s Land in 1869. Historical accounts of American and Canadian officials’ efforts in Washington and Ottawa to obtain these vast territories are abundant. Historians have devoted less attention, however, to expansionists who supported American expansion in Louisiana and Canadian expansion in Rupert’s Land. Daniel Clark, U.S. Consul to New Orleans, used his office to promote American acquisition of Spanish Louisiana. Canadian John Christian Schultz, an influential “doctor” and businessperson at Red River, became the owner of the only newspaper in the settlement and used it to advocate for Canadian possession of Rupert’s Land. Clark arrived in Louisiana from Ireland in 1786 and Schultz from Upper Canada between 1859 and 1861. Clark and Schultz were opportunists who understood that American and Canadian territorial ambitions presented them with opportunities to advance their business and political careers. Far less important to both men were the futures of other residents of New Orleans and Red River. Clark and Schultz for example, both argued that representative local government should not be immediately introduced in their regions.

In different states of indifference: movement, friction, and resistance

In different states of indifference: movement, friction, and resistance

Self-Destituent Power in Iroquois Diplomacy: Interpreting the 2020 Talks on the Tyendinaga Tracks

Preserving the original agreement between the Rotinonhsión:ni (Iroquois) and the first settlers, the Two Row Wampum belt (Teiohá:te) displays two parallel lines, where the original peoples’ canoe and the settlers’ ship are said to sail side by side, suggesting that allied parties to move in the same direction they must respect their mutual autonomy. Drawing on the transcripts of negotiations between Canadian officials and Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) warriors in Tyendinaga, this article examines how the Two Row Wampum's notion of alliance through separation played out in the 2020 rail blockade movement in support of the Wet'suwet'en people's fight against the Coastal GasLink pipelines. Central to the text is Kanien'kehá:ka warriors’ suggestion that, beyond relations with settlers, the Two Row Wampum applies to relations between and among Indigenous nations, clans, genders, and even nonhumans. The intricate consensus-based decision-making protocols that compose the Rotinonhsión:ni Confederacy's precolonial governance system likewise attest to the respect for separation that pervades all relations, as if the potential of Rotinonhsión:ni diplomacy to render sovereign power destitute had reached a constitutional stature.

The spokesperson matters: evaluating the crisis communication styles of primary spokespersons when presenting COVID-19 modeling data across three jurisdictions in Canada

Risk prevention measures are more likely to be accepted if people trust risk managers and their ability to handle the crisis, which often depends on who communicates with the public. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some Canadian officials became the main spokespersons of pandemic response in their jurisdiction, speaking almost daily to the public. We evaluated how the primary official for each jurisdiction chose to communicate about epidemiological modeling with the public and how they used modeling data to support their pandemic decisions. We conducted textual and visual analyses of press conferences held in British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario. Then, we asked focus group participants who they trusted the most and the least for information on COVID-19. We identified two main communication styles: compassionate-informative and condescending-evasive. Spokespersons following the former demonstrate a trust-building effort by providing straightforward answers, demonstrating expertise, while showing empathy and risk management competence. Those who followed the latter style predominantly offered superficial and defensive responses, engaging in blame-shifting and politicizing risk. Focus group participants trusted most the spokespersons who follow a compassionate-informative style are considered trustworthy, which could increase compliance with public health measures. However, those who use the condescending-evasive style were seen as less trustworthy. Our results underscore, first, the importance of disassociating political agendas from risk communication and emergency response during public health crises. Second, spokespersons should be trained in risk and crisis communication to engage with reporters and the public positively. Finally, crisis communication should emphasize the scientific evidence behind guidelines, while acknowledging scientific uncertainty.

Establishing twinning relations of Kyiv with Chicago and Toronto

The aim of the article is to study prerequisites and formalization process of inter-municipal cooperation of Kyiv with Chicago and Toronto held in July 1991. Methods of research: historical-genetic, comparative historical analysis, historical-biographical, structural-functional. Main results. The Kyiv City Council and its executive committee senior officials regarded the establishment of twinning relations of Kyiv with two North American cities mentioned above as an important component of enhanced cooperation between the Kyiv City Council and the Ukrainian western diaspora. Contacts of Kyiv authorities with representatives of the Ukrainian western diaspora and American and Canadian officials in 1990 along with increasing costs for international links contributed to the intensification of preparations for the process of institutional twinning between Kyiv and two mentioned North American cities held in July 1991. The latter coincided with the 1st anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine and the 100th anniversary of the arrival of first ethnic Ukrainians in Canada. Institutional twinning between Kyiv and Chicago took place in the latter, whereas the same process between Kyiv and Toronto was held in the capital of the Ukrainian SSR; formalization of twinning between Kyiv and the named two North American cities involved Kyiv City authorities who were accompanied by the members of the Ukrainian western diaspora and senior officials representing the USA, Canada and the Ukrainian SSR. The signing of inter-municipal agreements of Kyiv with Chicago and Toronto led to additional meetings with the participation of authorities, highest officials and participants of public organizations of the Ukrainian western diaspora; twinning between Kyiv and Toronto was covered by Ukrainian newspapers better than the same process between Kyiv and Chicago. Practical meaning of the article consists in the possibility of using its conclusions for the further studies of the history of twinning of Ukrainian cities. Originality of the article lies in setting its goal and the combined use of domestic and foreign concrete historical sources. Scientific novelty of the article consists in the attempt of comprehensive investigation of establishment of twinning links of Kyiv with Chicago and Toronto based on a broad range of sources. Type of article: research.

The Other Little House: The Brothel as a Colonial Institution on the Canadian Prairies, 1880–93

Abstract What role did settler bawdy houses play in Canadian colonial expansion in the 1880s? The trial of “Big Nelly” Webb, a white bawdy house madam and sex worker who shot a Mounted Police constable on the doorstep of her brothel in 1888, offers critical insight into the world of these seldom acknowledged colonial institutions and the women who ran them. Far from simply “women on the margins,” Canadian officials in the North-West Territories permitted many white madams and sex workers to operate bawdy houses in emerging prairie settlements because they viewed them as essential workers. Drawing from the archives of the North-West Mounted Police, memoirs and testimonies of bawdy house sex workers and madams, and newspaper and court reports, this article explores the networks of influence that supported these houses, including local police and high-ranking colonial officials. Beyond personal ties, the influence of women like Big Nelly reflected the colonial function of the settler brothel. The waves of migrating bawdy house madams and workers who flocked to Canada’s “Last Best West” during this period could serve a very real role in the growth and biopolitical regulation of new Canadian settlements in Indigenous territory. These workers were tasked with protecting and regulating settler sexual and reproductive health, retaining white bachelor migrants in isolated settlements, and fostering urban growth. Settler bawdy houses on the Prairies were also bastions of racial segregation and containment, built to displace (and expose) workers of color and stop the growth of Black, Indigenous, and mixed-race populations and resistance in the 1880s. Indeed, race-based hierarchies did not just exist within the settler brothel economies of Canada’s North-West Territories, they were one of the foundational justifications for their existence.

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada

Ethical product havens in the global diamond trade: Using the Wayback Machine to evaluate ethical market outcomes

Who benefits from ethical product markets? While most ethical products (e.g. fair trade and eco-certified products) are intended to benefit marginalized communities and vulnerable ecosystems, the reality is that the geographic preferences exhibited by so-called ethical markets may, in fact, reinforce global inequities rather than remedy them. It can be difficult to evaluate the outcomes of ethical product markets, however, because we are often limited to data from a small number of industries with widely used standards and certifications. This research pilots a new methodology, using an online archive—the Wayback Machine, to evaluate shifts in countries' ethical market share, focusing on the evolution of the ethical diamond market over the past 20 years. The ethical diamond market is an interesting case because it began specifically as a competition among countries of origin, with Canadian officials and diamond producers trading on Canada's reputation to position Canada as an ethical product haven in opposition to conflict diamonds from Africa. Yet, Canada's early ethical monopoly has been contested on multiple fronts, and this article focuses on the following questions: To what extent has the contestation over Canada's ethical monopoly actually changed the ethical diamond market? Specifically, how much market share have different ethical alternatives gained and lost over time? And, what does this tell us about the governance and development outcomes of the market? The results show that while the market has diversified over time, it is still largely not benefiting the most marginalized diamond producing countries and communities.

'Small Gold Mine of Talent': Integrating Prague Spring Refugee Professionals in Canada, 1968-1969

Following the August 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, 11,200 Prague Spring refugees were resettled in Canada. This movement included many experienced professionals and skilled tradespeople. This article examines how these refugees navigated language training and barriers to employment, including professional accreditation, and examines how this experience shaped bureaucratic and public views of refugee integration. The focus of this article is primarily on resettlement and integration efforts in Ontario, since roughly half of the Prague Spring refugees were permanently resettled in the province. The article outlines how, as part of its efforts to help the refu- gees with their economic and social integration, Canadian officials provided assisted passage, initial accommodations, help with securing Canadian employment, and English- or French-language training. Prague Spring refugees navigated professional obstacles, including securing accreditation of their foreign credentials and underemployment in their respective fields. Their successful resettlement and integration depended on intergovernmental cooperation between Canada and its provinces, and the assistance provided by local Czech and Slovak communities across the country.

The Proving Ground: Colombo Plan Fellowships and the Changing Landscape of Health Education in Canada, 1951-69.

This article examines the history of the Colombo Plan fellowship program in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s. It will argue that this program had a visible impact on Canadian institutions of learning and health care for three reasons. First, it brought an unprecedented number of students and health care professionals from South and Southeast Asia to Canada; second, it fostered a sense of mission within Canadian institutions about the role education should play in contributing to health and international development overseas; and third, it revealed the challenges and tensions inherent in fulfilling this mission in the context of differences between the objectives of Canadian officials and those of the fellows themselves. With its focus on South and Southeast Asia, the Colombo Plan fellowship program anticipated broader trends regarding the international migration of health workers from that region in later years.

Appropriating Indigenous lands: the liberal founding of Manitoba

ABSTRACT This article examines the language and strategies of Canadian land expansion through the founding of Manitoba in 1870. It analyses the discourse of key colonial authorities, which reveal that Canada mobilises the ideals of liberalism to promote the colonial policy of appropriating Indigenous lands. Because liberalism endures as the dominant paradigm that both structure contemporary politics and contemporary thinking about politics in the West, it is critical to clarify the connection between liberalism and the wrongs of land appropriation. Examining the role of liberal ideas in the founding of Manitoba also helps defuse the capacity of liberalism to produce dispossession, especially of Indigenous Peoples. In addition to exposing the ideas that supported the production of Canadian sovereignty, this article also analyses the various tactics Canada deployed to secure that sovereignty amidst Indigenous resistance. If Canadian officials first opted to absorb Indigenous lands through the ‘gentle’ means of administration, declaration and negotiation, they resorted to military forces when Indigenous Peoples frustrated Canadian claims to sovereignty. By bringing into focus the shifting tactics that Canadian state officials employed to annex Indigenous lands, the founding of Manitoba enriches our understanding of settler colonial statecraft and of the distinctive means of settler state expansion.

The Canada-US Border: Approaches to Managing Irregular Crossings

The Canada-US border has seen a significant spike in irregular crossings from the US into Canada since 2016. As tens of thousands of migrants have crossed into Canada outside official entry points, Canadian officials have had to grapple with how to manage these irregular asylum claims that have put enormous strain on the Canadian immigration system. In response, the Canadian government has developed an approach that sees officials conduct comprehensive security screenings to process these claims. However, the existence of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the US has also created a challenge in dealing with this issue. In response, three approaches have emerged. The first involves completely eliminating the STCA. The second would see serious restriction of asylum claims and patrolling of borders, while the third would seek to maintain the status quo. However, the ideal solution is likely one that finds a middle ground, expediting the processing while also closing loopholes in the agreement.

Dominion Imaginings: Commemorating WWI in Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Official Painting

ABSTRACT During the First World War, many belligerent nations commissioned official art to celebrate and preserve their experience of the conflict. This article explores the creation of the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand official war paintings; in particular, by tracing the emergence, development and fate of each collection, the article examines the process of memory-making and the politics at play in the commemoration of the war in art. It argues that while the collections were born from similar ideas circulating among dominion officials in London, these manifested themselves in markedly different ways under each war art program.

Canada, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the flexibility of terror identities

ABSTRACT Security governance practices are contingent on the imagination of future threats. The “war on terror” has produced a very narrow imagination of threats, almost singularly focused on suspect communities that are Arab, Muslim, or perceived to be Middle Eastern. Discussing how immigration practices in Canada have been influenced by counter-terrorism trends, we argue that “terror identities” are mutable and highly racialised imaginaries that cast indelible marks of suspicion on subjects who are deemed as security threats. Examining the case of a journalist deemed inadmissible to Canada because of her “membership” in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), we argue that terror identities impose authoritative control over the status and lived experiences of individuals who are cast through these racialised labelling practices. Focussing on the shifting characterisation of the PLO by Canadian officials as both political interlocutor and terrorist organisation, our purpose is to highlight how racialised imaginations of terror identities enact punitive and discriminatory practices.

“Just one of many donors”: Canada’s engagement with civil society in Afghanistan

ABSTRACTCanada's entry into Afghanistan as a NATO ally was widely considered a necessary military venture, but Canadian operations during the reconstruction period that ensued were criticized as having tarnished Canada's reputation on the international stage. Canada's history as a peacekeeping nation and its perceived middle power status did initially allow it to act as a mediator between the Afghan government, local actors, and the international community. However, our research discovered that Canada did not fully understand the dynamics of the established civil society structures in Afghanistan, nor the ways in which they influence local politics. A limited understanding of “civil society” among Canadian officials and disproportionate focus on professionalized NGOs as its most legitimate representative meant that local civil society groups in Afghanistan and the role they could play to establish democratic structures were largely ignored. By complementing knowledge synthesis of existing scholarly and policy literature with interviews with Canadian and Afghan aid workers, this article examines the process of post-conflict rebuilding in Afghanistan, considering how neglecting Afghan civil society has resulted in less durable social structures. We also examine Canada's image as an international mediator, and identify new ways of assisting rebuilding processes to ensure more durable and peaceful outcomes.

Exclusion by Other Means: Medical Testing and Chinese Migration to Canada, 1947-1967

The end of the so-called “Chinese Exclusion Era” in Canada (1885-1947) did not lead automatically to open and free migration. In the absence of overtly racebased discriminatory policies, Canadian officials in the early 1950s required migrants from the People’s Republic of China to produce an additional set of costly medical exams. This paper explores the impact of this targeted medical discrimination against Chinese migrant families. It investigates the manner in which medical tests were structured and looks specifically at how government officials varyingly understood the uses, and the reliability, of the results over two decades of immigration reform.

Welcoming the Sick and Afflicted: Canada's Tubercular Admissions Program, 1959-1960

In the 1950s, the United Nations lobbied Canadian officials to help close Europe's remaining displaced persons camps and resettle "hard core" refugees—individuals who were unsponsored, sick, infirm, or disabled. As part of Canada's contribution to World Refugee Year (1959-1960), the federal government appeased public demands for a humanitarian response by implementing a special program that brought 325 tubercular refugees and 501 family members to Canada. Despite federal concerns about the financial cost and potential burden on the health care system, the resettlement scheme represented a notable departure from existing immigration policy for unsponsored immigrants with tuberculosis and became an early antecedent to broader reforms in the 1960s.

The Sector Theory and the Canadian Arctic, 1897–1970

ABSTRACTAlthough European discovery in the Arctic began during the Middle Ages, sovereignty issues did not become a major concern until the early twentieth century. At that time, the controversial sector theory was taken up by Canada, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, but opposed by the United States and Norway. This article examines the sector theory in Canadian state practice, clarifying the version of the theory to which Canadian officials subscribed and the aims they hoped to achieve through its use. The international response to Canadian claims is also described.The article demonstrates that Canadian use of the sector principle during the 1920s was pragmatic and successful, but in later decades, confusion arose both inside and outside the government. Inconsistent public statements were made by government representatives in the 1950s and 1960s; these have puzzled and misled scholars ever since. Differences between the Canadian and Soviet versions of the sector theory, lack of adequate institutional memory in Ottawa, and partisan political rivalries all played a part in creating the confusion, but perhaps the key factor was the inherent difficulty of state control over this remote yet geopolitically crucial region.

Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies by Sarah Carter

Reviewed by: Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies by Sarah Carter Sheila McManus Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies. By Sarah Carter. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016. xi + 421 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 USD/$31.95 CAD paper. Sarah Carter’s newest monograph is another impressive addition to her own extensive corpus and our knowledge of white Englishwomen’s roles in the colonization of the Canadian Prairies. This book’s central argument is that Canada resisted allowing white women to homestead decades later than the United States or even other British settler colonies because Canadian authorities clung to particular notions of English gender norms even after England itself had begun to loosen its hold on those same notions. In chapter 1, a brief overview of northern Great Plains Indigenous women’s agricultural practices leads quickly to a discussion of the North American land policies which dispossessed Indigenous peoples and created the rigid grid which still organizes present-day Great Plains land uses. Chapter 2 introduces the vigorous nineteenth-century debate in England over whether or not women were capable of being farmers at all, and the hopes many activists had that the colonies might provide better opportunities for women. One of the only groups of white women who could legally homestead in the Canadian West were widows, because they were considered the “sole” head of their households. Chapter 3 explores some of their experiences in the Canadian Prairies. Chapter 4 describes the white Englishwomen who became local celebrities by buying their land outright, and chapter 5 focuses on the woman who was likely the most famous example of an English-woman farmer, Georgina Binnie-Clark. The homesteads-for-women activists ramped up their activities in the early twentieth century by embracing an explicitly xenophobic platform, as described in chapter 6, “‘Daughters of British Blood’ or ‘Hordes of Men of Alien Race’?.” The final chapter explains that even that strategy, so useful for white women’s suffrage campaigns, was destined to fail because Canadian officials were simply unable to give up their fear that white Englishwomen on the Prairies could or would do anything other than have white English babies. Imperial Plots is longer than it needs to be, with some lengthy tangential sections that don’t serve the central argument. But its greatest strength is the thorough attention paid to the many ways white Englishwomen fought for the right to farm the Canadian West and the stories of the women who succeeded. Sheila McManus Department of History University of Lethbridge Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln