Canadian Movement Research Articles

Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Canada by Alan Filewod, and: The Proceedings of the Theatre in Atlantic Canada Symposium ed. by Richard Paul Knowles

seems a bit worn out by the battle, and his suggestion that MacDiarmid is valuable because his poetry “serves as a measure, delineating a clear approach to the world (or rather, clear approaches) via poetry to which the approaches of other poets can be compared” (212) seems a bit lame. Why not go directly to the major players in the battle of making the language which would de­ scribe the nature of the twentieth-century cultural dilemma? And why not take MacDiarmid as he is, a peculiar bird, often silly, sometimes stupid, but once in a while, writing with a sharp intensity and aesthetic power that he was constantly searching for throughout his career. The Baglow book is a great help in following MacDiarmid through the labyrinth, much of it of his own making. N O T E 1 M. H. Abrams, gen. ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5th ed., voi. 2 (New York, 1986), p. 2239. C h a r l e s p u l l e n / Queen’s University Alan Filewod, Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Can­ ada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). 214. $30.00 cloth; $14.95 paper Richard Paul Knowles, ed., The Proceedings of the Theatre in Atlantic Can­ ada Symposium (Sackville: Centre for Canadian Studies, Mount Allison University, 1988). 266. $9.95 The welcome publication of Alan Filewod’s Collective Encounters: Docu­ mentary Theatre in English Canada and of The Proceedings of the Theatre in Atlantic Canada Symposium edited by Richard Knowles adds to the grow­ ing list of monograph-length studies concerned with the history of theatre and drama in Canada. Both works offer detailed analyses of their specific and well-defined special topics, a refreshing change from the overly generalized, albeit necessary, surveys which have characterized the field since the pioneer­ ing efforts of Murray Edwards’s A Stage in Our Past (1968), E. Ross Stuart’s History of Prairie Theatre (1984) and, more recently, Benson and Conolly’s English-Canadian Theatre (1987). Alan Filewod’s introductory overview of the development of alternative theatre in English Canada condenses and focuses material also dealt with to some extent in Toby Ryan’s Stage Left (1981) and Renate Usmiani’s Second Stage (1983). Filewod argues that the Canadian collective theatrical form represents in localist terms an emerging nationalism. John Gray’s keynote address in the Proceedings provides a per244 sonal documentation of the nationalist awareness developing in the period Filewod discusses. Filewod’s localism-as-nationalism position is also supported by the remarks of various other participants in the Theatre in Atlantic Canada Symposium who argue against the validity of the mediating regional, “Atlan­ tic Canada” designation in favour of a localized focus which better reflects the various and varying theatre communities within each separate province, espe­ cially in terms of government funding. Alan Filewod’s Collective Encounters examines six plays which provide the most widely known examples of collective theatre in English Canada: Thea­ tre Passe Muraille’s The Farm Show, Toronto Workshop Production’s Ten Lost Years, Globe Theatre’s No. 1 Hard, 25th Street Theatre’s Paper Wheat, The Mummers Troupe’s Buchans: A Mining Town, and Catalyst Theatre’s It’s About Time. Before launching into the particular analysis of each play which forms the main part of the text, Professor Filewod provides a back­ ground study of the major figures in and influences on the collective creative activity in the English Canada of the 1960s and 1970s. In this overview of theatrical origins and in the histories of the creation of each play Filewod makes a significant contribution to the study of English-Canadian theatre and drama. This background material connects the theatrical context of English-Canadian collective theatre and the international scene, specifically in terms of the work of Erwin Piscator’s “epic theatre,” the Theatre Work­ shop of Joan Littlewood in London and the Living Newspaper Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in New York. Since the activity of these groups is, I suspect, better known than the Canadian movement, Filewod’s examination of the influences at work here provides a useful orientation of as well as an introduction to the...

The divergent paths of the Canadian and American labour movements

The divergent paths of the Canadian and American labour movements

The Canadian Movement Against The Death Penalty

The Canadian Movement Against The Death Penalty

The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism 1867-1914

Prior to the publication of The Sense of Power most studies of the Canadian movement for imperial unity focused on commercial policy and military and naval cooperation. This influential book demonstrated that the movement - which held that Canada could only become a great nation within the British Empire - was significantly influenced by its leading advocates' belief in nationalism. Carl Berger explores the emotional appeal and intellectual context of this belief, arguing that these advocates' support of imperial unity can be grasped only in terms of their commitment to certain conservative values and in relation to their conception of Canada. The Sense of Power was commended by the Toronto Star when it was first published as entertaining as well as brilliant, and in 2011 Ramsay Cook noted that first books, or for that matter few books, have made as marked an impact on the interpretation of a major theme in Canadian This second edition brings to life the work's incisive analysis and its important contribution to Canadian intellectual history.

Planned Migration: The Social Determinants of the Dutch Canadian Movement.

Planned Migration: The Social Determinants of the Dutch Canadian Movement.

The Political Theory of Social Credit

This paper is concerned with the political theory developed by Major C. H. Douglas, the English founder and leader of the Social Credit movement, and not specifically with the ideas of the Canadian Social Credit movement, although the English theory has had a continuous, if not always a decisive, influence on the Canadian movement. Since the Douglas political theory stems from the Douglas social critique we shall begin with the latter.The frustration of the engineer by the business control of industry may be seen as the starting point of Major Douglas's social thinking. Deeply impressed by the waste of industrial capacity and potential, Major Douglas developed a sweeping critique of industrial civilization. A man of broad sympathies and with a professional view of his engineering calling, he saw that whatever held back the progress of science in industry made it impossible for the technologist to serve the people and give them the benefit of their heritage. He saw further that the concentration of power in the control of industrial production was only a part of a trend toward concentration of power in government, in trade unions, and in every institution which affected the life and opportunity of every individual both as worker and consumer. In his earliest writings his main concern was to expose this trend toward the submergence of the individual, to establish its pervasive nature, and to warn that it must be defeated if the human quality of civilization was not to be destroyed. His case was presented with restraint and with telling effect. His recommendation of a monetary device, which later became commonly identified with social credit, as the most probable direction in which a solution might be found for freeing men from the tyranny of concentrated power, was also presented with restraint in the writings of the first few years, and was subordinated to the main analysis. His point was that men could not be free in any other way until they had secured a freedom of choice, both as producers and consumers, and a level of material well-being which the existing system of production and distribution denied them. The economic system must therefore first be reformed. Socialism was not the answer, since it would mean still further centralization of economic and political power. Monetary reform was the answer because it could destroy the mechanism by which economic power was being increased and by which the material well-being and the freedom of the individual were being diminished. Always Major Douglas presented monetary reform merely as a means toward the end of establishing a new society in which human beings would be free to develop their individuality in a way that had never been possible before.