McGill-Queen's University Press Research Articles

Unpacking the Kists: The Scots in New Zealandby Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking, and Jim McAloon

Unpacking the Kists: The Scots in New Zealand, by Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking, and Jim McAloon. Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. xx, 412 pp. $100 Cdn (cloth). Unpacking the Kists: The Scots in New Zealand is an inter-disciplinary exploration of the Scottish emigrant experience in New Zealand. While historians have long claimed that New Zealand was more influenced by Scottish culture than anywhere else outside of Scotland, this is the first work to examine these claims in-depth and analyze the ways in which Scots negotiated with and affected their new environment. With the recent increase in ethnic and migration history, principally with regards to the Scottish diaspora, this book provides a particularly welcome, indeed needed, addition to present scholarship. The book is roughly organized into four parts. Following the first chapter, which explains the work's rationale and methodology, chapters two and three examine the statistical research used for the project. They provide a rigorous analysis of the movements, demographics and communities of Scots in New Zealand over different phases of settlement. Through a series of comparative studies of Scottish communities in New Zealand and Scotland, these chapters provide the quantitative groundwork for the more focused case studies that follow. The following section, encompassing chapters four through seven, looks at the impact that Scots had on New Zealand society, through examinations of their economic successes in relation to other British emigrants (particularly the English), their participation in civil society, their impact on the New Zealand environment, and their participation in Scottish ethnic associational culture. Chapters eight and nine examine the ways in which Scots maintained (or relinquished) their Scottishness within the private sphere; exploring the ways that the Scottish emigrants engaged with Scottish and colonial literature, religion, leisure activities and folkways. Finally, Chapter ten places the experience of Scots in New Zealand in a global context. Each chapter challenges long-held stereotypes, explaining why they were created and presenting the realities. One of the main contributions of this book is its successful demonstration of the duality of the Scottish New Zealand experience, one of two conflicting, yet at the same time congruous, cultures--Scottish and British. By primarily employing case studies, this work provides a robust analysis of the ways in which Scots shaped their identity in relation to the land of their ancestors, but also to the land they lived in. Not driven by generalizations based on stereotypes but by quantitative and qualitative data and research, this work provides an unrivalled examination of the Scottish migrant's understanding of themselves in the New Zealand landscape, society, and culture. …

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Specifying the Canadian: Four Books on Hockey

Specifying Canadian: Four Books on Hockey A Great Game: The Forgotten Leafs and Rise of Professional Hockey. By Stephen J. Harper. Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 2013. 368 pp. $34.99 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4767-1653-4. $22.00 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4767-1654-1.Hockey, PQ: Canada's Game in Quebec's Popular Culture. By Amy J. Ransom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 265 pp. $70.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-4813-5. $29.95 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4426-1619-6. $29.95 (ebook, EPUB format) ISBN 978-1-4426-7002-0.Refereeing Identity: The Cultural Work of Canadian Hockey Novels. By Michael Buma. Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012. 324 pp. $95.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-3987-7. $29.95 (paper) ISBN 978-0-7735-3988-4.Stickhandling through Margins: First Nations Hockey in Canada. By Michael Robidoux. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. 176 pp. $21.95 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4426-1338-6. $14.95 (ebook, EPUB format) ISBN 978-1-4426-6214-8.The idea that a sport like might Canada is one that might inspire instinctive resistance, but in an era of discredited metanarratives we should come to accept that topics of broad national resonance, no matter what topic, may have power to explain essential features of Canadian society. Certainly, writers have acknowledged this. Al Purdy famously referred to as the Canadian specific (Purdy 1986, 55), and others have invariably pointed out that stories about carry a national narrative-of northernness, of our social values, and of Canada's collective nature (Harrison and Dopp 2009). It is, however, only in last decade that scholars have begun to bring critical attention to these notions, and in new millennium a subfield that Andrew Holman (2009, 7) has called hockey studies has begun to flourish.Seminal works such as Richard Gruneau and David Whitson's Hockey Night in Canada: Sports, Identities, and Cultural Politics (1993) look more critically at meaning and implications of Canada's national game.1 Proponents of subfield have followed their lead through a series of interdisciplinary conferences on held more or less biannually since 2001. The first was convened by Colin Howell at St. Mary's University in Halifax, and resulted in two conference volumes (Howell 2002) that showed variety of work being done on hockey, from climate of indoor rinks to perennial question of origins of game. Subsequent gatherings in Fredericton, Plymouth, Victoria, and Buffalo have allowed a vibrant community of scholars to emerge, and several more publications that pushed forward critical analysis, including a special issue of Sport History Review (Holman 2006) and edited collections by Whitson and Gruneau (2006), Richard Harrison and Jamie Dopp (2009), and Andrew Holman (2009).2 Many of same scholars have contributed to other important, more focussed collections, including those examining national spread of (Wong 2009), cultural place of Montreal Canadiens (Laurin-Lamothe and Moreau 2011), and of course, 1972 Summit Series (Kennedy 2014).The last half-decade has also produced several substantial individual works that address major concerns of scholars (primarily meaning of game in Canadian context) and approach questions in a variety of ways. In this essay, I consider four books that to various degrees make compelling claims about how study of and its motivating myths illumine interactions of major themes of Canadian society in modern age-colonialism, national identity, ethnicity, gender, and capitalism.It must be said that studying has a few perks, and to generate Refereeing Identity: The Cultural Work of Canadian Hockey Novels (2012), Michael Buma had enviable task of reading dozens of Canadian novels and placing them in context of Canadian literary criticism. His work followed swiftly on heels of Jason Blake's Canadian Hockey Literature (2010), which surveyed more broadly fiction, poetry, and drama. …

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William Jenkins, Between Raid and Rebellion: The Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1867–1916. Québec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. 540pp. Bibliography. £72.00 hbk.

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Frontier Boosters: Port Townsend and the Culture of Development in the American West.ByElaine Naylor. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2014. xv + 296pp. $32.95/£20.99.

Frontier Boosters: Port Townsend and the Culture of Development in the American West.<b>By</b>Elaine Naylor. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2014. xv + 296pp. $32.95/£20.99.

Republicanism and Responsible Government: The Shaping of Democracy in Australia and Canada, by Benjamin T. Jones

Republicanism and Responsible Government: The Shaping of Democracy in Australia and Canada, by Benjamin T. Jones. Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. x, 299 pp. $100.00 Cdn (cloth), $34.95 (paper). There is no such thing as society, Mrs Thatcher famously expostulated with distillation of the essence of the liberal creed, There are individual men and women, and there are families. It is the contention of this work that such liberal emphasis on the individual was much less influential in changing the political culture of the Victorian British world than is commonly believed. Rather, it contends, the creed that did most to shape the reforming energies which brought about responsible government was energized by strain of thought which it characterizes as republicanism. Where liberals focussed on the individual and freedom from interference, was communally-minded and was actuated by fear of domination. Its classical roots are well captured in quotation from Cicero's De re publica: a people is not any group of humans ... but multitude of people who ... agree to serve the common good of the (p. 217)--a very different view of society to the atomistic form of liberalism underlying Thatcher's pronouncement. Civic republicanism, it is argued here on the basis of Canadian and Australian case studies, provided creed which could prompt change without sparking revolution. Importantly for citizens of the British world, it allowed for the retention of the monarchy while at the same time accommodating responsible government at the local level. The great architect of such constitutional dexterity was Lord Durham who proposed forms of colonial government which allowed for multiple centres of power within the British Empire while retaining the monarchy as common core of sentiment and identity. It was formula which, if followed by George III, might have kept Canada's southern neighbour within the British Empire. Hence avoided the disruptive and centrifugal forces of the separatist associated with the American and French Revolution. It meant, however, that the advocates of that communal political ideology which the author terms civic republicanism were cautious about the r-word with all its connotations of regicide in the case of the French and English Revolutions and fratricidal strife in the American. This means that often the presence of has to be inferred by its goals rather than by an explicit appeal to the term itself. The classical origins of mean, too, some difficulties in charting its transmission to the nineteenth century debates on constitutional government. …

Discovering Confederation: A Canadian's Story

Discovering Confederation: A Canadian's Story

Riel's Defence: Perspectives on His Speeches

Riel's Defence: Perspectives on His Speeches

Transatlantic Methodists: British Wesleyanism and the Formation of an Evangelical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec. By Todd Webb. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. xvii + 236 pp. $85.00 cloth.

Transatlantic Methodists: British Wesleyanism and the Formation of an Evangelical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec. By Todd Webb. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. xvii + 236 pp. $85.00 cloth. - Volume 84 Issue 2

A Church with the Soul of a Nation: Making and Remaking the United Church of Canada. By Phyllis D. Airhart. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. xx + 440 pp. $100.00 cloth; $34.95 paper.

A Church with the Soul of a Nation: Making and Remaking the United Church of Canada. By Phyllis D. Airhart. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. xx + 440 pp. $100.00 cloth; $34.95 paper.

Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia. Edited by Graeme Morton and David A. Wilson. McGill-Queen's University Press: Montréal and Kingston, 2013. 370 pp. Hdbk $100 (Canadian), pbk $34.95 (Canadian). ISBN 9780773541511.

<i>Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia</i>. Edited by Graeme Morton and David A. Wilson. McGill-Queen's University Press: Montréal and Kingston, 2013. 370 pp. Hdbk $100 (Canadian), pbk $34.95 (Canadian). ISBN 9780773541511.

Children into swans: fairy tales and the pagan imagination

CHILDREN INTO SWANS: FAIRY TALES AND THE PAGAN IMAGINATION. Jan Beveridge. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2014. 300 p. ISBN: 9780773543942. $29.95. FAIRY TALES ARC FULL OF COMMON ELEMENTS AND THEMES: fairies and elves, dwarfs and giants, people turning into animals, magic of various kinds, journeys to secret worlds hidden just out of view. But where did these ideas come from? And how far back can they be traced? That's the question Jan Beveridge seeks to answer in her book Children into Swans: Fairy Tales and the Pagan Imagination. The main thesis of the work is that these themes reflect an ancient imagination (3). The lingering influence of the pagan imagination, its fears and hopes and rituals, is found everywhere in the fairy tale tradition. The book is divided into four sections: History, Characters, Stories from the Pagan Year, Storytellers' Themes. In the first section, Beveridge traces the history of fairy tales, starting with the early Celtic and Norse storytelling traditions. These ancient stories, says Beveridge, introduce us to one predominant idea, a fairy tale idea, that was central to Celtic and Norse pre-Christian tradition--there is an unseen otherworld existing alongside the visible realm we know (12). Of particular interest in this section is a chapter on the oldest fairy tale--that is, the oldest story that features a fairy: Ectra Condla. In this story, a beautiful and mysterious woman appears to a prince, and tries to entice him to follow her back to her world, back to the Plain of Pleasure, called Moy Mell. The prince resists for a time but is so seized by longing for the fairy maiden that he eventually relents and leaves with her on a silver canoe. This story is preserved in the Book of the Dun Cow, a manuscript written around 1100 AD. The precarious life of this manuscript is given an entire chapter of its own--an interesting (if perhaps unneeded) digression by Beveridge. The historical section concludes with a brief overview of the modern development of fairy tales. The rise of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century, with its appreciation for rural life and language, led to the rise of folklore scholarship, and this, in turn, to a resurgence of interest in fairy tales. Unfortunately, this later history of fairy tales isn't examined in any depth by Beveridge, and is only given a few pages. In the second part of the book, Beveridge examines the origins of the most familiar types of characters found in fairy tales, devoting a chapter to each: fairies, elves, dwarfs, household spirits, water dwellers, giants, souls and spirits. A reader shouldn't come to these chapters expecting literary analysis. What Beveridge gives here is a historical survey, and the chapters consist almost entirely of summaries of the different ways in which these characters have appeared throughout the history of fairy tales. Expect to find many paragraphs starting along the lines of, Most stories depict the characters in this way ... Other stories depict the characters like this . …

A World of Paper: Louis XIV, Colbert de Torcy, and the Rise of the Information State, by John C. Rule and Ben S. Trotter

A World of Paper: Louis XIV, Colbert de Torcy, and the Rise of the Information State, by John C. Rule and Ben S. Trotter. Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. xvii, 829 pp. $49.95 CAD (cloth). A welcome addition to the growing corpus of books on the history of information in early Europe, A World of Paper by the late John Rule and his former student Ben Trotter elegantly expands our understanding of diplomacy during the reign of the Sun King. The authors ask new questions of documents in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and draw on a vast amount of scholarship on bureaucracy. Rule and Trotter use the methods of scholars like Eric Ash, James Cortada, Jacob Soli, and Cornelia Vismann to bring the study of information within the purview of diplomacy. Questioning just what is modern about bureaucracy with the help of contingency theory, the authors analyze Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Torcy's foreign affairs department during the latter part of Louis XIV's reign to show both that this ministry was highly specialized and organized by 1715 and that this system is not so different from bureaucracies of our time. The idea of strict barriers between patrimonial and bureaucratic systems already questioned by many scholars (esp. Peter Burke) is shown to be even more problematic in this close study of one of Louis XIV's major ministries. Moving away from Weber's idea of bureaucracy as a machine, the authors emphasize complex human activity and changeable, but sometimes routinized task-based work, as the driving forces in Torcy's department. Throughout the work the authors embrace contingency theory, which posits that organizational effectiveness reaches its pinnacle when structures are specialized to match the needs and size of the organization. They adopt this theory as a means of introducing flexibility in bureaucracy studies so as to avoid using evidence about the period between 1661 and 1715 as index of modernity (p. 30). The book is a long one, and almost half of the printed pages are dedicated to comprehensive notes. The text could have been split into multiple monographs (a biography of Torcy, a prosopography of the commis, and a study of the foreign ministry's portfolio) yet as a whole it is a testament to the life work of Rule. It is premised on the idea that administrative history should not judge the past by a Weberian idealized rationality but rather focus on the actual workings of power (p. 32). For Rule (1929-2013), the book is the culmination of decades of work, but it is also a publication that reflects Trotter's contributions and research (pp. xiv-xv). Rule and Trotter carefully map out the history of the foreign office under Louis XIV as a bureaucracy in motion, one that depended on unique, skilled individuals as much as it was shaped by the institutional, social, and economic structures of the regime. The title of the book refers to the great waves of paperwork that streamed into and out of the foreign secretary's chambers at Versailles, or later in Paris at Torcy's private residence. Discussion of the ministry's materiality and its inner workings animate this book even more so than the professional biographies of the clerks or ambassadors working under Torcy or his father Croissy. The things of ministers, clerks, and diplomats--their mail, horses, pens, gifts, and residences--open up a new appreciation for just how an ancien regime ministry functioned from day to day. Things move, and so Rule and Trotter describe the movements inherent in diplomacy, explaining the importance of equerries and the relais de poste, not to mention the complications of a mobile court. …

Brian Jenkins. Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. Pp. 541. $49.95 (cloth).

Brian Jenkins. Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. Pp. 541. $49.95 (cloth).

Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason by Norman S. Poser (review)

Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason. By Norman S. Poser.

Contesting the Moral High Ground. Popular Moralists in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain. By Paul T. Phillips. Studies in the History of Religion. Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press, 2013. xvi + 227 pp. $32.95 paper.

Contesting the Moral High Ground. Popular Moralists in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain. By Paul T. Phillips. Studies in the History of Religion. Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press, 2013. xvi + 227 pp. $32.95 paper. - Volume 84 Issue 1