Greg Marchildon talks to James Urry about his book, On Stony Ground: Russländer Mennonites and the Rebuilding of Community in Grunthal, published by UTP in February 2024.

On Stony Ground presents a historical ethnographic account of a generation of Mennonites from the Soviet Union who, following Russia’s revolution and civil war, immigrated to Manitoba during the 1920s. James Urry examines how they came to terms with a new land and with their new neighbours, including other Mennonites, Ukrainians, French Canadians, and Indigenous Peoples.

The book discusses the impact of the Great Depression and how the immigrants struggled with their identity in Canada as Hitler and Stalin rose to power in Germany and the USSR. It reveals the immigrants’ desire to maintain their faith, language, and culture while encouraging their children to take advantage of an education conducted mainly in English. On Stony Ground explores how prosperity following the Second World War helped the immigrants to build a community in conjunction with others, including Mennonites and non-Mennonites, and to accept their new home in Canada.

James Urry is an anthropologist and historian who has published widely on Mennonites and the history of anthropology.

Image Credit:  UTP

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On Stony Ground: Russländer Mennonites and the Rebuilding of Community in Grunthal

Larry Ostola talks to Palmiro Campagna about his book, The Avro Arrow: For the Record.

The controversial cancellation of the Avro Arrow — an extraordinary achievement of Canadian military aviation — continues to inspire debate today. When the program was scrapped in 1959, all completed aircraft and those awaiting assembly were destroyed, along with tooling and technical information. Was abandoning the program the right decision? Did Canada lose more than it gained?

Brimming with information to fill the gaps in the Arrow’s troubled history, Campagna’s new edition also brings to light recently discovered documents that answer whether the United States government wished Canada to continue the development of what was considered the world’s most advanced interceptor aircraft.

Palmiro Campagna is the author of Storms of Controversy: The Secret Avro Arrow Files Revealed, Requiem for A Giant: A.V. Roe Canada and the Avro Arrow, and The UFO Files: The Canadian Connection Exposed. He lives in Ottawa.

Image Credit:  Dundurn Press

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The Avro Arrow: For the Record

Nicole O’Byrne talks to Martin Friedland about his book, Canadian Criminal Law in Ten Cases.

Canadian Criminal Law in Ten Cases explores the development of criminal justice in Canada through an in-depth examination of ten significant criminal cases. Martin L. Friedland draws on cases that went to the Supreme Court of Canada or the Privy Council, including well-known cases such as those of Louis Riel, Steven Truscott, Henry Morgentaler, and Jamie Gladue.

The book addresses such issues as wrongful convictions, the enforcement of morality, Indigenous experiences with criminal law, bail and trial delay, and the impact of the 1982 Charter of Rights on the criminal justice system.

Friedland describes in a masterful way the factual background of each case and the political, social, and economic conditions of the time. Each character – the accused, judges, and counsel – is described in detail, as are the relevant laws and procedures. Friedland includes recommendations on how the criminal justice system can be improved, such as by creating a new federal commission devoted solely to criminal justice and by the enactment by Parliament of enhanced codes of evidence and criminal law and procedure.

Canadian Criminal Law in Ten Cases is an indispensable guide to understanding the criminal justice system for lawyers, students, and anyone interested in criminal law and the administration of criminal justice.

Martin L. Friedland is a university professor of law emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Image Credit:  University of Toronto Press

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Canadian Criminal Law in Ten Cases

Nicole O’Byrne talks to Sean Carleton about his book, Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia.

Lessons in Legitimacy brings the histories of different kinds of state schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples – public schools, Indian Day Schools, and Indian Residential Schools – into one analytical frame. Schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and youth had distinct yet complementary functions in building British Columbia. Students were given lessons in legitimacy that normalized settler capitalism and the making of British Columbia, first as a British colony and then as Canada’s westernmost province.

Sean Carleton combines insights from history, Indigenous studies, historical materialism, and political economy to present different histories of education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples together. In the process, this important study reveals how an understanding of the historical uses of schooling can inform contemporary discussions about the role of education in reconciliation and improving Indigenous–settler relations.

Historians, Indigenous studies scholars, and those in the field of education history will find this work illuminating, as will educators and general readers with an interest in schooling’s role in truth and reconciliation.

Sean Carleton is an assistant professor of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba. He has published in Historical Studies in Education, History of Education, Settler Colonial Studies, and BC Studies.

Image Credit:  UBC Press

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Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia

Larry Ostola talks to Alister Campbell about his book, The Harris Legacy: Reflections on a Transformational Premier.

Elected for the first of his two terms as premier of Ontario in 1995, Mike Harris introduced some of the most sweeping reforms the province has ever seen: substantial reductions in spending and taxation as well dramatic changes to welfare, education, health care, municipal affairs, labour relations, energy, the environment, and much more. He altered the way elections were fought, how the provincial government is held accountable, how it works with its counterpart in Ottawa, and on his retirement in 2002 said his only regret was “I wish I had done more… faster.” Three decades after the launch of his famous Common Sense Revolution, Mike Harris and his policies still galvanize emotions on all sides of the political spectrum. In this comprehensive and highly readable examination of The Harris Legacy, an all-star collection of political experts reviews what worked, what didn’t, and what’s still up for debate.

Alister Campbell has served as CEO of several Canadian insurance companies. He was the “Message Guy” in the 1995 Mike Harris campaign, responsible for policy, speech, communications, advertising, and media.

Image Credit:  Sutherland House

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The Harris Legacy: Reflections on a Transformational Premier

Greg Marchildon talks to Ronald F. Williamson about his book, The History and Archaeology of the Iroquois du Nord.

In the mid-to late 1660s and early 1670s, the Haudenosaunee established a series of settlements at strategic locations along the trade routes inland at short distances from the north shore of Lake Ontario. From east to west, these communities consisted of Ganneious, on Napanee or Hay Bay, on the Bay of Quinte; Kenté, near the isthmus of the Quinte Peninsula; Ganaraské, at the mouth of the Ganaraska River; Quintio, on Rice Lake; Ganatsekwyagon, near the mouth of the Rouge River; Teiaiagon, near the mouth of the Humber River; and Qutinaouatoua, inland from the western end of Lake Ontario. All of these settlements likely contained people from several Haudenosaunee nations as well as former Ontario Iroquoians who had been adopted by the Haudenosaunee.

This volume brings together Indigenous knowledge as well as documentary and recent archaeological evidence of this period to focus on describing the historical context, efforts to find the villages, and examinations of the unique material culture discovered there and at similar settlements in the Haudenosaunee homeland.

Ronald F. Williamson is founder and now Senior Associate of Archaeological Services Inc. He has spent most of his career studying the history and archaeology of Ontario Iroquoians, much of it collaboratively with Indigenous partners. He is also Vice Chair of the board of Shared Path Consultation Initiative, a charitable organization dedicated to moving beyond collaboration and consultation to Indigenous decision-making in land use planning. He has published extensively on both Indigenous and early colonial Great Lakes history. He is appointed as adjunct status at the University of Western Ontario and he is Chair of the board of the Museum of Ontario Archaeology in London. His primary interests are in the ancestral Wendat occupation of Ontario, the Early Woodland Period in the Northeast and more broadly in the origins and development of the northern Iroquoian cultural pattern.

Robert von Bitter is the Archaeological Data Coordinator at the Ontario Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries in Toronto where he lives with his wife and two daughters. Although broadly interested in the archaeology of the province, Robert has recently found the second half of the 17th century both a unique and fascinating period on which to focus his personal research.

Image Credit: University of Ottawa Press

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The History and Archaeology of the Iroquois du Nord

Nicole O’Byrne talks to Peter Ludlow about his book, Disciples of Antigonish: Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1880–1960.

For generations eastern Nova Scotia was one of the most celebrated Roman Catholic constituencies in Canada. Occupying a corner of a small province in a politically marginalized region of the country, the Diocese of Antigonish nevertheless had tremendous influence over the development of Canadian Catholicism. It produced the first Roman Catholic prime minister of Canada, supplied the nation with clergy and women- religious, and organized one of North America’s most successful social movements.

Disciples of Antigonish recounts the history of this unique multi-ethnic community as it shifted from the firm ultramontanism of the nineteenth century to a more socially conscious Catholicism after the First World War. Peter Ludlow chronicles the faithful as they built a strong Catholic sub-state, dealing with economic uncertainty, generational outmigration, and labour unrest. As the home of the Antigonish Movement - a network of adult study clubs, cooperatives, and credit unions - the diocese became famous throughout the Catholic world.

The influence of “mighty big and strong Antigonish,” as one national figure described the community, reached its zenith in the 1950s. Disciples of Antigonish traces the monumental changes that occurred within the region and the wider church over nearly a century and demonstrates that the Catholic faith in Canada went well beyond Sunday Mass.

Peter Ludlow is an adjunct professor of History and Classics at Acadia University and is editor of Historical Studies, the journal of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association.

Image Credit: McGill-Queen’s University Press

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Disciples of Antigonish: Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1880–1960

Larry Ostola talks to Stephen R. Bown about his book, Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada.

In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces.

Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were moulding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.

Stephen R. Bown writes on the history of exploration, science and ideas. His subjects include the medical mystery of scurvy, the Treaty of Tordesillas and the lives of Captain George Vancouver and Roald Amundsen. His books have been published in multiple English-speaking territories, translated into nine languages and shortlisted for many awards. He has won the BC Book Prize, the Alberta Book Award, the William Mills Prize for Polar Books, among others. His 2020 book, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire, won the J.W. Defoe Book Prize and the National Business Book Award. Born in Ottawa, Bown now lives near Banff in the Canadian Rockies.

Image Credit: Penguin Random House Canada

Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada

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On Stony Ground: Russländer Mennonites and the Rebuilding of Community in Grunthal

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