Volume
78, Number 4 December 1997
The
State, the Unemployed, and the Communist Party in Calgary, 1930–5
David Bright
The
Public Purse and State Finance: Government Savings Banks in the Era
of Nation Building, 1867–1900
Dan Bunbury
Taking
the World by Show: Canadian Women as Exhibitors to 1900
E.A. Heaman
Book
Reviews
Howell, Northern
Sandlots: A Social History of Maritime Baseball
reviewed by Bruce Kidd
Kidd, The Struggle
for Canadian Sport
reviewed by Don Morrow
Marks, Revivals
and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century
Small-Town Ontario
reviewed by Peter Bailey
Irwin, The New
Niagara: Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape of Niagara Falls 1776–1917
reviewed by Patricia Jasen
Monod, Store Wars:
Shopkeepers and the Culture of Mass Marketing, 1890–1939
reviewed by Cynthia Wright
McDonald, Making
Vancouver 1863-1913
reviewed by Donald Wetherell
Igartua, Arvida
au Saguenay: Naissance d’une ville industrielle
reviewed by Odette Vincent
Harris, Unplanned
Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy 1900 to 1950
reivewed by Michael Doucet
Conrad, ed., Intimate
Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia 1759–1800
reivewed by W.G. Godfrey
Petroff, Sojourners
and Settlers: The Macedonian Community in Toronto to 1940
reivewed by N.F. Dreisziger
Hoffman and taylor,
Much to Be Done: Private Life in Ontario from Victorian Diaries
reivewed by Adele Perry
Thurston, The
Work of Words: The Writing of Susanna Strickland Moodie
reivewed by Cecilia Morgan
Downie, A Passionate
Pen: The Life and Times of Faith Fenton
reivewed by Barbara Freeman
Leier, Red Flags
& Red Tape: The Making of a Labour Bureaucracy
reivewed by James Naylor
Thwaites, Travail
et syndicalisme: naissance et évolution d’une action sociale
reivewed by André E. LeBlanc
Hillmer, bothwell,
and sarty, eds., A Country of Limitations: Canada and the World in
1939
reivewed by Jean Pariseau
Donaghy, ed.,
Documents on Canadian External Relations, Volume 16: 1950
reivewed by Lee-Anne Broadhead
Seaver, The Frozen
Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America ca A.D. 1000–1500
reivewed by Robert McGhee
Voisey, ed., A
Preacher’s Frontier: The Castor, Alberta Letters of Rev. Martin
W. Holdom, 1909-1912
reivewed by W.J.C. Cherwinski
Mackie, The Wilderness
Profound: Victorian Life on the Gulf of Georgia
reivewed by Jon Swainger
Neering and thompson,
Faces of British Columbia: Looking at the Past 1860–1960
reivewed by Jon Swainger
Simmons, British
Imprints Relating to North America 1621–1760: An annotated checklist
reivewed by Patricia Fleming
Furniss, Victims
of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School
reivewed by Brian E. Titley
Lewis, ed., The
Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography 1730–1860. Vols
I (A-J) and II (M-Z)
reivewed by David Marshall
Abstracts
The
State, the Unemployed, and the Communist Party in Calgary, 1930–5
David Bright
Abstract
The On-to-Ottawa trek arrived in Calgary in July 1935, its first stop
in any major city outside British Columbia and the first test of its
determination to continue eastwards. That Calgary's civic authorities
and general public provided an encouraging reception for the trekkers
helped them to pass this test. Over the previous five years, however,
relations between Calgary's own unemployed and the local state had
steadily grown worse, frequently to the point of open and bloody conflict.
This paper examines the reasons for this discrepancy in attitude,
in particular setting the association of Calgary's unemployed with
the local Communist Party against the backdrop of the politics of
unemployment relief provision.
The
Public Purse and State Finance: Government Savings Banks in the Era
of Nation Building, 1867–1900
Dan Bunbury
Abstract
The Dominion Government Savings Banks were a national system of thrift
banks begun in 1867 when the federal government inherited government
savings banks from the four founding provinces. Along with the new
post office savings banks, the Dominion Government Savings Banks entered
into a period of expansion with the passage of the first bank act
in 1871. Not surprisingly, the establishment of a considerable bureaucracy
to run these institutions created considerable debate about the state's
role in the savings deposit business.
Despite increasing
conflict by the 1880s with the private chartered banks, the government
was unwilling to quickly abandon the banks for two important reasons.
The readily accessible pool of capital embodied in the savings banks
was essential to the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The
savings bank's role in the construction of the CPR has been largely
overlooked in the economic history of Canada. This is somewhat surprising
since previous researchers have delineated the precursors of federal
development strategy found in the use of savings banks by colonial
administrations pursuing infrastructure development. Second, the jobs
available at savings banks were an important aspect of late 19th-century
patronage. Many politicians, particularly in the Maritimes, regarded
with hostility any policies that served to reduce either the number
of positions or their role in filling them.
The article discusses
the political and economic realities that conditioned the formulation
of government finance policy, and how that policy affected the relationship
with chartered banks. Some putative effects on the economy of the
Maritimes and Canada are then posited and critically evaluated. It
is suggested the government's role may have exacerbated the decline
of regional banks in the Maritimes, and may have contributed indirectly
to problems with industrial development and credit allocation during
the 1870–1900 period.
Taking
the World by Show: Canadian Women as Exhibitors to 1900
E.A. Heaman
Abstract
This article surveys agricultural, industrial, and international exhibitions
in nineteenth-century Canada in order to explore the historical relationship
between women and political economy. The Victorian ideology of separate
spheres for men and women was perpetually renegotiated on political,
economic, and cultural fronts. The exhibition was one place where
negotiation occurred. Exhibits of domestic industry seemed to bolster
a traditional conception of women's place in the world. In fact, the
very act of exhibiting opened up new opportunities for women to communicate
and act within the public sphere. Gradually, women learned to use
exhibitions to demand a broader public role for their sex and, in
so doing, to shift the boundary between public and private spheres.
This entailed a transformation of ideas about the essence of womanhood:
women began the century as objects or exhibits for the edification
and pleasure of men, but ended it as exhibitors and historical agents
in their own right.
