Monday, September 26, 2016

Book Notes: Some new Canadian history


Peter McLeod of the Canadian War Museum launches Backs to the Wall, published by Douglas and McIntyre.  A sequel to his Armageddon (about the Plains of Abraham campaign), Backs to the Wall examines the Battle of Sainte-Foy of 1760, when the remaining French forces in New France sought to retake Quebec City. Update:  Reviewed at National Post, October 5)

Lori Chambers launches A Legal History of Adoption in Ontario, 1921-2015, from the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and University of Toronto Press.  Adoption must be almost as old as childbirth, but adoption legislation in a major Canadian province has been around less than a century.  Chambers's laws-and-courts-centred account of adoption in law enters a dialogue with a small library of adoption history studies by Veronica Strong-Boag, Karen Dubinsky, Karen Balcom, and others scholars.

Friends of  the late Burnley "Rocky" Jones, the Afro-Nova Scotia activist, Black Panther, lawyer, are launching Revolutionary: An Autobiography, published by Fernwood Books.
"Born and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia, Burnley “Rocky” Jones is one of Canada’s most important figures of social justice. Often referred to as Canada’s Stokely Carmichael, Jones was tirelessly dedicated to student movements, peace activism, Black Power, anti-racism, women’s liberation and human rights reform. He was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, brought the Black Panthers to Canada, taught at Dalhousie and founded his own law firm.
"This autobiography tells the story of Jones’s inimitable life and his accomplishments.
But it also does more. It illuminates the Black experience in Nova Scotia, it explains the evolving nature of race relations and human rights in recent Canadian history, and it reveals the origins of the “remedial” approach to racial equality that is now practised by activists and governments.
 
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