Suicide rose in importance as a major public health concern in post-war Canada, concurrent with the relative decline of infant and childhood mortality and the rise of the behavioural sciences. In response to a perceived crisis in suicides during the 1960s and 1970s, a new technology-the rotary telephone-was reconceived as a "therapeutic instrument" to reach people in crisis. Voluntary and religious groups began establishing "suicide hotlines" across the country as a participatory public health intervention aimed at saving lives. However, as suicide rates continued their seemingly inexorable rise, suicide hotlines witnessed a discursive transformation, away from a goal of reducing suicide rates and toward mental health crisis intervention more broadly.
This research note is based on a small-town Quebec borderland newspaper's death notices and obituaries published during the last half of the nineteenth century. The number of death notices in the sample years increased until 1880, after which there was a sharp decrease, reflecting a decline in infant and early childhood mortality. As for the obituaries, which were much fewer in number, there was a distinct gender divide within the messages conveyed. Those for men generally focused on their commitment to family and their neighbourliness, while those for women tended to stress their charitableness as well as their martyr-like suffering in their final days. In contrast to urban American obituaries, there was little change in the heavily religious tone until as late as 1890, nor was there any reference made to nation-building patriotism.
Student newspapers, conference documents and delegate reports offer insight into how the executive of the University of Alberta Students' Union, affiliated with the youth wing of the Progressive Conservative Party, tried to establish the Canadian University Students' Executive Council (CUSEC) in the mid-1980s. CUSEC organizers envisioned creating a narrowly focused, low-cost, easy-to-join, national student organization exclusively for student union presidents from Canadas' largest universities to undermine the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). CUSEC organizers were unable to effectively challenge the legitimacy of the CFS, a relatively well-established, social-democratic, national-level student organization that arose in the 1970s and 1980s after the collapse of the Canadian Union of Students in 1969. Leadership attrition, shifting organization tactics, and a general lack of interest outside the large universities in Western Canada (and McGill University in Quebec) led CUSEC to dissolve in 1988, but it was successfully revived under different organization names in the 1990s.
Abstract: In the 1960s and 1970s, tobacco became an important agricultural commodity in Canada due to global demand for tobacco products. In regions like Norfolk County, the heart of Ontario's "tobacco belt," many families growing tobacco were first-generation European immigrants who were drawn to its profitability. During harvest, it was commonplace for farm wives to provide homecooked meals to seasonal agricultural labourers, and farms known to serve good meals attracted reliable workers. To assist cooks with this mammoth chore, a monthly column in the Canadian Tobacco Grower magazine offered recipes and tips. Drawing on these columns, this article examines how harvest meals not only contributed to a farm's financial success but also allowed women to preserve their ethnic identities and maintain traditional foodways. In the ongoing scholarship around gender, immigration, and food in the post-war period, this study contributes an important rural and agricultural dimension. Abstract: Dans les années 1960 et 1970, le tabac est devenu un produit agricole important au Canada en raison de la demande mondiale pour les produits de cette industrie. Dans des régions comme le comté de Norfolk, au cœur de la « ceinture du tabac » de l'Ontario, de nombreuses familles cultivant le tabac étaient des immigrants européens de première génération attirés par la rentabilité de cette activité. Pendant la récolte, il était courant que les femmes des agriculteurs fournissent des repas faits maison aux travailleurs agricoles saisonniers, et les fermes réputées pour leurs bons repas attiraient des travailleurs fiables. Pour aider les cuisinières dans cette tâche colossale, une rubrique mensuelle du magazine Canadian Tobacco Grower proposait des recettes et des conseils. S'appuyant sur ces chroniques, cet article examine la manière dont les repas de récolte ont non seulement contribué à la réussite financière des exploitations agricoles, mais ont également permis aux femmes de préserver leur identité ethnique et de maintenir leurs traditions alimentaires. Cette étude apporte une dimension rurale et agricole importante aux recherches actuelles sur le genre, l'immigration et l'alimentation dans la période d'après-guerre.
As divorce became easier to achieve in the 1960s and 1970s, the number of divorces skyrocketed and many Canadians, regardless ofwhether or not they stayed together, were re-evaluating what they wanted out of their marriages. These changes were propelled, in part, by second-wave feminism and womens' increased workforce participation. In the magazines' treatment of marriage and divorce in these decades, Chatelaine's writers, many ofwhom themselves had experiences ofmarital breakdown, provided considerable advice to Canadians on how to negotiate this time of tremendous change in marital expectations.
The public played a constitutive role in the establishment of lifeboat institutions during the nineteenth century. August von Kotzebues'drama Das Strandrecht (The law of wreck; 1808), William Hillarys' An Appeal to the British Nation, on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution, for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1823), and similar appeals preceding the establishment of the German Society for the Rescue of Lives from Shipwrecks (Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Rettung Schiffbr & uuml;chiger) in 1865 demonstrate the role the threat of damage to the national image played in the absence of rescue efforts. Concurrently, the portrayal of the rescuer was popularized within the context of an aesthetic of the sublime, which may also have engendered conflicts with state interests.
The 200-year history of the UKs' Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), despite its longevity, has received scant scholarly attention. The RNLI exploited the Victorian fascination with "everyday heroism" to enhance its reputation and funding. This was most evident with Charles Fish, the celebrated coxswain at Ramsgate on the Kent coast, who represented the qualities of selflessness and courage found in Victorian imaginaries of lifeboat crews. And yet controversies arose when volunteers departed from the RNLIs'idealized norms and the publics' imaginaries. The promotion ofFish as an "everyday hero" contrasts with allegations made against Kents' and other North Sea lifeboat crews of incompetence, ill-discipline, cowardice, and greed. Tensions over salvage claims resulted from a highly centralized organizations'attempts to manage volunteers in remote coastal communities; despite such controversies, however, RNLI crews continued to be represented and viewed by the public as "everyday heroes."
HMS Nimble, a Royal Navy schooner having recently captured a Spanish slaver and taken aboard 272 slaves, ran ashore at nighttime in bad weather on the Cuban coast in November 1834. While all crew were saved, several dozen of the African recaptives aboard lost their lives in the accident, which according to the Nimbles' master had occurred because the "uncontrollable noise of these savages" had made it impossible to hear the breaking of the waves on the reef. What emerges from a detailed reconstruction of the perceptions of the accident as evident in the court martial documents is a specific imaginary of the comical, based on a profound lack of mastery over the moving parts of the situation-natural, technical, and social. This imaginary is intimately related to the moral language ofhumanitarianism but also adds to the patterns of victimization and the cruel ironies of abolition.
This article examines the military imaginary conveyed by accounts of British shipwrecks during the First World War through one main source: the press. We will focus more specifically on cases involving troop transport ships and hospital ships, their specificity being that sailors are in the minority on board. Why do these accounts focus on the motif of a military parade on the deck of a sinking ship? To answer this question, we suggest that these accounts echo an earlier shipwreck, that of the Birkenhead in 1852, which shaped the notion of heroism during such maritime catastrophes. These accounts were intended to reassure readers of the national and local press about the value ofBritish troops while encouraging them to accept the sacrifices of everyday life in wartime.
Since 2016, the BBC has broadcast nine seasons of the documentary series Saving opportunity to examine the ways in which the imaginaries of danger and heroism present in the series interact with the history of the institution. The imaginaries of lifesaving at sea operate both by integrating themselves in the founding imaginary of the RNLI and by broadening its scope. The institution, through a process of bricolage, uses and adapts to a wide variety of new activities a founding imaginary that is an important source of legitimacy and meaning. The central element of the RNLIs' imaginary functions by integrating the variety of situations encountered by lifeboat crews at sea into the shared situation type of lifesaving at sea.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Rettung Schiffbr & uuml;chiger (DGzRS) is a German maritime rescue organization founded in 1865 and based on humanitarian principles to save shipwreckedpersons regardless ofnationality or other characteristics. Rather than stagnating or being disbanded during the Nazi period, the society expanded significantly, with a sharp increase in membership. It branded itself-visually and semantically-as a Nazi organization. Analysis of historical publications of the DGzRS and holdings in the German federal archives reveals how a humanitarian organization like the DGzRS could thrive under a fascist regime. This development was made possible because maritime lifesaving not only served a certain function for the Nazi state, which was amplified within the context of the Second World War, but also because idioms of rescue resonated with the social imaginaries of both humanitarianism and Nazism.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Abenaki of Odanak, a First Nation community located on the east bank of the Saint-Fran & ccedil;ois River, were integrated into the local and regional credit networks of rural merchants that were developing in the Laurentian Valley. Using notarial archives, this article explores the credit relationships forged between the W8banakiak andIgnace Gill, a rural merchant linked to this community through his great-grandparents' adoption. In analyzing how these credit relationships led to the appropriation ofAbenaki land, resources and labour, the case of this merchant provides an insight into the interactions between capitalism and colonialism in the Lower Canada colony.
Irish women were not only wives and daughters of publicans and grocers; their labour was critical to public houses and grocery shops. Moreover, their involvement in hospitality, as publicans and grocers, provided them with the means to raise families and to realize economic independence, autonomy, and security, especially in the face of widowhood with children to support. Tavern-and innkeepers and grocers required a good head for business because they had to extend credit to guests and customers and purchase goods on credit. An array ofhistorical sources, especially the Bartholomew O'Brien fonds andR. G. Dun & Company credit report volumes for Montr & eacute;al, highlight in some detail womens' responsibilities, credit arrangements, capital accumulation, and business strategies. This study pays close attention to female publicans and grocers ofIrish descent operating at mid-century in Montr & eacute;al to argue that social networking facilitated the circulation of goods, money, information, people, and credit. The article also considers the ways in which they managed risk owing to fires, epidemics, and business failures.
Montbeillard, Quebec, May 1934: a group of unemployed settlers recipient of the Gordon Plan enters the colonys'general store and forces the clerk to "mark" their order. This act is one of last resort, a revolt against the repercussions of inadequate assistance policies and an inability to obtain credit. The tone and language used by the settlers echo those of many other accounts of resistance that we have at our disposal. Often taking more discreet forms, these acts demonstrate a desire to challenge a form of liberalism which, in these remote areas, is expressed with little restraint and results in abuse, exploitation, and favouritism. This article, which focuses on the 1930s, analyzes credit relations in these peripheral areas, where old and new practices introduced by unemployment "vouchers" coexisted. Immersing us in the daily reality of these relationships, it documents the moral economy upheld by families to enforce, through subtle and overt means, the norms that protect them. Grounded in an empirical approach, it provides insight into the complex nature of these norms in communities where proximity fosters both exploitation and domination as well as expressions of solidarity.
In the nineteenth century, several Wendat families from Jeune-Lorette earned comfortable livings producing moccasins, snowshoes, and other traditional goods manufactured for sale on capitalist markets. In writing about these families, historians have neglected their creation and management ofwealth, such as Wendat couple Marguerite VincentLa8inonkie and Paul PicardHonda8onhonts' investment in the notary-based credit market. Between the 1830s and the 1860s, the couple lent large sums at interest to their French Canadian neighbours in the rural region immediately north ofQu & eacute;bec City. The Picard-Vincentfamilys' wealth management is evidence not of economic marginalization but rather of Indigenous affluence, of a family attuned to and able to capitalize on changing religious and market conditions, and of class formation in one First Nations community.
What part did ordinary people play in the transformations that ushered in the consumer society? We study this phenomenon through the history ofcredit, adopting a "bottom-up" perspective that also highlights the agency of social actors. Our analysis combines a materialist approach to the consumption of urban workers between the 1940s and 1970s with a study of the policies, discourses and internal debates of the trade union organizations and cooperative movement to which large numbers of them adhered during this period. Our main field of investigation is Montreal, a major industrial city and North American metropolis. Canadian historiography has hitherto emphasized the slow pace of changes in consumer behaviour after the Second World War, and the cautiousness of Canadians in this respect. Our sources cast them in a different light. After the war, the workers and working-class households we study quickly integrate the new forms of credit available to them into their budget management. They are not content, however, to respond to the offer of new institutions, but are themselves creating credit unions or, in their capacity as members, insisting that the Desjardins cooperatives, with their rapidly expanding network, modify their lending policies. In our view, it is the pressure they exert, together with the new realities of their consumption, that are prompting their unions to defend not only the legitimacy of their aspirations to a better standard of living, but also their access to credit.
