Jennifer Henderson - Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

RECONCILING CANADA

Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

Truth and reconciliation commissions and official governmental apologies continue to surface worldwide as mechanisms for coming to terms with human rights violations and social atrocities. As the first scholarly collection to explore the intersections and differences between a range of redress cases that have emerged in Canada in recent decades, Reconciling Canada provides readers with the contexts for understanding the phenomenon of reconciliation as it has played out in this multicultural settler state.

In this volume, leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences relate contemporary political and social efforts to redress wrongs to the fraught history of government relations with Aboriginal and diasporic populations. The contributors offer ground-breaking perspectives on Canadas culture of redress, broaching questions of law and constitutional change, political coalitions, commemoration, testimony, and literatures of injury and its aftermath. Also assembled together for the first time is a collection of primary documents including government reports, parliamentary debates, and redress movement statements prefaced with contextual information. Reconciling Canada provides a vital and immensely relevant illumination of the dynamics of reconciliation, apology, and redress in contemporary Canada.

JENNIFER HENDERSON is an associate professor in the Department of English with cross-appointments to the Department of Sociology/Anthropology and the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University.

PAULINE WAKEHAM is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario.

Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

EDITED BY
JENNIFER HENDERSON AND PAULINE WAKEHAM

University of Toronto Press 2013

Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4426-4311-6 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4426-1168-9 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Reconciling Canada : critical perspectives on the culture of redress / edited by Jennifer Henderson and Pauline Wakeham.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4426-4311-6 (bound) ISBN 978-1-4426-1168-9 (pbk.)

1. Reparations for historical injustices Canada. 2. Reconciliation (Law) Canada. 3. Canada Ethnic relations History. I. Henderson, Jennifer (Jennifer Anne)

II. Wakeham, Pauline

FC105.R46R43 2013 323.171 C2012-907155-2

Cover photographs: (l-r) William James Topley, LAC C-015037; LAC PA-118000; LAC PA-034015; LAC PA-127064; Children from Poplar River, c. 1916, United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, 2093.049P/1268N; Sam family fonds, LAC MG55130-No166; F.H. Kitto, LAC PA-101548; LAC PA-034014

The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Acknowledgments

JENNIFER HENDERSON AND PAULINE WAKEHAM

MATT JAMES

EVA MACKEY

JENNIFER HENDERSON

LILY CHO

DALE TURNER

JAMES (SAKEJ) YOUNGBLOOD HENDERSON

ROGER I. SIMON

JULIA EMBERLEY

DIAN MILLION

AMBER DEAN

LINDY LEDOHOWSKI

LEN FINDLAY

ANNA CARASTATHIS

ROY MIKI

PAULINE WAKEHAM

We wish to thank many people for their advice: Bruce Anderson, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Dan Conlin, curator of marine history, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax; Greg Cran, director, School of Peace and Conflict Management, Royal Roads University; Aaron Devries, Kingston Frontenac Public Library; Nancy Fay, rights and licensing specialist, Library and Archives Canada; and Lara Wilson, university archivist, University of Victoria Archives.

The insight and support of friends and colleagues throughout the process of creating this book has been greatly appreciated. In particular, we wish to thank Matt James for inspiring us with his groundbreaking work in the field of Canadian redress studies and for sharing archival documents with us. Sincere gratitude also goes to Diana Brydon, Len Findlay, Robyn Green, Manina Jones, Smaro Kamboureli, Jenny Lawn, Eva Mackey, Heather Murray, Donna Pennee, and Cheryl Suzack.

At Carleton University, we wish to express our thanks to the following graduate students for research assistance: Micheline Besner, Jennifer Dalziel, Tom MacDonald-Depew, Razvan Ungureau, and especially Cindy Ma and David Mastey for their forays into Library and Archives Canada, their excellent judgment, and attention to detail. At Western, Patrick Casey, Sally Fuentes, Jeremy Greenway, Edward Hanecak, Elan Paulson, Suvadip Sinha, and Marlon Thompson provided invaluable research assistance. Special mention must be made with regard to David Drysdale, who performed advanced work in co-researching and co-writing the glosses for the Chinese Canadian head tax section of the appendix, offered meticulous editorial assistance, and saved us countless times with his technological wizardry. It has been a gift to work with such a generous and committed scholar. Since the very beginning, we have also been exceptionally fortunate to benefit from the outstanding research and editing skills of Erica Kelly, to whom great credit is due. Erica took a leadership role in co-researching and co-writing the glosses for the Black Loyalist and Africville, Japanese Canadian internment, and Komagata Maru sections of the appendix. She also provided expert editorial assistance throughout. Her keen intellect, attention to detail, and tireless devotion to this project have earned our deepest gratitude and respect.

We are grateful to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University for funding to assist with the publication of this book. Thank you also to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding that supported research assistantships integral to the production of this volume.

We are indebted to two anonymous reviewers for the University of Toronto Press for their commitment to this project and their incisive feedback. We would like to thank Siobhan McMenemy, our editor at the University of Toronto Press, for her support, and John St James for his meticulous copy-editing. Thank you also to Emily Truman for preparing the books index.

The creation of this book has been a truly collaborative process and we have learned much from working together. We thank our wonderful contributors for sharing their exceptional work and for their support of this project with all the patience that is required to see an essay collection appear in print.

Jennifer: Thanks to my friends in Te Taunga Tahi Research Network, and to Sheryl Hamilton and Julie Murray closer to home. Thanks to Keith Denny, Arthur, and Frances for their love and patience, and Eleanor Rose (Atwood) Henderson, who has given so much. Most of all, I wish to thank Pauline for the initial invitation to co-edit such a collection. Our close collaboration on this project has been hugely rewarding for me and the greatest rewards of all have been the opportunities to learn lessons in persistence, rigour, and generosity from you along the way, as we imagined, read, and wrote together.