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In Canada, as in the United States, cities seemed to many to be in complete disarray in the 1960s. Growing populations and the resultant increased demands for housing fed rapid suburban sprawl, creating a postwar burst of urban and suburban planning as consultants were hired in city after city to address the challenges of the postwar era. During this period expressway proposals sparked controversy in urban centres across the developed world, including every major city in Canada, namely Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montréal and Halifax. Residents objected to postwar autocentric planning designed to encourage and promote the continued growth of city centres. Frustrated by unresponsive politicians and civic officials, citizen activists challenged authorities with an alternate vision for cities that prioritized the safeguarding of the urban environment through the preservation of communities, the prevention of environmental degradation, and the promotion of public transit. As opponents recognized the necessity of moving beyond grassroots activism to established legal and government channels to fight expressways, their protests were buoyed by the rapidly rising costs that plagued the schemes. By the latter half of the 1960s, many politicians and civil servants had joined the objectors. Growing concerns over the many costs of expressways  – financial, social, environmental, and eventually, political  – resulted in the defeat of numerous expressway networks, but most were qualified victories with mixed legacies. Expressway disputes were an instrumental part of a wider struggle to define urban modernity, a struggle that challenged the basis of politicians and civil servants power by questioning their legitimacy as elected leaders and uniquely qualified experts, respectively. The subsequent emergence of urban reform groups that sought to change the direction of city development by challenging the autocratic municipal bureaucracies was the direct legacy of expressway and other development battles. Despite this, autocentric planning continued and demands for greater citizen participation did not result in significant changes to the form and function of municipal governments.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Weaver, John, History.

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This dissertation explores the social history of genetic counseling in the United States between 1930 and 2000. I situate genetic counselors at the interstices of medicine, science, and an increasingly “geneticized” society. My study emphasizes two central themes. First, genetic counselors have played a crucial role in bridging the “old eugenics” and the “new genetics” as mediators of genetic reproductive technologies. Genetic counselors negotiated the rights and responsibilities of genetic citizens in their patient encounters. Discourses of privilege and duty were also extrapolated outward to public debates about the new genetics, demonstrating the highly-politicized contexts in which counselors practice and women make reproductive choices. Second, I interrogate the professionalization process of genetic counseling from a field led by male physician-geneticists in the 1940s and 50s, to a profession dominated by women with Masters degrees by the 1980s and 90s. This transformation is best understood through the framework of a “system of professions,” and counselors’ professional position between “sympathy and science.” These frameworks similarly structured the client-counselor relationship, which also centered on concepts of risk, the promotion of patient autonomy, and the ethics of non-directiveness and client-centeredness. These principles distanced counselors from their field’s eugenic origins and the traditional doctor-patient relationship. I emphasize the voices of genetic counselors based on 25 oral history interviews, and hierarchies of gender, race, and educational status at work in the profession’s history. A study of genetic counseling is an important contribution to the histories of health and medicine, medical sociology, bioethics, disability studies, and gender and women’s studies.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Balcom, Karen, History.

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International humanitarian organizations played a prominent role in the Nigeria-Biafra War, but scholars have paid little or no attention to the humanitarian crisis in the war and the global humanitarian intervention that followed it. This thesis aims to fill a gap in the historiography of international humanitarian aid in the Nigeria-Biafra War by focusing on the Joint Church Aid (JCA), a consortium of Catholic and Protestant Churches that provided relief aid for the starving civilians in Biafra. This study of the JCA is broken down into three parts: the humanitarian impulse in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict, the formation of the JCA and its relief organization, and the challenges of relief operation in Biafra. The research provides a window into understanding the complex nature of international humanitarian aid in political conflicts. This dissertation argues that the JCA’s humanitarian operation, though relatively successful, had unintended consequences. While the JCA aimed to provide relief for the starving Biafran population, it was interpreted by the Nigerian government as political support for a “rebellion.” Convinced that the humanitarian organizations engaged in arms dealings with the Biafran government, the Nigerian government intensified military counter-action against the relief operation. The Nigerian government refused to separate international humanitarian aid from the political objectives of the war hence starvation came to be seen as a legitimate instrument of warfare. On the Biafran side, however, there was an effort to separate international humanitarian aid from the politics and hostilities of the war. Consequently, humanitarianism became a deeply contested issue that brought the humanitarian agencies into direct conflict with the Nigerian government. This study contributes to the scholarship on international humanitarianism and the internationalization of armed conflicts in postcolonial Africa.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Ibhawoh, Bonny, History.

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“The Conservative Party and Perceptions of the British Middle Classes, 1951 – 1974,” explores conceptions of middle-class voters at various levels of the party organization after the Second World War. Since Benjamin Disraeli, Conservatives have endeavoured to represent national rather than sectional interests and appeal widely to a growing electorate. Yet, the middle classes and their interests have also enjoyed a special position in the Conservative political imagination often because the group insists they receive special consideration. It proved especially difficult to juggle these priorities after 1951 when Conservatives encountered two colliding challenges: the middle classes growing at a rapid rate, failing to form a unified outlook or identity, and the limited appeal of consumer rhetoric and interests owing to the uneven experience of affluence and prosperity. Conservative ideas and policies failed to acknowledge and resonate with the changing nature of their core supporters and antiquated local party organization reinforced feelings of alienation from and mistrust of new members of the middle classes as well as affluent workers. This research shows that there was no clear-cut path between postwar Conservatism to Margaret Thatcher’s brand of Conservatism in which the individual, self-sufficient and acquisitive middle-class consumer became the champion. Moreover, the Conservative Party revealed, in these discussions, that it was much less ideologically certain than narratives have allowed previously.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Heathorn, Stephen, History.

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The following dissertation examines the history of general hospitals in modern, central and western Canada. It follows extensive case studies of the Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver general hospitals. The last few decades have seen an expanded interest in hospitals by Canadian medical historians, but the overall literature is thin. Further, many of the extant histories focus on a particular constituent: the medical profession, administrators, or architects. In this dissertation I argue that these general hospitals were contested spaces, and that their organization and layout reflected negotiation between several parties. A further important vector is the role hospitals played in the social life of their communities. As these general hospitals grew, and began treating middle-class patients, they also required large sums of money from the public purse. Administrators had to account for the shape and use of medical space to the general public that helped finance it, as they did to the doctors who worked there. During the period 1880-1945 general hospitals moved from the periphery of medical care to the centre, but not without substantial growing pains. These institutions routinely lacked funds and space, and remained in operation as much through the efforts of medical professionals as by concerned citizens. After the Second World War the Federal Government shifted from a standoffish institution to one ready to release funds and administrative energies towards new ideals of social welfare. Funding increased dramatically for the building of new hospitals, and legislative developments such as Medicare transformed the social and political relationship between hospitals and patients.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation began with the question: why do our general hospitals look the way that they do? It goes on to examine the ways in which multiple actors, including many non-medical ones such as local citizens, city councils, architects, and patients, interfaced with administrators and doctors to establish and build general hospitals in four Canadian cities. The core argument is that these were contested spaces, which reflected the communities in which they existed.

Advisors/Committee Members: Weaver, John, History.

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This thesis examines the safety policies implemented by three British Columbia forestry companies between 1943 and 1968. Companies sought to increase the efficiency of their operations by reducing the number of compensable accidents and fatalities among their workers. These companies, along with other member-companies in the BC Loggers Association and BC Lumber Manufacturers Association, took the lead in creating a safety regime in BC’s coastal forest industry, but were joined in the endeavor by the provincial Workmen’s Compensation Board (WCB) and the forest workers’ union, the International Woodworkers of America. In order to obtain worker consent for new safety programs, companies targeted worker’s masculinity. Workers who had seen themselves as following in the footsteps of the rugged and independent Paul Bunyan were a problem for companies who wanted to create a sense of mutual responsibility for safety across their entire workforce. Safety programs, accordingly, were heavily gendered and promoted a white, hetero-patriarchal masculinity. This masculine ideal was intended to reduce worker’s willingness to take unnecessary risks. In the later years of this study, companies obtained greater control over the work process by introducing tight controls over the work process in the name of safety. Overall, efforts by companies, as well as the union and the WCB, were successful in reducing many of the hazards of working in forestry by the later 1960s. However, many of the dangers in this industry persist into the twenty-first century.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis looks at the safety policies implemented by three British Columbia forestry companies between 1943 and 1968. Companies sought to increase the efficiency of their operations by reducing the number of compensable accidents and fatalities among their workers. They took the lead in creating a safety regime in forestry, but were joined in the endeavor by the provincial Workmen’s Compensation Board (WCB) and the forest workers’ union, the International Woodworkers of America. Safety programs were heavily gendered, with companies promoting a hetero-patriarchal masculinity in an attempt to reduce worker’s risk-taking. Efforts by companies, as well as the union and the WCB, were successful in reducing many of the hazards of working in forestry. However, many of the dangers in this industry persist into the twenty-first century.

Advisors/Committee Members: Frager, Ruth, History.

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This dissertation examines the origins and development of the cheese industry in rural Ontario between the 1860s and 1930s from the perspective of environmental history. Scholars have generally accepted contemporary beliefs that cheese was a “natural industry of this country” and that its growth was cooperative and inevitable. This dissertation tests these claims by comparing the rhetoric and actions of the rural elite and state officials against the human and extra-human work involved in manufacturing cheese for export, a method that has yielded new interpretations about the character and development of the industry. I build on James Murton’s concept of “alternative rural modernity” to argue that rural cheese manufacturing was a project of rural reform encouraged by elite ‘dairy reformers,’ rather than a natural development. Reformers believed cheese factories could support the social, economic and environmental stability of rural society indefinitely. Through cheese, they sought to create a society that was liberal and capitalist, but also cooperative and stable. They also believed that dairying would restore fertility to the region’s soils. In practice, however, their results were mixed. Although cheese became one of the province’s most significant export-oriented industries, transformed the environment, and deepened liberal values amongst rural people, it failed to deliver the alternative rural modernity reformers had envisioned. I provide two reasons why. First, the reformers’ mechanistic vision could not contend with the complexity and unpredictability of the socio-ecological world they sought to control. Second, the industry could not withstand the pressures of the emerging global capitalist food system and, ironically, facilitated the rise of ‘Big Dairy’ after the First World War, which hastened the industry’s demise. Overall, this dissertation emphasizes the dynamism of rural Ontario, contributes to an environmental history of liberal order in Canada, and contextualizes the resurgence of craft-based rural development in the twenty-first century.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation examines the origins and development of the factory cheese industry in rural Ontario between the 1860s and 1930s. I challenge the belief that cheese manufacturing was a “natural industry of this country” whose development was cooperative and inevitable. Instead I argue that the industry was a deliberate project of rural reform encouraged by elite ‘dairy reformers’ who believed cheese factories could sustain the social, economic, and environmental progress of rural society indefinitely. The industry failed to deliver all the reformers promised, even though it became one of the province’s most significant export-oriented industries by the early-twentieth century and transformed the environment and rural society in the process. Rural people and the environment behaved in more complicated ways than reformers anticipated, and the changing capitalist economy made the industry’s long-term success untenable. This…

Advisors/Committee Members: Egan, Michael, History.

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In 1919, the Bolshevik Party of Russia formed the Communist International (Comintern) to lead the international communist movement. As part of its efforts, it maintained a strong commitment to supporting colonial liberation, self-determination of nations, and racial equality. Many scholars of the Comintern and the Soviet Union assume that Moscow demanded firm discipline of all member parties and these parties largely followed its lead. But the Comintern was not as monolithic as is often presumed. Colonial affairs frequently were overlooked and European Communist Parties often skirted their commitment to supporting their colonial counterparts. Individual communists took it upon themselves to promote anti-imperialism or racial equality, but their efforts were frequently hampered by the tactical shifts of the Comintern and eventually, the erosion of Moscow’s interest. Frequently, the prioritization of certain issues in the Comintern proved to be the most important factor in determining Comintern interference in member parties. This dissertation includes the first comparative analysis of the Communist Parties of South Africa, Canada and Australia on issues of anti-imperialism, nationality, and race. In comparing these parties, this study explores the limits of Moscow’s control of other Communist Parties, while detailing the similarities and differences in the efforts of these three parties to combat imperialism, support colonial liberation, and fight for national rights and racial equality. This dissertation is the first to detail the Canadian and Australian communism’s efforts, sometimes on their own initiative, on anti-imperialism, nationality and racial equality during the interwar period, to provide new conclusions about Comintern intervention in South Africa, and to highlight the prioritization of the Comintern as each party sees Moscow’s intervention on these issues to very different degrees.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In 1919, the Bolshevik Party of Russia created the Communist International, an organization to lead communist parties throughout the world. Through this body, the Bolsheviks and international communists promoted colonial liberation, racial equality, and self-determination of nations. This dissertation uses the examples of the Communist Parties of South Africa, Canada, and Australia to show that each party dealt with these issues differently, saw different levels of intervention from the Communist International, and the severity of this intervention is directly tied to the priorities of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. Also included in this study is a comparative analysis of the tactics of all three parties, including the efforts of individual communists in each nation in developing platforms unique to the local conditions they were facing.

Advisors/Committee Members: McDonald, Tracy, History.

▼ Placing coffee at the centre of its analysis, this dissertation reveals the intersections between consumption, culture, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR)’s involvement in the developing world. State planners took steps to promote coffee as a good consumed not only for its value as a stimulant but also for enjoyment. Enjoying a warm cup of coffee represented East Germans’ participation in socialist society, and in a global coffee culture. Moreover, by adopting and weaving the older ideals and traditions associated with coffee into its messages of a bright socialist future based on modernity, progress and culture, the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) used coffee as part of its long-term goals of reforming society along socialist lines. When a major frost destroyed two thirds of Brazil’s coffee trees in July 1975, causing world prices to quadruple by 1977, GDR planners faced a genuine ‘Coffee Crisis’ that challenged the state’s political well-being. The regime replaced the most affordable brand ‘Kosta’ with ‘Kaffee-Mix,’ a blend of 51 per cent coffee and 49 per cent surrogate. Vehement public rejection of the replacement necessitated the hasty conclusion of new trade deals to solve the supply problem, deals which brought the GDR into contact with the developing world in ways it had not anticipated. This project considers four case studies – the GDR’s coffee deals with Angola, Ethiopia, Laos and Vietnam, and I argue that these coffee deals reveal as much about the GDR’s engagements with the global south as they do about its own self-image as a modern state in a divided, yet globalizing world. The GDR consciously approached these relationships as an industrially developed nation needing to ‘guide’ these newly independent states toward (a socialist) modernisation. Furthermore, these trade agreements reveal the balance between pragmatism and ideology which characterized the GDR’s pursuit of coffee; ideology often informed state representatives and framed the negotiations, but pragmatic concerns generally found primacy throughout the process. The GDR invested heavily in these developing countries’ coffee industries, sending technical equipment, along with agricultural and technical experts to help these countries meet East Germans’ import needs. In Angola and Ethiopia, the GDR provided weapons for coffee, while contracts with Laos and Vietnam led to lengthy development projects to ‘modernize’ each country’s coffee industry. This investment in turn helped change the balance of the world coffee trade; the most striking example of this process was the explosion of the Vietnamese coffee industry through the 1980s, which ultimately made Vietnam the world’s second largest producer of coffee next to Brazil. The need for coffee in the GDR, then, sparked a specific expansion of its involvement in the Global South, a process that complicates scholars’ positioning of the GDR within international relations. The example of coffee and the trade agreements it spurred suggests the need to move beyond questions about the… Advisors/Committee Members: Swett, Pamela, History.

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This study explores the relationship between soccer and Toronto’s Italian immigrants throughout the 1970s to the now-mythical 1982 celebration of the Italian team’s FIFA World Cup victory on Toronto’s Corso Italia. The celebration’s location in a distinctly ethnic neighbourhood is linked to concepts of ‘place’ and ‘identity’ which made it central to the construction of an Italian-Canadian identity during the era of Multiculturalism policies. Toronto’s Italian-Canadians used the victory as a way of recognizing their own worth to society and to proudly and publicly solidify their integration into the Canadian multicultural landscape. Soccer helped them create and maintain a multi-dimensional transnational identity that reinforced the importance of their ethnic community. It also provided them with a visual way to relate to the nation. This study shows that this nationalism transcended traditional gender constraints and transformed this sport victory celebration into a family event, which included males and females alike. Eighteen interviews of Italian-Canadians who lived in and around the Toronto area throughout the 1970s and early 1980s reveal what they remember about the soccer-related events of that time period and how they feel about those memories now. This study also examines various Italian, Italian-Canadian, and English-language Canadian newspapers that covered specific sporting events and celebrations from 1978 to 1983, with a particular focus on the 1982 World Cup. It argues that in this case a collective memory has been created and conditioned by the way the media portrayed the event and how Toronto’s Italian-Canadian cultural community sustained it.

Master of Arts (MA)

Advisors/Committee Members: Bouchier, Nancy, History.

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This dissertation examines the Ottoman grand strategy during the turbulent years of war and reform between 1826 and 1841.The concept of grand strategy utilized in my thesis does hereby not refer to purely military matters. It is rather a notion that explains how a political authority strives to realize its long-term aims through mobilization of its available instruments and resources. During 1820s-1840s, facing grave internal and external threats, the Ottoman grand strategy was directed at defending its existing possessions and re-establishing the center’s authority throughout the empire. To ensure their aims, Ottoman decision-makers initiated a radical bureaucratic-military reform agenda and mobilized available fiscal, military and ideological resources at their disposal. The majority of the existing scholarship tend to interpret the Ottoman reforms in an overly descriptive or superficial manner, therefore neglecting the Ottoman decision-makers’ perceptions, plans, and broader goals as well as the subsequent effects (and repercussions) of those policies within the empire. The “Eastern Question” literature, which is mainly based on European sources, often ignores the Ottoman agency and obscures the rather complex nature of Ottoman policy-making by assessing it within a facile “modernist-reactionary” bipolarity for the period in question. With my holistic approach and utilization of unused archival material, I will contribute to the existing knowledge about Ottoman policy-making and political-military transformation during the era in question. I argue in my thesis that the imperial center consciously, if frantically, responded to the internal and external challenges by tightening its grip around its subjects and making far-reaching changes in its governmentality. Aided by an expanding and diversifying military-administrative bureaucracy, Ottoman rulers managed to collect more taxes, create and expand a disciplined army, limit the power of provincial notables, standardize governing practices and pragmatically used their newly established European embassies to achieve their foreign goals. The social and economic costs of these policies were also immense, as I clearly underline in my study. Many common subjects and members of the higher classes expressed neither optimism nor pleasure about the top-down reforms and state policies. They were heavily taxed, suffered from rampant inflation, while tens of thousands of men were pressed into the new military formations to serve until they became disabled, deserted or died.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Grounded in archival research in Turkish historical repositories, this thesis examines the Ottoman ruling elite’s efforts to ensure the empire’s integrity and re-establish central authority by military-bureaucratic reform and internal negotiation in the second quarter of the 19th century. Going beyond the standard institutional histories and Eurocentric narratives of the Eastern Question, it explores how the Ottoman sultans and bureaucrats mobilized the…

Advisors/Committee Members: Aksan, Virginia H., History.

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In the first two centuries of European exploration of North America, accounts of monsters, including ones given by Indigenous guides, were largely accepted by Europeans as reflecting actual creatures. Gradually, under the influence of a range of factors, this dynamic shifted over time. Continued exploration, the spread of Enlightenment ideas, and changing material circumstances led to a decline in the belief in monsters—or at least put the belief in them beyond respectability, thereby enlarging the cultural gulf between various Indigenous cultures and European explorers and settlers, or at least the social elite of that latter group. In Canada, as argued here, the “sasquatch” was a hybrid creation combining Indigenous and European traditions; the windigo was an Indigenous monster tradition; the “grisly bear” was predominately a monster of the European imagination. Perceptions of each in European exploration literature followed a similar trajectory of increasing skepticism. Each evolved from creatures that were depicted as innately hostile or dangerous into somewhat more benign pop culture images as they lost their potency once the frontier receded and North America urbanized. As the gap in perspectives on monsters widened in exploration and frontier literature over the course of the nineteenth century, new narratives emerged that were much more negative in their depictions of Indigenous peoples. Frequently, this negativity, when connected with monster legends, depicted Indigenous peoples as cowardly or superstitious. With the sasquatch, European stereotypes about Indigenous people had by the 1870s partially supplanted what had once been a sense of genuine mystery regarding this frontier legend. The exploitation of windigo stories to portray Indigenous peoples as cowardly and superstitious also arose mainly after the 1870s, as earlier generations of explorers and fur traders had exhibited more receptive attitudes. Meanwhile many voyageurs and lower status trappers retained beliefs on monsters closer to their Indigenous counterparts, and as a result were often lumped into the same category as sharing premodern, superstitious beliefs by their social elites. Finally, in the third example, the “grisly bear” became a bloodthirsty monster in the European settler imagination. It was the last mainstream European monster myth, before it too largely faded away in the face of skeptical inquiry. However, such skepticism, voiced normally from afar, frequently misunderstood and misconstrued the nature of these legends, and the truths they had contained.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Cruikshank, Ken, History.

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Historical work on British war brides has been limited to the creation and collection of nostalgic interview anthologies; often by the women themselves or their children. These anthologies focus on the meeting of Canadian servicemen and British women and the women’s journey to and reunion with their husbands in Canada. Discussions of life in Canada and negative experiences are only briefly mentioned. This dissertation argues that this nostalgic view of war brides in the historical literature hides the immigration, settlement, and citizenship challenges faced by these women in Canada during and after the Second World War. Reception of war brides by the Canadian government and public was not as positive as the current scholarship has suggested. While some war brides flourished in Canada, others experienced adaptational problems, including differences in language and religion, navigating Canada’s housing crisis, and hostile in-laws. A few women also experienced problems related to abandonment, abuse, or husbands with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder. Since divorce was difficult to get at the time, these women tended to suffer in silence. Some war brides and their children even experienced problems with their citizenship, due to sexist provisions in the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1946, and changes to the Act in 1976, which made proof of citizenship necessary for all Canadians; something that many war brides were unaware of. This dissertation examines the creation and evolution of Canadian citizenship from a perspective that highlights its initial racism and sexism, as well as the consistent bureaucratic bungling regarding the application of its provisions since 1947. While these cases were fixed by amendments to the Citizenship Act in 2008 and 2014 by the Harper government, the citizenship conundrums that this community faced raise interesting questions about what citizenship means and who gets to be a Canadian citizen.

Thesis

Candidate in Philosophy

Most historical work about British war brides has been overly nostalgic and focussed on the collection and creation of interview anthologies; often created by these women and their children. Discussions of life in Canada and negative experiences are only briefly mentioned. This dissertation argues that this nostalgic view of war brides in the historical literature hides the immigration, settlement, and citizenship challenges faced by these women in Canada during and after the Second World War. The different experiences of these women reveal biases towards their background and gender, relationships damaged by the trauma of war, bureaucratic incompetence in the immigration and citizenship process, and raises important questions about national belonging and the nature of Canadian citizenship, from the post-war period to the present.

Advisors/Committee Members: Frager, Ruth, History.

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This thesis provides a historical study of the Canadian government's changing foreign policy toward the development of an international bill of rights at the United Nations from the 1940s to the 1970s. Canada was initially reluctant to support international human rights instruments because the concept of 'universal human rights' articulated at the UN challenged customary understandings of civil liberties in Canada, and federal policy makers felt an international bill of rights would have a negative impact on domestic policy. By the 1970s, however, the Canadian government was pushing for the ratification of the International Covenants on Human Rights and working to present Canada as an advocate for the UN's human rights regime. This study considers this change in policy by examining the domestic and global factors that influenced the government's approach to international human rights. Within Canada, rights activism led to increased public awareness of human rights issues, and transformed Canadian understandings of rights and of the role of government in promoting these rights. This led to pressure on the Canadian government to support human rights initiatives at the United Nations. In this same period, the geopolitics of the Cold War and the rise of anti-colonialism shaped debates at the UN over human rights. As global support for the UN's human rights instruments grew, Canada became the subject of criticism from other states. Concerned about the negative implications, at home and within the international community, of appearing to stand in opposition to the principles of human rights, Ottawa changed its policy. Despite the government’s new rhetoric of support for the international bill of rights, however, federal policy makers continued to question the benefit of these instruments for Canada. This lack of commitment accounts, at least in part, for Canada’s continued failure to fully implement its international human rights obligations.

Dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Frager, Ruth, History.

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The following dissertation examines the little-known history of Canada’s Great War disabled. During the Great War Canada mobilized 620,000 soldiers, most of them volunteers. Nearly 120,000 would one day receive compensation for a disability incurred on, or aggravated by military service. Thousands more suffered from related injuries, diseases, or traumas but lacked the documentary evidence necessary to garner material support from the state. The core objective of this dissertation is to explore how policy-makers responded to these challenges, and how their efforts shaped the daily experiences of veterans from all walks of life. By fusing an analysis of policy with a social history of disability, this study uncovers the multiple paths disabled veterans embarked upon during their civil re-establishment. Few followed unfirom trajectories. The affects of disability on a veteran’s wellbeing varied widely based on numerous factors including pre-war social standing, support networks, material resources, age, and overall health. While most studies of disability and the Great War have focued on the cultural, medical, or political impact of disability, few adequately explain how both government policy and extraneous forces affected the lives of disabled veterans. Utilizing a wealth of statistical data and a large sample group of case files, “State, Service, and Survival: Canada’s Great War Disabled, 1914-44” is the first Canadian study to address this gap in our collective understanding of the war’s legacy.

Dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Weaver, John, History.

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This dissertation explores the role of religion in the origins of the Cold War from 1880 to 1948. Building on David Foglesong’s research into the role of religion in shaping American missionaries, businesspeople, and public intellectuals’ perceptions of Russia, as well as Andrew Preston’s insights into the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s use of religious tropes to justify intervention against Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1945, this project focuses on the White House and US State Department’s efforts to manage diplomatic tensions and public controversies surrounding religious repression in Russia during the origins of the Cold War from 1880 to 1948. The central finding of this project is that during the period from 1933 to 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his personal allies such as Joseph Davies sought to minimize popular and official criticisms of Soviet religious policies as a part of Roosevelt’s program of pragmatic cooperation with the USSR. Eventually, anti-communist officials in the State Department managed to undermine Roosevelt’s public relations program in order to justify a more confrontational approach to the Soviet regime. Roosevelt’s poor health, growing personal isolation, and neglect of personal relationships with American Catholic leaders after 1943, as well as his failure to create a bureaucracy committed to his vision of post-war cooperation, meant that after his death religion could be used by anti-communists in their campaign to denigrate the Soviet Union. To gain popular support for its containment and roll-back strategies, the Truman administration called for a worldwide Christian crusade to eradicate atheistic communism. By shedding light on how well the Roosevelt administration was able to overcome US-Russian religious tensions, this project supports the “missed opportunities” thesis that the Cold War was not inevitable. It also stands as an example of a growing body of scholarly research linking religion, diplomacy, and US foreign relations.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Streeter, Stephen, History.

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This investigation contributes to studies of post-1945 Europe and the Cold War by examining Franco-Yugoslavian relations in the period 1944–1969. In analyzing the diplomatic, economic, military, and cultural relations between the two countries, this dissertation argues that contrary to dominant narratives, neither the destruction wrought by the Second World War nor the ideological divide imposed by the Cold War swept away pre-1945 structures. Rather than jettisoning their “traditional friendship” that had been forged in the First World War, after the defeat of Nazi Germany France and Yugoslavia revived their many forms of cooperation despite the radically changed political landscape. That each sought to exploit the friendship for its own gain was not surprising. While it has been assumed that France quietly retreated from its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe after 1945, this work argues that until 1966 Yugoslavia was an important site for the reclamation of French power and prestige vis-à-vis the British and Americans. Although Yugoslavia’s claim to international status was its leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement, its security concerns remained in Europe. Consequently, it sought to capitalize upon its friendship with France for a variety of purposes, including to facilitate the legitimation of the new regime and its territorial claims against Italy, insurance against German resurgence, and cooperation on the international stage. Belgrade’s desire for cooperation with France stemmed from the similarities between “Gaullism” and “Titoism.” The crucial ideologically-derived differences between the two, however, precluded any meaningful form of collaboration. In addition to reintroducing ideology into the realism-dominated field of Cold War studies, the evidence in this dissertation – that both France and Yugoslavia remained invested in the “traditional friendship” – demonstrates that the post-1945 political and ideological division of Europe after was porous.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Horn, Martin, History.

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What kind of animal was a black bear? Were black bears primarily pests, pets, furbearers or game animals? Farmers, conservationists, tourists, trappers, and hunters in early twentieth-century Ontario could not agree. Even as the century progressed, ideas about bears remained twisted and there was often very little consensus about what the animal represented. These varying perceptions complicated the efforts of the provincial Department of Game and Fisheries and its successor agencies, the Department of Lands and Forests and the Ministry of Natural Resources, to develop coherent bear management policies. Perceptions about black bears often conflicted and competed with one another and at no one time did they have a single meaning in Ontario. The image of Ontario’s black bears has been continuously negotiated as human values, attitudes, and policies have changed over time. As a result, because of various and often competing perspectives, the province’s bear management program, for most of the twentieth century, was very loose and haphazard because the animal had never been uniformly defined or valued. Examining the history of these ambiguous viewpoints towards the black bear in Ontario provides us with a snapshot of how culture intersects with our natural resources and may pose challenges for management.

Dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Cruikshank, Ken, History.

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This dissertation argues that mid-century liberalism provided the philosophical rational and basis for sex education, and that sex education was cumulatively institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling between 1955 and 1988 as the result of incremental, technocratic policy-making. School-based sex education – an extension of the welfare state – was a technocratic solution to socio-sexual problems such as venereal disease and teenage pregnancy. Sex education was conceptualized as a program of disease prevention and health promotion with the added objective of promoting sexual responsibility amongst students. While school-based sex education was ostensibly a form of sexual regulation, it also conformed to the purpose of liberal education: the development of the critical autonomous capacity of each and every individual student. The sex education that students received, therefore, was a medico-scientific study of sex that stressed prevention and early treatment, but which also emphasized the centrality of individual choice in place of the imperatives of a single standard of behaviour or morality. Sex education policy was shaped by a succession of incremental changes to better remedy both longstanding and emerging socio-sexual problems. When AIDS education was mandated for the 1987–88 school year in response to the AIDS crisis, sex education was further institutionalized. This decision, however, was only reached as a result of the past three decades worth of technocratic policy-making. Social scientific studies had provided evidence, albeit limited, of sex education’s effectiveness in ameliorating socio-sexual problems and reducing government spending. Moreover, empirical evidence indicated that most Ontarians were accepting of sex education – or at worst apathetic about it. While mandating AIDS education was the result of a catalyst, it did not represent a major shift in sex education policy when looked at over the longue durée. AIDS education was largely built upon established policy. By 1988, many aspects of contemporary sex education policy had been established. Ultimately, the ministry’s sex education policy reflected its burgeoning technocratic liberalism amidst an increasingly secular, pluralistic, and sexually permissive society. As a result of incremental, technocratic policy-making between 1955 and 1988, sex education – under conditions of liberal modernity – was institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling.

Dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Frager, Ruth, History.

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As former colonies and newly independent states of the ‘Third World’ organized internationally around anticolonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, Ghana became a key site in debates over development at the height of the Cold War. Contributing to the new economic and political history of postcolonial Ghana, this study examines the national development visions and international political-economic connections of the Nkrumaist state 1957-66 and the first year under the post-coup National Liberation Council through the lens of translocality. Translocality refers to the entanglement of different localities and communities, and in this context, how the idea and practice of national development is co-constituted with these connections. Kwame Nkrumah situated national development as a resource in uniting the African continent against foreign political and economic influence. The Nkrumaist state played a leading role in the formation of the Organization of African Unity, non-alignment, nuclear non-proliferation, and attempts at harmonizing national development continentally. The movements of individuals to Ghana seeking participation within the Nkrumaist project were also racialized and gendered. Women Pan-Africanist activists organized conferences and made internationalist commentaries, making claims for inclusive economic development and participation. Furthermore, Ghanaian national development, dependent on mixed-planning foreign capital, markets, and technologies to finance projects, became increasingly subject to non-national departmental debates and an emerging liberal disciplinary politics through 1962-1966. The International Monetary Fund, Britain and the United States came to a consensus regarding a balance of payments and foreign reserve crisis in Ghana. After a military coup d'état in 1966, the NLC introduced an IMF reform package and embarked on a program of unmaking Nkrumaism. This study contributes to understanding the translocal dynamics of postcolonial development and development discourses.

Dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

I argue that Ghana’s national development from 1957 to 1968 was conceived of, practiced, and situated within, transnational and international connections that can be best understood through the concept of translocality. Translocality refers to the entanglement of different localities and communities, and in this context, how the idea and practice of development cannot be separated from these relational connections. The research supporting this concept contributes to understanding African postcolonial national development in tension and co-constituted with non-national dynamics. As an idea and policy mandate dictated by Kwame Nkrumah, national development was defined as a resource in the struggle for Pan-Africanism but also entangled with the politics of Pan-Africanism, the Cold War and international creditors. These translocal connections are explored through the activisms and commentaries of women Pan-Africanists, activists, and political moderates travelling to Ghana as well as…

Advisors/Committee Members: Ibhawoh, Bonny, History.

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The first section of this thesis identifies two schools of economic thought that were prominent between 1923 and the 1960s. Both employed a staples approach to organize, explain and interpret Canada’s history but used different scopes of inquiry, methodologies and time horizons. I call these two schools Innis’ staples thesis and Macintosh’s staple economics. No sooner were these two schools firmly established than the economics profession underwent a fundamental shift. Economic historians abandoned the old Canadian political economy in the 1960s and followed international trends toward increased specialization. Academic economists concentrated on theoretical and deductive methods with little concern for historical time. During this period of rapid transition, Mel Watkins developed a third approach known as the staple theory. If contemporary economists are cognizant of a staples approach, they most likely think about Watkins’ theory which was written during the ascendancy of the ‘new’ economic history in the United States. One of the legacies of the old political economy was the construction of historical data sets, but they are rarely used in contemporary studies. The collection of historical data related to staples activity waned as the focus shifted to the construction of national accounts. The reconstruction of Canada’s trade flows was abandoned. The last five chapters of this thesis remedy this neglect with a new series of trade flows for all British North America from 1829 to 1960. Economic historians will now have a continuous series of meaningful trade statistics to facilitate future research on the role of staples in international economy of British North America. With this information, research can begin to evaluate the long-run evolution of the structure, behaviour and performance of Canada’s external economy from a simple colonial society to a modern industrial nation.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Weaver, John, Cruikshank, Ken, History.

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This work is a local study of charity in seventeenth-century Marseilles. Civic councillors, inspired by the dévot movement, were the chief agents of charitable poor relief. Responding to external political pressures from the Bourbon monarchy and religious inspiration from within the community, charity became a facet of local political authority and a vehicle of social moral reform. The collective purpose of the newly emerging specialized asylums was to mould orderly and spiritually orthodox members of society. In light of the city’s ongoing hopes for civic autonomy and its unwavering commitment to Catholicism, the desire for citizen-virtue crystallizes as a struggle for distinctly Marseillais identity. My study emphasizes not the ‘enfermement’ but the concept of ‘charity’ as the central concept in treatment of the poor. The asylums were ‘rehabilitative’ rather than purely punitive. In showing charity as a mechanism of social reform – tailored to each group’s material, moral and spiritual lowliness and to the threat they allegedly posed – the study implicitly unveils the exclusionary aspects of the social mosaic.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Armstrong, Megan, Kaczynski, Bernice, Aksan, Virginia, History.

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Between 1964 and 1975, approximately 7,500 to 11,000 American military women served in the Vietnam War. They served in many roles – they worked as air traffic controllers, dieticians, physiotherapists, clerks, and cryptographers – but the bulk of American women who went to Vietnam served as military nurses with the Army, Navy, and Air Force Nurse Corps. This dissertation explores the wartime and homecoming experiences of female nurse veterans whose Vietnam experiences have been largely ignored or minimized by historical accounts of the war. By refashioning the narrative of the war to include women, this study challenges cultural constructions of war as an exclusively male sphere, and in doing so offers a more sophisticated understanding of both men’s and women’s Vietnam service. In Vietnam, American women risked their lives for their country. Motivated by a blend of patriotism, humanitarianism, professional advancement, and educational opportunity, female nurses volunteered for war at a time when many young men sought to evade military service. Yet the women who served have been consistently denied the rewards of their sacrifice. After the war, sexist attitudes about who is eligible for the privileges which accompany military service led the VA to routinely deny veterans entitlements including health care and disability pensions to female military nurses. Efforts to memorialize the war, through their focus on male veterans’ experience, relegated women’s service in Vietnam to the periphery of public memory. Based primarily on oral history interviews with 29 female military nurses who served in the war, this dissertation reveals women’s agency through an exploration of their responses to these and other gendered challenges associated with their military service, and exposes the connection between public memory and women’s access to the benefits bestowed upon martial citizens.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Streeter, Stephen, Balcom, Karen, Wright, David, History.

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Antiwar activists and Congressional doves condemned the Nixon administration for supporting South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, whom they accused of corruption, cruelty, authoritarianism, and inefficacy. To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of Nixon’s decision to prop up a client dictator with seemingly so few virtues. Joshua Lovell’s dissertation addresses this gap in the literature, and argues that racism lay at the root of this policy. While American policymakers were generally contemptuous of the Vietnamese, they believed that Thieu partially transcended the alleged limitations of his race. The White House was relieved to find Thieu, who ushered South Vietnam into an era of comparative stability after a long cycle of coups. To US officials, Thieu appeared to be the only leader capable of planning and implementing crucial political, social, and economic policies, while opposition groups in Saigon’s National Assembly squabbled to promote their own narrow self-interests. Thieu also promoted American-inspired initiatives, such as Nixon’s controversial Vietnamization program, even though many of them weakened his government. Thieu’s performance as a national leader and administrator was dubious, at best, but the Nixon administration trumpeted his minor achievements and excused his gravest flaws. Senior policymakers doubted they would find a better leader than Thieu, and they ridiculed the rest of the South Vietnamese as fractious, venal, and uncivilized. While the alliance ultimately chilled over disagreements regarding the Paris peace negotiations, Washington’s perception of Thieu as a South Vietnamese superman facilitated a cordial relationship for most of Nixon’s first term in office.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Streeter, Stephen, Song, Jaeyoon, Stubbs, Richard, History.

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This dissertation examines urban renewal programs carried out in Hamilton, Ontario and Buffalo, New York, from 1949 to 1974. It shows how these projects fit within the Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne’s Functional City paradigm and how the modernist aesthetic was reflected in these industrial cities’ planning documents and practices. Urban renewal is often examined by focusing on issues of race, politics and social upheaval. This cross-border study offers a new approach to the analysis through the modernist aesthetic. The comparative study demonstrates that modernist ideas were integral to both Hamilton’s and Buffalo’s urban renewal schemes, contributing both to the desired outcome and to the process, a commitment to action through the destruction of blocks of homes and buildings. The analysis shows how the aesthetic transcended national differences in politics and programs and offers new insight to our understanding of urban renewal on both sides of the international border.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Harris, Richard, Weaver, John, Cruikshank, Ken, History.

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I examine the central influence of anti-Catholicism upon the construction of English Canadian nationalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Anti-Catholicism provided an existing rhetorical and ideological tradition and framework within which public figures and other Canadians communicated their diverse visions of an ideal Canada. The study of anti-Catholicism problematizes the rigid separation that many scholars have posited between a conservative ethnic nationalism and a progressive civic nationalism. Often times these very civic values were inextricable from a context of Britishness. Hostility to Catholicism was not limited only to the staunchly Anglophile Conservative party; indeed the importance of anti-Catholicism as a component of Canadian nationalism lies in its presence across the political and intellectual spectrum. Catholicism was perceived to inculcate values antithetical to British traditions. It was a medieval faith that stunted the “natural” development of its adherents, preventing them from becoming responsible citizens in a modern democracy. The concentration of Catholicism in Quebec further inflamed many in Canada who saw French Canadian Catholics as anachronistic barriers to a united, democratic and modern Canada.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Gauvreau, Michael, Heathorn, Stephen, Horn, Martin, History.

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This dissertation examines the development of Huguenot confessional identity and political strategy under the Edict of Nantes through sermons. Here, sermons serve as a vital medium of ideological exchange, shaping and reflecting the mental world of France's Protestant population, while acting as a source of dialogue between Huguenot ministers, their parishioners and readers, and the crown. As a result, this study demonstrates the cultural tools that influenced how the Huguenot population made sense of their position in France in the seventeenth century, and it shows that, while Huguenots lost much of their effective political power after 1629, their ministers were active in the decades after through informal but telling channels, instructing their parishioners about proper civic and political belief, and positing for their various audiences a view of the French polity – and of its absolutist monarchy – that included a legitimate place for the Huguenot population. The introduction and the first chapter provide the historical and historiographical background, while also offering a detailed explanation of the training and vocation of Huguenot ministers, shedding light on their sermons and their social and professional networks. Chapters two and three provide the heart of the argument, exploring the elements of the sermons that emphasized, first, the necessity of religious particularism for Huguenots within France and, second, their abiding devotion to the crown. Together, these dual elements of Huguenot identity meant that they were negotiating their own vision for the kingdom and their place within it. The final three chapters examine the prevalence and significance of the Huguenot dual identity in diverse sermon themes, while also showing its legacy beyond the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This dissertation provides an important contribution to Reformation and French historiography, while also complicating notions about religious identity and the development of absolutist thought by demonstrating a confessionally-distinct political activism that is not often recognized. It also reveals the interwoven nature of religion and politics in the Reformation era, here as it is manifested in sermons.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Armstrong, Megan, Kaczynski, Bernice, Aksan, Virginia, History.

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“The Time of Politics and the Politics of Time: Exploring the Role of Temporality in British Constitutional Development during the Long Nineteenth Century,” studies the role of time in the development of Britain’s liberal democracy. Conceptually, it explores time both as a structure that the procedural framework of the British Parliament produced and as an historical perception that the technological culture of modernity constructed. In both cases, the study focuses on the constitutional significance of perceived fluctuations within the scarcity of political time as well as imagined changes in the pace and continuity of history. Methodologically, I use these conceptualizations of time in order to examine the intersection of four seemingly disparate political phenomena in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: namely, the perceived expansion of democracy, the instrumentalization of rationality in political culture, the devaluation of deliberative practices as forms of political action, and the rise of mass political dissatisfaction with the efficiency of Parliament.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Heathorn, Stephen, Swett, Pamela, Gauvreau, Michael, History.

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The thesis offers an interpretive account of the formation of a field of struggle relating to low-income housing in Toronto during the Depression. The stakes in the struggle are established by showing how rival authorities competed for influence over the definition of a housing problem and promoted new state projects of slum clearance, district redevelopment, public housing, and neighbourhood rehabilitation. A particular contribution of the research is to link interventions made to direct state development with the production and reproduction of spatially constituted social structures of Toronto. Through the reconstruction of the form and trajectory of a local housing market using oral histories, archived commentaries, photographic and quantitative sources, practices of housing provision are connected with patterns of service that contributed to class relations in the city.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Harris, Richard, Gauvreau, Michael, Frager, Ruth, History.

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This dissertation examines transnational connectivities centred on anti-discrimination and human rights activism, discourse, and policy spanning the Canada-United States border during the 1950s and 1960s. It focuses specifically on Canadian interactions with the African American civil rights movement, with particular attention to the ways Canadian activists contributed to the American movement, as well as the significance of the American movement to Canadian rights activism and policy. This dissertation contributes to historical understanding of the transnational nature of the American civil rights movement by illustrating how Canadian activists and organizations impacted directly on the American movement through financial and moral support. It also argues the American movement had important implications for Canadian rights activism and policy. Canadian anti-discrimination activists followed American civil rights campaigns, adapting ideas and techniques when relevant to their own efforts. Most significantly, they leveraged examples from south of the border and elsewhere around the world when pressing for change in local contexts. Through their local and global efforts, Canadian activists achieved notable successes in pushing Canadian public policy towards stronger human rights protections. While generating pressure for change, the international framework acted simultaneously as a restraining force on more fundamental transformations in conceptualizations of human rights in Canada. Many Canadians observed the civil rights movement from a sanctimonious perspective, denying that international examples carried applicability for their own country. Whether acting as a pressure for strengthened human rights protections, or a restraining force against the advent of more fundamental measures, this dissertation argues that Canadian human rights activism, discourse, and policy in the 1950s and 1960s can only be fully understood when intersections between local, national, and global contexts are considered.

Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advisors/Committee Members: Frager, Ruth, History.