The Last Hooray with the Axworthian One

For our final tutorial session please be sure to read Chapter 23 from The Peoples of Canada and most importantly, Lloyd Axworthy's article, "Canada and Human Security: The Need for Leadership" and Fen Osler Hampson's and Dean F. Oliver's "Pulpit Democracy: A Critical Assessment of the Axworthy Doctrine." See you all on Wednesday!

Think on these:

1. Discuss Axworthy's article. Explain the basic tenets of the Axworthy doctrine?

2. What are some of Hampson's and Oliver's critiques of the Axworthy doctrine?

3. What are some of the tangible advancements of the Axworthy doctrine?

4. Can you think of any instances where Canada has employed the notion of 'soft power' diplomacy?

5. Is Canada's Peacekeeping tradition a myth?

6. What should Mike give up first, playing Roll up the Rim or cheering for the Maple Leafs? (I should note that I finally won last week on my 55th purchased cup and I should also note that the Buds are 7 points out of 8th place)

The Penultimate Tutorials

For the second last tutorial of 2TT3 we are going to be discussing the material from The Peoples of Canada and the items that can be found online. When exploring Brian Mulroney's links please be sure to glean all the material but pay close attention (i.e., READ) his Meech Lake Accord speech.

Also, before we have a general discussion on all the items I want to take 15-20 minutes to go over the assignment. I want to ensure everyone understands what they need to do, review formatting and stylistic issues, and open the floor to any questions anyone may have.

Here are some questions that may be worth discussing:

1. If you were vacationing in Rome and a local asked you about the Constitution Act of 1982 how would you explain its importance to this person who is unfamiliar with Canadian political and legal history?

2. How would you rank the following in order of importance to Canada's history? BNA Act 1867, Statute of Westminster 1931, and Constitution Act 1982. How important are legislative milestones? What other formative events might you include?

3. Discuss Mulroney's Meech Lake Accord Speech. What are some of the issues with conferring the status of "distinct society" upon Quebec?

4. Does the province of Quebec qualify as a distinct society? If Quebec qualifies, how do we reconcile the position of other groups in Canada such as First Nations?

5. How would you define 'suburbia'?

6. Discuss the difference between culture in Canada and Canadian culture.

7. How did sport become part of overall cultural policy in Canada? Where does hockey rank?

8. What happened to Canadian history in the 1960s?

Marshall McLuhan, Heritage Minute

Afternoon Tutorial

Hi all,

The TA that was supposed to take up today's readings ran into some car issues today so she and I apologize for her absence. In an effort to reward those that did the readings, please come to tutorial next week with two questions about the readings. I want you to come up with two questions you would ask about the readings and then provide a 50 word explanation for why you chose the questions. They will be graded out of 10 and will be your mark for this week's tutorials. Those that didn't do the readings, here is your chance to read and collect some marks. So it will look like this

Question 1
50 word explanation as to why you chose the question

Question 2
50 word explanation

Purchasing Natural Selections

For those of you looking to purchase the book, here are some links that might help ease the process:


AbeBooks
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=alan+maceachern&tn=natural+selections&x=0&y=0

Amazon Canada
http://www.amazon.ca/Natural-Selections-National-Atlantic-1935-1970/dp/0773521577/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299612465&sr=1-1

Amazon US
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=natural+selections+maceachern&x=0&y=0

Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Natural-Selections-National-Atlantic-1935-1970/dp/0773521577/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299612546&sr=8-1

Chapters
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Natural-Selections-National-Parks-Atlantic-Alan-MacEachern/9780773521575-item.html?ikwid=alan+maceachern&ikwsec=Home

This is a fairly popular environmental history book so be sure to check the library and also check your local library as well. Has anyone seen a copy of the book in Titles yet?

2TT3 Experiment-Court is in Session!

Before diving into our plethora of questions we will begin Wednesday's sessions with a different approach. For each article I want you to pretend that I am a judge on the Canadian Supreme Court. For both articles there will be two groups; prosecutors and defense attorneys.

For Loo's article, the prosecutors will each present ONE reason why development should proceed on the Peace River. The defenders will provide ONE reason each why hydroelectric development should not proceed.

After this, we will switch roles for Schaba's articles. The prosecutors for will present ONE reason each why Canada should adopt the Universal Human Rights Declarations and the defenders will provide ONE reason why not. This means you need to come up with one reason per article. You do not need to hand this in but I recommend you write it down so this process goes smoothly.

Please use information from the article's and your own personal insights to form your response. You do not necessarily have to agree with the point you are arguing as there were some controversial arguments against Canada's adoption of the UHRD. This is just meant to be a fun exercise and will give you each an opportunity to play Devil's Advocate. I imagine you will all do a better job than Keanu Reeves.

Please email me before tutorial if this information is unclear

MORNING TUTORIAL

Tina Loo Article
Prosecutors: Robert, Sarah, Marcel, Ricardo, Dylan B., Scott, John, Nathan
Defenders: Chris, Mike, Dylan H., Spencer, Stephanie, Michelle

William Schabas Article
Prosecutors: Chris, Mike, Dylan H., Spencer, Stephanie, Michelle
Defenders: Robert, Sarah, Marcel, Ricardo, Dylan B., Scott, John, Nathan

AFTERNOON TUTORIAL

Tina Loo Article
Prosecutors: Aaron, Andrew, Cara, Emily, Guilia, Juliano, Laura, Leah, Tony
Defenders: Mark N., Mark P., Ameer, Melissa, Paula, Rebecca, Samantha, Svjetlana

William Schabas Article
Prosecutors: Mark N., Mark P., Ameer, Melissa, Paula, Rebecca, Samantha, Svjetlana
Defenders:  Aaron, Andrew, Cara, Emily, Guilia, Juliano, Laura, Leah, Tony

Questions Arising from Loo and Schabas

 As usual, questions on both articles will begin with the standard's:

1. What is the theme of the article?

2. What is the author's argument?

3. How do they set out to prove their case?

4. Was their endeavour successful, why or why not?

Specific questions from Tina Loo's article may include the following:

5. What was W.A.C. Bennett's vision for BC's natural resources?

6. What is the idea of "high modernity"?

7. How did the government and industry view the people of Arrow Lakes?

8. Loo argues that "Columbia development would destroy more than a physical place" what else was at stake?

 

9. Would you consider the pictures above as natural landscapes? Can industry become an extension of nature or is it impossible to reconcile the 'middle landscape' created by the intrusion of industry? This is merely an opinion question. Think about some of the industrial landscapes that you are most familiar with. What were you perceptions of these as a child? Have they changed over time? Having spent twelve years in three northern Ontario towns (Thunder Bay, Timmins, and Sudbury) the sight of pulp and paper plants, mines, and smelters were an ingrained part of my life. However, that does not mean I have totally accepted them as 'natural'. 

Keep some of these thoughts in mind as you are reading MacEachern's, Natural Selections.

Canada and the Human Rights Question-"Not too Schabas"

1. What is this article about?

2. Why would Canada's support or opposition of Human Rights have been so important in the post-war period?

3. What evidence does Schabas use to suggest that Canada was a repressive society during and following the Second World War?

4. How did the Cold War influence or impact the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

5. Is it fair to say that Canada's Department of External Affairs lacked a "human rights culture"?

Loo and Schabas Article's

Hi all,

Here is a link to Tina Loo's and William Schabas' webpage's respectively:
http://www3.telus.net/tinaloo/Welcome.html

http://www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights/Staff/william_schabas.html

It is always a good idea to do a quick background check on the scholars we are reading. It may help you gain some insight on their perspectives and will give you an idea of some of their previous works.

Below is a link that will direct you to the Tina Loo article that we will be discussing this week.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.citizensforpublicpo

Here is the link to the William Schabas article on Human Rights:

lawjournal.mcgill.ca/documents/43.Schabas.pdf

Natural Selections

I know you all just finished your first assignment but it is already time to start looking towards the horizon for your upcoming book review of Alan MacEachern's, Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970.  For this assignment, proper citation and documentation will be imperative for a successful grade. Please adhere to the Chicago school of documentation. Below I will post examples of how you will cite MacEachern's work in your essay and in your bibliography as well. In addition, simply for readability, please use footnotes instead of endnotes. 

Footnote citation should appear exactly like this:

Alan MacEachern, Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), 15.

Bibliographic:

MacEachern, Alan. Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.

As the deadline for the assignment approaches, I will also post examples of how book reviews should be cited.

"Remembering Armageddon"

Hopefully you all were able to access the blog earlier this week and noticed that we will be discussing "Remembering Armageddon" tomorrow. We will also examine Cynthia Commachio's article as well. For both, please consider the following questions before tutorial.

1. What are the thesis arguments?
2. How do the scholars support their cases?

In regards to Vance's article, it is my hope that this article will spark interest in a general discussion about Canada's role in the Great War and what this had on the nation's collective memory. We still commemorate the sacrifices our fallen soldier's have made so we can all bring something to the table based on our own experiences growing up with Remembrance Day. I understand that some of may not have read this article because it was not required for tutorial but it is a really great piece and I hope we can discuss tomorrow. Also, for those of you that were snowed in two weeks ago, we can still potentially discuss the articles from that week tomorrow as well.

Readings this Week

As of right now we will be basing our discussion on Jonathan Vance's article, "Remembering Armageddon" and Cynthia Comacchio's article, "Dancing to Perdition: Adolescence and the Problem of Modern Leisure of Interwar Canada." For those of you that have the textbooks, please do all the appropriate readings as I still might be able to get a copy of it by Wednesday. If you do not have the textbook yet you can find the Vance article on Avenue to Learn and you can find the Comacchio article online in the Journal of Canadian Studies, Fall 1997.

Essay Time!

We have all gone through the painful experience of writer's block or many of the other essay frustrations, so don't sweat it if you are experiencing these symptoms.

Don't stay in the same position or area for too long. I find that if you get sedentary it gets harder to focus, which inevitably leads to the desire to catapult your computer out of your office window.

Grab a snack, take a walk or throw on one of your beats. I recommend going to, http://nevernothouse.com Nothing gets the blood flowing and the mind thinking like a 2 minute dance party.
 If you have any questions/concerns or would like me to read a sample, please feel free to contact me via email.

Upcoming Business

There are no tutorials this coming week as your first writing assignment is due. If you need any help or assistance please email me through my McMaster account. We will resume tutorials on February 16. You will need to do the following readings for that session:

The Peoples of Canada, Chapter Eleven, 254-286

Nation and Society, Cynthia Comacchio, “Dancing to Perdition: Adolescence and Leisure in Interwar English Canada,” 221-237.

Nation and Society, Denyse Baillargeon, “Indispensable But Not a Citizen: The Housewife in the Great Depression,” 257-271.

However, you still need to read the articles listed below for next week's lectures.

The Peoples of Canada, Chapters Nine and Ten, 206-227 and 228-253.
Nation and Society, Jonathan F. Vance, “Remembering Armageddon,” 200-215.

If you would like, we could also include these readings in our next discussion as many of you have indicated an interest in the Great War.

What's Important in Canadian History?

Here are the results from a survey that I took in my first tutorial meeting. The majority of those who undertook the survey placed paramount importance on the First and Second World War. Yet, I was happy to see that some had also attached significance to other themes such as immigration, political equality, and technology. I will use these findings when structuring tutorials, hopefully we will hit on all these major notes.

HIST-2TT3 Article