After Emancipation: Thomas Fowell Buxton and Evangelical Politics in the 1830s

After the Emancipation Act of 1833 officially abolished slavery in the British empire, it became clear that the anti‐slavery coalition was even more tenuous than many had believed. The expectations created by reform, and by the previous measures removing disabilities on dissenters and catholics, sent the various elements within the anti‐slavery camp in different directions. This splintering of efforts was especially true of evangelicals in parliament. During the next four years, the anti‐slavery leader, Thomas Fowell Buxton, went through a reorientation as he worked to make sense of his priorities under new political conditions. Although involved with many issues of the day, Buxton came to focus on the plight of aboriginal peoples in the British empire and then formulated his proposals to end African slavery. Buxton's shift represents a larger one for evangelicals in England. While they could not all agree on the benefits or morality of poor law reform or the appropriate way to handle the Irish Church question, most could agree that the peoples coming under British rule should have their rights protected, especially if it opened a way for further missionary activity. By 1840, Buxton's efforts provided a set of concepts and an agenda for many people of otherwise diverse political bent. Domestically, the evangelical communities in Britain might disagree on what policy and programmes served their civilisation best; but they all agreed that Britain's growing empire needed to be directed in a way that promoted christianity and commerce, and hence the spread of ‘civilisation’.     

Education and Empowerment: Lessons and History of the Christian Education Network in Israel and Palestine

Beginning in the 1850s, Christian missionary organizations established schools in Ottoman Palestine. A variety of networks developed over the years, principally those of the Anglicans and Catholics. Initially, these schools provided an education emphasizing European Christian values and subjects. Over time, however, a slow process of indigenization occurred. The first fruits of this process are illustrated by young leaders like Emil Tume and Tewfik Tubi who were prominent in the political opposition in Israel's first years of statehood. Another generation produced such notables as author Raja Shehadeh and Hanan Ashwari. In today's Israel and the Palestinian territories, the best schools, from a standpoint of matriculation, are Christian private schools that are open to all communities. Through this history, the article examines the development of a Christian school network and the political activism, involvement, and empowerment they engendered. It also provides a case study of the Rosary Sisters' school system.     

“THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MARITIMES”: A REAPPRAISAL

Will the post-9/11 environment revive Canada–US intelligence cooperation and catalyze a security community? A comparative study based on intelligence principles, ideas, norms, orientations, and institutions drawn from the literature predicts cooperation but not necessarily a security community, owing to different (a) histories, (b) security interpretations/agenda placements, (c) political and legislative cultures, (d) degrees of public acceptance, and (e) domestic–international inclinations. Waning British influences, evaporating Anglo-Saxon identities, and changing strategic interests compel Canada to play Thomas Hughes's butcher role, and the US the more encompassing intelligence-policy maker role.     

Cultivating ignorance of Aboriginal realities

The principal problem in Aboriginal education in Canada is the education of Canadians. This article exposes Canada's long history of ignorance of Aboriginal Peoples and suggests that while education may not be the source of ignorance, it is now perpetuating it. Using the Ontario secondary school curriculum as an example, this article looks at mainstream Canadian and World Studies, of which geography is an integral part, and Native Studies courses, offered in Ontario since 1999, but available for study to few young Ontarians. Curricular reforms during recent decades have removed the worst expressions of racism, but have not addressed fundamental colonial attitudes in the mainstream curriculum. As a citizenry we are complacent about a deep‐seated ignorance of the country's past and present, affecting both Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal Canadians. Lack of interest in traditional and modern Aboriginal cultures doom immigrants and established settlers to a dysfunctional relationship with the growing and increasingly internationally recognized indigenous population. As university educators and teachers of teachers, geographers must assume responsibility for promoting truthful and inclusive perceptions of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and, in recognizing the subtle strategies of cultivating ignorance, examine how geography as it is currently taught in schools might exclude Aboriginal People and understanding.     

Canada's history wars: indigenous genocide and public memory in the United States,Australia and Canada

In this article, I explore the slow development of a national debate in Canada about genocide in the Indian residential schools, which I compare to earlier ‘history wars’ in Australia and the United States. In the first section I begin with a brief introduction to the history of the IRS system and some of its legacies, as well as attempts at redress. These include financial compensation through the 2006 IRS Settlement Agreement, an official apology and the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which has been a nodal point for articulating claims of genocide. I follow this in the second section with an analysis of the history wars in the United States and Australia over indigenous genocide, before engaging in the third section with debates about genocide in Canada. Overt debates about genocide have been relatively slow in developing, in part because of the creation of a TRC, mandated with collecting the ‘truth’ about the IRS system while similarly engaging in ‘reconciliation’ (a contested term) with settler Canadians. While Canada's history wars may seem slow in getting off the ground, the TRC's more ‘balanced’ approach and wide-ranging engagement with non-Aboriginal societal actors may have a greater effect in stimulating national awareness than in the United States and Australia.     

Acts of severity: colonial settler massacre of amaXhosa and abaThembu on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony,c.1826–47

Colonial massacre of the amaXhosa and abaThembu on the Cape Colony's eastern frontier between the 1820s and 1840s appears to be neglected compared to the extermination of the Khoisan. Whereas revisionist histories—most of which use an indigenous-resistance framework—have concentrated on Xhosa resistance to settler expansion, little attention has been paid to settler massacre. This article examines selected massacres between 1826 and 1847, considers their etiology, situates them within current debates on colonial settler genocide, and questions the success of Buxton's Select Committee on Aborigines in ending them.     

“Participation”, White Privilege and Environmental Justice: Understanding Environmentalism Among Hispanics in Toronto

Abstract: The environmental justice movement has highlighted not only the unequal distribution of environmental hazards across lines of race and class, but also the white, middle‐class nature of some environmentalisms, and broader patterns of marginalization underlying people's opportunities to participate or not. There is a significant body of work discussing Hispanic environmental justice activism in the US, but not in Canada. This paper draws on interviews with representatives of organizations working on environmental initiatives within the Hispanic population of Toronto, Canada to explore definitions of and approaches to environmentalism(s) and community engagement. Four interrelated “mechanisms of exclusion” are identified in this case study—economic marginalization; (in)accessibility of typical avenues of participation; narrow definitions of “environmentalism” among environmental organizations; and the perceived whiteness of the environmental movement. Taken together, these mechanisms were perceived as limiting factors to environmental activism in Toronto's Hispanic population. We conclude that the unique context of Toronto's Hispanic community, including contested definitions of “community” itself, presents both challenges and opportunities for a more inclusive environmentalism, and argue for the value of “recognition” and “environmental racialization” frameworks in understanding environmental injustice in Canada.     

The relationship between school ground design and intensity of physical activity

In this study, we investigated the relationship between school ground design and children's physical activity levels. In particular, we were interested in understanding the contribution of ‘green’ school ground design to physical activity levels. Data for this study were collected at an elementary school in Australia and in Canada. At each school, scans of Target Areas were completed to record the students' location and intensity of physical activity, based on the System for Observing Play and Leisure Activity in Youth (SOPLAY) (Australia: 23 scans, 6 Target Areas; Canada: 18 scans, 7 Target Areas). At both schools, the highest percentage of children present was engaged in vigorous physical activity on the manufactured equipment (42% of children/scan). Similarly, at both schools, the green area encouraged the highest percentage of children present to be engaged in moderate physical activity (47% of Australian children/scan, 51% of Canadian children/scan). The patterns of sedentary behavior differed slightly between countries. At the Australian school, the paved sporting courts (57%) and the paved canteen courtyard (50.5%) promoted the highest degree of sedentary play. At the Canadian school, the treed grassy berm (42%) and the treed concrete steps (43%) encouraged the highest percentage of sedentary behavior, followed by the open asphalt (34%). These results are also discussed in light of gender distribution. We conclude with a discussion of the design and cultural factors that influence children's physical activity on school grounds. We argue that if school grounds are to realize their potential to promote physical activity, they should include a greater diversity of design features and ‘green’ elements that engage children of varying interests and abilities in active play.     

Assembling Sovereignty: Canadian Claims to the Athabasca District Prior to Treaty No. 8

ABSTRACT

Recent Canadian legal scholarship has emphasised the centrality of treaties between the colonial state and First Nations in the assertion of Canadian sovereignty over Indigenous lands. Historical interpretations, meanwhile, would suggest that sovereignty, rather than asserted, is assembled over time. Historically, sovereignty is understood to be contingent and layered; it is assembled through a series of ‘detours, improvisations and tinkering.’ This paper looks at the historical circumstances of Canadian sovereignty in the Athabasca district prior to the making of Treaty No. 8 with the First Nations. British sovereignty claims to Rupert's Land and the Northwestern Territories (including the area that came to be known as the Athabasca district), were assembled through the practices and activities of the Hudson's Bay Company. These claims were transferred to Canada in 1869 and Canada hesitantly and quietly took measures to further assemble and express its sovereignty in these lands. Canada surveyed and inventoried the Athabasca district's resources, commenced exploratory work on petroleum resources, provided relief from famine, financially supported schools for Indigenous children, and established and enforced a system of law. By the time Treaty No. 8 was negotiated in 1899, Canada had thus taken a series of steps to assemble and express its sovereignty in the district. Rather than establishing, asserting or legitimating Canadian sovereignty, Treaty No. 8 may be better understood as another measure in the process of assembling it.     

Promoting the Advancement of Women: Baha'i Schools for Girls in Iran, 1909–35

In the early twentieth century, Iranian Baha'is were at the forefront of efforts to promote modern schooling for girls in Iran. Using previously untapped published primary sources and archival records, this article examines the history of the Baha'i schools for girls in the context of modern schooling of Iranian girls and assesses their contribution to female education in Iran. This contribution was significant and all the more remarkable considering the Iranian Baha'is’ numbers and resources and the restrictions under which they operated. Most notably, in the spring of 1933, less than two years before the forced closure of Baha'i schools by the Pahlavi state, 4 percent of all females in Iran's accredited schools were enrolled in Baha'i schools. The Baha'i community's most prestigious school, Tarbīyat-i banāt in Tehran, was by this time Iran's largest girls’ school. Outside Tehran, in some localities, the only girls’ schools were run by Baha'is, and in others a significant portion of all female pupils were enrolled in Baha'i schools.     

Electoral redistricting and minority political representation in Canada and the United States

This article compares the political representation of visible minorities in Canada and the United States, focusing on differences in federal redistribution (redistricting) practices and constituency composition. Although the two countries both use territorially‐based electoral systems, they operate under different legal standards and institutional environments for the creation of ridings (districts). In the US, redistricting is a highly political process, yet must respect strict population equality standards. Litigation over redistricting is common, and courts adjudicate voting and representation under a constitutional system enforcing strong individual rights. In contrast, Canada's redistribution process is relatively nonpartisan, permits large population variances among ridings, places more emphasis on community rights, and is seldom subject to extensive court challenges. Despite these differences, the two countries exhibit striking similarities in the overall level of visible minority representation relative to population share. Conversely, Canada's population inequalities among ridings create a systematic disadvantage for visible minorities. Political attention to visible minority representation is stronger in the US, but the means to achieve it are constrained both by the judicial limits on group representation and the constitutional limits on the use of racial identity. Canada has a framework for political representation that could easily accommodate significant visible minority representation but lacks the political imperative to use it, in part because doing so would run counter to Canada's multicultural image of these groups as immigrants rather than as non‐white minorities.     

From Evangelizing to Modernizing Iranians: The American Presbyterian Mission and its Iranian Students1

This article examines the American Presbyterian education project in Iran from the early nineteenth century to 1940. While most literature on the subject concerns Iranian state-missionary relations and Presbyterian boys' schools in Iran, this article seeks to address the interactions between American Presbyterians, the Iranian state, and students and families of Iranian girls' schools. A study of the Presbyterians' flagship girls' school in Iran Bethel/Nurbakhsh and its sixty-six-year history reveals missionary intentions, tactics, and accomplishments, as well as the adaptations and accommodations pressed upon them by the Iranians they served. Despite the school's promotion of modern American norms and Christian teachings, the young graduates of Iran Bethel/Nurbakhsh developed a strong sense of loyalty to both Iran and Islam, thus turning an evangelist mission into an important feature of the construction of Iranian nationalism and modernity.     

Political Learning During Reformasi

This paper is a case study examination of the orientation of adolescents in West Sumatra towards the New Order Pancasila, Indonesia's state ideology, before and during the transition from the New Order regime. Pancasila in the New Order affirmed an integralist identity of interest between the state and the citizen, and between citizens at all levels of society. Integralism runs counter to the differentiated interests, institutions and identities of political community in liberalism. The concern of the paper is what effect a schooling in integralism had on students' receptivity to the prospect of an alternative, liberal model of politics; and whether that receptivity could be ascribed to political learning from the transition. The study found that students at elite schools shifted away from Pancasila and integralism in the year of Suharto's fall, while those at poorer schools did not; and that high levels of expressed support for Pancasila were good predictors of integralistic views on a series of attitudinal variables.     

Theorising the anti-nation: George Woodcock,anarchism, and Canadian nationalism

George Woodcock was anarchism's most influential historian and an important public intellectual in Canada. This article focuses on his engagement with Canadian nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that a ‘philosophical anarchism’ was at the heart of his intellectual project, and this informed his reading of Canadian cultural development and subsequent political challenge to Pierre Elliott Trudeau's civic nationalism. Woodcock decoupled the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ in order to develop a radically different model for Canada—the ‘anti-nation’—defined by regionalism, federalism and direct democracy. His reading of Canada's cultural history supporting this position was therefore part of a strategy to repurpose nationalist rhetoric towards anti-state ends.     

Syrian refugee resettlement and the role of local immigration partnerships in Ontario,Canada

We examine Canada's recent Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative (SRRI) paying close attention to the resettlement role played by mid‐sized urban communities. We elaborate on a key policy dimension at work at this scale of action: local immigration partnerships (LIPs). We start with a very brief review of Canada's history of mass refugee resettlement. Second, we assess the policy of LIPs, particularly how they have been presented as a form of “place‐based policy,” and third, we offer an overview of the role the LIPs played in three case study communities (Hamilton, Ottawa, and Waterloo) during the SRRI. Finally, we present three overarching themes that emerged from our research in each of these communities: the importance of each community's history of immigration and refugee resettlement; the embeddedness of the LIP and its leadership in the local community; and how the positioning of each LIP relative to the three levels of government and its official Resettlement Assistance Program agreement holders impacted its ability to act. The history, location, and place characteristics of each community influenced the nature of intersectoral and intergovernmental relations in distinctive ways, and differentially shaped the effectiveness of each LIP's ability to contribute to the SRRI.     

Excessive rightsizing? The interdependence of public school closures and population shrinkage

Shrinking cities have, by definition, lost population. Rightsizing is a strategic planning approach to mitigate the challenges of population loss by adjusting a municipality's services, amenities, or even footprint to fit a new demographic reality. While studies have documented the unacceptability and ineptitude of municipality-driven rightsizing, public school closures have proliferated and quietly become a noteworthy material manifestation of population change. However, as public schools are widely considered to be a foundational component of community cohesion, identity, and prosperity, it begs the question of whether their closure may accelerate the decline feedback mechanisms already present in many shrinking cities. Our study examines public school closures in Ontario, Canada, from 2011 to 2016 to determine the relationship between municipal population trajectories and size and public school closures, and to explore the prevalence of school closures and the community context in shrinking Ontario municipalities. We find that public school closures occurred disproportionately in shrinking and smaller municipalities. Furthermore, public school closure prevalence is associated with low income, low ethnoracial diversity, and low educational attainment.     

Marring the Memory: The 1967 Vimy Ridge Commemorations and Canada-France Relations

Commemorating Canada's legendary April 1917 battle of Vimy Ridge has normally proven an emotive event of national importance, symbolic of shared Canadian and French wartime trials and given mostly to remembrance of Canada's war dead. Since 1936, the ridge has been graced by the massive Canadian National Vimy Memorial, for decades the site of impressive and solemn annual ceremonies. But Canada's 1967 50th anniversary celebrations of the battle – a showpiece of the national centenary celebrations – became mired in controversy. French President General Charles de Gaulle was deeply offended that Canada had invited Prince Philip to the event without consulting Paris. It was a stunning diplomatic blunder, especially since Canada's relations with France already were tense as a result of de Gaulle's tacit support for the cause of Quebec independence. Consequently, an opportunity to commemorate a signal event in Canadian history devolved into a fractious bilateral debate and led to a shocking and much-deplored French boycott of the ceremonies. This article adds to the history of commemoration as foreign policy and argues that the Vimy incident had major consequences on France–Canada relations and played a role in France's growing encouragement of Quebec separatists.     

Building a GIScience Community in Cyberspace: reflections on GIScOnline

In this paper, distance learning is defined not as the physical separation of students from a tutor but by the need to facilitate group learning, interaction and a sense of community amongst course participants. A critical review of an established distance-learning course is made reflecting on the team's experiences of building a learning community in cyberspace. The successes and failures are recorded, as are the barriers to engendering a sense of kinship on the course. A survey of students' own experiences with and feeling towards various communication technologies is also presented.     

Absolute age and tooth eruption and wear sequences in sheep and goat: determining age-at-death in zooarchaeology using a modern control sample

This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the relationship between mandibular tooth eruption and wear sequences and absolute age in modern sheep and goat. While the relationship between tooth eruption and wear and absolute age has been investigated for primitive breeds in parts of the Old World, our pilot study extends the applicability of this research to modern breeds and to another geographic region (North America). A modern control sample of two species of domestic caprines – Ovis aries (sheep) and Capra hircus (goats) from Manitoba, Canada – are used to evaluate the two major systems for analyzing mandibular tooth wear and eruption (Payne and Grant) and for assigning an absolute age-at-death. In order to compare the two systems, an absolute age for Grant's Mandibular Wear Stages was established for the first time, previously demonstrated only for Payne's system. The analysis confirmed that there is a very high correlation between the known age and estimated age based on tooth eruption and wear. However, Payne's system generated far coarser age-at-death profiles, which lowers its utility in constructing harvest profiles. Grant's system is recommended for ageing be utilized since it can yield more sensitive age estimations. In conclusion, it is possible to utilize the modern caprine breeds to establish the relationship between tooth eruption and wear and absolute age to reconstruct age and season of death of archaeological samples.