Past Imperfect
VOLUME 5
1996
Editors: Steven Karp and Douglas Bailie
From Pariahs to Patriots: Canadian Communists and the Second World
Chris Frazer
Official anti-communist policies, adopted by the Mackenzie King government
during the Second World War, were only partially effective. These policies
were implemented by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the armed
forces high command, and included internment, banning the Communist Party
of Canada (CPC), and monitoring communists in the armed forces. These policies,
however, were thwarted by the logic of the war, as well as by opposition
from liberal public opinion and the communists themselves.
Meanings of Motherhood: Maternal Experiences and Perceptions on Low
Country South Carolina Plantations
Robynne Rogers Healey
This paper is a comparative study of the meanings of motherhood for black
and white women in the antebellum South. Even the prescriptive literature
concerning motherhood penned by women during the first half of the nineteenth
century largely ignored the health-related aspects of motherhood. Records
of the experience of white plantation mistresses and female plantation
slaves in antebellum, low country South Carolina, however, reveal that
concerns with health, both mortality and morbidity, dominated the maternal
experience of these women. Furthermore, in this particular geographic location,
motherhood itself was centred more in the extended family than in the nuclear
family.
Context and Content: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and George Grant
and the Role of Technology in Modern Society
Philip Massolin
Social science and science grew significantly in Canadian universities
during and after World War II. This growth, along with a growth in consumerism
and mass culture, signalled the decline of the centrality of the humanities
in the curricula of Canadian universities and the rise of the technological
society. Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and George Grant were leading
critics of this trend. Their criticism was shaped by the home front experience
of Canada during World War II and the economic boom which followed the
war. Although not linked through friendships, professional collaboration,
or common academic disciplines, their thoughts and criticisms of technology
and mass culture were shaped in a context which they shared.
The Union of Saskatchewan Indians: An Organization of Indian People
for Indian People
Rauncie Murdoch-Kinnaird
The Union of Saskatchewan Indians (USI) had been described as a political
tool of the Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The USI, however, was
established and operated independently of the CCF government. Factors which
influenced the establishment of the USI included: veterans' involvement,
social issues which bonded Indian people together, the education of Indian
people, and the support of the Saskatchewan CCF government. Further, the
USI operated independently of the CCF government. Its constitution, funding,
members, and policies were separate although influenced by the CCF government.
Nevertheless, the USI cannot accurately be described as an instrument of
the CCF. It was an independent and Indian organization.
"Sisters in Arms": Slave Women's Resistance to Slavery in the United
States
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers
This paper examines the gendered nature of slave resistance in the nineteenth-century
United States and illustrates the ways in which both gender and race shaped
the institution of slavery . This examination is based on a collection
of ex-slave oral interviews which were gathered in the 1930s in the Slave
Narrative Collection of the Federal Writer's Project of the Works Progress
Administration. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data reveal
that slave women defended their own needs as slaves and challenged the
system itself. The analysis broadens the traditional definition of "resistance,"
and illustrates the ways in which slave women carried out their day-to-day
resistance to an oppressive system of servitude. Without women, slave resistance
could not have been so thoroughly entwined into the fabric of everyday
life as under slavery.
