The Infinite Bonds of Family


Book Description

With this book, Cynthia Comacchio presents the first historical overview of domestic life in Canada, showing how families have both changed and remained the same, through transitions brought about by urbanization, industrialization, and war.







The Making of the Mosaic


Book Description

Immigration policy is a subject of intense political and public debate. In this second edition of the widely recognized and authoritative work The Making of the Mosaic, Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock have thoroughly revised and updated their examination of the ideas, interests, institutions, and rhetoric that have shaped Canada's immigration history. Beginning their study in the pre-Confederation period, the authors interpret major episodes in the evolution of Canadian immigration policy, including the massive deportations of the First World War and Depression eras as well as the Japanese-Canadian internment camps during World War Two. New chapters provide perspective on immigration in a post-9/11 world, where security concerns and a demand for temporary foreign workers play a defining role in immigration policy reform. A comprehensive and important work, The Making of the Mosaic clarifies the attitudes underlying each phase and juncture of immigration history, providing vital perspective on the central issues of immigration policy that continue to confront us today.




One Hundred Years of Social Work


Book Description

One Hundred Years of Social Work is the first comprehensive history of social work as a profession in English Canada. Organized chronologically, it provides a critical and compelling look at the internal struggles and debates in the social work profession over the course of a century and investigates the responses of social workers to several important events. A central theme in the book is the long-standing struggle of the professional association (the Canadian Association of Social Workers) and individual social workers to reconcile advancement of professional status with the promotion social action. The book chronicles the early history of the secularization and professionalization of social work and examines social workers roles during both world wars, the Depression, and in the era of postwar reconstruction. It includes sections on civil defence, the Cold War, unionization, social work education, regulation of the profession, and other key developments up to the end of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as personal interviews and secondary literature, the authors provide strong academic evidence of a profession that has endured many important changes and continues to advocate for a just society and a responsive social welfare state. One Hundred Years of Social Work will be of interest to social workers, social work students and educators, social historians, professional associations and anyone interested in understanding the complex nature of people and institutions.




Handbook of World Families


Book Description

The Handbook of World Families clarifies and promotes a cross-cultural perspective on the family by an examination of 25 countries worldwide, with the same topics covered in parallel fashion for each. These topics include a brief demographic and historic description of the country, mate selection, child rearing practices, gender roles, family stresses and violence, divorce and remarriage, kinship, aging and death, and the family within the broader societal institutions including politics, economics, and religion.




Colour-Coded


Book Description

Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice. Although this conception has been challenged in recent years, it has not been completely dispelled. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, and underscores the damaging legacy of inequality that continues today. Backhouse presents detailed narratives of six court cases, each giving evidence of blatant racism created and enforced through law. The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian, and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the 'Ku Klux Klan of Kanada.' From thousands of possibilities, Backhouse has selected studies that constitute central moments in the legal history of race in Canada. Her selection also considers a wide range of legal forums, including administrative rulings by municipal councils, criminal trials before police magistrates, and criminal and civil cases heard by the highest courts in the provinces and by the Supreme Court of Canada. The extensive and detailed documentation presented here leaves no doubt that the Canadian legal system played a dominant role in creating and preserving racial discrimination. A central message of this book is that racism is deeply embedded in Canadian history despite Canada's reputation as a raceless society. Winner of the Joseph Brant Award, presented by the Ontario Historical Society




A Nation of Immigrants


Book Description

This collection of essays examines immigrants and racial-ethnic relations in Canada from the mid-nineteenth century to the post-1945 era.







Picturing the Family


Book Description

Whether pasted into an album, framed or shared on social media, the family photograph simultaneously offers a private and public insight into the identity and past of its subject. Long considered a model for understanding individual identity, the idea of the family has increasingly formed the basis for exploring collective pasts and cultural memory. Picturing the Family investigates how visual representations of the family reveal both personal and shared histories, evaluating the testimonial and social value of photography and film.Combining academic and creative, practice-based approaches, this collection of essays introduces a dialogue between scholars and artists working at the intersection between family, memory and visual media. Many of the authors are both researchers and practitioners, whose chapters engage with their own work and that of others, informed by critical frameworks. From the act of revisiting old, personal photographs to the sale of family albums through internet auction, the twelve chapters each present a different collection of photographs or artwork as case studies for understanding how these visual representations of the family perform memory and identity. Building on extensive research into family photographs and memory, the book considers the implications of new cultural forms for how the family is perceived and how we relate to the past. While focusing on the forms of visual representation, above all photographs, the authors also reflect on the contextualization and ‘remediation’ of photography in albums, films, museums and online.




Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870


Book Description

Drawing on diaries and letters exchanged between family members Françoise Noël considers the nature of family, the couple during courtship and after marriage, parents and children in childhood and after the children leave home, and the social life of the family in terms of both leisure time and entertainment and the mutual assistance provided by social networks of kin, neighbours, and friends. She notes that courtship usually took place within the social network of interactions with kin and neighbours and shows that family life was located in a broad social space that included people of various ages. By examining the correspondence and diaries of francophone and anglophone middle-class families of various faiths, Noël presents touching stories of family life in the Canadas in the early nineteenth century.