1968 in Canada: A Year and Its Legacies

by Michael K. Hawes (Editor), Andrew C. Holman (Editor), Christopher Kirkey (Editor)

Overview

The year 1968 in Canada was an extraordinary one, unlike any other in its frenetic pace of activities and their consequences for the development of a new national consciousness among Canadians.

It was a year when decisions and actions, both in Canada and outside its borders, were thick and contentious, and whose effects were momentous and far-reaching. It saw the rise of Trudeaumania and the birth of the Parti Québécois; the articulation of the new nationalism in English Canada and an alternative vision for Indigenous rights and governance; a series of public hearings in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women; the establishment of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, nation-wide Medicare and CanLit; and a striving for both a new relationship with the United States and a more independent foreign policy everywhere else. And more. Virtually no segment of Canadian life was untouched by both the turmoil and the promise of generational change.

Published in English with chapters in French.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780776636603
Publisher:	Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Series:	Mercury
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Michael K. Hawes (Editor) Michael Hawes is CEO at Fulbright Canada and professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University. He has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, Tsukuba University, IUJ, USC, and UBC.Andrew C. Holman (Editor) Andrew C. Holman is a professor of history and the director of the Canadian Studies Program at Bridgewater State Universityin Massachusetts.Christopher Kirkey (Editor) Christopher Kirkey is Director of the Center for the Study of Canada and the Institute on Quebec Studies at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh.

Read an Excerpt

“To keen observers watching global events unfold, the world seemed to be on fire, and Canada was dangerously close to the conflagration. Few were more prescient than Nanaimo’s Wilma Sharpe, who saw in January 1968 that a great test of character lay ahead. By June, the Lethbridge Herald editor worried that the massive malaise spreading around the globe would infect Canada. By December, in his Christmas message to the nation, Prime Minister Trudeau was certain that it had.”

Editorial Reviews

In Canada as in other countries, 1968 was a year like no other. Gathering excellent authors and covering key issues, this volume traces what happened in 1968 while exploring the consequences of that pivotal year. It is a must-read for those interested in the period and its lasting impact.

3 March 2021

The origins of this excellent book arose out of a cross-disciplinary colloquium held at the University of London’s Institute of the Americas in 2017, followed by a symposium hosted by the Canadian Museum of History, now co-publisher with the University of Ottawa in their successful joint ‘Mercury Series’.
Cultural change happens slowly, and typically displays an S-curve pattern from first emergence, through accelerating growth, until it reaches a tipping-point and becomes dominant. Institutional change, on the other hand, can occur very abruptly. Organisations are established or dissolved; legislation is renewed; and new persons take up public office. 1968 in Canada examines how that year’s sometimes dramatic events – especially personified in the new prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau – can best be understood, both as climacteric tipping points in larger, slower processes of cultural change, and in their wider historical and geopolitical contexts.
Several of the topics addressed deal with the impact of Trudeau. Paul Litt explores parallels in campaign style between Trudeau in Canada and Bobby Kennedy in the US, and P.E. Bryden examines Trudeau’s reorganisation of the prime minister’s office and the privy council (that is, cabinet) office. Graham Fraser shows how his determined promotion of the status of French, and the drafting of the first Official Languages Act (1969), launched a behavioural shift throughout the federal system from anglophone complacency into becoming the major force in (re)casting Canada as a bilingual state. Both Fraser, and Jocelyn Létourneau and Alexandre Tourgeon (in French), tease out the contradictions and confrontations between Trudeau’s avowed federalism and the increasing nationalism of leaders in Québec.
Jane Arscott and Michael Temelini critique two royal commissions of that era: Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and the Status of Women; Andrew Gemell exposes the failings in Trudeau’s early Indigenous policies; David Wright and Sasha Mullally inspect the challenges facing the introduction of Canada’s Medicare. Ira Wagman looks at the emergence of a more insistently Canadian profile in broadcasting, and Laura K. Davis highlights the crucial role of Jack McClelland, now in sole charge at McClelland and Stewart, in promoting a distinctive profile for Canadian authors, also exemplified in Will Smith’s reading of a short story by David Helwig. In foreign relations, Christopher Kirkey studies Trudeau’s environmental concerns about the transport of Alaskan oil, and Andrea Chandler explores Canada’s response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, while Robin S. Gendron and David Edward Tabachnick examine the federal government’s response to Québec’s participation at the Libreville Conference of francophone education ministers in Gabon.
The chapters are mostly clearly written (with some overuse of field-specific acronyms!) and the editors’ introduction is an excellently lucid exposition of the raison-d’être of this impressive and insightful collection.

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/bjcs.2022.13 - Keith Battarbee