{"id":1104,"date":"2017-08-18T16:45:48","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T16:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2025-02-24T17:39:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T22:39:59","slug":"struggle-and-story-canada-in-print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2017\/08\/18\/struggle-and-story-canada-in-print\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggle and Story: Canada in Print"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Struggle and Story: Canada in Print<\/h1>\n\n
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Joshua McEvilla<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Exhibition review<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Cover<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Struggle and Story: Canada in Print
<\/strong>The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
20 March\u20139 September 2017<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Retired Director of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Anne Dondertman, is quite right in her Foreword to the exhibition catalogue of Struggle and Story: Canada in Print<\/em> that the \u201cFisher exhibition will no doubt be one of dozens if not hundreds of exhibitions celebrating our nation held throughout the country during 2017 [ie., Canada\u2019s sesquicentennial of Confederation, the uniting of the provinces into a country]\u201d (5). I agree \u2013 and I think Library patrons will also \u2013 with the two reasons that she gives in setting this exhibition apart from any other: first, she notes \u201cthe deep knowledge of the curator,\u201d Pearce Carefoote, who \u201centhusiastically embraced this challenge almost from the time he first joined the staff in 2002\u201d (5); second, she writes of the extraordinary repository of unique and Rare documents of Canadiana preserved at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library through traditions \u201ceven predating the establishment of special collections [of the University of Toronto] as a separate department in 1950\u201d (5). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see on display in this exhibition the richest of literary and historical gems of our often-undervalued or culturally hyphenated \u2018Canadian\u2019 past, many items talked of in Canadian schools or displayed virtually via television documentaries, but seldom experienced in the physical, material sense, indeed objects rarely \u2013 if ever \u2013 subjected to the penetrating critical acumen of a mind like Carefoote\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us begin with some of the items that many Canadians may recognize from recent media exposure but which few would be able to experience in person without this exhibition. In 2013, through the courageous generosity of Helmhorst Investments Limited and the Department of Canadian Heritage Movable Cultural Property Program, the Thomas Fisher Library was able to acquire, at a cost in the millions of dollars, \u201c[s]ome 229 of [British General James] Wolfe\u2019s autographed letters [that] remained in private hands from the death of Wolfe\u2019s mother in 1764 until they were purchased for the Fisher Library\u201d (49\u201350). The purchase of these letters<\/a>, covered on national news<\/a>, returned to Canada a record of the intimate thoughts and meditations of a celebrated patriot and soldier. Wolfe witnessed first-hand a wide range of military campaigns and skirmishes before his untimely death leading the British forces to a victory over the French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon, Marquis de Saint-Veran, at the Plains of Abraham, during the Battle of Qu\u00e9bec, a decisive victory in the Seven Years\u2019 War. To accompany a selection of the more evocative and eloquent letters of this military \u2018Renaissance\u2019 man, the first written by Wolfe when he was just 13 years old, the last written only two weeks before his death at age 32, Carefoote includes a volume that few would know was even in the University\u2019s collection. Famously on the eve of his glorious conquest, Wolfe is said to have declared to his lieutenants of Thomas Gray\u2019s An Elegy written in a Country Church Yard <\/em>(1751), \u201cGentlemen, I would rather have written that piece than take Qu\u00e9bec tomorrow\u201d (51). This exhibition has on display Wolfe\u2019s \u201cotherwise unremarkable\u201d ninth edition of Gray\u2019s famous poem, which was celebrated \u201cas the University of Toronto\u2019s seventh million volume in 1988\u201d (50\u201351).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the other items on display, another also stands out for its media currency \u2013 in this second instance an item exemplifying the drive to explore the distant reaches of the Earth in \u2018the age of exploration.\u2019 In September 2014, the wreck of the H.M.S. Erebus was discovered in an underwater diving expedition at the bottom of the eastern portion of Queen Maud Gulf, with the discovery of its sister ship, the H.M.S. Terror, following close on, in Nunavut Bay in September 2016. These two ships have become iconic in the story of man\u2019s struggle to overcome the perils of the natural world as both were commanded by the daring John Franklin (1786\u20131847) and lost in his Arctic expedition to discover \u2018The Northwest Passage\u2019 of 1845\u20131848. Carefoote draws attention to this story of fearless determination in the face of Mother Nature\u2019s obstacles, as he did some years ago in a special interview for CTV News<\/a>, by showing and describing a holograph journal of Owen Stanley<\/a> (1811\u20131850), the Terror\u2019s previous commander. The diary speaks in minute detail of daily life in Canada\u2019s furthest reaches during the \u2018age of exploration\u2019 \u2013 with \u201creports of polar bear encounters,\u201d the \u201chazards of anchoring one\u2019s ship to rolling icebergs,\u201d and of methods to combat boredom should your ship be \u201cfrozen in sea ice\u201d (during Stanley\u2019s stint as Captain he \u201chosted a masquerade party on board\u201d and \u201ccreated an observatory for himself on the ice with a revolving roof made of blanket\u201d [18]). Although the names H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror have become part of a national lexicon, the personal histories of Stanley\u2019s crew show a humorous, less tragic side of the struggle against \u2018death by landscape.\u2019[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting aside these two major highlights of the exhibition, I feel that the exhibition, which is organized into eight \u2018parts\u2019 or \u2018cases\u2019 exhibiting themes of \u2018struggle,\u2019 excels against other exhibits of the like on two counts, mainly the pervasiveness of the thesis uniting the objects selected (the idea of Canada\u2019s \u2018story\u2019 as a \u2018struggle\u2019) and the quirkiness of many of the curatorial and authorial decisions, which render a number of conceivably very dull topics unexpectedly exciting. The structure consists of eight \u2018parts\u2019 ie., \u201cThe Struggle to Understand,\u201d 9\u201324; \u201cThe Struggle to Engage,\u201d 25\u201340; \u201cThe Struggle for the Continent,\u201d 41\u201360; \u201cThe Struggle for Survival: The War of 1812,\u201d 61\u201370; \u201cThe Struggle for Responsible Government,\u201d 71\u201382; \u201cThe Struggle for a Nation,\u201d 83\u2013104; \u201cThe Struggle to Belong,\u201d 105\u2013120; and \u201cThe Struggle for Identity,\u201d 121\u2013130.[2]<\/a> Carefoote successfully achieves a logical through-line (or the \u201cred thread of information\u201d to locate the discussion in the Library and Information Science arena[3]<\/a>) by connecting the ostensibly random to eight national concepts: 1.) The Literature of the Age of Exploration; 2.) European Perspectives on First Nations Peoples; 3.) The Fight for Qu\u00e9bec; 4.) The War of 1812; 5.) The Rebellions against the Family Compact and Ch\u00e2teau Clique; 6.) The circumstances enabling the creation of the British North American Act (Confederation of Ontario [Upper Canada], Qu\u00e9bec [Lower Canada], Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick); 7. Refugeeism and the justification of a Social Welfare state; and 8.) Canada\u2019s participation in the \u2018Great War\u2019 as a cause of national unity and pride. Within this story arc, a few rather notable features stand out as the marks of an experienced and wise curator: in \u201cThe Struggle to Engage,\u201d Carefoote explores in both macrocosm and microcosm early attempts to understand the \u2018New World,\u2019 permitting him to exhibit Agnes Chamberlin\u2019s striking \u201cOriginal Watercolour Paintings of Canadian Wild Flowers<\/a>\u201d (19; 19\u201320); in the exhibition catalogue, each \u2018part\u2019 is accompanied by a fold-out map, suggesting the significance of vast wilderness in Canada\u2019s struggle; and, this exhibition, mounted in celebration of 150 years of Confederation in Canada, stops before covering literary materials created after Canada\u2019s centenary year (1967), thus playing to the strengths of past librarians\u2019 collecting (8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In regard to the quirkiness of many of the selections and historical accounts, on the other hand, one needn\u2019t look or read far to detect signs of Carefoote\u2019s eye for the unusual and interesting. In addition to both the land-centered (10\u201311) and peoples-centered (27\u201329) volumes by Samuel de Champlain (1567\u20131635), which one would expect to find in such an exhibit, the exhibition offers displays of lesser-known works by Louis Hennepin (1626\u2013ca. 1705), \u201camong the earliest Europeans to witness the might and majesty of Niagara Falls\u201d (11), and Louis Armand de Lom d\u2019Arce, baron de Lahontan (1666\u20131715?), whose image of a beaver in New Voyages to North-America<\/em> (1703) captures the essence of why some of his travel narratives are felt to have \u201cthe veracity of \u2018the legends of the sea serpent\u2019\u201d (13). Carefoote\u2019s choice of St. Marie de l\u2019Incarnation\u2019s La vie de la venerable M\u00e8re Marie de l\u2019Incarnation, premi\u00e8re sup\u00e9rieure des Ursulines de la Nouvelle France<\/em> (Paris, 1677) allows him to demonstrate how certain voices are louder than others in the taught histories of this country\u2014not all Church pioneers subscribed to the doctrine that the conversion of native peoples to the teachings of Christ demanded that they sacrifice their culture and traditions to European ideals. (The narrative of her body\u2019s exhumation for her book\u2019s frontispiece<\/a> serves to crystalize in my memory the name of this lesser-known saint [32]). Carefoote\u2019s favourite item of the display, so he says on the audio tour<\/a> accompanying the catalogue and display cases, is William Lyon Mackenzie\u2019s self-printed broadside \u201cProclamation\u201d (Buffalo?, 1837), in which the brazen Mackenzie declares himself \u201cChairman pro. tem. of the Provincial Government of the State of Upper Canada<\/em>\u201d (ie., Canada\u2019s first Prime Minister) (77). There is the so-called \u201cbeaver map\u201d (discussion, 44; illustration, 45); we have the story of Sir John A. Macdonald\u2019s \u201cnew fur coat\u201d in the celebrated William Topley portrait (Ottawa, 1883), donated by G. R. Renfrew & Co., the \u201cantecedent to Holt-Renfrew\u201d (101); there is the World War I notebook<\/a> that stopped a bullet to save the life of the influential economic theorist Harold Innis (1894\u20131952) (123); and, to demonstrate changes in the design and features of the Canadian passport, there are early passport documents previously owned by the co-discoverer of insulin, Dr. Frederick Banting (1891\u20131941), and the distinguished journalist, whose collection of Cultural Revolution posters was recently on display at the Fisher, Mark Gayn (1902\u20131981) (132). In putting together the exhibition, Carefoote discovered spies\u2019 notes pertaining to espionage on both sides of the 1837 Rebellion (78).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is also a significant moralistic dimension to the exhibit, which Carefoote\u2019s efforts to focus the events of Canada\u2019s history into a narrative trajectory, and to make the mundane entertaining, do not undercut. One sad state of affairs unearthed in the curation of this exhibit is the story of Nelson Hackett, a black slave who claimed sanctuary in what was Upper Canada. The exhibition includes a petition of \u201cthe Colored [sic<\/em>] People of Hamilton to Sir Allan Napier MacNab\u201d (Canada West, 1842) with autographs or marks of 178 of their number, requesting MacNab\u2019s intervention to protect Hackett from kidnap and re-enslavement by masters who planned to take him, by force, to the United States (110\u201311). Despite laws protecting Hackett at the time, as Carefoote notes, \u201cthe newly arrived Governor General of Canada, Sir Charles Bagot (1781\u20131843)[,] quietly approved the extradition,\u201d and the last we hear of Hackett he is receiving a tortuous whipping for defiance and re-sold to a Texas owner (112). Carefoote rightly notes that when thinking about these aspects of our history one cannot help but feel \u201ca sense of shame\u201d (audio guide<\/a>). A more uplifting story, however, is that of the early Irish settlers. Although there is in the exhibit a letter bearing the pitiful account of Mary Colon, whose husband died of drowning on the voyage from Ireland to Canada, leaving her with five orphan children (112\u201314), one can take solace in the statistics of integration and concession that Carefoote quotes: \u201cBetween May and October of 1847 more than thirty-thousand famine refugees, evicted from their Irish farms, disembarked at Toronto, whose population at the time was only twenty thousand people\u201d (113). The peoples of Toronto struggled, and endured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Struggle and Story: Canada in Print<\/em> is a visually striking exhibition, and the catalogue is well-crafted. In addition to all the above, the exhibition boasts \u201cthe third recorded document printed in Canada and the oldest still to be found within the country,\u201d a Halifax Price Current<\/em> (1752) printed for Nathan Nathans (d. 1778) and Naphtali Hart, Jewish immigrants who migrated to Canada from the American colonies in 1750 (106); a copy of \u201cAn Act for the Union of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick\u201d [the British North America Act, which declares Canada a country] (97); and an album of early photographs by William Notman (1845\u20131930) \u2013 \u201cPhotographer to the Queen [i.e., Queen Victoria I]\u201d (89) \u2013 recording views of the pristine wilderness surrounding the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carefoote is one of Canada\u2019s most celebrated and influential Rare Book Librarians, and his genius merits close perusal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joshua McEvilla
University of Toronto<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Exhibition and Catalogue by Pearce J. Carefoote. Toronto: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (Printed by Coach House Press), 2017. 151p., ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> I allude here to Margaret Atwood\u2019s famous short story of tragedy at a Canadian women\u2019s summer camp: \u201cDeath by Landscape,\u201d in Wilderness Tips<\/em> (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Inc., 1991).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> In addition to the eight \u201cparts\u201d of the exhibition catalogue, there is the equivalent of an \u201cappendix\u201d titled \u201cSymbols of an Evolving Identity\u201d (131\u201341) covering: \u201cFirst and Second World War Posters\u201d (131), \u201cPassport\u201d (132), \u201cThe Flag\u201d \u2013 with an allusion to Stan Bevington\u2019s involvement in the \u201cflag wars\u201d of 1964 (133), \u201cThe Anthem\u201d (134\u201335), \u201cHockey\u201d (135\u201336), \u201cA Time to Celebrate – 1967\u201d (136\u201337), \u201cConfederation Coins and Currency\u201d (137\u201338), \u201cThe Confederation Train\u201d (138\u201339), and \u201cExpo 67\u201d (139\u201341). Carefoote\u2019s strategic motive for the creation of the final section, which adds a case of objects to the exhibit, is not to end the exhibition on a \u201cdown note\u201d (audio guide<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> On the \u201cred thread of information,\u201d see Marcia J. Bates, \u201cThe Invisible Substrate of Information Science<\/a>,\u201d Journal of the American Society for Information Science<\/em> 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043\u201350.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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