Conor O’Clery’s Moscow 25 December 1991 follows a notably growing trend for picking a pivot point in history and revolving round it to find a popular audience (witness 1066, 1421, 1434, 1491, 1492 etc. All good books by and large but adopting a very similar tact). The date provides a recognizable focus and then the space is open for provide the background and the aftermath in a popular fashion. O’Clery breaks the mold though in a most engaging fashion with the book. I am always in praise of those who can manage to effectively uses flashbacks within chronologically-driven narratives and the still hold the thread. In Moscow 25 December O’Clery very effectively picks the day that Mikhail Gorbachev signed the legal document dissolving the USSR as his pivot. The day is divided into a series of periods and as time coverless on the act of signing the paper, the author steps back to the genesis of the two protagonists careers. The careers of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin lead up to the day and as time slows as they converge on the act, the intermingling of the story lines converges. The structure and execution of the writing is superb.

This is not to downplay the actual events taking place. The cyclical nature of revolution in Russia (both political and economic) is thoughtfully documented and exposed and the author takes advantage of a privileged position on the sidelines to highlight much information that simply didn’t make it above the fold in the West. In my opinion Gorbachev comes of far worse than Yeltsin in the author’s handling. I am grateful for this as I feel that western media treatment of him may well have been lately shaped by cultural bias and the politics of the time. Neither of which should surprise. However, it is very good to have some corrective applied. Nonetheless, one is struck by how much the pettiness and personal animosities can play a huge role in the destiny of a nation (or in this case of nations).

I hung on to the few events that I felt I had a degree of familiarity with such as the failed 1991 coup and the rise of Vladimir Putin, and O’Clery thankfully fills in some gaping holes. The character treatment of Yeltsin gave much to consider and appreciate how his portrayal by western media as merely and opportunistic drinker misses a huge swath of his character and denies a truer appreciation of his motivations and accomplishments. The contrasting (less than complimentary) portrait of MIkhail Gorbachev surprises me, yet provides me with a corrective that illustrates how much a carefully managed public persona might hide simple human frailties. Both warn the reader that we much be more critical consumers of the media — forgive my rather naive moment here.

This is a gripping read. The pace of the narrative holds you in thrall and the richness of the story envelops. A true pleasure. I was fascinated by much of the detail that I simply would not have come to appreciate at the time of the events taking place and dismayed that I feel that I was starkly out of touch with the momentous things going on. I am grateful for O’Clery’s work in crafting such a fine account and sharing his experiences. Highly recommended!

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As I was wandering to the whole food store tonight I heard the droning of an aircraft I couldn’t identify. There was the beat of a helicopter blade, but I could identify the comingled drone of a heavy engine. Then as the sounds grew closer a huge Ford Tri-motor roared over the trees a block away. The Tri-motor was cruising at no more than 1000ft accompanied by a helicopter shooting video. It was an amazing sight. The sun was at a lovely evening height giving a wonderful orangey ambience, the sky clear and I was transported to another era. I was drawn back to a time when an airplane was the novelty (rarity) that the Tri-motor is today. What would it have been like to have seen this virilely powerful metal beast soaring over a small town bringing the hope/promise/threat? of a faster communication and transport? The sheer size and mechanical wonder must have inspired an awe even more substantial than my serendipitous amaze.

The helicopter buzzing about the larger ship seemed like a hawk being menaced by a sparrow or two. Especially as another helicopter came shooting across the skyline heading in for a closer look as well. I will have to find out where the magnificent beast was heading. A new addition to the Canadian Warplane Heritage at the airport perhaps. Given that only 18 are known to still exist, I was blessed with a rare experience tonight.

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Marvin McInnis challenges the widely held belief that Canadian agriculture was adversely affected by the First World War. His talk at the University of Guelph Rural Roundtable yesterday, presented a nuanced and revisionary look at the common story that wartime demand drove Canadian farmers to double acreage devoted to wheat and unwittingly create a dangerous monoculture. A situation that led to a massive collapse in GNP when the price of wheat collapsed after the war. McInnis’ earlier paper “Canadian Economic Development in the Wheat Boom Era” sets an appropriate stage for this further discussion. In this paper, McInnis questions the conclusion that Canada’s rapid economic growth during the first decade and a half of the twentieth century rested on western settlement and the ‘wheat boom.’ This has been a persistent and widely accepted view until more recent re-examination has questioned the role of wheat in this growth and determination that other factors were of greater consequence to this growth. This story though has supported the consequent one that envisions wartime demand and response to it as greatly affecting Canada’s agricultural economy.

McInnis’ counter analysis separates western agriculture from eastern/central agricultural models to determine real growth determinants and also evaluation of the rather sluggish rebound in GNP growth following WWI. The commonly held vision of mass migration to the prairies and the subsequent breaking of new land leading to verdant crops of wheat has gone hand in hand with a picture of Canada as the wheat bowl for the Empire during the time of the First World War. It seems plausible and has remained largely free of scrutiny. The approach adopted by McInnis is to break the story down into component parts and test the veracity of each. What he is able to demonstrate is that wheat settlement took place prior to the war, specifically during 1910–1912. Additionally, there was subsequent population and acreage growth that naturally continued during the war and is unconnected to wartime to impetus. The initial claim that there was a 48% increase in wheat acreage in the west during 1915 begs examination. Where did this acreage come from? As McInnis shows, there didn’t seem to be any complementary drop in acreage dedicated to other crops, or claims of this vast amount being newly brought under cultivation. So where do the numbers come from? Through analysis, he found that circular reference between census enumerators and agricultural reporters led to a double counting of the number of farms and the number of acres under cultivation. This starts to lend some greater appreciation of a truer picture of this supposed growth. By revising for these findings, McInnis shows that growth was far less rapid, and was actually relatively stable throughout the entire period. While this doesn’t suggest that wartime demand had no effect, it does suggest that what demand there was probably balanced a possible slight decrease in the natural trend.

There were other factors at play as well that had huge impact of the Prairie wheat crop. Environment and disease have an impact on the crop, but don’t fit as well with the traditional story and thus have substantively been ignored. Moreover, trying to extnd the wartime hypothesis as leading to a drive to bring less advantageous areas (such as parts Palliser’s Triangle) under cultivation and sloppy practise due to depleted workforce similarly don’t hold up under scrutiny. McInnis identifies the spread of rust, hailstorms and major July frosts as leading to a protracted period of low yields in the west. Additionally, trade factors such as the removal of the US tariff on livestock imports led to greater increase in production than war time demand. The demand rose before the war, continued through, and only fell when the tariffs were coincidentally reimposed shortly after, but unrelated to wartime issues.

The ignorance of the place of Eastern agriculture in the traditional story is another missing facet. As McInnis asserts, well over 50% of agricultural product during this period. In central Canada, agriculture is reliant primarily on the production of pork and cheese. Cheese in particular was a huge export product, 90% of which was being shipped to Britain. Butter never had this dominance in trade, nor did beef. Beef exports rose by 25% between 1912–14 to the United States, largely because of tariff reductions. The US produced 5-6X as much pork for export and changes in their production had greater impact. However, livestock production in Eastern Canada experienced no tremendous growth during wartime, despite soaring prices, raising questions as to why Ontario farmers were not more responsive to economic demand.

As a conclusion, McInnis leaves us with a variety of questions for further pondering. However, he very solidly demonstrates that questioning simple economic stories is both necessary, possible and can help us to better appreciate the truer national story of the Canadian economy.

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The latest additions to The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project were published today. When I took a look at the three new mysteries I was reminded what a powerful addition to the teaching of Canadian history that this collection is. The new mysteries: “The Redpath Mansion Mystery”, “Death on Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy,” and “Death of a Diplomat: Herbert Norman and the Cold War” keep raising the bar of how to effectively present material using the web. The project is a collabourative effort amongst Canadian historians to provide engaging and fun teaching tools directed towards high school and university level students. The mysteries are presented as self-contained websites, each one with its own theme and approach. Typically they provide compelling narrative and also offer a wealth of primary documents and other source material to aid in learning about Canadian History and historical methods. With the addition of these new modules, the breadth of the site is reaching a point of critical mass and offer a nicely diverse collection from throughout time and geographic area.

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About a year ago I adopted the French Republican Calendar for my personal journalling. Why? Really for no other reason than to be different. It offered me the opportunity to learn the Republican Calendar through practise (a word-a-day sort of arrangement). The upheaval of the switch to a new system in France in 1795, caused confusion, was not widely adopted and in the end was discontinued by Napoleon during the Empire. This was not before such references such as the Coup of 18 Brumaire and lobster Thermidor forever embedded the poeticisme of the calendaring system in our historical memory.

The calendar is divided in to 12 months of 30 days, with three weeks of 10 days each. The ‘extra’ days of the solar year were celebrated as special festival days (virtue, talent, convictions,labour, honours and the Revolution) — intended to solidly cement the triumph of the Revolution into the French psyche. Months are topically named after environmental characteristics of the months themselves and each day of the calendar is associated with a plant, mineral, tool, or animal. During the winter months, we have the months of snow, rain and wind. On a daily basis, today we celebrate Bette (Chard). When one considers the system it’s actually rather cool, if not practical. It emphasizes the individual or human’s position with in a larger natural world. Needless to say it is a humanist device and was considered integral to the secularization of the Republic. But after using it for nearly a full cycle now I quite like the way in which I am reminded of a single natural bounty, which one cannot help but reflect upon that day. It’s a wonderful reminder of one’s place as well as the fruits of the environment. It might be considered the ‘green calendar’.

If you are interested in more info about the calendar, the wikipedia entry is a great start, and has a number of additional references. Additionally, and I have really appreciated this, there is a Republican Calendar widget for the OSX dashboard available which reminds you of the date and its associated element.

On a personal note, a few days ago, the cycle changed and we entered the season of Germinal. I was personally struck by the change and felt quite positive — all the more Spring-like, but somehow more than the term spring brought to my mind. Even with the news reminders, and media attention to the advent of the Spring season, the turn to Germinal somehow was more profoundly striking. Germinal set me off picturing new growth, germination, the colour green and of re-awakening following the whiteness and bleakness of the the past season. In the Republican Calendar the past month was Ventôse and I honestly cannot remember a month when this seemed all the more appropriately descriptive. The winds howled this winter and this republican association with characteristics seemed both close and . With the change in cycle we are reminded that even without human intervention, the season do change and that we are part of an infinitely larger system. One nowe moving into a rich, vitalizing rebirth.

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I was entering some dummy citations into a social networked text sharing project on the weekend.
Serendipitously I chose the genre of historical fiction and ended up reflecting on some of the more memorable books I have enjoyed. At the top of that list is the memoirs of Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy by Donald Jack. This multi-volume series was very deservedly awarded the Stephen Leacock Award for humour on three occasions. This is all the more appropriate given the very Leacockian style of the Bandy papers themselves.
If you have not ever been exposed to Bandy, I can not recommend these books enough. They are superb examples of the comedic novelist’s art down the line of P.G Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and George Macdonald Fraser. Set in early twentieth century Ontario, B.W. Bandy, the hero is an Ottawa valley farm boy who heads off to fight in the First World War. He meets real life notables along the way, enjoys some of the most brilliantly told adventures and despite the comedic delivery actually teaches much about Canadian history. These novels demonstrate the close connection between literature and history — the enduring importance and beauty of a tale well told.

As I reflected on the enormous enjoyment that these novels have brought to me, and many of my compatriots, I remain deeply struck by Donald Jack’s talent. He was able to relate very poignant and real events using mirth that ultimately captures the human experience.
Those that have read these stories I am sure will not easily forget the muck encrusted face that terrified William Lyon Mackenzie King when it appeared in the window of his private railcar while stranded in the fog on Long Island, let alone Bandy hooking the Prime Minister on the pontoon of the Bandyplane prototype as he landed on the lake at Kingsmere.
Jack had a unique ability to deliver comedy in that deadpan manner that raised the level of amusement to a new high. I could go on at length about my recollections of Bandy, but instead I would like to end with an excerpt from the first volume of the series, where young Bandy joins the Canadian Expeditionary Force and heads off to Europe. He is placed in charge of a platoon and we find him training a colourful crew on Salisbury Plain in England. Bandy assumes his authority (despite his own experience or natural ability with typical officiousness). By the way, as I typed this passage in, I was typing through tears of amusement despite the fact that I have read this passage countless times over the past couple decades. Cheers.

“One day on the grenade range I had a narrow escape. I was in charge of a small party of bombers. One of them was a thin sallow man from Toronto called Soapes. I had been a bit uneasy about him from the start, since he had been showing signs of fright at the thought of hurling a live bomb.
We were in a small sandbagged enclosure five or so feet below ground level, and well protected from the blasts by a parapet of more sandbags. I gave everyone careful instructions, repeated them three times slowly, and threw the first bomb myself before handling the the second bomb to Squires.
Squires, in spite of a bad habit of clattering his false teeth together like a riveting gun, had shown himself to be reliable. He got rid of the grenade with credible alacrity.
The next soldier, Private Barbara, began badly by releasing the spring clip in the pit before throwing the bomb. Unfortunately, of all persons it had to fly at, it chose Private Soapes; and in trying to catch it he somehow managed to entangle it in his trouser pocket. For some reason Soapes immediately go the idea that the spring arm was the bomb itself. He gave a terrified scream and tried to tear the piece of metal out o his pocket. It caught in the lining of his trousers, and although it tore a large hole, it remained stuck. Whereupon, still screaming at the top of his voice, he started to remove his trousers. Under different circumstances I would probably have congratulated him on his quick thinking.
Meanwhile, unnerved by the shrieks of Soapes, the rest of the men had made a concerted rush for the narrow, double-bagged entrance. But there they had managed to wedge themselves so firmly that not one of them was able to get through. By now they were al shouting, as well as kicking, biting, scratching, and elbowing in their frenzy to get away from the trousers.
In the middle of this, I suddenly noticed Private Barbara staring stupidly at the antics of Private Soapes, who indeed presented an absurd site, hoping around on one leg with hi trousers half off and screaming like a stuck pig. Private Barbara had not moved a muscle since the spring arm had flown at Soapes. There was a distinctly unpleasant sensation in my stomach when I realized that Barbara was still holding the bomb, and that it was smoking. When it smokes, its due to go off.
I opened my mouth to shout a warning to Barbara, but discovered to my surprise that my mouth was already open and that I was already shouting. Now Barbara noticed the smoking grenade still in his hand. His expression changed; he could not have looked more surprised had he found himself holding a haddock.
I snatched the grenade from him. Luckily his fingers were slack — I could not see myself spending half a minute prying the thing loose otherwise — and heaved it over the parapet. Simultaneously, another object flew up and followed it over the sandbags. It was Private Soapes’ trousers.” Donald Jack, Three Cheers for Me, McClleland and Stewart, 1962, pp.26–7.