Reviews in the British Journal of Canadian Studies

Jackson W. Armstrong ed. - Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong 1859 and 1869

Jackson W. Armstrong (ed.),

Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong 1859 and 1869

Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004

xvi + 228 pp. Cloth. ISBN 0 88920 440 3.

Mary Armstrong was an English immigrant. Her husband was a butcher and her son became a doctor. The Armstrongs lived on a small block up Yonge Street just beyond the expanding Toronto suburbs, where they ran cows and hens, thus providing Mary with a small line of business and this volume with its title. Her surviving diaries cover five months of 1859 and seven months of 1869. This might seem a slender foundation to carry the formidable Introduction of genealogy, sociological analysis and diary theory, but both text and commentary are a worthwhile contribution to the publisher’s Life Writing Series. Paradoxically, as a witness of contemporary affairs, Mary Armstrong is perhaps most valuable in reminding us just how little the public sphere intruded on daily life. In a rare aside, she dismissed the unease of Torontonians when the provincial seat of government departed for Quebec in 1859: ‘I expect there will always be people enough, to buy all the eggs and butter I have to spare, and … the fields will look as green, the birds will sing as sweetly as ever and I shall not miss the passing of the Governor’s Carriage.’ (p. 102) The editor is a fifth-generation descendant of the diarist who began his project as an undergraduate at Queen’s University. His comprehensive Endnotes confirm a scholar in the making.

William Johnston - A War of Patrols: Canadian Army Operations in Korea

William Johnston,

A War of Patrols: Canadian Army Operations in Korea

Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003

xx + 426 pp. Cloth.                  ISBN 0 780774 810081.

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Canada contributed a Special Force, variously known as 25^th Brigade, the Second Battalions or Rocky’s Army. This initial contribution to the American-led United Nations Forces was speedily raised from men who had served in the Second World War: as Johnston points out, it was the only occasion in the country’s history when Canada entered an overseas conflict with a large pool of ready trained recruits who had recent battle experience. Subsequently, the Special Force troops were replaced by regulars, who were critical of their forerunners. Not much has been written about the Canadians in Korea. 309 deaths in action represented an appreciable loss for the peaceable kingdom, but hardly the basis for a miniature publishing industry. Johnston’s comprehensive study forms part of the Canadian War Museum’s series, Studies in Military History. While it provides a detailed chronicle of operations, this is no bland ‘official history’. Johnston contests ad indeed inverts the denigration of the Special Force troops, and is scathing about the leadership and fighting qualities of many regular officers ─ a criticism of some wider import, since it was Korea veterans who would run the army until the 1970s. The hero of the book is unquestionably Brigadier John M. Rockingham, known and trusted by the soldiers from his courageous and resourceful service in the Normandy campaign, and who once confided that he was ‘not particularly keen about soldiering when there is no fighting involved’. (p. 206) As in all war histories, there are intriguing cameos: in December 1952, two Canadians patrolling in thick snow reached to within 200 yards of Chinese positions and, on open ground, stamped out the message, ‘Merry Christmas from C Company’. It was a thoughtful gesture, the more so as the men were from the Van Doos and courteously assumed that the enemy knew no French. In 1951, the Canadian brigade joined British, Australian and New Zealand troops to form the 1^st Commonwealth Division. Officers felt more at ease under British than American command, for instance preferring the precision of British battle orders to the John-Wayne-gung-ho style and content of American directions. This was to be the last time that troops from the four countries fought side-by-side under joint command. There are seventeen maps and a profusion of contemporary photographs that have reproduced unusually well as text illustrations.

J.I. Little - Borderland Religion: The Emergence of an English-Canadian Identity, 1792-1852

J.I. Little

Borderland Religion: The Emergence of an English-Canadian Identity, 1792-1852

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004

xv + 386 pp. Cloth.        ISBN 0-8020-8916-X.

 
Ostensibly, this book is a history of organised (and some disorganised) religion in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. But in its implications, it is far more than a local study. Little argues strongly for the integration of religious history with the perceived ‘mainstream’ political and social story. He challenges the recent fashion for studying the Townships as part of an international ‘borderlands’. True, the Townships were largely settled by Americans, not all of them Loyalists. They retained New England habits, ignored customs posts and even counterfeited US currency. But Little argues that the region was also shaped by influences from the imperial centre, calling his approach ‘borderline’ by comparison. The Townships were largely Protestant, and considers the major churches in turn, tracing how those of American origin diverged from their origins. The War of 1812 forced some choices as did, to a lesser degree, the 1837-38 rebellions, so that the annexation movement of 1849 proved short-lived. The core of Little’s argument is about organisation backed by external support. Congregationalists and Baptists were largely abandoned by their republican neighbours. Americans could never decide whether Canada was tax-free paradise or a monarchical despotism. Either way, it did not seem a promising field for outreach activity. New England Protestantism was so deeply imbued with Calvinism that missionary work seemed pointless anyway. Left to their own fragile structures, Protestant churches in the Townships were more likely to be destabilised than strengthened by religious revivals: a Justice of the Peace was brought in to police a Methodist ‘love feast’ in 1829. In the early 1840s, they were ravaged by messianic movements which predicted the end of the world, a mystical seven years from the rebellions.

By contrast, the British-oriented churches, especially the Anglicans, could call upon external support, from missionary societies and well-wishers. (They also had valuable cash from the clergy reserves, a point which Little does not emphasise.) As a result, many Township people became census Anglicans, an identity which Little sees as fertilised from without. He calls the result ‘a distinctly Canadian hybrid or synthesis’ (89) although he later acknowledges it to have been ‘somewhat lumpy’ (285). These downloaded Yankee Anglicans were an odd crew. Since they had joined a wealthy church, they declined to pay their clergy: one congregation even refused to buy a stove. They also refused to join in responses, demanded baptism by total immersion and ignored ritualistic attempts to encourage chanting and (of all things) churching.