British Association forBACS logo
Canadian Studies  
BACS E-News May 2013
In This Issue
President's Letter
News
Calls for papers
Conference Diary
 
About BACS

The British Association for Canadian Studies acts as a forum for Canadianists in the UK and holds an annual conference at Easter each year.

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook
 
 
British Journal of
Canadian Studies

BJCS cover

The current list
of books available for review in the BJCS is available on the BACS website

Receive regular Table of Contents alert

 

BACS E-News

The next deadline for copy for BACS E-News (to [email protected])  is 28 May 2013

 
 
 
 
Renew/donate
Click to renew your membership or make a donation to BACS
 
 
British Association for Canadian Studies
[email protected]
 
Letter from the BACS President

 

Dear all,

This is just to update you on the current situation with BACS.

The Association has just had a very successful conference in London, our 38th, and I wish to thank all of those involved, including organizers, presenters and everyone who attended. We are already well into the planning for next year's conference. It will take place from Thursday 24 April until Saturday 26 April in London. The opening night keynote will be at either Canada House or Macdonald House and will feature, I'm very pleased to announce, General John de Chastelain, former head of the Canadian military and also the chairman from 1997 to 2011 of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning for Northern Ireland. General Chastelain's opening night keynote will be followed by two full days of papers and keynotes at the Eccles Centre at the British Library.

The conference theme is "Warrior or Peacemaker? The Battle over Canada's Identity, 1914-2014." It is a theme that reflects the tension between Canada's long military history (next year being the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War One) and the strong and more recent identification of Canadians with peace-making. There are also internal conflicts (the October Crisis, Oka, or the struggle over the right to vote for Canadian women, for instance) that do not fit neatly into either category but which suggest a much more complex identity or identities. As ever, the call for papers is also open to anything remotely Canadian studies and not just to the conference theme. A conference website with the full call for papers is available here.

Finally, it is with great sadness that I say on behalf of all of BACS farewell and thank you to Jodie Robson for her nearly two decades of service. It is safe to say that for many of us Jodie is synonymous with BACS. Far more than any one person, Jodie has been responsible for the flourishing of BACS as an academic organization over two decades in addition to ensuring its smooth functioning on a daily basis. Fortunately, Jodie's association with BACS has not ended; she has been co-opted to Council and will continue to play a role in Canadian studies in the United Kingdom.

What this development means for BACS is that we are in a dramatic period of transition to a new era without an administrator. I ask therefore that you be patient over the next few weeks as we adjust to this new reality.
With this change in personnel, we need now more than ever for everyone to chip in to ensure success for BACS in the coming months and years. Helping out could involve a simple thing such as renewing your membership or spreading the word about the conference and the association. Or it could be about a bigger financial contribution to BACS, which is a registered charity. We now have established our Fund for the Future, which we will use to assist post-graduates, the Canadianists of the future, in attending the annual conference. Thanks to the generosity of our members, we have already received �2000 in donations to this Fund. This result is testament to the spirit of BACS and its members and that our best days are yet to come.

Steve Hewitt
BACS President

 

News  

18th Annual Douglas W. Bryant Lecture 
From Acadie to Arab Spring: Reflections on America's Place in the World by Lyse Doucet

Monday 13 May 2013, 19.00-20.00 
Conference Centre, British Library 
ree, but prior reservation is essential. 
Reserve places by emailing [email protected] now. Tickets are not issued for this event so, for the guest list, please provide your full name and the name(s) of any companion(s).

 

Born in the Acadian heartland of eastern Canada, BBC Presenter and Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet has been reporting from around the world for the past thirty years. Her BBC work includes postings in Abidjan, Kabul, Islamabad, Tehran, Amman, and Jerusalem. In recent years her travel has often taken her to the Middle East, including Syria, as well as to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Lyse was educated at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario) and the University of Toronto. Her work has won a series of journalism awards and she holds honorary doctorates from universities in both Canada and the UK.

 

***   

 

15 May 2013, Women, Peace and Security 

  

 

Canada-United Kingdom Joint Declaration Seminar Series, Institute for Research in Social Sciences, Canadian Research Programme, in Association with the Government of Canada and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. University of Ulster.  

Programme
Bios

***

Institute of Germanic & RomanceStudies, University of London School of Advanced Study

The Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies offers opportunities for visiting scholars, with or without funding, to conduct research into any field relevant to the work of the Institute, and now invites applications for the period 1 September 2013 to 30 June 2014:

Non-Stipendiary Visiting Fellowships and Scholarships

Up to ten Visiting Fellowships and five Visiting Scholarships are available annually on a non-stipendiary basis, tenable at the Institute or within one of its research centres, including the Centre for Quebec and French-Canadian Studies

For further particulars and application procedure, please visit the Institute website.
 
Closing date for applications and references: 1 May 2013 (extended to 22 May
2013). In addition, the School of Advanced Study offers a number of Visiting Fellowships and Scholarships which are open to applicants from the UK and overseas. Further details at: School of Advanced Study Fellowships.

***

Canadian Studies in Wales Group

Announcing a one-day conference on the theme

Regeneration, heritage and culture: Transatlantic perspectives

The National Waterfront Museum, Swansea
Saturday June 22nd 2013 9.30am - 6pm

Papers presented by Emeritus Professor Wayne Davies, Calgary University; Professor Huw Bowen, Swansea University; Professor John Reid, St Mary's University; Steph Mastoris, Director, National Waterfront Museum Swansea; Dean Robert Summerby-Murray, Dalhousie University; Dr Stevie Upton, Institute of Welsh Affairs, Cardiff; Professor Terry Marsden, Cardiff University; Professor Edward MacDonald, University of Prince Edward Island; Dr Kristjan Ahronson, Bangor University.
 
Further information from Dr Graham Humphrys, Acting Chairman, Canadian Studies in Wales Group
 

UCL Canadian Studies Programme

 

Friday 12 July 2013

UCL-IA conference

 

William Lyon Mackenzie King - unsung hero?

This is an international conference to be held at the UCL Institute of the Americas that aims to revaluate the political career of William Lyon Mackenzie King - Canada's longest serving Prime Minister (1921-1926, 1926-1930, 1935-1948). Mackenzie King occupied the position of Prime Minister for 22 years in all during a period that witnessed the great depression, the Second World War and the onset of the Cold War. He led the Liberal party to a succession of election victories and was in many ways the most successful politician in Canadian history. And yet his career has rarely received the attention that it deserves and he is perhaps better known for his dabbling in the spirit world than he is for his political accomplishments.

 

For more information on this event, contact Tony McCulloch 


Publications 

Tim Rooth and Alexander Hallawell
Redcliffe Press, �11.50
 
At dawn on 1st March 1809 two men armed with pistols faced each other across a Gloucestershire field. One was Henry Smith, a Bristol attorney, while his adversary was a local businessman named Richard Priest. The cause of their duel was a trivial argument at the King's Theatre two days before which had now got completely out of hand. Shots were exchanged. Priest was hit in the thigh and later that morning, despite the surgeons' best efforts, died from loss of blood. Smith was unhurt but that afternoon, following a coroner's inquiry, he was identified as a protagonist and indicted for wilful murder. Urged by friends he was persuaded to flee Bristol and so with the police in close pursuit he set off for London and within days posters appeared offering a reward of 100 guineas for his arrest. Now a fugitive, he remained on the run for more than a year. During this time he kept a diary of his travels and misadventures which took him to London, back to Bristol, to Scotland and the Iberian Peninsula where he eventually joined Wellington's army. His 19-year-old sweetheart, Ann, travelling alone through the war zone of the Peninsula, attempted to find him and persuade him to return to England to accept whatever fate the law held in store for him. This remarkable book is based on this journal (long-lost but recently rediscovered), together with his defence brief from the archives of Burges Salmon Solicitors, their oldest surviving document. It ends dramatically with his trial.

 

Conference Diary

 

10-12 May 2013: Island Studies: West Coast Canada & Beyond, Island University, BC.

May 24-26 2013, Straddling Boundaries: Hemispherism, Cultural Identity and Indigeneity, the inaugural international conference of the Culture and the Canada-US Border research network. Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Keynotes: Margaret Noodin, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Guillermo Verdecchia. Registration open.

22 June 2013: Regeneration, Heritage and Culture: Transatlantic Perspectives, Canadian Studies in Wales Group.

8-11  July 2013, Transatlantic Studies Group Conference, University of Northumbria. See website for information and registration.

12 July 2013: William Lyon Mackenzie - unsung heroUCL-IA Conference, London.
 
30-31 July 2013: Canada Abroad, Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex.

19-23 November 2013, Canada in the Hemisphere, ACSUS, Tampa, Florida.