Browsing by Author "Colpitts, George"
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- ItemOpen AccessBetween King Cotton and Queen Victoria: Confederate Informal Diplomacy and Privatized Violence in British America During the American Civil War(2019-12) Cleland, Beau; Towers, Frank; Schoen, Brian; Ferris, John Robert; Colpitts, GeorgeThis dissertation explores the Confederate and British colonial relationship during the American Civil War, particularly the networks of minor officials, merchants, and other private individuals that supported the rebellion in the colonies of British America. This support included blockade running most importantly, but also diplomatic tasks, communications, and even military action. This commercial-diplomatic network proved vital for coordinating the movement of arms and supplies from Europe to the shores of the Confederacy, and for protecting the local interests of the Confederacy from Union and British interference. The specific local social and political conditions of the colonies deeply affected the depth and nature of their involvement in Confederate schemes, which had a potential to disrupt regional peace and order far in excess of their size. Ultimately, this project makes the case for the enduring importance of private actors for our understanding of international violence and diplomacy during and after the Civil War. British colonial merchants and elites demonstrated the power to resist or alter the policies of the world’s most powerful state. The Civil War also marked an inflection in the dynamics of privatized violence in North America and beyond. In the antebellum era it existed outside or in cooperation with the state, as with filibustering and privateering, but during the war Confederates looked for new ways to bind private military action and private enterprise to state authority as a response to changes in international law and technology that disrupted the older traditions of international, state-permitted violence. This dissertation looks at the international Civil War with the British colonies rather than the metropole as the center of gravity, and as such relies heavily on manuscript sources, government records, and contemporary publications written in or about British America, especially the files of the Colonial Office, alongside relevant Confederate and colonial accounts. I begin with an analysis of antebellum relations between the South and the colonies and existing patterns of privatized violence and informal diplomacy and consider how those patterns affected the Civil War and colonies by examining them in the Bahamas, Bermuda, and British North America respectively.
- ItemOpen AccessBooks and Broomsticks: Prairie Indigenous Female Domestic Workers and the Canadian Outing System, 1888-1901(2019-08-30) Nason, Sarah Faye; Colpitts, George; Janovicek, Nancy; Starblanket, GinaThis thesis discusses the Canadian outing system, a direct feature of industrial schools in the prairie west prominent in the late nineteenth century. Seen as an extension of the school’s vocational training, the outing system became an outlet with which the Canadian federal government’s Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) could integrate into the lower ranks of Euro-Canadian society young Indigenous girls in a hierarchical system of labour. By examining the roles and education of Indigenous female youth in the industrial school system in the Canadian prairies, this study illuminates how, in the name of assimilation, the DIA implemented the outing system. This thesis highlights how young Indigenous women were compelled to work in homes that exemplified settler values, taking on strenuous labour in environments where attitudes of race and class dimensions were prominent. By drawing from 1901 census data and looking at the settler homes, farms, and establishments in which they worked, this thesis provides an important glimpse into the early history of domestic work for Indigenous women and girls in western Canada and offers insights into the very nature of settler colonialism in early Canadian national history.
- ItemOpen AccessBraiding Western Science and Blackfoot Worldviews: An Investigation into Manifestations of Food Stress from 1790-1890(2023-12-19) Lazette, Larissa Denice; Amundsen-Meyer, Lindsay; Paris, Elizabeth; Colpitts, George; Walls, MattDuring the Protocontact (1730-1830) and Contact (1830-Present) Periods, the traditional diets of Indigenous peoples on the Plains were greatly altered. Bison populations began to decline sharply during this time, as a result of over exploitation by the commercial hide trade. By the late 19th century, the bison populations were in sharp decline, and Indigenous peoples on the Plains were relocated onto newly established reserves where they were forced to rely on government administered rations. Both factors greatly impacted food availability for Indigenous peoples. This research examines manifestations of food stress among the Blackfoot people using multiple lines of evidence. These lines of evidence include archaeological faunal assemblages from two stone circles at the Antelope Hill Tipi Ring Site (EbPi-75), ethnographic accounts, Blackfoot winter counts, and Blackfoot oral traditions. The goal of this research is to combine Western scientific approaches in the form of archaeological analyses and the examination of ethnographic and ethnohistoric documents with Blackfoot oral traditions. This results in a more holistic understanding of the changes occurring to traditional diets during the Protocontact and Contact Periods. The assemblage in Stone Circle 1 and 4 is highly fragmented. Explanations for this and other patterns in the assemblage include grease rendering activities, meat butchering and marrow extraction or tipi cleaning behaviours, all of which may have been occurring simultaneously. Ultimately, it was found that evidence of food stress is limited in Stone Circle 1 and 4 and in Blackfoot oral traditions, while the ethnographic and historic accounts contain strong evidence for food stress, demonstrating a difference in perspective from the ethnographer to the perspective in Blackfoot oral tradition.
- ItemOpen AccessDeconstructing Colonial Conceptions: The St. Paul Industrial Boarding School Report of 1896(2023-08) Wilde, Nathan Grant; Colpitts, George; McCoy, Ted; Marshall, David B.In 1896, acting principal Edward F. Hockley of St. Paul industrial boarding school, submitted his annual report to the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA). In it he informed the Department regarding the day-to-day operations of the school. This thesis bases its analysis on Hockley’s 1896 report. Along with the centrality of Hockley’s report as a primary source for this study, the thesis is structured by analysis of a normalized perception of education, arising from the standardized curricular document used to govern industrial and later residential schools, titled the “Programme of Studies for Indian Schools.” The Programme, and the reports that insisted on its adherence (like that from Hockley), reveals a colonial ideology that was highly hierarchized and normalized. As this thesis demonstrates, Hockley’s report provides a clear window into historical Western conceptions of education, which shaped his perceptions as written. These conceptions were historically contingent, ideologically driven, and largely centred on Western (colonial) views of childhood. To reveal this, the thesis draws three themes from Hockley’s report which, in turn, shape its three chapters: discipline, religion, and play. By studying Hockley’s discussion of these matters, as reflected by his report on St. Paul, wider historical influences are demonstrated, which shaped, informed, proliferated and importantly, authenticated his perceptions of play, discipline, and religion, both for himself and for his superiors as being “normal.” In so doing, the thesis takes inspiration from the works of Michel Foucault and draws on Edward Said’s contrapuntal method of analysis.
- ItemOpen AccessDispatches from the Wilderness: A History of the Canadian Missionaries and Korean Protestants in Northern Korea and Manchuria, 1893 - 1928(2018-09-12) Glover, Frederick James; Marshall, David B.; Colpitts, George; Wright, David Curtis; Apple, James B.; Samson, JaneThis thesis examines the motivations of the Canadian Missionaries and Korean Protestants in in Hamgyeong Province (Northeastern Korea) and Gando (Southeastern Manchuria) as well as the influence they had on one another during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The analysis of Canadian motivations demonstrated that they were wholly consumed with building the mission and would do nearly anything to ensure that it succeed, including: working themselves to exhaustion, cooperating with Protestant nationalists, vigorously protesting against the Japanese colonial government's brutal suppression of the Koreans in 1919 and 1920 as well as capitulating to the demands of their constituency when they were forcefully expressed in the 1920s. The Korean Protestants wanted changes to be made to the educational and financial policies of the mission and some resorted to violence in an effort to spur the Canadians into action. The examination of Korean motivations shows that they gravitated toward the Church for a variety of reasons, one of the most salient being, their desire to reclaim their nation from the Japanese imperialists. The discussion of the influence that the Canadians had on the Koreans revealed, among other things, that their decision to work with, rather than against the nationalists, contributed to further radicalizing the Church, and their "women's work" helped to transform the nature of gender relations in Hamgyeong and Gando. The investigation of the Koreans showed that they too had much influence. The Canadians understood that they had to "do the bidding" of the Koreans for the mission to succeed, as is most clearly seen in their resolve to transform the mission in the 1920s. The study of the Canadians and Koreans in Hamgyeong and Gando enhances our understanding of the missionizer and the missionized in the overseas mission field by providing a different way of viewing the motivations of the former and emphasizing the agency and power of the latter; enriches our knowledge of Korean Christian history by revealing how and why the Canadians and Koreans built a distinct mission and Church; and illuminates the role that the Presbyterian Maritime Church played in the Canadian missionary movement.
- ItemOpen AccessErnest Brown’s “Birth of the West”: Early narratives of imagined space and race in Western Canada(2018-05-20) Yaremko, Scott; Stortz, Paul James; Colpitts, George; Felske, Lorry WilliamThis thesis examines the life and works of settler photographer Ernest Brown, and identifies ways in which Alberta and its Indigenous inhabitants were imagined, perceived and manipulated through his vocation towards history and education. Brown presents a unique case study in the historiography of Western Canadian photography, as he utilized his extensive collection of photographs to establish a museum running from 1933 to 1939 in the heart of Edmonton, as well as a series of teaching pictures called “The Birth of the West.” While many photographers made a living through portrait studios or by selling views as souvenirs, Brown crafted an imagined settler space and history in the West, with specific roles for the Indigenous peoples with whom he was so infatuated.
- ItemOpen AccessEugenics in Comparative Perspective: Explaining Manitoba and Alberta’s Divergence on Eugenics Policy, 1910s to the 1930s(2019-01-22) Kurbegović, Erna; Stahnisch, Frank W.; Janoviček, Nancy; Stam, Henderikus J.; Colpitts, George; McCoy, Ted; Kelm, Mary-EllenThis dissertation compares eugenics in Alberta and Manitoba in order to explain their divergence on sexual sterilization policy. Alberta implemented a Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928, while Manitoba rejected similar legislation in 1933. This thesis shows that Manitobans actively engaged with national and international discussions and debates about eugenics despite a lack of an official eugenics program. Eugenics was hardly monolithic and by focusing attention only on provinces with formal eugenics programs, historians miss how eugenic ideas manifested themselves in provinces without sterilization legislation, for example in mental institutions, in educational programs, and in child welfare policies. Lack of legislation does not necessarily mean that there was a lack of enthusiasm for eugenic measures. This dissertation brings a comparative aspect to the history of eugenics in Canada and demonstrates the ways in which eugenic policy was influenced at various levels by an emerging professional class of psychiatrists, by grassroots organizations, by religious groups, and by the unique local conditions including demographic, cultural, and political factors. I argue that Manitoba and Alberta shared similar concerns about “race degeneration,” “defective” immigrants, and the economic costs of running institutions, but there were important subtle differences in the political contexts of the two provinces. These differences served to empower the opposition elements to sexual sterilization in Manitoba, while in Alberta it served to empower grassroots organizations that were adjacent to the government, and at the same time weaken any political critics. A comparative perspective is valuable in understanding the history of eugenics in Canada especially because of regional differences but more importantly because each province has its own historical, social, and political traditions that help illuminate their distinct approaches to eugenics. The importance of a comparative perspective to the history of eugenics in Manitoba and Alberta is that it gives us insight into the political and cultural debates that occurred during the interwar period in order to better understand the forces at play and discussions regarding eugenics.
- ItemOpen AccessExploring Music Beyond the Canon: Radio Orchestras, the CBC and Contemporary Music in the Mid-Twentieth Century(2023-09-18) Bailey, Robert Warren; Sallis, Friedemann; Radford, Laurie; Elliott, Robin; Sutherland, Richard; Colpitts, George; Wolters-Fredlund, BenitaThe emergence of broadcast technology in the twentieth century fundamentally changed how people could experience music. Networks across the world assembled orchestras to serve a variety of functions—background music for dramatic presentations, light entertainment and symphonic concerts. Radio emancipated the orchestral concert from the confines of the concert hall, bringing to the masses a cultural experience which was formerly the domain of the privileged classes. As early as the 1930s, the notion of a radio symphony orchestra—that is, a permanent concert orchestra based in the broadcasting studio—began to emerge. Through unconventional programming philosophies, as well as distinct social and political roles, many of these orchestras gradually acquired identities distinct from traditional symphony orchestras. However, radio symphonies have not received a large amount of scholarly attention. The purpose of this dissertation is to establish the historical context from which radio symphony orchestras emerged, with a specific focus on Canada. My primary focus is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and its relationship with twentieth-century music, as seen through the lens of the CBC Symphony Orchestra (1952–1964). The study proceeds in three stages. First, I provide a broad historical overview of the origins of radio symphony orchestras before World War Two, exemplified by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurter Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchestra and the BBC Symphony. Second, I look at the emergence of radio orchestras in Canada, and the CBC’s patronage of twentieth-century music in Canada following World War Two. These concepts are brought together in the final section, which focuses on the work of the CBC Symphony. Born as an intended symbol of Canada’s musical achievement, the CBC Symphony regularly featured music from outside the traditional orchestral canon. Not only did this policy introduce modern composition to Canadian listeners, it provided Canadian composers with regular opportunities to write for large orchestras—opportunities which had previously been few and far between, if present at all.
- ItemOpen AccessFinding Directions West: Readings that Locate and Dislocate Western Canada's Past(University of Calgary Press, 2017-02) Colpitts, George; Devine, HeatherIn the past, Western Canada was a place of new directions in human thought and action, migrations of the mind and body, and personal journeys. This book anthology brings together studies exploring the way the west served as a place of constant movement between places of spiritual, subsistence and aesthetic importance. The region, it would seem, gained its very life in the movement of its people. Finding Directions West: Readings that Locate and Dislocate Western Canada's Past, showcases new Western Canadian research on the places found and inhabited by indigenous people and newcomers, as well as their strategies to situate themselves, move on to new homes or change their environments to recreate the West in profoundly different ways. These studies range from the way indigenous people found representation in museum displays, to the archival home newcomers found for themselves: how, for instance, the LGBT community found a place, or not, in the historical record itself. Other studies examine the means by which Métis communities, finding the west transforming around them, turned to grassroots narratives and historical preservation in order to produce what is now appreciated as vernacular histories of inestimable value. In another study, the issues confronted by the Stoney Nakoda who found their home territory rapidly changing in the treaty and reserve era is examined: how Stoney connections to Indian agents and missionaries allowed them to pursue long-distance subsistence strategies into the pioneer era. The anthology includes an analysis of a lengthy travel diary of an English visitor to Depression-era Alberta, revealing how she perceived the region in a short government-sponsored inquiry. Other studies examine the ways women, themselves newcomers in pioneering society, evaluated new immigrants to the region and sought to extend, or not, the vote to them; and the ways early suffrage activists in Alberta and England by World War I developed key ideas when they cooperated in publicity work in Western Canada. Finding Directions West also includes a study on ranchers and how they initially sought to circumscribe their practices around large landholdings in periods of drought, to the architectural designs imported to places such as the Banff Centre that defied the natural geography of the Rocky Mountains. Too often, Western Canadian history is understood as a fixed, precisely mapped and authoritatively documented place. This anthology prompts readers to think differently about a region where ideas, people and communities were in a constant but energetic flux, and how newcomers converged into sometimes impermanent homes or moved on to new experiences to leave a significant legacy for the present-day.
- ItemOpen AccessHorses and Mules of the Canadian Artillery and Ammunition Columns during the First World War(2016) Lemna, Samantha; Brennan, Patrick; Colpitts, George; Coates, Donna; Brennan, PatrickThis thesis develops a narrative for the horses and mules of the Canadian artillery units and ammunition columns, while consequently expanding that of the soldiers serving alongside them. Carrying out mounted, draught, and pack work, these animals played an invaluable role in military operations and greatly impacted daily life. Immense effort was made to preserve the wellbeing of the horses and mules, although casualties were considered inevitable. The evolution of the acquisition, training, and transport practices of these animals and men is examined. This is followed by a general analysis of the labour performed and the working conditions, with specific battles given as case studies. The daily care that went into the horses and mules and the relationship between man and animal is also addressed. Finally, the negligible impact of mechanization is discussed.
- ItemOpen Access'How Kola': The Wauneita Society at the University of Alberta, 1908-1930(2016) McFadyen, Ursula; Stortz, Paul; Colpitts, George; Felske, Lorry; MacMillan, KenThis thesis deals with the creation of campus culture in one of Canada’s first universities to be formed as a co-educational university. Using predominantly primary source material derived from university, student, alumni, professor, and administrative accessions at the University of Alberta, this thesis explores how men and women managed to create a campus culture at a time when women were just being introduced to college campuses in Canada. Certain difficulties such as maintaining respectability while in close proximity to men, finding a place for women on campus, and exploring roles for educated women in Canadian society are some of the challenges the female students faced while trying to create an educational environment that was both instructive and meaningful. The solution for the women at the University of Alberta was the formation of the Wauneita Society. The Wauneitas gave women a voice and a presence on campus that as a distinct minority, they would have otherwise been without.
- ItemOpen AccessHunting for Food Citizenship: Food, Politics, and Discourses of the Wild(2017) Carruthers Den Hoed, Rebecca; Elliott, Charlene; Schneider, Barbara; Rock, Melanie; Colpitts, George; Knezevic, IrenaIn the words of food hunting advocate Tovar Cerulli (2012a), hunting is taking a seat at the table of food “citizenship”: it is increasingly positioned as a way for people to engage with questions about how food and people ought to be governed. While a burgeoning literature on food citizenship exists, it focuses on agrarian citizenship projects and overlooks wilder food practices, like hunting. Given that several prominent food activists are now advocating the practice, food hunting warrants careful examination as a model of food citizenship. This study uses a Foucauldian view of discourse to explore the food citizenships mobilized in food hunting lifestyle manuals. It finds that models of food citizenship mobilized by these food hunting texts echo elements of agrarian food citizenships, but also diverge from them in startling ways—rendering hunting-based food citizenships nigh unrecognizable as expressions of food citizenship, at least by agrarian standards. Rather than champion reconfigurations of agrarian-industrial food networks to foster close-knit communities and relations of care, food hunting citizenships aim to reconfigure human-nature relations so that humans are compelled—via appeals to biological and genetic destiny—to govern themselves in ways suited to the Anthropocene, the current ‘age of humanity,’ in which humans must contend with (and check) their power to threaten nature, and endure the power of nature to threaten humans (Davoudi, 2014, p. 360). As of and for the Anthropocene, hunting-based food citizenships are rather grim and defeatist: prudent hunters exercise vigilance and self-control in the wild, minimizing human-wrought destruction threatening human and food security; whereas resilient hunters cultivate the readiness and resourcefulness required to endure disruptive changes wrought by wild-nature and the perpetual vulnerability of humans in wild food systems. Hunting-based food citizenships, however, open up space to consider the role of sentient animals—as autonomous, self-governing actors—within models of food citizenship. They also render visible wild species, wild lands, and wild discourses as integral to debates about food policy.
- ItemOpen AccessInuit and Newcomers: Trade and Animal Resources in the Kivalliq, 1900-1945(2022-07) Goodwin, Andrew Lachlan; Colpitts, George; McLean, Scott; Marshall, DavidBetween 1900 and 1945, Qallunaat newcomers, predominantly whalers and fur traders, increased their physical and economic presence in the Kivalliq region, bringing them into closer contact with local Inuit groups. These newcomers worked closely with Inuit partners, as the commercial success of their animal-centric ventures relied on the knowledge and skills of Inuit hunters and trappers. While the newcomers relied on Inuit lifeways for success, they also inadvertently and intentionally brought significant changes to the region in the forms of new technology, ideas, economic systems, ways of living, and viral diseases. This thesis argues that despite the changes brought to the Kivalliq by newcomers, Inuit in this period were able to draw what they desired from these developments, while still maintaining a strong hunting lifeway based on a deep connection with the land and the animals that inhabited it. Drawing on both the written records of Qallunaat whalers and fur traders, and the oral testimonies of Inuit people, it explores how the ventures of whalers and traders were successful because they were compatible with the pre-existing beliefs, lifestyles, and skills of Inuit partners. Thus, attempts to modify Inuit lifestyles largely met with only limited success, as Inuit were able to be selective about which Western technologies and cultural elements they accepted, and generally adopted those that were compatible with pre-existing hunting lifeways.
- ItemOpen AccessLovely tender exotics: exploring Victorian female agency in the western Canadian fur trade, 1830-51(2012-09-13) Bakker, Amber; Colpitts, GeorgeThis thesis explores the ability of Victorian-era women to demonstrate agency in the colonial setting. The subjects of this study are Frances Simpson, Isobel Finlayson, and Letitia Hargrave, all upper-middle class European women who married fur traders of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the first half of the nineteenth century and relocated with their husbands to Rupert’s Land. While traveling to, and living in the fur trade, these women recorded their experiences and actions in the form of travel journals and letters, demonstrating how they purposefully and deliberately upheld the expectations placed upon them to be respectable, domestic, feminine women. This thesis argues that by acting in ways expected of them as Victorian-era women, Simpson, Finlayson, and Hargrave found the ability to display agency and negotiate their physical and social spaces in the fur trade.
- ItemOpen AccessMetis pioneers: Isabella Hardisty Lougheed and Marie Rose Delorme Smith(2012) MacKinnon, Doris J.; Colpitts, George; Devine, Heather
- ItemEmbargoNot Indian Enough: The History of the Michel Indian Band(2024-01-26) Snyder, Henry Campbell; Colpitts, George; Colpitts, George; Elofson, Warren; Vogt, DanielMichel Callihoo signed Treaty 6 in 1878 on behalf of his Cree Nation, becoming the Michel band consisting of roughly 160 individuals. The bands’ reserve was located west of Edmonton, until it was dissolved in 1958 through involuntary enfranchisement. The Michel band remains the only Indian band in Canada to be wholly dissolved involuntarily. This thesis explores the history of the Michel band, and the Callihoo family as they navigated the tumultuous implementation of the Indian Act as opposed to the treaties. Chapter 1 explores the early history of the Callihoo family until treaty signing, paralleling the experiences of the Michel band at Lac Ste. Anne with the events of the Red River Valley. Chapter 2 looks at the non-implementation of the treaty agreement and the harsh measures imposed by the Canadian government in their attempts to expand control and “civilize” the Indians throughout the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century through means like Metis scrip and direct Indian Agent control. Chapter 3 finishes the history of the Michel band, as the Department of Indian Affairs took deliberate steps to enfranchise the members of the Michel band causing them and their descendants to lose Indian status to this day.
- ItemOpen AccessProfits, prophets, and profiteers: local and global economies of wildlife in the northern Yukon 1860-1910(2009) Iceton, Glenn; Colpitts, GeorgeFrom the 1860s into the early twentieth century the Athapaskans of the northern Yukon experienced great changes in the demography and economy of their traditional territory and consequently also saw changes in their uses of wildlife and their material culture, which heretofore had been largely based on the products of their local environment. This thesis addresses the impact of the fur trade and other modes of exchange on the harvesting practices and uses of wildlife by the Han and Gwich'in First Nations of the northern Yukon between 1860 and 1910. Analyzed here are the tensions that occurred between subsistence and commodified uses of wildlife by the First Nations. This includes the efforts on the part of fur traders to commodify the region's wildlife, the related changes to indigenous material culture, and conflicts of authorities over the harvesting and management of wildlife.
- ItemOpen AccessProtestant Liberty: Religion and the Making of Canadian Liberalism, 1828-1878(2019-08-29) Forbes, James Murray; Marshall, David B.; Marshall, David B.; Spangler, Jewel L.; Colpitts, George; Campbell, Lyndsay M.; Stewart, David K.; Heaman, ElsbethThis study offers a new interpretation of the origins and nature of nineteenth-century liberalism by re-examining the role of religion in the politics of Upper Canada (Ontario). Whereas other recent studies have characterized this era’s liberal thought as neutral toward religion and universally transferable across cultures, this study argues that the early origins of Canadian liberalism were firmly rooted in the British tradition of Protestant Dissent and based on the premise of guarding against the encroachment of illiberal non-Protestant faiths. After the union of Upper Canada with the predominantly French-Catholic Lower Canada in 1840, this “Protestant liberty” perspective came into conflict with a more neutral alternative which sought to strip liberalism of its religious roots in order to appeal to Catholic voters and allies. Beginning with the reform victory in the 1828 election, this study traces the development of liberal thought in Upper Canada through the political turmoil and rebellions of the 1830s, the Union of the Canadas and its resultant mid-century sectional crises, and the separation of this union due to the reformers’ initiative in the Confederation talks of the 1860s. As a political strategy in the early national period of the 1870s, however, the Liberal Party explicitly sought a more decisive break from its Protestant heritage and instead began to favour the culturally neutral version of liberalism based on free markets and appeals to the workingman. This eventual marginalization and stigmatization of the “Protestant liberty” perspective signaled the beginning of a secular-materialist ethos for the liberal order in Canada.
- ItemOpen AccessRemaking the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands: The North-West Mounted Police, the United States Army, and the Klondike Gold Rush(2020-04-22) Dumonceaux, Scott Drew Cassie; Colpitts, George; Jameson, Elizabeth; Peric, Sabrina; Marshall, David B.; McManus, SheilaPublic and academic historians of the Klondike gold rush have long positioned the Alaska-Yukon border as an established fact, serving as a firm dividing line between perceived American lawlessness and Canadian order as thousands of miners rushed to the Yukon and Alaska from 1896-1899. A wider, regional analysis of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands, however, reveals that at the beginning of the gold rush, the border was little more than a line-on-a-map. When the North-West Mounted Police and the United States Army first arrived in the region in 1894 and 1897, the Alaska-Yukon borderlands was largely a borderless region, with miners, merchants, and transportation companies crossing the unmarked Alaska-Yukon border without interference. As thousands of miners began rushing to the region during the fall of 1897, the efforts of the Mounted Police and the U.S. Army to control the situation transformed the Alaska-Yukon borderlands from a borderless to a bordered region. This process of remaking the Alaska-Yukon borderlands involved establishing government control in Alaska and the Yukon, developing transportation routes that linked the region to the North American industrial economy, and clarifying the location of the Alaska-Yukon border. The U.S. Army and the Mounted Police gathered information about a constantly changing situation, cooperated and negotiated with local transportation companies, miners, merchants, Canadian and American customs officials, and each other, and formed different understandings of the situation on the ground than their respective governments. By the end of 1899, the remaking of the Alaska-Yukon borderlands had created two separate but connected territories and a functional Alaska-Yukon border that allowed people and supplies to move across the border and the police and the army to enforce national sovereignty - just as international negotiators met to discuss the boundary question for the first time.
- ItemOpen Access"Rendezvous" for renewal at "Lake of the Great Spirit": the french pilgrimage and indigenous journey to Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, 1870-1896(2012-08-31) Buresi, Jessica Anne; Colpitts, GeorgeThe Lac Ste-Anne Pilgrimage is an Indigenous-Catholic gathering that takes place along the lake at Lac Ste-Anne, Alberta, seventy-five kilometres west of Edmonton, and continues to attract approximately 50, 000 pilgrims yearly, most of them of First Nations or Métis heritage. It was initiated on June 6, 1889, by Jean-Marie Lestanc, a Catholic father with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a congregation which originated in Marseilles, France. This thesis discusses the long history of both Catholic pilgrimage and aboriginal rendezvous traditions in France and Canada respectively, and addresses the complexity of conversion among North-Western Canadian indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century. It suggests that the event was borne of an implicit negotiation and compromise between the largely francophone Oblate fathers and the local First Nations and Métis peoples over the significance of Lac Ste-Anne, and the “nomadic” ritual journey needed to arrive there.