Brian S. Osborne

Constructing national identity in Canada's capital, 1900–2000: Confederation Square and the National War Memorial

Abstract Ottawas Confederation Square was initially planned to be a civic plaza to balance the nearby federal presence of Parliament Hill. A century of federal planning, with the direct involvement of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, repositioned it as a national space in the City Beautiful style. Recent renovations have improved its pedestrian amenity and restored much of the original plan by French urban designer Jacques Greber. The square contains the National War Memorial and the National Arts Centre, yet is a weak public space due to weak edge definition, animation, and spatial enclosure. The war memorial design was selected in a 1925 international competition won by Britains Vernon March. The Great War monument was not installed until the 1939 Royal visit, and Mackenzie King intended that the re-planning of the capital would be the World War II memorial. However, the symbolic meaning of the Great War monument gradually expanded to become the place of remembrance for all Canadian war sacrifices. The National War Memorial is more successful as a symbolic object than Confederation Square is as a public space, yet both have evolved into important elements of the Canadian capitals national identity.

Housing tenure and social classes in Kingston Ontario 1881–1901

Abstract Housing once again became the subject of political struggles and debates in many countries in the late nineteenth century. It is argued that these struggles may best be understood within the frame of reference of Marxist theory and, in particular, an interpretation of the significance of housing in terms of the production of wage labour as a class relation. From this perspective, attention is directed to the changing relationship between housing tenure and social class. Unfortunately, very little is known about this relationship over the period in question. We lack information on trends in home-ownership in particular and domestic property ownership in general. Furthermore, we lack information on the changing tenure characteristics of the urban populations of the time in relation to their developing class structure. This lack is especially apparent for Canada. On these questions we present evidence from Kingston, Ontario. We note a decline in homeownership which was experienced by all classes. In particular, however, we note a dramatic increase in absentee (as opposed to resident) landlordism. The origins and political effects of these trends may be understood in terms of the particular character of Kingston in the period. Unfortunately, however, it is impossible to define adequately this uniqueness in the absence of comparable research on other American and Canadian cities of the day. We conclude with a set of questions for future research.

Figuring space, marking time: Contested identities in Canada

Abstract Conflicting concepts of identity have long exercised the Canadian imagination. The central focus of this paper is the role of institutionalised memory in promoting centralist patriotic sentiments. The association between the development of a consciousness and knowledge of the nation is illustrated by the founding of the Canadian Club, the Champlain Society and the Canadian Geographical Society. Attention is also directed to Canadas Historic Sites and Monuments Board, founded in 1919. Throughout its 75‐year history, the HSMB has commemorated events, places and people of historical significance for Canada in some 1600 sites. As may be expected, there have been shifts in emphasis in the national meta‐narratives over time, as is also demonstrated by the recent Charles Richard Bronfman Foundations ‘Heritage Moments’. Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate a dynamic agenda of reconstituting national memory, national self‐knowledge, and national identity.

In the Shadows of Monuments: the British League for the Reconstruction of the Devastated Areas of France

Armed conflict destroys people and property but, for obvious reasons, human losses have received most attention, as have the ways in which we have commemorated them. The affect of the destruction of the lived-in landscape and people?s loss of their vernacular material worlds has been neglected. Yet artefacts and their associations are constitutive of place. Not only are they the material product of any community?s collective activities over time, they become important reference points in everyday life and mnemonic devices for contextualising the past and future. They serve to imbue localities with symbolic meanings. These ?landmarks? and ?lieux de me´moire? effect a rendezvous in place and time of the lived-in world with the collective memory. Moreover, their sudden loss can constitute a collective trauma for a community. This was certainly the world of the French civilian population displaced from their homes by the events of the Great War. One of the projects attempting to transform the ?shadowed ground? into a place of human congress and community was the British League for the Reconstruction of the Devastated Areas of France.

Commonlands, mineral rights and industry: changing evaluations in an industrializing society

Abstract This paper is concerned with a society experiencing significant change, an industrializing society. Throughout the South Wales coalfield in the second half of the eighteenth century, rural structures were being supplanted by urban-industrial structures, traditional modes of landuse were being dislocated by new enterprises and the former pastoral landscape was being invaded by the paraphernalia of mining and manufacturing. The old cultural region, “Blaenau Morgannwg” was being transmuted into the new cultural region, “The Valleys”. More particularly, this industrializing society experienced a significant change in the attitudes of landowners to their estates and also a change in both the mechanisms and intensity of control. With the recognition of the opportunities for industrial development, many lords evinced an increased concern for the integrity of their manorial perquisites, particularly those related to minerals and their access to them. The assertion of neglected rights, the institution of rigorous estate management and the prosecution of previously neglected abuses constituted a dislocation of local landuse practices and traditional ways of life. To some extent, the experience was similar to that of other areas experiencing increased industrial activities at this time, although the effect of certain local cultural influences may be recognized in the particulars of the response. The specific focus of this study is on the important roles which manorial wastes were to play in these new industrial enterprises. Whereas in the past the wastes had been but peripheral elements of the total estate economy, the industrial demand for minerals, fuel and land occasioned a radical reappraisal of their contribution. Many studies have considered encroachments and enclosure in the context of agricultural systems but it is argued here that in certain parts of Britain, industrial considerations were of paramount importance. The primary challenge to the very existence of manorial wastes and commons, the Enclosure Movement, was contemporaneous with the initial stages of the industrialization of this region. But rather than expediting the elimination of these lands, several factors caused manorial wastelands and commons to bulk large in the early industrialization of the South Wales coalfield. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to attempt a better understanding of the impact of industrialization upon the wastelands of the South Wales coalfield and of the society formerly dependent upon them. Particular attention will be focused upon the way in which this process affected the attitudes of the various interested parties towards mineral rights, encroachments and parliamentary enclosure, and which in turn required reappraisals of a way of life by an old social order.

COMMENT ON: “THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER ON THE WEST: SIXTEENTH-CENTURY BELORUSSIA”

(1989). COMMENT ON: “THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER ON THE WEST: SIXTEENTH-CENTURY BELORUSSIA”. Soviet Geography: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 197-206.