The Pirate Archives, William Ready Division of Archives and research collections, McMaster University

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the history and contents of an archival resource that is of interest to scholars of historical marketing. The Pirate Group Inc. archive, held by McMaster University Library’s William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections consists of over 27,000 sound recordings and 84 metres of textual records, documenting the work of Pirate, an award-winning Toronto-based advertising company founded in 1990. The comprehensiveness of the archives, which includes tens of thousands of advertising “spots”, gives researchers unprecedented access to the creative forces behind some of the most memorable advertisements produced in Canada. Design/methodology/approach This paper aims to answer the following questions: what is the Pirate Group Inc. and what is their documentary legacy? How can scholars of marketing history benefit from the records contained within the Pirate Group Inc. archive? How can researchers access the material at McMaster University Library’s William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections? Findings The authors assert that the Pirate Group Inc. archive may be of particular interest to scholars engaged in research on the following topics: Canadian nationalism in marketing campaigns, the advertising history of companies whose histories are under-studied due to a lack of archival resources and the recent history of radio and television political ad campaigns. Originality/value The paper contributes to historical research in marketing by asserting that the Pirate Group Inc. archive has continuing value for further research. The Pirate archive, which allows for unprecedented access into the study of Canadian advertising due to its comprehensiveness and its uniqueness among archival collections from the contemporary era, makes it a strong primary source for marketing historians.

The Romance of Canada: Nationalism and Canadian Historiography

This is a short overview history of the relationship between Canadian historians and Canadian nationalism. It maps the historiography of Canadian nationalism against its significant manifestations in Canadian society and developments in nationalism scholarship internationally. Three conjunctures when the fate of the nation loomed large in Canadian historiography are featured. Evidence from the Canadian Historical Review (chr) is highlighted throughout, and, for each conjuncture, relevant articles from the chr are provided for further reading. In reflecting on this history, this article considers Canadian historians’ accomplishments and failures in understanding Canadian nationalism as well as the contemporary politics and praxis of their relationship with nation.

The Folk Fight Back: Protesting the Cancellation of Don Messer’s Jubilee in 1969

This article examines part of the reaction to the 1969 cancellation of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (cbc) television’s Don Messer’s Jubilee, one of the most popular Canadian-produced programs of the era. In addition to an exploration of television history and popular culture, it is also a look at the neglected topic of “square” Canada in the 1960s. Messer began fiddling at dances in rural New Brunswick in the 1920s and moved to radio and recording prior to becoming an unlikely national television star by 1961. After exploring possible classifications of the show’s music, the article explores themes in protest letters and petitions sent to the cbc. These included Canadian nationalism in opposition to American mass culture, Canadian folk culture, cbc elitism, Maritime regionalism, nostalgia, and the related themes of the generation gap and permissive society. The article concludes that fans viewed Messer as a custodian of Canadian folk culture that was being erased by the national broadcaster at a time of heightened nationalism.

Ambiguously Hip: The Tragically Hip and Canadian Nationalism

The Tragically Hip are a remarkable, indeed unique, phenomenon in Canadian popular music. Their 2016 final tour, undertaken after lead singer Gordon Downie was diagnosed with brain cancer, spectacularly reinforced longstanding perceptions of a privileged link between the band’s music and Canadian national identity. This article probes this connection, asking why deeply ambiguous and often critical references to Canada sufficed to raise The Hip to an extraordinary status as icons of Canadian nationalism. Drawing from theories of “banal” and “everyday” nationalism, it argues that, while The Hip’s work may legitimately be read as nationalist, Canada's position as a culturally peripheral nation is the key to explaining the incongruous appropriation of the Hip’s work for nationalist self-celebration. The discourse around The Tragically Hip, then, helps to illuminate some of the ways in which nationalism works in a culturally peripheral context.

The peculiarities of ideology of the first-wave feminist movement in Alberta: maternal feminism, Anglo-Canadian nationalism, and eugenics

This article examines certain ideological peculiarities of the first-wave feminist movement in the Canadian province of Alberta, and intertwinement of Anglo-Canadian nationalism, maternal feminism and eugenics in the ideological basis of the feminist movement in the early XX century. The author examines the fusion of the questions of gender and nationality in ideology of the feminist movement, and analyzes the formation and realization of a particular feminist agenda in Alberta, which was based on the specific ideology of maternal feminism. Paying special attention to similarity of the ideology and objectives of the Anglo-Canadian nationalistic and feminist movements in the province, the author notes the causes for rapid success of the feminist movement by pivotal goals of the agenda. The scientific novelty of this research is substantiated by the fact that the author is first within the Russian historiography to explore the intertwinement of nationality and gender in ideology of the feminist movement in Alberta. The conclusion is drawn on the interinfluence of Anglo-Canadian nationalism, maternal feminism and eugenics in the ideological basis of the first-wave feminist movement in Alberta, as well as placing in the agenda the question of equal rights of men and women as an important aspect in preservation of Anglo-Canadian ideals for the future generations in Alberta.

Representations of Surveillance and Perceptual Technologies at Military Museums

Drawing from fieldwork at military museums across Manitoba, Canada, we explore the objects and narratives used to curate museum displays featuring what Bousquet (2018) calls “military perception.” Using Bousquet’s categories of military perception to organize our analysis, we examine how these museums position scopes, sonars, camouflage, and other devices meant to create visibility or invisibility as aesthetic objects rather than as instruments enabling state violence. With a focus on curatorial strategies and the arrangement of objects at these museums, we explore how surveillance and camouflage displays are organized to minimize the harm that military interventions cause and align the affect of the viewer with the form of Canadian nationalism animating the museum and against “enemy” others and spaces, a process we refer to as encasement. In conclusion, we reflect on what our analysis adds to literature on military museums and representations of surveillance.

The Canadian Civil Wars of 1837–1838

Canadian historians have traditionally stressed that the rebellions of 1837 and 1838 in Upper and Lower Canada were revolts against British imperial authority. Less stressed has been the fact that the rebellions were also civil wars and that British troops were aided by substantial numbers of loyalists in defeating the rebels. In recent years historians have tended to downplay the importance of French-Canadian nationalism, but by 1837–8 the rebellion in Lower Canada was essentially a struggle between French-Canadian nationalists and a broadly-based coalition of loyalists in Lower Canada. Outside Lower Canada there was no widespread support for rebellion anywhere in British North America, except among a specific group of American immigrants and their descendants in Upper Canada. It is a myth that the rebellions can be explained as a division between the older-stock inhabitants of the Canadas and the newer arrivals. It is also a myth that the rebels in the two Canadas shared the same objectives in the long run and that the rebellions were part of a single phenomenon. French-Canadian nationalists wanted their own state; most of the republicans in Upper Canada undoubtedly believed that Upper Canada would become a state in the American Union. Annexation was clearly the motivation behind the Patriot Hunters in the United States, who have received an increasingly favourable press from borderland historians, despite the fact that they were essentially filibusters motivated by the belief that America had a manifest destiny to spread across the North American continent. Indeed, it was the failure of the rebellions that made Confederation possible in 1867.

Citizenship and Gender on the American and Canadian Home Fronts during the First and Second World Wars

This chapter analyzes the impact and consequences of the First and Second World Wars for the home fronts of Canada and the United States, with a particular focus on the definitions of and challenges to gendered systems of citizenship. Many Americans and Canadians actively claimed an expanded citizenship as a reward for their wartime service. However, that service brought imperatives for loyalty and national security that resulted in severe restrictions on civil liberties and citizenship in the name of national security during and after these conflicts. In the First World War, both nations designed programs and propaganda to define citizenship in the narrow confines of “100% Americanism” and “Canadian nationalism” at the expense of diversity and dissent, and they reflected notions of traditional gender roles and suspicion of those who did not follow such prescriptions. Gendered wartime citizenship in Canada and the United States during both world wars related directly to the home-front conceptions of armed conflict and war.