First Report of Laurel Wilt Disease Caused by Raffaelea lauricola on Sassafras in Virginia

Laurel wilt is a lethal vascular disease affecting native Lauraceae in North America. The causal fungus, Raffaelea lauricola T.C. Harr., Fraedrich & Aghayeva and its symbiont, redbay ambrosia beetle, Xyleborus glabratus Eichhoff are native to Asia (Fraedrich et al. 2008, Harrington et al. 2008). Since their introduction near Savannah, Georgia in 2002 (Fraedrich et al. 2008), laurel wilt has spread rapidly, resulting in extensive mortality of native redbay (Persea borbonia [L.] Spreng.) [Hughes et al. 2017] and is a threat to other native Lauraceae, such as sassafras (Sassafras albidum [Nutt.] Nees) (Bates et al. 2013) and northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin [L.] Blume) [Olatinwo et al. 2021]. In June 2021 a sassafras sapling showing wilt and dieback was observed along a roadside in Scott County, Virginia, which borders a laurel wilt-positive Tennessee county (Loyd et al. 2020). The trunk (approximately 5 cm diameter) was submitted to the Virginia Tech Plant Clinic. Although beetle holes were observed, X. glabratus was not found. Discolored sapwood chips were excised and plated on malt extract agar amended with cycloheximide (200 ppm) and streptomycin (100 ppm) [CSMA]. A fungus was consistently recovered and the morphology of conidiophores and conidia, and presence of blastoconidia and mucoid growth, aligned with the description of R. lauricola (Harrington et al. 2008). Two R. lauricola-specific primer sets (Dreaden et al. 2014) were used to amplify DNA extracted from a representative isolate (0248-2021) and confirm R. lauricola. For further confirmation, the LSU region of the rDNA was sequenced (Lloyd et al. 2020). The sequence of the isolate (GenBank accession no. OL583842) showed 100% identity (573/573 bp) to R. lauricola ex-type strain sequence, CBS 121567 (accession no. MH877762) (Harrington et al. 2008, Vu et al. 2018). The isolate was also confirmed by the National Identification Services by sequencing. To confirm pathogenicity, 15 sassafras seedlings (height = 60-100 cm, diameter = 8-10 mm) were inoculated with a conidial suspension harvested from 10-day CSMA cultures of 0248-2021, as follows: two 0.4 mm diameter holes were drilled 10 cm above the soil line at a 45° angle on opposite sides of the stem, leaving at least 3 cm between holes. Ten µl of the conidial suspension (5 x 107/ml) was transferred into each hole and sealed with parafilm. Two sassafras seedlings were inoculated with sterile water. Seedlings were maintained with 12 h photoperiod at 27° ± 2° C. Off-color foliage and loss of turgor were observed 10 days post-inoculation on conidia-inoculated seedlings; at two weeks, these were completely wilted and had sapwood discoloration. Water-inoculated plants showed no symptoms. Sapwood from 15 cm above the inoculation point was excised from 0248-2021-inoculated plants (n=2) and water-inoculated plants (n=1) and plated on CSMA. R. lauricola was recovered from symptomatic plants, but not from water-inoculated plants. The identity of the recovered fungus was confirmed with two species-specific primers sets (Dreaden et al. 2014). It is likely that laurel wilt is more prevalent in the area of the roadside find. Both sassafras and northern spicebush are widespread in Virginia and their range extends into the northeastern US and lower Canada. Laurel wilt poses a serious threat to these species and their ecosystems. For example, spicebush and sassafras are primary hosts of the native spicebush swallowtail butterfly (Papilio troilus L.) [Nitao et al. 1991].

Loyalty to the Regime: Prominent Men, Militia and French-Canadian Identity through the 1812 War

In the North American British colonies, the 1812 war led to a great mobilization of militia corps to protect the Empire’s possessions. For colonial authorities, such context represented an opportunity to measure local militia officers’ loyalty to the Crown, particularly those who resided in the French traditional countryside. What can we understand of the French-Canadian involvement in the War of 1812 as officers? What is the impact of their relation to the Crown on their capacity to hold on to positions in their respective communities? By bringing to life a few case studies, this paper wishes to examine the formation of the French-Canadian identity through the involvement of local elites in the militia. This study is based on an analysis of the correspondence of the principal officers of the battalions with the central authorities and prosopographical research of those same officers in the rural regions of Lower Canada. The analysis of the strategies, values and interests of the militia officers, will serve to enlighten the parameters of the collaboration between the local elite and the colonial elite.

Settling and 'selling' Canada's West : the role of immigration

This major research paper explores the promotional immigration material created by the Department of Agriculture during Sir John A. Macdonald's time as Prime Minister and within the context of western migration. The paper begins by examining the historiography of Canadian western expansion and continues by exploring the idea of western development as espoused by the business elites in Upper and Lower Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald's National Policy, which focused on increased tariffs, the completion of a transnational railway, and immigration are explored as well. Many attribute the active promotion of Canada to Europeans overseas with Clifford Sifton and the Laurier government. Sifton is known for having envisioned an agricultural paradise in western Canada and the idea of attracting hardworking peasant farmers, yet the contents of the promotional materials produced by the Department of Agriculture contain the same themes.

Settling and 'selling' Canada's West : the role of immigration

This major research paper explores the promotional immigration material created by the Department of Agriculture during Sir John A. Macdonald's time as Prime Minister and within the context of western migration. The paper begins by examining the historiography of Canadian western expansion and continues by exploring the idea of western development as espoused by the business elites in Upper and Lower Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald's National Policy, which focused on increased tariffs, the completion of a transnational railway, and immigration are explored as well. Many attribute the active promotion of Canada to Europeans overseas with Clifford Sifton and the Laurier government. Sifton is known for having envisioned an agricultural paradise in western Canada and the idea of attracting hardworking peasant farmers, yet the contents of the promotional materials produced by the Department of Agriculture contain the same themes.

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.

Violent Loyalties

Upper and Lower Canada were parts of the Irish Diaspora that presented strong representations of Irish masculinities and deeply-held beliefs about Irish manliness in the decades prior to the Great Irish Famine. While histories of the famine and of the Irish in Canada in the second half of the nineteenth century continue to garner important attention and scholarship, the aim of this history is to relate and reposition the stories of earlier Irish male migrants to the Canadas so that their gendered, violent, and loyal experiences can take their place within the larger story of gender and migration across the Irish Diaspora. Using various case studies from the period of 1798 until 1841, this book argues that Irishmen living in the Canadas were the subject of a vast array of manly constructions and representations. Their involvement in creating, sustaining, or destroying these images and stereotypes had lasting positive and negative effects depending upon one’s position within colonial society. For those who prospered because of how Irish manliness was seen and understood, the themes of gender, violence, and loyalty were part of how they embedded themselves within the fabric of the Canadian colonies and the wider British Empire. For those who were treated poorly because of presumptions made about their manhood, their capacity for violence, or their Irish ethnicity, the Canadas could be an unfriendly and dismissive space. ‘Irishness’ in this period was experienced and defined very differently by individual Irishmen and by the collective fraternities they embodied.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this book re-examines the thematic interplay between gender, violence, and loyalty in shaping evaluations of Irish manliness and constructions of Irish masculinities in Upper and Lower Canada in the first half of the nineteenth century. It questions why Canadian examples of a gendered Irish Diaspora have not gained as much traction as those from colonial Australia or nineteenth century America. The chapter reasserts how the book as a whole has added to various historiographic and gendered debates and emphasises that using a gendered paradigm in concert with cultural analyses of violence and loyalty can weaken predominant local, national, and imperial myths. It closes by asserting that violent Irishmen very much existed in the Canadas. While they did not represent a majority of their countrymen in the colonies, they did represent important aspects of Irish Canadian masculinities that have been underplayed or ignored in national and diasporic histories.