Reading List: Canada Day 2022

July 1^st is Canada Day. While it is traditionally a holiday in honour of Canadian Confederation, the meaning of Canada Day has evolved amidst more accurate understandings of the country’s history. Not only a day of celebration, Canada Day also allows the time and space for learning, reflection, and remembrance. A day dedicated to Confederation calls for the acknowledgement of the history of colonialism on which the country was founded, as well as the ongoing process of reconciliation.

This year for Canada Day, we have compiled a reading list of recently published books that explore Canadian issues by centering the histories, experiences, and treatment of marginalized groups in the country.

The Racial Mosaic
A Pre-history of Canadian Multiculturalism

By Daniel R. Meister

The Racial Mosaic demonstrates how – despite the apparent tolerance of a variety of immigrant peoples and their cultures – cultural pluralism in Canada was founded upon, and easily coexisted with, settler colonialism and racism. A unique look at how Canadians thought about diversity before multiculturalism became official policy, it compels readers to consider how racism has structured Canada’s settler-colonial society.

Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice
The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case

By Kent Roach

In August 2016 Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice Kent Roach critically reconstructs the Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie case to examine how it may be a miscarriage of justice. The book provides valuable insight into criminal justice, racism, and the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Harriet’s Legacies
Race, Historical Memory, and Futures in Canada

Edited by Ronald Cummings and Natalee Caple

Harriet’s Legacies articulates new critical terrain for the historic freedom fighter Harriet Tubman by recuperating the significance of Tubman’s time in Canada as not just an interlude in her American narrative but another site for thinking about Black diasporic mobilities, possibilities, and histories, placing these narratives within a transnational and transatlantic framework.

Mass Capture
Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens

By Lily Cho

Mass Capture argues that the CI 9 documents implemented by the Canadian government as a means of acquiring information on Chinese migrants functioned as a form of surveillance – a process of mass capture that produced non-citizens. Cho reveals CI 9s as more than documents of racist repression: they offer possibilities for beauty and dignity in the archive, for captivation as well as capture.

Royally Wronged
The Royal Society of Canada and Indigenous Peoples

Edited by Constance Backhouse, Cynthia E. Milton, Margaret Kovach and Adele Perry

Written primarily by current Royal Society of Canada members, these essays explore the historical contribution of the RSC to the production of ideas and policies that shored up white settler privilege, underpinning the disastrous interaction between Indigenous peoples and white settlers. Royally Wronged poses difficult questions about what is required to move meaningfully toward reconciliation.