During the nineteenth-century, the writing of history in English-speaking Canada changed from promotional efforts by amateurs to an academically-based discipline. Professor Taylor charts this transition in a comprehensive history. The early historians - the promoters of the title - sought to further their own interests through exxagerated accounts of a particular colony to which they had developed a transient attachment. Eventually this group was replaced by patriots, whose writing was influenced by loyalty to the land of their brith and residence. This second generation of historians attempted both to defend their respective colonies by explaining away past disappointments and to fit events into a predicitve pattern of progress and development. In the process, they established distinctive identities for each of the British North American colonies. Eventually a confrontation occurred between those who saw Canada as a nation and those whose traditions and vistas were provincial in emphasis. Ultimately the former prevailed, only to find the present and future too complex and too ominous to understand. Historians ssubsequently lost their sense of purpose and direction and fell into partisan disagreement or pessimistic nostalgia. This abandonment of their role paved the way for the new, professional breed of historian as the twentieth century opened. In the course of his analysis, Taylor considers a number of key issues about the writing of history: the kind of people who undertake it and their motivation for doing so, the intended and actual effects of their work, its influence on subsequent historical writing, and the development of uniform and accepted standards of professional practice.

Settling and Unsettling Memories analyses the ways in which Canadians over the past century have narrated the story of their past in books, films, works of art, commemorative ceremonies, and online. This cohesive collection introduces readers to overarching themes of Canadian memory studies and brings them up-to-date on the latest advances in the field. With increasing debates surrounding how societies should publicly commemorate events and people, Settling and Unsettling Memories helps readers appreciate the challenges inherent in presenting the past. Prominent and emerging scholars explore the ways in which Canadian memory has been put into action across a variety of communities, regions, and time periods. Through high-quality essays touching on the central questions of historical consciousness and collective memory, this collection makes a significant contribution to a rapidly growing field.

Blodgett suggests that each of the several 'national' groups that compose Canada develops unique narratives that demonstrate their different responses to the notion of nationhood and their sense of place within Canada's borders.

The private and public lives of James David Edgar and Matilda Ridout Edgar symbolized the increasingly complex nature of Toronto society as older generations gradually gave way to a new generation of "outsiders" seeking fame and prominence. James David Edgar (1841-1899), a self-made man, born to proud though impoverished Scottish-immigrant parents in Quebec, became a lawyer, an author, a railway promoter, an M.P. and ultimately speaker of the House of Commons in Ottawa. Matilda Ridout Edgar (1845-1910) was one of Canada’s first widely respected female historians and ultimately president of the National Council of Women of Canada from 1906 until her death. This dual biography, revealed through the voices of James and Matilda, as expressed through correspondence, provides insights into 19th-century Canadian history, and presents a mutually supportive marital relationship, each encouraging professional fulfillment for the other – a stance surprising in this era of male dominance.

Showing that the past is often written into present concerns, and that many groups in Ontario, both powerful and disempowered, have invoked the experience of the Loyalists, Knowles significantly revises earlier interpretations of the Loyalist tradition.

This unique study draws on biographical dictionaries as a collective portrait of the emerging Canadian middle class in the last half of the nineteenth century. The works compiled by Henry James Morgan, George MacLean Rose, and William Cochrane, and published between 1862 and 1903, reveal not only the life-course patterns of "representative" Canadians, but personal and social motivations driving the selection process. The complex of occupation, mobility and opportunity, networking, the meaning of success, and contrasts between the representation of men and women, are analyzed with an eye to the "structure of feeling" that characterized Canadian culture and national consciousness in this period.The National Album is a major contribution to Canadian studies, particularly to the flourishing interest in biography and autobiography, and to the interdisciplinary field of historical sociology.

It conscripts historical events in a bid to guide shared memories into a coherent narrative that helps individuals negotiate their place in broader collective identities." "The contest over public memories involves an exclusiveness that packages "other" according to the ideological preferences of the dominant cultures. Gordon shows that in Montreal ethnic, class, and gender voices strove to stake their own claims to legitimacy."--BOOK JACKET.