Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History
Description
Through insightful essays, Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History challenges the national myths that celebrate Canada’s inclusivity, frame this country as a global human rights leader, and minimize persistent inequalities at home. Contributors to this volume critically examine how Canadian citizens and governments have historically understood and mobilized human rights, as well as who has fought for, benefitted from, and been excluded from them.
Spanning topics such as incarceration and criminalization, women’s rights, labour movements, Indigenous sovereignty, grassroots activism, immigration, and foreign policy, this collection reflects the diversity of research driving the rapidly developing field of human rights. Both a timely intervention and call to mobilize for social justice, Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History offers a nuanced reassessment of Canada’s history and historiography of human rights.
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Persons
Jennifer Tunnicliffe is a human rights historian with a particular interest in how domestic and transnational activism shapes cultural attitudes and legislative approaches to rights and freedoms. She teaches in the department of History at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Stephanie Bangarth is a Professor in History at King’s University College, at the University of Western Ontario. She teaches courses on human rights advocacy and history in Canada and the United States and immigrant experience in North America.
Content
Introduction by Jennifer Tunnicliffe and Stephanie Bangarth
Chapter 1. Reflections: Current Trends in Historical Writing on Human Rights in Canada by James W.St.G. Walker
Part I. Human Rights for Whom?
Chapter 2. A Child's Right to be Civilised? Human Rights, Children's Rights, and Indigenous Rights by Jasmine Holding Brown
Chapter 3. Whose Rights Count? Antiracist Activists, Feminists, and Canada's Human Rights Codes from the early 1950s to the early 1970s by Ruth A. Frager
Chapter 4. On the Edge of Freedom: The Re-enslavement of Elizabeth Watson in Nova Scotia by Franco Paz and Harvey Amani Whitfield
Part II. Incarceration, Criminalization, and Human Rights in Canada
Chapter 5. Internment is a Family Affair: One Pro-Communist Ukrainian-Jewish Extended Family’s Experiences with Political Incarceration in World War II Canada by Rhonda L. Hinther
Chapter 6. “Injurious Effects on Mind and Body”: Solitary Confinement and the Limitations of Rights in Canadian Penitentiaries by Janet Miron
Chapter 7. Performative Justice? Canada’s Response to Alleged War Criminals in the Country, the Case of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration v. Vladimir Katriuk by Katelyn Arac
Part III. Human Rights Activists and Activism in Canada
Chapter 8. The Battle of Church Street: Queers, Police, and the Streets of Toronto, 1981 by Tom Hooper
Chapter 9. From Demanding Exclusion to Joining the Human Rights Community: Labour, Human Rights, and Immigration Policy in 1940s Canada by David Goutor
Chapter 10. Universal Rights in Local Contexts: Postwar Human Rights Debates in Quebec (1945–60) by Paul-Etienne Rainville
Chapter 11. Native Non-Governmental Organizations: Grassroots Constructions of Aboriginal Human Rights in Canada by María Cristina Manzano-Munguía, Dan Smoke, and Mary Lou Smoke
Part IV. Canada, Foreign Policy, and Transnational Human Rights Approaches
Chapter 12. Inside Out: The Rights Revolution and Canadian Foreign Policy since 1948 by Asa McKercher
Chapter 13. “Eyes on the Prize”: Canada, Human Rights, and South African Apartheid in the Transition Years by Daniel Manulak
Chapter 14. Pacific Flows: Asia, Canada, and Human Rights Norms Diffusion by David Webster