In 1947 the federal government of Canada began a program to move European Displaced Persons (DP) out of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) camps in Germany and Austria. This program, designed to fill chronic labour shortages in Canada’s resource industries and contribute to a solution for Europe’s refugee crisis, occurred in a transitional moment in Canadian society. Canadians emerged from World War Two with a new sense of Canada’s role in the world, but despite a changed international climate, a new discourse of human rights and a potentially robust economy, old perceptions of race, immigration and economic management lingered in the postwar years complicating the work of a new generation of civil servants, politicians and industry operators. This is a history of the transition. It demonstrates the ways that old and new ideas of the nation, citizenship, race and immigration co-existed. It highlights the significance of the beginnings of a debate on the elimination of discrimination based on race in Canada’s immigration policy; shows the link between economic prosperity and popular support for immigration; and demonstrates the importance of individuals within industry, the civil service and in government in national decision-making. This is an international history, spanning the Atlantic and bringing a global perspective to local experience in Canadian industries. Chapters on the federal decision making process are supplemented by evidence from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the IRO, the Ontario Ministry of Education and forestry, mining and hydro industries. It uses a variety of methodologies including policy history, oral history, public opinion polling, gender, ethnicity and labour studies to investigate the implications of these decisions for Canadian society. It demonstrates that the 1947-1951 movement of DPs was initiated primarily under dual pressure from Canadians who had served abroad and industry leaders who had previously used POW labour to solve on going shortages in the bush. These decisions were strongly informed by both the crisis in Europe and Canadian assumptions about race, labour and citizenship. By examining the expectations Canadians had for the behaviour of its newest arrivals and future citizens this study highlights the foundations of Canadian citizenship in 1947: community participation, contribution to the development of the economy, and political loyalty to the nation.

This dissertation examines how social inequalities are reinforced over time and in place by addressing a central question: How are power relations maintained and reproduced in space? I outline ways in which social networks contributed to the reproduction of social and economic power in early twentieth-century Toronto. I also pay particular attention to the ways in which particular spaces acted as a nexus for the reproduction of power and unequal social relations. My research captures the dynamism and complexity of social capital networks that stretched across space. These networks demonstrate that Toronto’s Anglo elite and Italian entrepreneurs lived in a world where persons interacted over a number of regions and scales. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in social capital, network and social boundary research. Although this dissertation is largely concerned with early twentieth-century Toronto class and power relations, the results have implications beyond this case study. This research makes a significant contribution to historical geography by providing scholars interested in contemporary power relations and social networks with an empirically rich historical perspective. This study extends previous examinations of social inequality by examining how power relations were reproduced over time and through space. I analyze how social capital can be conceptualized as set of processes that is 1) integral to the acquisition of economic capital, 2) significant in constraining the action of others by redrawing the social boundaries of class and ethnicity, and 3) critical for the building of alliances across space. This research offers a complementary method to the inequality studies of David Ward, Joe Darden, Nan Lin, Richard Harris, James Barrett, and David Harvey by historically situating questions about the reproduction of social inequality through the examination of social networks.

Six Nations women transformed and maintained power in the Grand River community in the early twentieth century. While no longer matrilineal or matrilocal, and while women no longer had effective political power neither as clan mothers, nor as voters or councillors in the post-1924 elective Council system, women did have authority in the community. During this period, women effected change through various methods that were both new and traditional for Six Nations women. Their work was also similar to non-Native women in Ontario. Education was key to women’s authority at Grand River. Six Nations women became teachers in great numbers during this period, and had some control over the education of children in their community. Children were taught Anglo-Canadian gender roles; girls were educated to be mothers and homemakers, and boys to be farmers and breadwinners. Children were also taught to be loyal British subjects and to maintain the tradition of alliance with Britain that had been established between the Iroquois and the English in the seventeenth century. With the onset of the Great War in 1914, Six Nations men and women responded with gendered patriotism, again, in ways that were both similar to Anglo-Canadians, and in ways that were similar to traditional Iroquois responses to war; men fought and women provided support on the home-front. Women’s patriotic work at home led to increased activity in the post-war period on the reserve. Six Nations women made use of social reform organizations and voluntary associations to make improvements in their community, particularly after the War. The Women’s Institutes were especially popular because they were malleable, practical, and useful for rural women’s needs. Women exerted power through these organizations, and effected positive change on the reserve.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada sought “desirable” immigrants to “settle” the Northwest. At the same time, nearly eight thousand members of the Dukhobori (commonly transliterated as “Doukhobors” and translated as “Spirit Wrestlers”) sought refuge from escalating religious persecution perpetrated by Russian church and state authorities. Initially, the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada in 1899 seemed to satisfy the needs of host and newcomer alike. Both parties soon realized, however, that the Doukhobors’ transition would prove more difficult than anticipated. The Doukhobors’ collective memory of persecution negatively influenced their perception of state interventions in their private affairs. In addition, their expectation that they would be able to preserve their ethno-religious identity on their own terms clashed with Canadian expectations that they would soon integrate into the Canadian mainstream. This study focuses on the historical evolution of the “Doukhobor problem” in Russia and in Canada. It argues that the “problem,” commonly misunderstood by political and legal authorities as a law-and-order issue, was actually an extended identity struggle, both among Doukhobors of opposed factions, and between Doukhobors and state authorities in Russia and in Canada who insisted on conformity to social, economic, legal, and political “norms.” It uses the Doukhobors’ historical experience in Canada to showcase a wide spectrum of possible “newcomer” responses to the Canadian “host” society, drawing attention to subtleties which may be missed in the study of less extreme cases. Using orally articulated collective memory narratives and print journalism sources to access Doukhobor and Canadian identity perceptions, this study argues that newcomers’ impact on Canadian identity definitions predated the multicultural shift of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By pointing out the way in which immigrants such as the Doukhobors did, or did not, conform to (Anglo-) Canadian “norms” in public discourse, Canadians articulated their national identity perceptions in the early decades of the twentieth century. This study concludes that the “Doukhobor problem” could only be solved when the contested identity narratives and collective memories which were at the root of the Doukhobors’ discontent were publicly addressed in “truth and reconciliation” style symposia called in the 1970s and 1980s.

This thesis locates John G. Diefenbaker’s electoral triumphs in the general elections of 1957 and 1958 and his subsequent world tour within the context of the revival of Conservative nationalism in the postwar period. To make his case against a Liberal government that had been in power for twenty-two years, Diefenbaker had to engage the public in a response to political events based on an appreciation of an abstract and not quite palpable threat to democracy and a national way of life. He did so by harnessing the persuasive techniques of public relations and the new medium of television—a powerful combination that Diefenbaker knew could most effectively tell and sell a national narrative. The signature he settled on was the “New National Policy.” The choice harkened back to a discourse of Conservative nationalism that spoke of the antiquity of his party ideology and rediscovered the heroes who founded the nation. The “New National Policy” was a therapeutic ethos designed to assuage voters’ fears about mass consumption, continentalism, communism, and the end of empire: it ensured that the greatness of events and men of the past could guarantee the ideas and values of the present; it was gendered in its construction of patriotic manhood, exalted motherhood, and icons of nationalist ideology; it was transnational in scope; it told of a relation of cause-and-effect that resembled a theory of history more than a blueprint for public policy; it was fashioned to disarm critical analysis because it conformed to the structures and traditions of storytelling and the clichés of historical memory. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that the systems of values and meanings on which Diefenbaker drew cannot be understood by analyzing his personal foibles or tracing his rise and fall through a series of events. Partisan narratives are built out of the dialectical interchange between warring political ideologies and are stories fitted to character, circumstance, and experience. Second, it suggests that Diefenbaker was a transitional figure whose vision, message, leadership style, and public relations campaign seemed to best fit the barely discernable dimensions of the political and cultural change of the immediate postwar decades. Finally, by examining resurgence of Conservative nationalism in the context of imperial decline, it seeks to show that partisan narratives in English Canada in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger transnational contexts in which they emerged.

In 1947 the federal government of Canada began a program to move European Displaced Persons (DP) out of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) camps in Germany and Austria. This program, designed to fill chronic labour shortages in Canada’s resource industries and contribute to a solution for Europe’s refugee crisis, occurred in a transitional moment in Canadian society. Canadians emerged from World War Two with a new sense of Canada’s role in the world, but despite a changed international climate, a new discourse of human rights and a potentially robust economy, old perceptions of race, immigration and economic management lingered in the postwar years complicating the work of a new generation of civil servants, politicians and industry operators. This is a history of the transition. It demonstrates the ways that old and new ideas of the nation, citizenship, race and immigration co-existed. It highlights the significance of the beginnings of a debate on the elimination of discrimination based on race in Canada’s immigration policy; shows the link between economic prosperity and popular support for immigration; and demonstrates the importance of individuals within industry, the civil service and in government in national decision-making. This is an international history, spanning the Atlantic and bringing a global perspective to local experience in Canadian industries. Chapters on the federal decision making process are supplemented by evidence from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the IRO, the Ontario Ministry of Education and forestry, mining and hydro industries. It uses a variety of methodologies including policy history, oral history, public opinion polling, gender, ethnicity and labour studies to investigate the implications of these decisions for Canadian society. It demonstrates that the 1947-1951 movement of DPs was initiated primarily under dual pressure from Canadians who had served abroad and industry leaders who had previously used POW labour to solve on going shortages in the bush. These decisions were strongly informed by both the crisis in Europe and Canadian assumptions about race, labour and citizenship. By examining the expectations Canadians had for the behaviour of its newest arrivals and future citizens this study highlights the foundations of Canadian citizenship in 1947: community participation, contribution to the development of the economy, and political loyalty to the nation.

This dissertation examines how social inequalities are reinforced over time and in place by addressing a central question: How are power relations maintained and reproduced in space? I outline ways in which social networks contributed to the reproduction of social and economic power in early twentieth-century Toronto. I also pay particular attention to the ways in which particular spaces acted as a nexus for the reproduction of power and unequal social relations. My research captures the dynamism and complexity of social capital networks that stretched across space. These networks demonstrate that Toronto’s Anglo elite and Italian entrepreneurs lived in a world where persons interacted over a number of regions and scales. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in social capital, network and social boundary research. Although this dissertation is largely concerned with early twentieth-century Toronto class and power relations, the results have implications beyond this case study. This research makes a significant contribution to historical geography by providing scholars interested in contemporary power relations and social networks with an empirically rich historical perspective. This study extends previous examinations of social inequality by examining how power relations were reproduced over time and through space. I analyze how social capital can be conceptualized as set of processes that is 1) integral to the acquisition of economic capital, 2) significant in constraining the action of others by redrawing the social boundaries of class and ethnicity, and 3) critical for the building of alliances across space. This research offers a complementary method to the inequality studies of David Ward, Joe Darden, Nan Lin, Richard Harris, James Barrett, and David Harvey by historically situating questions about the reproduction of social inequality through the examination of social networks.

Six Nations women transformed and maintained power in the Grand River community in the early twentieth century. While no longer matrilineal or matrilocal, and while women no longer had effective political power neither as clan mothers, nor as voters or councillors in the post-1924 elective Council system, women did have authority in the community. During this period, women effected change through various methods that were both new and traditional for Six Nations women. Their work was also similar to non-Native women in Ontario. Education was key to women’s authority at Grand River. Six Nations women became teachers in great numbers during this period, and had some control over the education of children in their community. Children were taught Anglo-Canadian gender roles; girls were educated to be mothers and homemakers, and boys to be farmers and breadwinners. Children were also taught to be loyal British subjects and to maintain the tradition of alliance with Britain that had been established between the Iroquois and the English in the seventeenth century. With the onset of the Great War in 1914, Six Nations men and women responded with gendered patriotism, again, in ways that were both similar to Anglo-Canadians, and in ways that were similar to traditional Iroquois responses to war; men fought and women provided support on the home-front. Women’s patriotic work at home led to increased activity in the post-war period on the reserve. Six Nations women made use of social reform organizations and voluntary associations to make improvements in their community, particularly after the War. The Women’s Institutes were especially popular because they were malleable, practical, and useful for rural women’s needs. Women exerted power through these organizations, and effected positive change on the reserve.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada sought “desirable” immigrants to “settle” the Northwest. At the same time, nearly eight thousand members of the Dukhobori (commonly transliterated as “Doukhobors” and translated as “Spirit Wrestlers”) sought refuge from escalating religious persecution perpetrated by Russian church and state authorities. Initially, the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada in 1899 seemed to satisfy the needs of host and newcomer alike. Both parties soon realized, however, that the Doukhobors’ transition would prove more difficult than anticipated. The Doukhobors’ collective memory of persecution negatively influenced their perception of state interventions in their private affairs. In addition, their expectation that they would be able to preserve their ethno-religious identity on their own terms clashed with Canadian expectations that they would soon integrate into the Canadian mainstream. This study focuses on the historical evolution of the “Doukhobor problem” in Russia and in Canada. It argues that the “problem,” commonly misunderstood by political and legal authorities as a law-and-order issue, was actually an extended identity struggle, both among Doukhobors of opposed factions, and between Doukhobors and state authorities in Russia and in Canada who insisted on conformity to social, economic, legal, and political “norms.” It uses the Doukhobors’ historical experience in Canada to showcase a wide spectrum of possible “newcomer” responses to the Canadian “host” society, drawing attention to subtleties which may be missed in the study of less extreme cases. Using orally articulated collective memory narratives and print journalism sources to access Doukhobor and Canadian identity perceptions, this study argues that newcomers’ impact on Canadian identity definitions predated the multicultural shift of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By pointing out the way in which immigrants such as the Doukhobors did, or did not, conform to (Anglo-) Canadian “norms” in public discourse, Canadians articulated their national identity perceptions in the early decades of the twentieth century. This study concludes that the “Doukhobor problem” could only be solved when the contested identity narratives and collective memories which were at the root of the Doukhobors’ discontent were publicly addressed in “truth and reconciliation” style symposia called in the 1970s and 1980s.

This thesis locates John G. Diefenbaker’s electoral triumphs in the general elections of 1957 and 1958 and his subsequent world tour within the context of the revival of Conservative nationalism in the postwar period. To make his case against a Liberal government that had been in power for twenty-two years, Diefenbaker had to engage the public in a response to political events based on an appreciation of an abstract and not quite palpable threat to democracy and a national way of life. He did so by harnessing the persuasive techniques of public relations and the new medium of television—a powerful combination that Diefenbaker knew could most effectively tell and sell a national narrative. The signature he settled on was the “New National Policy.” The choice harkened back to a discourse of Conservative nationalism that spoke of the antiquity of his party ideology and rediscovered the heroes who founded the nation. The “New National Policy” was a therapeutic ethos designed to assuage voters’ fears about mass consumption, continentalism, communism, and the end of empire: it ensured that the greatness of events and men of the past could guarantee the ideas and values of the present; it was gendered in its construction of patriotic manhood, exalted motherhood, and icons of nationalist ideology; it was transnational in scope; it told of a relation of cause-and-effect that resembled a theory of history more than a blueprint for public policy; it was fashioned to disarm critical analysis because it conformed to the structures and traditions of storytelling and the clichés of historical memory. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that the systems of values and meanings on which Diefenbaker drew cannot be understood by analyzing his personal foibles or tracing his rise and fall through a series of events. Partisan narratives are built out of the dialectical interchange between warring political ideologies and are stories fitted to character, circumstance, and experience. Second, it suggests that Diefenbaker was a transitional figure whose vision, message, leadership style, and public relations campaign seemed to best fit the barely discernable dimensions of the political and cultural change of the immediate postwar decades. Finally, by examining resurgence of Conservative nationalism in the context of imperial decline, it seeks to show that partisan narratives in English Canada in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger transnational contexts in which they emerged.