The CHA Journal is awarded every year for the best essay published each year in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association. The adjudication committee consists of the editorial board and a representative from the CHA Council, assisted by comments received through the peer review process.

Best Article Winners

2009

Kathryn Harvey. “Location, Location, Location: David Ross McCord and the Makings of Canadian History.”

This  study of the McCord National Museum in Montreal examines the role of place in the creation of personal and public memory.  The founder, David Ross McCord, sought to promote a version of Canadian history in which family and personal myth were conflated with that of nation.   McCord’s highly personal narrative of Canadian origins was conceived in the private space of the home and was made manifest through the repetitive act of remembering.

Mark Meyers.  “‘Your brain is no longer you own!’: Mass Media, Secular Religion, and Cultural Crisis in Third Republic France.”  Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 2007.

Mark Meyers’ cogently argued article "‘Your brain is no longer your own!’: Mass Media, Secular Religion, and Cultural Crisis in Third Republic France," is a sophisticated and complex study of interwar French culture. While much literature has focused on the political, economic, and social challenges to the Republic, few have delved into the cultural challenges mounted by sectarian changes as represented by technological and scientific ‘advances’. In the paper Meyers studies a startling array of links between collective behaviour, hypnotic suggestion, and ‘religiosity’ and does so in an imaginative way.  In doing so, the connections between the present and the past are underscored to reveal the ambiguity of terms often used by historians to delineate this period.

Ryan C. Eyford.  “Quarantined Within a New colonial Order. The 1876-77 Lake Winnipeg Smallpox Epidemic".  Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 2005.

Ryan’s C. Eyford’s beautifully written paper, “Quarantined Within a New Colonial Order: The 1876-77 Lake Winnipeg Smallpox Epidemic,” brings together the themes of colonization, settlement, and the dispossession of Aboriginal people in western Canadian history.  Theoretically sophisticated, it was deemed an “important” work by reviewers.  Eyford traces the intricate relations between the Aboriginals, Icelandic settlers, and the federal government during a devastating epidemic, in which government management allowed the Icelanders to colonize the area in a way that denied Aboriginal land claims.  Taking an apparently ‘small’ story, Eyford has created a model of analysis that will serve other historians of immigrant/Aboriginal relations well.

John Sandlos. “Federal Spaces, Local Conflicts: National Parks and the Exclusionary Politics of the Conservation Movement in Ontario, 1900-1935". Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 2004.

Professor John Sandlos has written an engaging and thought-provoking article on Canadian national parks and the conservation movement in Ontario during the early 1900s. Making use of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Professor Sandlos demonstrates the complex interaction between federal and provincial officials, organizations, local commercial and recreational interests, squatters and aboriginal hunters in creating and developing these spaces. Using Point Pelee and Georgian Bay Islands National Parks as models, the result is an engaging examination of parks policy that encourages readers to look at these deliberations from the perspective of a ‘policy community’; that is, a construct that accounts for state and local actors in formulating a regulatory regime.

Kevin Kee. Bobby Sox to Bach: Charles Templeton and the Commodification of Popular Protestantism in the Postwar Era. Journal of the CHA, 2004.

This papers focus on popular religion is a valuable counterbalance to the tendency to emphasize church leadership, and its emphasis on the post-Second World War era addresses an era not extensively covered by historians. The essay also provides valuable insights into Charles Templeton, a relatively well-known figure, but one who is not as well understood in terms of his role in popular religion in Canada. Most important, the authors thesis convincingly challenges the prevailing wisdom of the role of Christianity in modern Canada, and undoubtedly will be the subject of future debate.

Whitney Lackenbauer. The Methodological Challenge of non-Events: A Reflection Using Comparative Case Studies on Military-Aboriginal Relations Over Land Use in Twentieth-Century Canada. Journal of the CHA, 2003.

This paper successfully intertwines local history, Native history, and the Canadian experience during the Second World War. It challenges accepted interpretations and presents a nuanced interpretation of motivations within the aboriginal community and among federal government officials. The paper serves as a reminder that historians should embrace complexity in historical events, and presents a striking example of what can be achieved through using this approach.

James Opp, "Re-imaging the Moral Order of Urban Space: Religion and Photography in Winnipeg, 1900-1914", vol. 13 (2002): 73-93

In this innovative paper, James Opp provides a fresh perspective on urban reform and the Social Gospel in Canada through an examination of the photographs used by social gospelers in Winnipeg in their efforts to create a "scientific" representation of social problems. In his analysis, the author quite literally invites us to see the period in a new way.

Marlene Epp, "Pioneers, Refugees, Exiles, and Transnationals: Gendering Diaspora in an Ethno-Religious Context", vol. 12 (2001): 137-53.

In this innovative paper, Marlene Epp combines general theorizing about diaspora with the personal, immediate, and specific technique of story-telling to examine the lived experiences of four Mennonite women and assess the nature of identity among migrant peoples. She shows how notions of diaspora help to illuminate womens experiences, while at the same time showing that a study of gender can help to enrich our understanding of diaspora. In the process, she also challenges the collective myths of the Mennonites themselves (and some historians) to propose that the key elements of these womens identities were not religion or ethnicity, but rather the lived experience of transnationality itself, and their experience of place in patriarchal systems, including their own families. Both historiographically and methodologically, this essay provides considerable food for thought.

Jerry Bannister, "The Naval State in Newfoundland, 1749-1791", vol. 11 (2000): 17-50.