Michel Ducharme

Michel Ducharme. Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des Révolutions atlantiques (1776-1838).  In this original and provocative book, Michel Ducharme situates political debate in the Canadas before 1840 in different conceptions of liberty, both hostile to absolutism, embedded in the political philosophy of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Embedded in a thorough knowledge of political philosophy and in the political debates in Lower and Upper Canada, this book provides a new and richly argued perspective on a crucial period of the Canadian past. Situating the primary cause of unrest in these colonies in different intellectual currents rather than in socio-economic circumstances, it offers a striking alternative to widely-accepted interpretations. It is a milestone in Canadian historiography.

Honourable mentions
Sean Mills. The Empire Within; Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal. This book connects protest movements in Montreal in the 1960s and Third World postcolonial thought, and in so doing situates these movements in a global anti-colonial struggle. For all the variety of protest movements in Montreal in the sixties, they shared, it suggests, a common anti-colonialism until, unable to resolve “internal contradictions and ambiguities,” this loose “grammar of consent” unraveled in the 1970s.The book is well-researched, well-connected, and deft. It challenges conventional views of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and succeeds in exploring both the richness and vitality of Quebec society and an axis of its global connections.

Joan Sangster. Transforming Labour; Women and Work in Post-War Canada. This book is a sophisticated and nuanced study of women’s work in Canada during the “Fordist” accord between capital, the state, and labour in the twenty-five years following the Second World War. It shows how women advanced the cause of gender equality and challenged accepted attitudes embedded in the Fordist accord.The book is the product of years of research and of a materialist tradition of labour history. In sum, it suggests the continuing robustness of this tradition while contributing a basic work to the study of working women and, more generally, of labour in the Fordist years after the Second World War.