Centre of Canadian Studies

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Conference Programme

Full conference programme below. Also available as PDF Download. 

Thursday 24 April – Playfair Library, Old College

16.00    
Playfair Library     Doors open

16.30    
Playfair Library     Welcome

• Frank Cogliano, Dean International (North America), University of Edinburgh
• Tony McCulloch, President, British Association for Canadian Studies, University College London

Followed by
Plenary Keynote 1

Chair, James Kennedy, Director, Centre of Canadian Studies, University of Edinburgh

From Black Lives Matter to the War on Woke: the (Homegrown) Politics of Backlash in Canada

Debra Thompson, Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies, McGill University

18.00-19.00        
Reception
 

Friday 25 April – Chrystal Macmillan Building (CMB)

08.30-09.00    
CMB Foyer    Registration

09.00-10.30    
Seminar Room 4    Session 1.1 Indigeneity 1: Global and Historical Arenas

Chair, Tracie Scott, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

• Marie-Pierre Bousquet, Université de Montréal, ‘More than Tartans, Fiddles and Bannock: Why Canadian Indigenous People are Interested in their Scottish Ancestry’
• Faith Decontie, University of Aberdeen, ‘Recalibrating Colonial Pain: Reflection on Indigenous Canadian and United Kingdom Relations’
• Robert C. Thomsen, Aalborg University, ‘Indigeneity and other collective identities at the Arctic Winter Games’

09.00-10.30    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 1.2 Multiculturalism 1: Race and Immigration

Chair, Bern Dysart, University of Edinburgh

• Mary Fowke, University of Lisbon, ‘Ways of Remembering: Contrasting Experiences of Displacement in Canadian Immigrant and Emigrant Memoirs’
• Eyitayo Aloh, Trent University, ‘Unmasking the Polite Racist: Humour, Resistance and Black African immigrants in Canada’

09.00-10.30    
Seminar Room 6    
Session 1.3 Literature 1: (Re)Imagining Identity and Belonging

Chair, Ellie Bird, University of Lancaster

• Janne Korkka, University of Turku, ‘Unstable Spaces in Canadian Writing’
• Maxmilian Rhys, Technical University of Liberec, ‘Real and Imagined Communities in Canadian Novels from the 1940s to the 1970s’
• Fernando Pérez García, University of Oviedo, ‘Should I be here? A Transmodern Reading of Black and Indigenous Relations with Land and Solidarity in Wayde Compton’s The Lost Island’ 

09.00-10.30    
Violet Laidlaw Room    
Session 1.4 UK-Canada Relations 1: Historical and Cultural

Chair, Tony McCulloch, University College London

• Anne MacLennan and Antara Dey, York University, ‘A Moveable Feast: Invisible Cultural Heritage and Scottish Food Identities in Canada’
• Colin Coates and Stéphane Castonguay, York University and Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, ‘Message in a bottle … in a cheese: Establishing links in the Canadian cheese trade with the United Kingdom, 1880-1914’
• Matthew Hayday, University of Guelph, ‘Canada, the UK and the Commonwealth in the late 20th Century: Researching Canada Through a British Lens’
• Jaroslav Valkoun, Charles University, ‘The King-Byng Affair and Its Significance for British-Canadian Relations, 1926’

09.00-10.30    
Practice Suite    
Session 1.5 Québec and French Canada 1: Language and Mobilisation

Chair, Maeve Conrick, University College Dublin

• Yulia Bosworth, Binghamton, SUNY, ‘Nous voulons un pays: Discourse on identity, nationhood and sovereignty in Parti Québécois Instagram posts’
• François Vaillancourt, Université de Montréal, ‘Language Policy in Canada and Québec in the 2020+ period’
• Alexandre Turgeon, Université Laval, ‘The Future of the Quiet Revolution’

        
10.30-11:00    
CMB Foyer    Refreshment break
        
11:00-12.30    
Seminar Room 4    
Session 2.1 Indigeneity 2: Indigenous Governance and Colonial Politics in the 19th Century

Chair, Panel Organized 

• Brian Gettler, University of Toronto, ‘Peregrine Maitland and the Origins of the Indian Fund’
• Isabelle Bouchard, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, ‘First Nations Governance in Colonial Context: the Uses of Official Notarial Writing by the Abenaki in the 19th Century’
• Alain Beaulieu and Stéphanie Béreau, Université du Québec à Montréal and Professional History Consultant, ‘Identity and Power among the Indigenous Peoples of the Saint Lawrence Valley in the 19th Century: The Case of the Gill family in Odanak’
• Mathieu Arsenault, Université de Montréal, ‘Indigenous Politicians in the Canadian Capital and the Implementation of Regulations to prohibit them from visiting the Seat of Government, 1840-1852’

11:00-12.30    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 2.2 Multiculturalism 2: Mechanisms of White Supremacy: Trade, Media, Migration and Multicultural Myth-Making

Chair, Panel Organized 

• Angela Stigliano, York University, ‘Modern Homesteading, Natural Living and the Far Right’
• Anneka Bosse, York University, ‘(Un)Welcome to Canada’s Future: White Supremacy, Migrant Resistance and Changes to Canadian Immigration Policy’
• Aaliyah Khan and Fizza Mir, York University, ‘The Violence of Multiculturalism: Producing Canada through Carceral Violence, Anti-Palestinian Racism and Islamophobic Media’
• Paula Hastings, University of Toronto, ‘The Eyes of the World are on Vancouver’: The Panama Canal, White Supremacy, and the Reordering of Global Trade and Travel in the Early Twentieth Century’

11:00-12.30    
Seminar Room 6    
Session 2.3 Literature 2: Past, Present, Future Fiction

Chair, Claire Smerdon, University of Edinburgh

• Isabelle Fournier, Trent University, ‘Resilience and Hope in Annie Bacon’s Chroniques Post-Apocalyptiques’
• Kait Pinder, Acadia University, ‘History’s ‘Vibe’ in Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience’
• Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, University of Bialystok, ‘Seeking Meaning in the Medieval Past: Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Historical Fantasy fiction’
• Pauline Montassine, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, ‘‘We’ve Been Here Before’: Mapping Timescapes in Margaret Atwood’s Paper Boat (2024)’
• Andrea Beverley, Mount Allison University, ‘Archival Collage and Elizabeth Brewster’

11:00-12.30    
Practice Suite    
Session 2.5 Locating Labour and Social Class

Chair, James Kennedy, University of Edinburgh

• Daniyal Zuberi, University of Toronto, ‘Addressing Youth Poverty in the Peel Region, ON’
• Léonard Bédard and Scott Richardson, Queen’s University, ‘Labouring Under Illusions: How Canada’s Temporary Worker Programme Exploits and Restricts the Social Mobility of Economic Migrants’
• Robert Wardhaugh and James Flath, Western University, ‘Fielding: The Rise and Demise of a Saskatchewan Small Town’
• John Belshaw, Thompson Rivers University, ‘‘The Spinster and the Spokesman:’ What the Killing of Rachel Shannon reveals about early Vancouver’s elite’

        
12.30-13.15    
CMB Foyer    Lunch
        
13.15-14.15    
Meadows Lecture Theatre    
Plenary Keynote 2

Chair, Ailsa Henderson, University of Edinburgh

It’s not all about nationalism: Canada-Québec; the United Kingdom-Scotland; Spain-Catalonia and the Basque Country.

Michael Keating, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Aberdeen, and Honorary Professor, University of Edinburgh

        
14.30-16.00    
Seminar Room 4    
Session 3.1 Indigeneity 3: Cultural Articulations and Knowledge Practices

Chair, Claire Smerdon, University of Edinburgh

• Heather Devine, University of Calgary, ‘Digital Family Roots: Genealogical Research and Canada’s Indigenous Identities’
• Aafiyah Shaikh, University of Edinburgh, ‘Museums as Sites of Reconciliation: Imperialism, Soft Power and the Rematriation of Artefacts’
• Lisa Binkley, Dalhousie University, ‘The Flower Beadwork People: The Evolution of Métis Embroidery and Beadwork’
• Monty Montgomery and Margaret Kovach, University of British Columbia, ‘Indigenous Epistemic Space in 21st Century Canadian Society?’

14.30-16.00    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 3.2 Multiculturalism 3: European Settlers 

Chair, Tracie Scott, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

• Kristín M. Jóhannsdóttir, University of Akureyri, ‘The Linguistic Landscape of Gimli, Manitoba’
• Dagmara Drewniak, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, ‘Photographs, Ghosts and Legacy Memoirs as Testimonies of Eastern European Immigration to the Prairie Provinces’ 
• Venkovits Balázs, University of Debrecen, ‘Exploring and Preserving the Heritage of Immigration: A Case Study of Montreal’

14.30-16.00    
Seminar Room 6    
Session 3.3 Literature 3: Aesthetic Hybridities

Chair, Liliana Riga, University of Edinburgh

• Ian Rae, Western University, ‘Blackwood’s in the Backwoods: Galt and Dunlop in an Unpublished Novel (c.1900) by Kathleen and Robina Lizars’
• Cecilia Beecher Martins, University of Lisbon, ‘Identity and Biotext: Looking at Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill and A Door to be Kicked’
• Elina Valovirta, University of Turku, ‘Finally Free: Materialist Canadian and Caribbean Seascapes in Shani Mootoo’s He Drown She in Sea’
• Octavian More, Babeş-Bolyai University, ‘‘Troubled only by clarity of weather:’ perspectivism and spiritual experience in the poetry of Margaret Avison and Christopher Dewdney’

14.30-16.00    
Violet Laidlaw Room    
Session 3.4 Book Panel 1

Chair, Raphaël Gani, Université Laval

The Words of Nation. At the heart of the basic lexicon of six national communities: USA, France, England, Scotland, Canada, Québec, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2025

Author: Jocelyn Létourneau, Université Laval; Discussants: Michael Keating, Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Hugh Starkey, University College London, Antonia Maioni, McGill University, and Yulia Bosworth, SUNY-Binghamton

14.30-16.00    
Practice Suite    
Session 3.5 Climate Emergency Conversations

Chair, Danita Burke, University of Southern Denmark

• Alan MacEachern, Western University, ‘Taking our Temperature: How Canadians Talk About the Weather’
• Tracie Scott, Jyothsna Appiah Singh and Aishwarya Singhal, Heriot-Watt University Dubai, ‘Much ‘Ad’o about nothing: Legislating against greenwashing in Canada’
• Joanna Robinson, York University, ‘‘We are Skipping our Lessons to Teach you One’: Intergenerational Conflict in the Canadian Climate Movement’
• Ian Urquhart, University of Alberta, ‘From Leader to Laggard: The Canadian Climate Change Story’
• Jade Laflamme, Arielle Navette, Léonard Bédard, Université Laval, Université Laval and Queen’s University, ‘À chaque marais sa municipalité: Gouvernance locale et protection des milieux humides au Québec’

        
16:00-16.20    
CMB Foyer    
Refreshment break
        
16.20-17.50    
Seminar Room 4    
Session 4.1 Indigeneity 4: Trauma and Rights

Chair, John Harries, University of Edinburgh

• Gabriela Kwiatek and Ewelina Feldman-Kolodziejuk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow and University of Bialystok, ‘Speaking the unspoken: Testimonies of Forced Sterilization in Sacred Bundles Unborn’
• Brian Calliou, University of Calgary, ‘Response by Canada’s Legal Profession to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action’
• Jeremy Patzer, University of Manitoba, ‘Beyond the Supreme Court of Canada: Indigenous Rights in the 21st Century’

16.20-17.50    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 4.2 Multiculturalism 4: A Century of Greek Canadian History and Memory in Toronto

Chair, Panel Organized

• Sakis Gekas, York University, ‘Towards a Transnational History of Greeks in Toronto: the case of the 1918 anti-Greek riots and its various afterlives’
• Angelo Laskaris, York University, ‘Remembering the 1940s: Greek Canadian Memory and Historical Awareness in the Present’ 

16.20-17.50    
Seminar Room 6    
Session 4.3 Literature 4: Literary Regions

Chair, Panel Organized 

• Ceri Morgan, Keele University, ‘Regional chick lit: shaping l’Estrie’ 
• Vanja Polić, University of Zagreb, ‘Marina Endicott’s The Little Shadows: a View of the Westen Region from a Vaudeville Stage’
• Aritha van Herk, University of Calgary, ‘Canada does not exist.  Nevertheless, we yearn to be there’

16.20-17.50    
Practice Suite    
Session 4.4 ‘Canadian’ Wine and Food

Chair, Panel Organized

• Marcel Martel, York University, ‘Promoting Canadian wine, 1860-1940’
• Nicole Neatby, St Mary’s University, ‘Creating a ‘foody’ destination: How Québec cuisine was turned into a tourist attraction and a marker of national identity (1920-1967)’
• Adrian Shubert, York University, ‘‘The County’: the Making of a Wine Region in 21st Century Ontario’    

16.20-17.50    
Violet Laidlaw Room
Session 4.5 UK-Canada Relations 2: Promoting UK-Canada Relations: the Role of the British Consulates General

Patrick Holdich, University College London, and Fouzia Younis, British Consul General in Toronto
 

16.20-17.50  
Meadows Lecture Theatre
Session 4.6 : Québec and French Canada 2:  ‘Culture et citoyenneté Québécoise/Culture and Citizenship in Québec A curricular paradox’

Chair, Joanne Pattison-Meek, Bishop’s University; Discussant: Hugh Starkey, University College London

• Denis Jeffrey, Université Laval, ‘The Sociological Underpinnings of the New Culture and Citizenship Curriculum’
• Raphaël Gani, Université Laval, ‘The Dilemma(s) of Curricular Translation for Québec’s Official Language Minority’
• Joanne Pattison-Meek, Bishop’s University, ‘PhotoVoices from the Field: Supporting Understandings of Culture and Citizenship in Quebec in Rural, English High School Classrooms’  

18.00-18.45    
Meadows Lecture Theatre    
Plenary Roundtable: Whither Canadian Studies?

Chair, Colin Coates, York University

• Stewart Gill, University of Melbourne, ‘‘Something Still to Find:’ Why Canadian Studies are still relevant’
• Paul Keen, Carleton University, ‘Still Sleeping with the Elephant: Canadian Studies’ Unfinished Arguments’

        
19.30
Playfair Library, Old College    
Conference dinner

Saturday 26 April – Chrystal Macmillan Building (CMB)

09.30-10.30    
Meadows Lecture Theatre    
Plenary Keynote 3

Jointly sponsored by BACS and the Association for Canadian Studies in Ireland (ACSI)

Chair, Maeve Conrick, University College Dublin 

Who Owns the Prairies? Debates and Anxieties About the ‘American Invasion,’ 1890s - 1920s

Sarah Carter, H.M. Tory Chair and Professor of History, University of Alberta

        
10.30-11.00    
CMB Foyer    
Refreshment break
        
11.00-12.30    
Seminar Room 4    
Session 5.1 Indigeneity 5: Health, Language, Politics

Chair, Tracie Scott, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

• Antonia Maioni, McGill University, ‘The development of Indigenous health systems in Canada and the US’
• Tomasz Soroka, Jagiellonian, University, Krakow, ‘Navigating Linguistic Diversity: Canada’s Language Policies Towards Non-Official and Non-Indigenous Languages’
• Cora Voyageur, University of Calgary, ‘Leading the Nations: First Nation Chiefs in Canada’

11.00-12.30    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 5.2 Multiculturalism 5: Attitudes toward Immigration: Belonging and Deservingness

Chair, Panel Organized 

• Ailsa Henderson and Antoine Bilodeau, University of Edinburgh and Concordia University, ‘The Terms of Belonging in Minority Nations: Markers of National Identity in Québec and Scotland and Attitudes toward Minority Groups’ 
• Luc Turgeon, University of Ottawa, ‘Immigration and the housing crisis: a comparison of Canada’s English- and French-language press’
• Antoine Bilodeau and Luc Turgeon, Concordia University and University of Ottawa, ‘Attitudes toward immigrants in Québec: A look at territorial and generational variations’ 

11.00-12.30    
Seminar Room 6    
Session 5.3 Literature 5: Indigenous Stories: Healing, Hauntings, Territory, Narration

Chair, Faye Hammill, University of Glasgow

• Lucie Altmannová, Masaryk University, ‘Traditional Healing as Decolonial Resistance in Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth’
• Cynthia Sugars, University of Ottawa, ‘Unreconciled Monsters: Intergenerational Hauntings and Canadian Residential Schools in Armand Ruffo’s Windigo Tale’
• Diane Bélisle-Wolf, Universität Trier, ‘Territory, art and identity in Natasha Kanapé’s novel Nauetakun, un silence pour un bruit’
• May Wang, National Defense University, ‘First Person Narration and Interpellation in Thomas King’s Short Stories’

11.00-12.30    
Practice Suite    
Session 5.4 Policy Transformations in Health, Sex and Gender 1

Chair, Janice Denoncourt, Nottingham Trent University

• Marie Moreau, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, ‘Promoting Involved Fatherhood? Canadian Institutions and the journey forward towards a more gender-equal Canada’
• Claire Mountford, Queen’s University, 'How do Canadian Political Parties respond to allegations of sexual violence: To sanction or not to sanction?'
• Guilia Rovelli, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, ‘Health, Prosperity, Intellectual Advancement. The Evolution of the Concept of Well-Being in Canada (1791-1920)’

11.00-12.30    
Meadows Lecture Theatre    
Session 5.5 Governance and Political Institutions

Chair, Tony McCulloch, University College London

• Raymond Blake, University of Regina, ‘It is all about Freedom: The Rhetoric of Canadian Prime Ministers Since Mackenzie King’
• Christopher Dummitt, Trent University, ‘Sixties Social Transformation from Unexpected Places: the Divorce Act of 1968’
• Penny Bryden, University of Victoria, ‘Political Scandal in Canada: Historical Insights for a Post-Scandal Age’
• Tim Cook, Canadian War Museum, ‘Renewing the Canadian War Museum’

        
12.30-13.30    
CMB Foyer    Lunch

13.00-13.30    
Meadows Lecture Theatre    BACS AGM
        
13.30-15.00    
Seminar Room 4    
Session 6.1 Indigeneity 6: Developments and Responses 2: Encounters and Reconciliations

Chair, James Kennedy, University of Edinburgh

• Patrick Holdich, University College London, ‘Canadian Politics and Indigenous Issues: Where is Public Opinion?’
• Kiera Ladner, University of Manitoba, ‘Restoring Pluralism: Imagining a Way of Living Together’
• Hannah Wyile, Concordia University, ‘Examining Economic Reconciliation’

13.30-15.00    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 6.2 Art, Stories and National Identity

Chair, Liliana Riga, University of Edinburgh

• John Bessai, Trent University, ‘Art and Public Service: Shaping Canadian Identity through Visual Storytelling’
• Michael Follert, Saint Francis Xavier University, ‘‘Grim Excitement’ Listening to the North over CBC Radio, 1945-58’
• Claire Smerdon, University of Edinburgh, ‘Susannah of the Mounties: A Childhood Encounter with Residential Schools’
• Anne MacLennan, York University, ‘Competing Canadian Identities’

13.30-15.00
Violet Laidlaw Room    
Session 6.3 Book Panel 2

Québec’s Eastern Townships and the World: A Region and its Global Connections, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025

Author: Andrew Holman, Bridgewater State University

13.30-15.00    
Practice Suite    
Session 6.4 Policy Transformations in Health, Sex, and Gender 2: Complexities of Reproductive Rights: Immigrant and Indigenous Women Activists (1960s-1990s)

Chair and Commentator, Annalee Lepp, University of Victoria

• Karissa Patton, University of Edinburgh, ‘Expert or Interloper? Birth Control Centres in Alberta, 1969-1979’
• Sarah Nickel, University of Alberta, ‘Planned Parenthood and Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Autonomy, 1970s-1980s’
• Margaret Little, Queen’s University, ‘The Complexities of Reproductive Justice Politics for Immigrant Women Activists in Toronto, 1970s-1980s’
• Cherene Aniyan, Rutgers University, and Lynne Marks, University of Victoria, ‘The India Mahila Association’s Campaign Against Sex Selection Clinics, Vancouver, 1993-1998’

        
15.00-15.30    
CMB Foyer    Refreshment break
        
15.30-17.00    
Seminar Room 4    Session 7.1 Indigeneity 7: Beothuk Ghosts

Chair, Panel Organized 

• John Harries, University of Edinburgh, ‘Banishing Beothuk Ghosts: kinship, the unhaunting of Newfoundland and settler colonial futures’
• Julia Laite, Birkbeck University of London, ‘Reframing Beothuk Histories: Re-narrating the life of Shanawdithit and the colonial history of Newfoundland’
• Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University, ‘The past in the present in Newfoundland’

15.30-17.00    
Seminar Room 5    
Session 7.2 International Orders: Past and Present

Chair, Tony McCulloch, University College London

• Wayne Hunt, Mount Allison University, ‘Power Politics and The Weaponization of The Working Class: The Dynamics at Work Behind Trudeau’s Surprise Dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago on 29 November 2024’
• Stephen McBride, McMaster University, ‘Trade and Trump 2.0: Challenges to Canadian Strategy’
• Daniel Guedes, York University, ‘Not so nice Canada: Canadian sub-imperialism in Central America’

15.30-17.00    
Seminar Room 6    
Session 7.3 Literature 7: Coloniality

Chair, Claire Smerdon, University of Edinburgh

• Denisa Krásná, Masaryk University, ‘Chosen People, Chosen Species: Decolonizing Exceptionalism in The Marrow Thieves’
• Shelley Hulan, University of Waterloo, ‘Raspberries of Discord: Colonial Ingratitude in Two Early Canadian Novels’
• Rūta Šlapkauskaite, Vilnius University, ‘This Thing of the Darkness: Petro-memory and Kinship Time in David Hubert’s Oil People’ 
• Jose Romaris, National University of Distance Education (UNED), ‘Murder and Resurrection of Ganymede: The Impact of Colonialism on Two-Spirit/Queer Representations in the Literature of Canadian Indigenous Nations’

15.30-17.00    
Practice Suite    
Session 7.4 Québec and French Canada Panel 3: Rights and Citizenship

Chair, James Kennedy, University of Edinburgh

• Christina Keppie, Western Washington University, ‘Voices «de l’extérieur». Reflections on le Congrès mondial acadien and center-periphery relations’
• Lorraine O’Donnell, Concordia University, ‘Resources on English-speaking Québec: A Field Map’
• Patrick Donovan, Concordia University, ‘The Shifting Complexity of Identity in English-Speaking Québec, from the 19th century to today’
• Janice Denoncourt, Nottingham Trent University, ‘Challenging Financial Opacity: Corporate Transparency Obligation in Québec and Canada’

15.30-17.00    
Meadows Lecture Theatre    
Session 7.5 Roundtable: The Canadian Federal Election, 2025

Chair, Patrick Holdich, University College London, 

Jocelyn Létourneau, Université Laval, Antonia Maioni, McGill University and Christopher Kirkey, SUNY Plattsburg