An Accidental History of Canada

Full bibliography

An Accidental History of Canada

Resource type

Authors/contributors

Davies, Megan Jean (Editor)
Hudson, Geoffrey L. (Editor)

Title

An Accidental History of Canada

Abstract

Although Canadian history has no shortage of stories about disasters and accidents, the phenomenon of risk, upset, and misfortune has been largely overlooked by historians. Disasters get their due, but not so the smaller scale accident where fate is more intimate. Yet such events often have a vivid afterlife in the communities where they happen, and the way in which they are explained and remembered has significant social, cultural, and political meaning. An Accidental History of Canada brings together original studies of an intriguing range of accidents stretching from the 1630s to the 1970s. These include workplace accidents, domestic accidents, childhood accidents, and leisure accidents in colonial, Indigenous, rural, and urban settings. Whether arising from colonial power relations, urban dangers, perils in resource extraction, or hazardous recreations, most accidents occur within circumstances of vulnerability, and reveal precarity and inequities not otherwise apparent. Contributors to this volume are alert to the intersections of the settler agenda and the elevation of risk that it brought. Indigenous and settler ways of understanding accidents are juxtaposed, with chapters exploring the links between accidents and the rise of the modern state. An Accidental History of Canada makes plain that whether they are interpreted as an intervention by providence, a miscalculation, inevitability, or the result of observable risk, accidents--and our responses to them--reveal shared values. -- Publisher's description

Series

McGill-Queen’s/AMS healthcare studies in the history of medicine, health, and society

Place

Montreal

Publisher

McGill-Queen’s University Press

Date

2024

# of Pages

xiv, 380 pages: illustrations

Language

English

ISBN

978-0-228-02115-5

Extra

OCLC: 1411221203

Notes

Contents: Introduction: Framing an Accidental Past / John Douglas Belshaw, Megan J. Davies, Geoffrey L. Hudson, and Sasha Mullally (page 3). Part 1: Equity. 1 “Vahinko!”: Finnish Canadian Socialists Making Sense of Accidental Fire / Samira Saramo (33) -- 2 The Accidental Underground: Death and Injury in Ontario’s Mining Industry /John Sandlos (61) -- 3 Coroner Morton Shulman versus Dr Edward Shouldice: Medical Malpractice in 1960s Canada / R. Blake Brown (89) -- 4 Pedalling Acceptable Losses: Narratives of Cyclist Accidents in Vancouver, BC / John Douglas Belshaw (113). Part 2: Education. 5 Life and Death in the Building of Montreal’s Victoria Bridge, 1854–1860 / Anh-Dao Bui Tran (143) -- 6 A “Lack of System in Their Work”: Risk, Injury, and Labour in the Grenfell Medical Mission of Northern Newfoundland and Labrador, 1893–1914 / John R.H. Matchim (170) -- 7 An Allowance for Accidents: Alberta’s 1908 Workmen’s Compensation Legislation / Ceilidh Auger-Day (197) -- 8 “Don’t Shoot Crooked Chute”: Memorializing Death and Mediating Risk on Ontario’s Petawawa River / Cameron Baldassarra (225). Part 3: Narratives. 9 Wind, Error, and Providence: Shipwrecks in New France / Colin M. Coates (253) -- 10 Accidental History and Manitoulin Island, ca. 1830–1960: Indigenous and Settler Experience / Geoffrey L. Hudson and Darrel Manitowabi (281) -- 11 An Accident’s Afterlife: Childhood, Disability, Maternalism, and Rehabilitation / Megan J. Davies and Tamara Gene Myers (313) -- 12 Kitchen-Table Surgery: Rural Risk and Accidental Care in Early Twentieth-Century General Practice / Sasha Mullally (342) -- Conclusion / John Douglas Belshaw, Megan J. Davies, Geoffrey L. Hudson, and Sasha Mullally (367).

Citation

Davies, M. J., & Hudson, G. L. (Eds.). (2024). An Accidental History of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Link to this record

http://labourstudies.ca/lsi/CBQI656B