Truth and reconciliation commissions and official governmental apologies continue to surface worldwide as mechanisms for coming to terms with human rights violations and social atrocities. As the first scholarly collection to explore the intersections and differences between a range of redress cases that have emerged in Canada in recent decades, Reconciling Canada provides readers with the contexts for understanding the phenomenon of reconciliation as it has played out in this multicultural settler state.

In this volume, leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences relate contemporary political and social efforts to redress wrongs to the fraught history of government relations with Aboriginal and diasporic populations. The contributors offer ground-breaking perspectives on Canada's 'culture of redress,' broaching questions of law and constitutional change, political coalitions, commemoration, testimony, and literatures of injury and its aftermath. Also assembled together for the first time is a collection of primary documents - including government reports, parliamentary debates, and redress movement statements - prefaced with contextual information. Reconciling Canada provides a vital and immensely relevant illumination of the dynamics of reconciliation, apology, and redress in contemporary Canada.

"A crucial resource for classrooms, researchers, and anyone wanting to understand the dynamics of Canada's culture of redress, Reconciling Canada offers important resources for setting Canada's projects of apology and reconciliation in context. The editors have collected in one volume timely insights from some of Canada's leading scholars on the possibilities and problems in Canada's many and manifold projects of reconciliation. The volume also reproduces historical documents on key apologies to remind readers of the long and diverse history of apology in Canada." -- Daniel Coleman, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

About the Author
Jennifer Henderson is an associate professor in the Departments of English and Sociology/Anthropology and the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University. Pauline Wakeham is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario.

Reviews

'Reconciling Canada is the first text to comprehensively unpack Canada's unique position in history, marking it as an important contribution to both Canadian and reconciliation studies.'

-- David Gaertner * Canadian Literature Spring 2014 *

"This serious engagement with the challenges posed by the culture of redress in Canada is an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand our history and for imagining alternative futures.... A milestone in Canadian interdisciplinary scholarship, this book repays the effort it demands. If Northrop Frye was correct in diagnosing the central Canadian question as "where is here?" then this book shows "here" to be a complex place in which healing and hope are yet to be achieved but can be imagined differently. "

-- Diane Brydon, Distinguished Professor and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies, University of Manitoba * University Affairs, December 3, 2014. *

'"A historicization of redress" is a stated objective of the collection, and the editors have marshalled expertise from across the disciplines to achieve this end.'

-- Forrest D. Pass * University of Toronto Quarterly vol 84:03:2015 *



Book Information
ISBN 9781442611689
Author Jennifer Henderson
Format Paperback
Page Count 496
Imprint University of Toronto Press
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Weight(grams) 960g
Dimensions(mm) 247mm * 173mm * 29mm