This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Through a study of the British Empire’s largest women’s patriotic organisation, formed in 1900, and still in existence, this book examines the relationship between female imperialism and national identity. It throws new light on women’s involvement in imperialism; on the history of ‘conservative’ women’s organisations; on women’s interventions in debates concerning citizenship and national identity; and on the history of women in white settler societies. After placing the IODE (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) in the context of recent scholarly work in Canadian, gender, imperial history and post-colonial theory, the book follows the IODE’s history through the twentieth century. Tracing the organisation into the postcolonial era, where previous imperial ideas are outmoded, it considers the transformation from patriotism to charity, and the turn to colonisation at home in the Canadian North.

"Colonialism in twentieth century Canada has operated as a totalizing discourse, administered not by the force of a colonizing power, but by the mimicry of descendants from the constructed British imperial centre. These anglo-celtic descendants built a colonial identity that in its ideal manifestation asserted universal dominance and control, demanding that all difference assimilate or cease to exist. The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), a Canadian women's patriotic organization formed in 1900 and still in existence, is used to represent this colonial identity; a hegemonic process that was constantly changing, and produced in a recursive relationship to the threats and resistance that, at specific moments, challenged its composition. Tracing the historical/cultural geography of the IODE reveals the shifting focus of Canadian identity from imperial space to national space. This shift was produced in a multiplicity of geographic locations that offer a complicated challenge to theories of 'public' and 'private', of masculine and feminine and the 'everyday' and the 'theoretical'. Archival sources from across Canada, interviews with members of the IODE provide the primary sources." --

Sir John Seeley once wrote that the British Empire was acquired in “a fit of absence of mind.” Whatever the truth of this comment, it is certainly arguable that the Empire was dismantled in such a fit. This collection deals with a neglected subject in post-Confederation Canadian history – the implications to Canada and Canadians of British decolonization and the end of empire. Canada and the End of Empire looks at Canadian diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and the United States, the Suez crisis, the changing economic relationship with Great Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of educational and cultural institutions in maintaining the British connection, the royal tour of 1959, the decision to adopt a new flag in 1964, the efforts to find a formula for repatriating the constitution, the Canadianization of the Royal Canadian Navy, and the attitude of First Nations to the changed nature of the Anglo-Canadian relationship. Historians in Commonwealth countries tend to view the end of British rule from a nationalist perspective. Canada and the End of Empire challenges this view and demonstrates the centrality of imperial history in Canadian historiography. An important addition to the growing canon of empire studies and imperial history, this book will be of interest to historians of the Commonwealth, and to scholars and students interested in the relationship between colonialism and nationalism.

Commemorating Canada is a concise narrative overview of the development of history and commemoration in Canada, designed for use in courses on public history, historical memory, heritage preservation, and related areas. Examining why, when, where, and for whom historical narratives have been important, Cecilia Morgan describes the growth of historical pageantry, popular history, textbooks, historical societies, museums, and monuments through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Showing how Canadians have clashed over conflicting interpretations of history and how they have come together to create shared histories, she demonstrates the importance of history in shaping Canadian identity. Though public history in both French and English Canada was written predominantly by white, middle-class men, Morgan also discusses the activism and agency of women, immigrants, and Indigenous peoples. The book concludes with a brief examination of present-day debates over Canada’s history and Canadians’ continuing interest in their pasts.