Understand Canada, via the printed word
Historians can analyze the story of Canada by examining many avenues – wars, natural resources, politics, exploration, Native Canadians and immigration, to name only a few. Now, a massive project, led by the University of Toronto in collaboration with five other universities, is taking a different path by analyzing what has been read by Canadians.
The History of the Book in Canada/Histoire du livre et de l’imprimé au Canada project came to life in 1999 as the result of a $2.3 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Over the next three years, researchers from U of T, Simon Fraser University, the University of Regina, McGill University, Université de Sherbrooke, and Dalhousie University will publish three volumes, in French and English, dealing with different periods in Canada’s history. The first volume should be ready in the fall of 2004.
“This project really is the history of Canada from the perspective of what has been in print in this country and how and why people have read this material,” says Patricia Fleming, project director, Volume I co-editor and a professor in U of T’s Faculty of Information Studies.
“We use the word ‘book’ in the name of the project, but we mean anything that has been in print and in circulation in Canada, such as textbooks, novels, newspapers, magazines, almanacs, music, cookbooks, religious books and government documents.
“One of our students found the catalogue and borrowers’ records of a circulating library in Scarborough (now a part of the Greater Toronto Area) in the 1830s. From this, we have a great insight now into what types of books people were interested in, which tells us a lot about certain Canadians at that time.”
The research also sheds light on the difficulties women experienced in becoming equal members of society. “We found that reading and writing were taught separately in the 18th and 19th century. Women didn’t vote and transacted very little business so they would not need to know how to write. But it was felt that it was important for them to read because they would be better mothers.”
Even seemingly innocuous documents, such as the contracts for voyageurs trading with Native Canadians, have become valuable sources of information. “If you look at these contracts, you can see interesting things about the relationship between the French traders and the Native Canadians,” says Fleming.
The Canadian project is one of many similar initiatives being undertaken by other countries. France completed the first national book history in four volumes and others are being developed in the United States, Britain, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.
“When these national histories are completed, we will have an invaluable international resource,” notes Fleming. “Through our books and printed materials, we have a telescope into our past like finding a fossil or an arrowhead.”