McGill-Queen's University Press Blog

Putting Swine Flu in Context

The recent scares over the H1N1 ‘swine’ flu – the outbreak, its development into a pandemic, and the threat of worse to come this fall – have been making daily headlines for months. These kinds of health scares are at once alien to us and at the same time very present, invoking both our cultural memories and the history of the Plague, scarlet fever, SARS, and the Spanish Flu. 

Waiting for the Wave in the Globe and Mail

As Adam Daifallah, co-author of Rescuing Canada's Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution, puts it, “other than Stephen Harper, no person is as qualified as Tom Flanagan to offer an insider's perspective on the Reform Party, its reincarnation as the Conservative Party and what has transpired since then”.

The rest of his review of Tom Flanagan’s Waiting for the Wave, which appeared in the weekend edition of the Globe and Mail, outlines how important Flanagan’s book is to understanding contemporary Canadian politics and the path the Conservative party has taken since the days of Preston Manning. You can find more information about Waiting for the Wave, as well as Flanagan’s other works, here, here, and here.

Stepping up to the plate: a taste of Canadian food history

 

Between Alice Waters, the Slow Food Movement, the 100 Mile Diet, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, and a lot of farmers and their friends, food is back on the agenda — and rightfully so.

The line goes something like this: obesity, swine flu, avian flu, salmonella, and mad cow disease have all made it into the category of “major health scares” in recent years. The average age of farmers is, well, not very young, rural populations are dwindling, the archetypal Canadian farm is being handed over to massive agribusiness and those wooden wheat silos are now made of concrete. The variety of foods we eat has dropped drastically, but the number of processed, derived products has shot upwards. Some foods are — to use terminology no longer restricted to dinosaurs— going extinct. In this context, taking another look at what we eat and where it comes from doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

From Prime Ministers to Presidents: Canada and America in the 20th Century

 

 

In Roosevelt's Bright Shadow:

 

Presidential Addresses About Canada from Taft to Obama in Honour of FDR's 1938 Speech at Queen's University

Edited by Arthur Milnes

The Canadian–American relationship is a special one: both countries often claim that the world’s longest unprotected border they share represents a relationship that is defined by high levels of economic dependence, a series of partnerships addressing national defense, and the psychological entanglement that comes with sharing a continent.

The River Returns

The Bow River, one of the most iconic and well known Canadian waterways, flows from high up in the Canadian Rockies, through Banff National Park, meanders down through Calgary and flows out on to the open prairie. It is the water source for both the City of Calgary and much of the surrounding farmland; the Bow watershed is the most densely populated in Alberta. So it’s particularly worrying that those in the Bow River Basin, not to mention the river itself, have been hit — to use an appropriately environmental metaphor — by a perfect storm of massive population growth, liberal water licensing, climate change, and a free market on the water itself.  

Some Suggested Summer Reading from MQUP

Summer is here- even if the weather, at least in Montreal, sometimes disagrees. And if sunscreen, straw hats, and beach towels are on your shopping list, so should some good summer reading. If you’re still building your list, MQUP has got a couple of suggestions.

America, Oil, and Peter Dale Scott

 

Peter Dale Scott,

author of Mosaic Orpheus

Diplomat, poet, professor, author and political commentator Peter Dale Scott has recently written an  article for Global Research: the Center for Research on Globalization, examining America’s foreign policy in the Middle East, both historically and since President Obama’s recent speech in Cairo.