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Reviewed by:
  • New World Dawning: The Sixties at Regina Campus
  • Ian Milligan
New World Dawning: The Sixties at Regina Campus. James M. Pitsula. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2008. Pp. 349 + ix, $29.95

Regina may seem like an odd setting for a book on the sixties, as James Pitsula concedes in New World Dawning. Yet Regina Campus, the radical counterpart of the more staid Saskatoon campus of the University of Saskatchewan (Regina would achieve independence in 1974), presents itself as a worthwhile object of study. This is because of the need for local studies to counterbalance overarching national narratives of the broader sixties, and to enable the unique flavour of the sixties as they played out in disparate locations to be sampled, but [End Page 818] also because Regina itself is a significant place within any story of the sixties in Canada. With a new campus opened in 1965, Regina was an instant modern campus, like the more-studied Simon Fraser University. It was also the birthplace of the Student Union for Peace Action, Canada’s pre-eminent New Left organization. Saskatchewan, home of the first North American socialist government under Tommy Douglas, also looms as an important locale: the political character of the province shaped the student experience, which tended towards politics rather than the sixties counterculture. Using the student newspaper Carillon as his primary source, Pitsula weaves the international, national, and local stories together, showing how a ‘new world was born’ at Regina campus between the 1950s and the 1970s.

New World Dawning is organized around six main themes: student culture, liberation movements, the peace movement, the counterculture, the momentous year of 1968, and the enduring impact of the sixties. At times, the thematic focus lends itself to repetition, as important events have to be reintroduced. However, this thematic approach permits these important topics to be fleshed out. Each chapter weaves together the international, national, and local narratives. The international and national narratives are at times lengthy, recounting the secondary literature in these periods and allowing Regina to be placed in the broader context. While these sections add little that is new, they situate the book well as an introductory reader to the period or as one that is pitched to undergraduate courses. Readers are brought up to speed quickly on the important literature and events of the period, and are then able to fully understand Regina’s significant role in the milieu.

Using the perspective of the student newspaper Carillon from which to view the sixties unfold on Regina campus, Pitsula aptly documents the changes that played out through its pages by drawing on comments from random students, the changing advertisements that drew on youth themes to market products (the ‘Pepsi Generation’), and the changing imagery, rhetoric, and politicization. Responding to a controversial sexualized image published in the paper in late 1968, the Board of Governors proposed withholding student activity fees; the resulting upheaval drew nearly forty per cent of the student body to the defence of the paper, a staggering figure that speaks to the level of student involvement at Regina as well as the importance of the paper.

Clearly written and argued, New World Dawning shows not only that Regina is relevant to a study of the sixties, but it also argues against the declensionist narrative of failure. ‘We live in a world the sixties made’ (12) Pitsula argues; he refuses to declare winners or [End Page 819] losers, instead noting the many major reformist (as opposed to revolutionary) changes that swept the university and broader society.

The nearly exclusive reliance on the Carillon as the book’s primary source (although archives are also consulted) is a choice that brings with it advantages and disadvantages. The use of the student voice, as heard in the newspaper, provides an honest, historical way to recount the story of Regina campus. Yet the focus on Regina-based sources constrains some of the narrative. The chapter on liberation movements could have been enhanced by reference to external archives and interviews, which would have enlivened the narrative of actions involving Aboriginals and Metis in Saskatchewan. Similarly, Pitsula’s decision not to engage with oral histories is significant – many of...

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