Myth, Symbol, and Colonial Encounter: British and Mi'kmaq in Acadia, 1700-1867 by Jennifer Reid (review)

674BOOK REVIEWS without any clear indication of the specific location where the reader could find the direct quotation. An example of this is note 30 of chapter 4, where seven articles and three interviews are mentioned. In chapter 8, footnote 45 it would have been helpful to cite the actual text of Land O'Lakes and where it could be found. The quotation from Philip Gleason on page 275 includes a quotation from President Leo McLaughlin, SJ., of Fordham University, "pay any price, break any mold" but no identification of the speaker is given. On the whole, O'Brien has given us an interesting book, one that will inform and please many of Father Ted's admirers. What it lacks in terms of objectivity and scholarly preciseness will probably be remedied in a later definitive biography where the views of his critics will also be considered. In the meantime, the Notre Dame story, of which Hesburgh is such a large part, will continue to arouse admiration among his peers inAmerican higher education. His influence on the rest of Catholic higher education is another important story that needs to be told in more detail, and perhaps O'Brien's work will stimulate work in that direction. Alice Gaixin, O.S.U.. New Rochelle, New York Canadian Myth, Symbol, and Colonial Encounter: British and Mi'kmaq in Acadia, 1700-1867. By Jennifer Reid. [Religions and Beliefs Series, No. 4.] (Ottawa , Ontario: University of Ottawa Press. 1995. Pp. 9, 133. Can. $16.00 paperback .) The author has attempted a gigantic task, an analysis of the "problem of community that plagues Canadian society." She believes that this is the problem of "alienation," and she considers that it is anchored in the character of the relationship between "European Canadians and all others." "For non-Europeans," she writes, "the problem has to do with alienation from dominant structures of human significance in society. For Europeans," she continues, "it has to do with the capacity of recognizing the human composition of Canadian society and, consequently, of our own human significance." She has chosen to consider her ideas by looking at "British and Mi'qmaq in Acadia" between the years 1700 and 1867. It was Bergson who suggested that the answers we find are contained in the questions we ask, and the monograph that Reid has published inevitably reflects her assumptions about Canadian society and its make-up, as well as about the nature of the relationship between the power of political institutions and organizations of social status.What results is a work that contains an interesting survey of an eclectic bibliography, with little or no reference to political and social theory and no attempt to consider the extent to which Irish, Scottish, BOOK REVIEWS675 French, and English differ from one another. She poses an argument that requires much greater analysis than the monograph has allowed. Much of the argument presented in the monograph depends upon a detailed analysis of questions which Professor Reid must have considered, but has had no space to broach in this short work. For example,the sharp division into Mi'kmaq and British of the many communities that lived during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the territory that today forms the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island needs some elaboration. Since her work specifically is said to begin in 1700, the lack of attention paid to the presence of the Acadians there, as the most populous group of European descent before 1755, should be explicitly defended. Some comment should also have been made on the interpretation of Catholic belief systems, which were common among both Acadian and Mi'kmaq during these years. If Professor Reid considers that Protestant and Catholic beliefs are interchangeable, she should make this point explicitly. It would be interesting to have her consideration of how the varying groups of new migrants were linked to one another. Are the religious views of the Gaelic-speaking and Catholic Scots, who arrived in the seventeen-seventies in Nova Scotia and were without the franchise until 1829, not significantly different from those of the ProtestantYorkshire families who arrived at much the same time, or the United Empire Loyalists...