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420 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 research industry. However, despite its >cultural= approach to the birth of contemporary advertising, the book fails to address some of the key societal issues that cultural and communication studies have highlighted in recent decades. Canada of the period under consideration was a place of very high immigration. The massive changes that this phenomenon wrought on this country=s economy and social relations as well as the ideological role of advertising in socializing newcomers have yet to be explored. (KARIM H. KARIM). Vincent J. McNally. The Lord=s Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia University of Alberta Press 2000. xxvi, 444 $34.95 Vincent J. McNally=s extensive research and recording of personalities, events, statistics, conditions, and attitudes with regard to the Oblates and the Catholic community in British Columbia are admirable and valuable in filling a gap in Canadian history. The story, so very distinct from such missionary accounts of other parts of Canada, ranges from the founding of the Oblates in France after the French Revolution, through the machinations of the Bishops Blanchet, to the founding and the ethos of the residential schools; the establishing of dioceses and the building of churches, schools, and hospitals in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster; the work with the Native peoples and attitudes towards them; the tensions between bishops and religious and among religious themselves; the secularist mentality of the west, and the great apology of the Oblates in 1991. The telling is extremely interesting; unfortunately, it is also deeply flawed. The problem is not with the historical accuracy of the book, but with the convictions and the attitude of the author, particularly with regard to the Oblates. McNally sees this group of men as products of a Jansenistic theology and spirituality, racist, and, by a misguided zeal, determined to eliminate the languages, beliefs, and customs of the Native peoples in order to make them good Catholic Canadians. Having thus categorized the Oblates, he diligently relates foundations, schools, programs, and results, insisting on the priests=sterile and blinkered Jansenism and their refusal to see things in a broader light, which the author himself enjoys, having lived a century later. There are no heroes in this history, only benighted and stubborn missionaries, subservient women religious, incompetent and devious bishops, secularized whites far more interested in money than in faith, and oppressed and abused Native peoples. What success there seems to have been is admitted grudgingly. The dimension of joyful service for the love of God, which we usually associate with missionary endeavour, does not appear. Instead we have attributions which are harsh and unfair. The term >racist= implies enmity and hatred. The Oblates did not hate the Native humanities 421 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 peoples; they may have been unenlightened, according to today=s standards, but their inspiration was charity. McNally=s statements are surprisingly harsh and border on polemic, as though he were angry at those about whom he writes; he states, for example, of Joseph Brabant, a secular priest from the American College at Louvain who spent thirty years among the Native people on the west coast of Vancouver Island: >Initially, as the first European to live among them for generations, his major contribution to the Hesquiat ... was to introduce smallpox.= Archbishop Seghers, the man who longed to give his life for the Native people (for he too was imbued with the Jansenistic spirituality of sacrifice, so repugnant to Father McNally) was murdered because of his foolishness in choosing to be accompanied by an unbalanced Irish guide. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is McNally=s use of the word >holocaust= to describe the catastrophic plague of smallpox of 1861 which decimated the Native peoples. Again, in its modern context, the word evokes the elimination of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime. What is the implication here? Were the Native peoples deliberately eliminated by the Europeans, particularly by the Oblates? The book makes uncomfortable reading for another reason: for all its handsome presentation, it is not well edited. The style...

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