History

276 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY London Little Theatre). STRATPORD (PHIL.) trans., Jean Anouilh, Eurydice (London., Ont., Circle Theatre) . PERIODICAL. THEATRE CANADA: revue specialisee es·art theatral. publiee SOllS les auspices du Festival Dramatiquc National; a magazine of .the theatre and allied arts, published under the auspices of the Dominion Drama Festival (vol. I, no. 1, Jan.-Feb., 1951 ); redacteur-en-chef, EMILE. LEGAULT, associate editor, HERBERT WHITTAKER; bilingual; SOc.; ceased publication with this number. IV. SOCIAL STUDIES F. H. UNDERHILL, H. A. INNIS, & OTHERS In the absence of Professor A. Brady, who is on leave for the present session, Professors F. H. Underhill and H. A. Innis have divided the , responsibility for this section. Professor Innis's most recent volume, The Bias of Communication (1951), is to be reviewed in a later issue of the QUARTERLY. I. History F. H. UNDERHILL AND OTHERS In the field of Canadian history there appears to have been a lack of much scholarly writing of significance during the past year. But two volumes of documents deserve favourable notice. One is volume 13 of the series published by the Hudson's Bay Record Society. With a long editorial introduction by E. E. Rich, it prints the journals kept by Peter Skene Ogden in the Snake River country (roughly the area covered by the present state of Idaho) during the years 1824-6. The Company, foreseeing the time when it would have to retire from this part of the West, was trapping the area vigorously; and these journals record the expeditions made by Ogden and the difficulties with which he met. They are of rather special interest for experts in the history of the fur trade. The second volume, a publication of the Champlain Society, is of much more general interest. It is the first of two volumes giving an English translation of the Historia canadensis originally published (in Latin) by the Jesuit father Fran~ois du Creux in Paris in 1664. The translation has been made by Percy Robinson of Toronto who also writes an introduction, and there are editorial explanatory notes supplied by J. B. Conacher of the Department of History of the University of Toronto. Du Creux's work is a summary of the Jesuit Relations and covers the period from 1625 to 1658. It is full of the missionary enthusiasm of the Jesuits but, as the translator points out, not SO good on the purely political aspects of the period. However, these pages make fascinating reading; and one can only say about them, as one has to say about a good many of the Champlain Society volumes, that it is a pity that material on Canadian history of such interest as this should LEITERS IN CANADA, 1951 277 be published in such expensive fonn that it will never reach thousands of readers who would be delighted and stimulated by it. The Canadian Pageant by G. J. Reeve and R. O. MacFarlane is another school history text-book, written on the commendable principle that it is desirable to give school and the general public a fuller knowledge of the period since Confederation than of the earlier years. It appears to be generally well done, and is specially good on the ecanomic basis of Canadian development. But the authors, who start by expressing strong disapproval of those persons who defend Canadian shortcomings by explaining that we are a young people, find themselves near the end of their book explaining the lack of distinctive national characteristics in our literature by this same time-honoured remark that we are a young people. Democracy in the Canadas, 1759-1867 by D. Hugh Gillis is a little book developed from a Ph.D. thesis written under the direction of the late Professor Harold Laski in the University of London. It tells the story of the political evolution of these years competently, but it does not seem to have any new infonnation or any new insight. A certain fondness for abstract phrases is perhaps a sign of the Laski influence. That a work of this kind should be considered worthy of the Ph.D. in London leads one to some disquieting reflections on the standards of historical scholarship...