Introduction

We are pleased to submit Issue 53 to our readership; this marks the first year of publications for the team established in 2014. We are fortunate and excited to publish five top-quality articles that will excite great interest. Many of the themes contained herein lay the groundwork for the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation in July 2017; stay tuned for a call for a special issue around that theme. Articles in this volume address both perennial and new issues for Canada as a global citizen. In the first article, by Michael Hurley, the role of the first “war historian,” Major John Richardson, is uncovered. The next article by Joanna Everitt and Joseph Sanford contains an interesting discussion about which themes resonated most strongly in the 2014 New Brunswick provincial election. Following their discussion is that by Philippe Rioux who undertakes a fresh analysis of Quebec nationalism and American influence in the Action catholique editorial cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s. Next we find a discussion by Min Zhou of the interrelationship between skeptics of environmental change and effects on the environmental movement in Canada. The final article is by Christina Keppie, describing the Acadian “Congrès mondial” in 2014 and the implications for the Acadian identity.

Michael Hurley’s article introduces us to Major John Richardson, a figure more of us need to get to know. A fascinating figure, Richardson was a 15-year-old fighter in the War of 1812, alongside General Brock and Tecumseh, both of whom, we are told, “took an interest in the young man.” Richardson framed the conflict as the war of Canadian independence against the United States, writing epic novels such as Wacousta, Or, The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas (1832) and the sequel The Canadian Brothers; Or, the Prophecy Fulfilled: A Tale of the Late American War (1840). He started a newspaper in 1843 entitled Canadian Loyalist and Spirit of 1812. Richardson despaired that “Canadian schools . . . are stocked with the trash that is, from time to time, poured into them from the pens of the most incapable of American authors.” Hurley mentions that “as Richardson tells it, the myth of the border is the coincidence of opposites. Canada the borderline case fascinates him, its problems of identity which seem to be problems of equilibrium, of balance: a key notion in our literature and the study of it.”

Joanna Everitt and Joseph Sanford’s study of the New Brunswick provincial election of 2014, an important piece of the Comparative Provincial Election Project, revisits and updates many of the “traditional” theories of voting behaviour in New Brunswick. The authors remind us that most studies have focused on the “demographic variables of religion and language, partisanship, retrospective voting against the incumbent government, and prospective voting for new young leaders.” Older studies, in particular, have found the support for the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) (as they are called there) among the anglophone region of the south and southwestern parts of the province, while Liberal support was said to come from the north and northeastern francophone, Catholic areas. One important intervening event pointed to by Everitt and Sanford is the switch in the province to single member districts in 1974, which helped party leaders to downplay the seemingly permanent regional, religious, and linguistic lines on which elections were drawn. For example, the PCs won with two successive Acadian leaders from 1995 to 2008. The authors’ findings are rich and provoke our thinking in many interesting ways, showing us, for example, that the role of partisanship varies for Liberal versus PC vote choices as does that of other key independent variables.

We are pleased to include in this issue Philippe Rioux’s historical article “Fraterniser avec l’ennemi,” which was originally presented at the graduate student conference “Le Québec dans les Amériques,” organized by the Association internationale d’études québécoises in Washington, DC, in January 2016. Philippe Rioux’s article was selected from among the best student articles produced at that conference for publication in our journal. We wish to thank the conference selection committee and our reviewers for their support of our commitment to publishing deserving doctoral candidates’ work...