More Questions of Balance

The incoming eilitors, the eilitorial staff, and the editorial board would like to highlight Michael Peterman's superb eilitorial contribution over a 14-year period. As associate editor from 1981 and editor from 1984, he has overseen the publication of more than 500 articles and reviews, many of them seminal works of scholarship. His talent and dedication have been responsible for our journal's extensive national and international circulation, for its success in SSHRCC competitions, and for the cheery atmosphere of our working quarters. Thank you, Michael; we wish you all the best in your ongoing work on Catharine Parr Traill. ML More Questions ofBalance As this issue of the Journal goes to press, the Cameron Report on Canadian Studies, an update of the 1976 Symons Commission Report To Know Ourselves and its third volume and sequel Some Questions ofBalance (1984), is on the verge of appearing. A preliminary overview of its findings was presented by David Cameron in the opening plenary of this year's ACS meetings in Calgary, and if his sensitive and sensible presentation was any indication, it will offer a most welcome hard look at the lost ground as well as at the successes of the last 30 years. At the time of the Symons Commission inquiry, university students were more interested in Canailian studies than were faculty; almost 20 years later, the reverse seems to be the case. And while several established programs have emerged, many smaller centres continue to struggle for university administrators ' recognition and support. Without explicitly setting aside policy recommendations, David Cameron's Calgary presentation emphasized current statistics, balancing the good news with the bad. What follows are my own meditations, not to be confused with Professor Cameron's observations. Many faculty initially involved in setting up Canadian studies programs in the wake of the Symons Report are now left wondering why today's students often turn to no less worthy but newer and trendier transdisciplinary programs such as women's studies, native studies, development studies and environmental studies. Constitutional battle fatigue may be a factor, coupled with the perceived onerousness of language requirements , and this despite the popularity of immersion programs. The economic climate and its impact on teaching jobs should not be underestimated: the traditional disciplines' growing attraction is a sign not of the failure of Canadian and other interdisciplinary programs, so much as of the misguided back-to-basics conservatism ilictating student options, given scarcity and intense competition in academic and other job markets. Perhaps, too, uninformed and misguided assumptions about Canadian studies as a scholarly discipline, so often Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 29, No. 2 (Eti 1994 Summer) 3 mistakenly confused with the intense Canadian nationalism that contributed to its emergence in the 1970s, has not caught up to the current reality - that both disciplinary and transdisciplinary Canadianists are often on the cutting edge of research in their field. Whatever the causes, it would seem that the colonial cringe and its alter ego, a commitment to decolonizing the Canadian imagination , have to some extent been superceded by postmodern cynicism and apathy. · One of the greatest ironies of the Cameron Report's findings is that Canadian studies may be healthier abroad (in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America) than it is at home, a cause for both rejoicing and concern. There are, for example, several PhD programs in other countries but none in Canada at the moment. The gradual displacement of the Secretary of State (now Heritage) by External (now Foreign) Affairs as a home for Canadian studies has played its part over the years, although issues of trade and immigration also help account for the shift in focus and audience. There is food for thought in recent findings suggesting that - questions of funding and politics aside others often genuinely take a greater interest in Canadian politics, society and culture than we do; they value Canada and Canadians as subjects of study, both in and of themselves and from a comparativist standpoint. Thus it comes as no surprise to me that a conference theme such as "Canadian Studies at Home and Abroad," implicitly emphasizing the latter, drew more prominent Canadian scholars than usual to the ACS meetings...