Upper Canadian Politics Revisited

Ontarian identity. Jean Laponce's work is well peppered with international examples that demonstrate the inevitable conflict that arises from individual and community language-contact situations. It may be disconcerting to face the thesis that even plural societies that appear to have achieved an accommodating balance among ethnic groups, such as Switzerland, are in fact on an inevitable trip to unilingualism. Nevertheless, his treatment of the issue of language contact is thorough and erudite. NOTES I. Peter H. Nelde, "Language Contact Means Language Conflict," Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 8, nos. I & 2 (1987), 33-42. 2. Donald G. Janelle, "Measuring Human Extensibility in a Shrinking World," The Journal of Geography, vol. 72, no. 5 (1973), 8-15. 3. Don Cartwright, "Accommodation Among the Anglophone Minority in Quebec to Official Language Policy: A Shift in Traditional Patterns of Language Contact," Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 8, nos. l & 2 (l 987), 187-212. 4. Richard J. Joy, Languages in Conflict (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972). 5. Frederick W. Boal and J. Neville Douglas, eds. Integration and Division: Geographical Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Problem (London: Academic Press, 1982). DON CARTWRIGHT The University of Western Ontario Journal of Canadian Studies Vol. 23, No. 4 (Hiver 1988-89 Winter) Upper Canadian Politics Revisited SIR JOHN JOHNSON: LOYALIST BARONET Earle Thomas. Toronto and Reading: Dundum Press, 1986. 19lpp. Illustrated. THE LION, THE EAGLE, AND UPPER CANADA: A DEVELOPING COLONIAL IDEOLOGY. Jane Errington. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987. 272pp. Illustrated. THE ORANGEMAN: THE LIFE & TIMES OF OGLE GOWAN. Don Akenson. Toronto:James Lorimer, 1986. xiii, 330pp. Illustrated. THE BANK OF UPPER CANADA. Peter Baskerville. Carleton Library Series No. 141. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1987. cliii, 400pp. Illustrated. For almost a generation after the publication of Gerald Craig's Upper Canada in 1963, ongoing scholarship in Upper Canadian political history went underground, becoming accessible only to those willing to read theses, articles in learned journals, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Pathbreaking theses by Graeme Patterson and Hartwell Bowsfield, though essential to an understanding of pre-Confederation Ontario, remained unpublished, as did significant dissertations by Fred Armstrong, Barry Dyster, and Robert Fraser. Happily, in the last five years this trend has been reversed. The "bicentennial" of the province stimulated a reasonable amount of loyalist scholarship. A number of theses have been expanded into books by Phillip Buckner, Bruce Wilson, and Donald Beer. The Osgoode Society has encouraged legal scholarship, and the academic presses - Carleton, University of Toronto, McGill-Queen's, and University of British Columbia - have all recently published important works in the field. Upper Canadian political history has once again become accessi135 ble, and the books reviewed here are part of an ongoing revival in Upper Canadian political history which extends also to the history of Canada West. Sir John Johnson: Loyalist Baronet by free-lance historian Earle Thomas is an addition to the growing list of popular biographies of pre-Confederation Upper Canadians published by Dundurn Press. Based largely on the Claus and Haldimand papers, as well as on printed document collections and secondary sources, this book contains a wealth of material on Johnson's fascinating private life, and is told very much from Johnson's own point of view. A fast-moving and readable biography with numerous illustrations , it will be useful for introducing non-specialists to some important personalities of the loyalist era. The book is structured in a curious way, beginning in 1775-76 when political events disturbed the Johnson family's enjoyment of their Mohawk Valley estates in New York. It is only after Sir John has succeeded in escaping the rebel force sent to imprison him in 1776 that the book travels back in time to discuss Johnson's boyhood and early manhood. Here, however, probably because of the author's heavy reliance on the Sir William Johnson papers, the focus is less on Sir John than on his father. It is only with Sir William's death, recorded in Chapter 4, that Sir John really becomes the centre of this biography. Thomas indicates that Sir John grew up very much in the shadow of his father, an Irish immigrant who became a great...