Canada: Confederation to Present [CD-ROM] (review)

The recently issued CD-ROM Canada: Confederation to Present claims to be 'the most comprehensive history of Canada ever authored.' Such an expansive claim is difficult to assess, but surely contains some measure of truth. One hundred and forty historians from Canada and Quebec contributed to this electronic resource, designed for students and the general public. Sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage, Telefilm Canada, and the University of Alberta, the project was overseen by an editorial board composed of thirteen historians representing the country's different regions. The abundance of information (both textual and visual) on the disc is impressive, at times even overwhelming; ultimately, this is a sound and satisfying resource.

The structure of Canada: Confederation to Present benefits from the multidirectional possibilities offered by the medium of a compact disc. The history of Canada from 1867 onward is presented through five 'interpretative narratives, or pathways': 'Natives,' 'Society/Culture,' 'Women,' 'Politics/Economy,' and 'Regional Dynamics.' Each 'pathway' includes several scholarly overviews written by experts in the field. Under 'Natives,' for instance, the researcher might choose between 'Native Life' (authored by J.R. Miller), 'Government Policy and Administration' (the work of Kerry Abel), or 'Native Activism' (written by Anthony J. Hall). Each of these essays is in turn divided into chronological periods, and each period into different themes. Readers of James G. Snell's essay 'Home Life' (part of the pathway 'Society/Culture') interested in the period 1945-67 might choose, for instance, among sub-topics 'The Baby Boom,' 'The Elderly,' 'Housing,' and 'Suburbia.' All twenty-four overview essays (which occasionally overlap) include footnotes, references to current historiographical debates, and suggestions for further reading. All include visuals, some of them truly wonderful: photographs (such as 'Norman Bethune's Apartment, Montreal, QC, ca. 1935'), illustrations, caricatures, graphs, tables, and maps. Many include excerpts from primary documents, and some include links to short film clips (for instance, 'Vancouver to Get Oil Pipeline, 1952' or 'Roman Catholic Mission, Chesterfield Inlet, NT, 1951').

All twenty-four overview essays also provide hyperlinks to 'case studies.' There are 120 case studies in all, each specially commissioned for this CD-ROM and each the work of an expert in the field. Some of these case studies consist of 'classic' material: Marilyn Barber on domestic servants; Irving Abella on Canadian anti-Semitism in the interwar years; Gail Cuthbert Brandt on women in the Quebec cotton industry; Réal Bélanger on Wilfrid Laurier. Other case studies are drawn from more recent research: Charlene Porsild on Klondike society; Valerie Korinek on post-war readers of Chatelaine; Éric Bédard on the October Crisis; Robin Brownlie on the role of Indian agents in Ontario; Lisa Dillon on elderly women in late Victorian Canada. For reasons that remain unclear to this reader, some of the most interesting case studies are not actually to be found on the CD-ROM, but can be accessed on-line from the Canada: Confederation to Present Web site. Like the overview articles, the case studies include illustrations (some in colour), footnotes, excerpts from primary sources, and a bibliography.

As the titles of the five pathways suggest, the CD-ROM reflects the emphasis on social history that for the past thirty years has been characteristic of the discipline. The editors and authors have paid careful attention to differences structured by region, ethnicity, gender, and social class. In its approach and its historiographical leanings the CD somewhat resembles the two-volume textbook edited by Margaret Conrad, Alvin Finkel, et al., History of the Canadian Peoples. It might be seen as a response to those who charge that historical knowledge has become fragmented, in that it pulls the social history microstudies of the last quarter-century together into coherent syntheses and one (massive!) product. And the CD actually delivers more than it promises: ostensibly a history of Canada since Confederation, some of the overview articles (such as Jean-Claude Robert's essay on Quebec and David Marshall's essay on religion) also provide valuable background information on...