Volume 118, numéro 1, spring 2026

EN :

Between 1946 and 1962, over 2.1 million newcomers came to the safe haven of Canada. Many of these immigrants successfully integrated into the host society. This paper will provide an intimate look into the experiences of seven families who emigrated from Germany to Sault Ste. Marie in the postwar period. In “the Soo,” cultural clubs and families of various ethnicities often banded together to help each other adapt, start over, and rebuild their lives. The resident Saultites demonstrated curiosity, but also varying degrees of acceptance of these immigrants, even though some of them had come from countries against which Canadians had fought. German newcomers to the Soo were consequently able to retain their heritage while becoming part of Canadian society. They created new identities as German-Canadians while participating in the acculturation process.

EN :

In the summer of 1964, first-year Alberta College of Art and Design student Roberta Joan Anderson (soon to be Joni Mitchell) dropped out of college and fled to Canada’s most cosmopolitan city: Toronto. Twenty years old, pregnant, unwed, and utterly terrified, Mitchell was still a perennial pragmatist. She envisioned Toronto as an environment more hospitable to the life she wanted to lead—a life that deviated from normative Canadian cultural values and saw her becoming both a single mother and a female singer-songwriter. This article examines an understudied period in the life of musical legend Joni Mitchell. It expands on existing studies of Mitchell’s early career and on the experiences of unwed mothers living in 1960s Toronto. In it, I illuminate the context-specific considerations that led to Mitchell’s decision to leave Alberta and interrogate what normative expectations of motherhood looked like in the Canadian Prairies versus postwar Ontario. After being turned away from the Salvation Army’s Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers, Mitchell gave birth alone to her daughter on February 19, 1965. She left the hospital the next day, her daughter placed into foster care. Mitchell is one of thousands of Canadian women whose lives were irrevocably impacted by Canada’s postwar adoption mandate programs. As a public figure who has gone on record about the mistreatment she suffered while pregnant and unwed, Mitchell grants us access to a domain of Canadian history where voices are notoriously difficult to find, given the shame and stigma surrounding unwed motherhood. Mitchell becomes a totem through which to discuss the enduring legacy of Canada’s postwar adoption mandate for single mothers and the climate of hostility that unwed Canadian mothers in 1960s Ontario were forced to navigate.

EN :

In 1850, the number of Canadians in each Old Northwest state in the United States varied considerably, partly due to differences in total population (Ohio had nearly two million people and Wisconsin about 305,000), and partly due to differences in settlement preferences. Indiana’s total population was nearly triple that of Michigan, but Michigan housed over seven times as many Canadians. The residential locations of the Old Northwest’s British American immigrants can be examined at two levels. First, generally, by considering each state’s number of Canadians and their proportions compared to all immigrants (domestic and foreign), only foreign immigrants, and within the total of British Americans. Second, more granularly, by analyzing their county-by-county residential locations. Since published census tables do not include county-level nativity data, this information was extracted from the microfilmed schedules through individual-by-individual counting and data analysis. The 1850 manuscript census also provides a window into the origins of immigrants to the Old Northwest within British America. Census records reveal that British American immigrants lived in nearly every county of the Old Northwest in 1850, and in many Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois counties, they represented a significant proportion. Yet they are scarcely examined in the historical literature. Perhaps this article can point researchers towards places where local histories and genealogical information can be examined to construct a deeper understanding of the presence and role of mid-nineteenth century Canadian immigrants to the Old Northwest.

EN :

This research analyzes the careers, teaching practices, and self-assessments of Ontario college media professors hired in the 1970s and 1980s in three parts of the province. I interviewed nine retired media professors and an academic manager about their professional experiences during the establishment of these programs. My historical account uses a feminist model of closure theory from the neo-Weberian sociology of professions, along with intersectional writing on identity, to explain the gendered and racialized nature of the labour market in these geographically and historcally specific areas during these years. How was hiring influenced by these elements?  At the beginning of this period, privileged white middle-class men with connections to education and industry experience founded the programs, eventually hiring privileged white women with relevant post secondary credentials and industry experience. However, not all the women hired in the 1980s began their careers full time, unlike their male colleagues, and those who did faced challenges within the institution.