Month: June 2019

“Learning from Development/Development from Learning: Aid and Education, 1945-1975”

CNHH Sponsored Panel – Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, June 5, 2019, University of British Columbia


Education – defined broadly – was at the heart of notions, discourses, and practices of international development efforts in the mid-twentieth century. Learning from Development/Development from Learning:Aid and Education, 1945-1975 proposes to engage with this idea at multiple registers, across diverse time periods, and in the non-governmental, governmental, and intergovernmental settings. In so doing, it explores how Canadians were implicated in a diverse array of efforts to impart the knowledge of ‘development’, the way in which such knowledge was constructed, and the structures of power it thus reflected and reified. It also explores how Canadian involvement in the global development phenomenon led to a feedback of lessons that shaped how Canadians, their communities and their institutions related to the Global South.

To this end, Jill Campbell-Miller focuses on the life and career path of individual women in order to uncover the role Canadians and Canadian organizations played in developing medical institutions in India. Building on this discussion, David Meren explores the origins and evolution of a UN Regional Training Centre launched in the late 1950s at UBC, a collaboration between that university, the UN, and the Canadian government, and how efforts to train individuals from the Global South meant to carry home the knowledge obtained from their time in the Pacific Northwest were interwoven with settler colonialism. Finally, Kevin Brushett explores ‘Ten Days for World Development’, a program the Interchurch Consultative Committee for Development and Relief for development education launched in 1973 with a view to raising awareness of development and social justice issues among Canadian communities, and that evolved into a network for development education programs with which Canada and Canadian NGOs became strongly – though not uncomplicatedly – associated.

Thank you to CNHH member David Meren for organizing this year’s panel.


00.00: Introduction by Chair, David Webster, Associate Professor, Bishop’s University

04:00: Jill Campbell-Miller, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, Carleton University, “A Mission for Modernity: Canadians and Medical Education in India, 1946-1966”

27:00: David Meren, Professeur agrégé, Départment d’histoire, Université de Montréal, “The Pedagogy of ‘Development’: Settler Colonialism and the Origins, Life and Demise of the United Nations Regional Training Centre for Technical Assistance at UBC”

57:15: Kevin Brushett, Associate Professor, Department of History, Royal Military College of Canada, “On Ten Days to Shake the World: NGOs, the State, and the Politics of Development Education”

1:22:45: Question period

*Please note – some of the questions are difficult to hear in this section of the audio, and you may have to adjust your volume appropriately.

“A Very Fortunate Life” by Roger Saint-Vincent

by Mike Molloy

Produced 14 years ago, and printed in only a few dozen copies for friends and colleagues, the memoirs of one the main actors of Canada’s actions towards displaced persons between 1945 and 1980 is now available widely, thanks to the digitization services of the MacOdrum Library.  His long time co-worker Mike Molloy reviews the book for a joint blog with the Canadian Immigration Historical Society; the illustrations come from his collection. Continue reading

Entrevues et documentation pour l’histoire d’une aventure montréalaise de solidarité internationale

Par Anne-Michèle Lajoie, étudiante stagiaire, Université Carleton

 

Image en vedette ci-dessus: 1. Kiosque des bénévoles: Prise au Sommet des Peuples à Québec avril 2001. C’est un sommet en parallèle avec le Sommet des chefs d’État. C’est la réponse populaire démocratique, internationaliste au processus de mondialisation structuré autour de celui des governments et des patrons. Cette photo démontre l’importance des bénévoles dans la mission d’Alternatives.

L’organisation montréalaise de solidarité internationale « Alternatives » aura 25 ans en novembre 2019 et l’organisation a le souhait de bâtir une mémoire, en faisant ressortir des moments clés de son histoire, en mettant la lumière sur des étapes de son évolution qui ont un intérêt historique au-delà du strict cadre institutionnel. Anne-Michèle Lajoie, étudiante en « Public Affairs and Policy Management » à Carleton, a passé les 13 jours de son « practicum » en histoire à les aider.  Dans ce blog, elle raconte son expérience et réfléchit sur les liens entre les praticiens et les historiens de l’humanitaire. Continue reading