An Accidental History of Canada explores accidents, their causes, consequences, and afterlife, in colonial, Indigenous, and urban contexts, from the 1630s to the 1970s. These investigations make plain that accidents have significant social, cultural and policy meaning, and reveal aspects of precarity and inequity.
Authors
- Published in
- Montreal, CA
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- AN ACCIDENTAL HISTORY OF CANADA 2
- Title 4
- Copyright 5
- Dedication 6
- CONTENTS 8
- FIGURES 12
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 16
- Introduction: Framing an Accidental Past 20
- PART ONE | EQUITY 48
- 1 “Vahinko!”: Finnish Canadian Socialists Making Sense of Accidental Fire 50
- 2 The Accidental Underground: Death and Injury in Ontario’s Mining Industry 78
- 3 Coroner Morton Shulman versus Dr Edward Shouldice: Medical Malpractice in 1960s Canada 106
- 4 Pedalling Acceptable Losses: Narratives of Cyclist Accidents in Vancouver, BC 130
- PART TWO | PRECAUTION 158
- 5 Life and Death in the Building of Montreal’s Victoria Bridge, 1854–1860 160
- 6 A “Lack of System in Their Work”: Risk, Injury, and Labour in the Grenfell Medical Mission of Northern Newfoundland and Labrador, 1893–1914 187
- 7 An Allowance for Accidents: Alberta’s 1908 Workmen’s Compensation Legislation 214
- 8 “Don’t Shoot Crooked Chute”: Memorializing Death and Mediating Risk on Ontario’s Petawawa River 242
- PART THREE | NARRATIVES 268
- 9 Wind, Error, and Providence: Shipwrecks in New France 270
- 10 Accidental History and Manitoulin Island, ca. 1830–1960: Indigenous and Settler Experience 298
- 11 An Accident’s Afterlife: Childhood, Disability, Maternalism, and Rehabilitation 330
- 12 Kitchen-Table Surgery: Rural Risk and Accidental Care in Early Twentieth-Century General Practice 359
- Conclusion 384
- CONTRIBUTORS 388
- INDEX 390
