Uncovering the Historical past of the Atlantic Area: What was the Catalyst – and What’s Subsequent?*


Historical past issues greater than most of us acknowledge until and till it immediately impacts us. But it shapes in delicate and unconscious methods how provinces and communities are perceived prior to now and current, and the way they confront the long run.  That applies particularly within the case of Atlantic Canada, mendacity “Down East” and, till the previous fifty years, considered as principally outdoors the mainstream of Canada’s historic custom.

Two vital tutorial developments modified that outlook, each of which originated and have been ‘hot-housed’ on the College of New Brunswick.  Since its founding in 1971, influential articles, analysis research, and e book evaluate essays revealed in Acadiensis: Journal of Historical past of the Atlantic Area, have challenged regional stereotypes, uncovered buried public coverage points, and influenced how the province and area are considered not solely in North America however throughout the Atlantic world.

Fifty years in the past, in 1974, the founders of the “Acadiensis College” established the biennial Atlantic Canada Research convention, which, in 1979, earned the Clio Prize of the Canadian Historic Affiliation for excellent scholarship, placing regional historical past on the scholarly map in Canada.

Historic analysis, usually produced in public archives in laborious trend hardly ever will get correctly acknowledged within the public sphere.  Two outstanding College of New Brunswick historians, Invoice Parenteau and Elizabeth Mancke, who handed away within the fall of 2023, did make their mark leaving a path of shock and unhappiness of their wake.  The duo have been an integral a part of the analysis workforce that helped Matawaskiye (Madawaska Maliseet First Nation) win a federal tribunal land declare in April 2021 leading to a $145-million payout, the most important settlement within the historical past of the Maritimes.

Over the weekend of Could 10-12, 2024, the Atlantic Canada Research Convention, marked its fiftieth  anniversary 12 months in typical, understated Maritime trend.  That convention, hosted by UNB-trained historian Mark J. McLaughlin at College of Maine Orono, paid tribute to not solely to the 2 historians’ roles in attaining that historic settlement, however equally essential, their legacy in sustaining Acadiensis, because the area’s flagship and influential journal of Atlantic Research.

Founders of the journal, spearheaded by founding editor Phillip Buckner and referred to as the ‘Acadensis College’, got here collectively within the late Nineteen Sixties and early Seventies, satisfied that one thing was severely lacking. Our area was consigned to the periphery in nationwide debates. With the UNB Historical past Division as their base, they have been dedicated to filling the yawning hole in analysis and establishing a bigger presence for Atlantic Canada our nationwide story or narrative. The biennial Atlantic Canada Research Convention, based In 1974, supplied a showcase for a lot of the most effective analysis on the area.

The UNB-based journal shaped its personal publishing arm referred to as Acadiensis Press in 1980 and the massive breakthrough got here in 1989 with the looks of E.R. (Ernie) Forbes Difficult the Regional Stereotype: Essays on the twentieth Century Maritimes. Drawing upon the storehouse of articles revealed over 20 years, Forbes and the contributors countered the prevailing view that the Maritimes was a conservative society doomed to the destiny of financial marginalization due to the area’s distance from central Canada and its supposed dynamism.

Good historical past was important to good coverage, Forbes and the Acadiensis College of researchers believed, and a change in perspective was warranted. Collectively they documented a practice of lively resistance and advocacy for structural change, from the Eighteen Eighties onward, connecting the Maritime Rights Motion, railways and transportation coverage, Melancholy-era reduction initiatives, and the affect of wartime consolidation of energy and manufacturing capability in central Canada.

The journal flourished and UNB grew to become a magnet for a few of the nation’s main historic thinkers and authors. Forbes and his shut colleagues David Frank and Gail Campbell supplied the anchor at UNB, and a succession of historians, slicing their enamel or increasing their attain at Acadiensis, rose to grow to be Canadian Historic Affiliation presidents:  Phillip Buckner (1992-93), Gregory Kealey (1998-99), Margaret Conrad (2005-07, and Don Wright (2024-25). In a captivating 2015 article, Atlantic Canadian historian Tom Peace analyzed the citations of articles revealed in Acadiensis and recognized a small group of key contributors to the scholarship however an online or community of affect extending to some 700 historians and researchers.

The main focus and preoccupations of Acadiensis modified over the a long time, reflecting bigger shifts in historic writing – from politics and nationwide coverage within the early Seventies to social, labour and girls’s historical past within the Nineteen Eighties to broader research of the Atlantic world within the early 2000s. At this time, a perceptible shift is underway within the route of exploring ‘settler-colonialism’ and gender identities over time.

Invoice Parenteau’s current passing sparked a critical reflection on his position in shaping the analysis agenda and the affect of his scholarship on the sphere.  Shifting from the College of Maine to UNB for doctoral research from 1987 to 1994, he was central to what’s referred to as the second era of the Acadiensis College exemplified within the shift in focus to finding out bushes, forests, and Indigenous land claims.  His 1994 PhD thesis laid the groundwork tracing the evolution of the N.B. useful resource sector from lumber to pulp and paper from the Nineteen Twenties to the top of the Nineteen Thirties.

After returning to the UNB Historical past Division in 2000 as a professor, Parenteau edited Acadiensis for seven years, and supervised some 22 graduate college students, together with his greatest recognized protégé, Mark McLaughlin, now based mostly on the Canadian-American Research Centre at UMaine Orono.  He additionally performed an instrumental position within the rise and unfold of environmental training, propelled by important research digging into forestry useful resource growth and environmental impacts on the Atlantic salmon and the subsistence actions of rural New Brunswickers.

The late Elizabeth Mancke made her mark with a critically-important 2005 essay offering a totally new interpretation of the origins of New England and the Maritimes. Breaking from the standard colonization framework, she noticed “areas of energy” within the Indigenous-European contest that formed the origin and drove the evolution of the early trendy Atlantic world. Seen by way of the lens of “areas of energy,” Indigenous-imperial European contact took on a totally new dimension, one the place Indigenous peoples had inherent rights to land and self-determination.

Fellow American-born scholar Elizabeth Mancke arrived in New Brunswick in 2012 as Canada Analysis Chair in Atlantic Canada Research at UNB, Fredericton. She emerged as Parenteau’s logical successor at UNB and, specializing in early Maritime research, established a British North America Legislative Database, cataloguing key items of laws regarding an entire vary of Indigenous claims.

Parenteau and Mancke discovered frequent trigger of their advocacy for Indigenous rights and claims to lands and assets. Armed together with his utterly unparalleled information of the Public Archives of New Brunswick, he carried out analysis on a number of Wabanaki claims earlier than engaged on the profitable Madawaska declare. When Parenteau bowed out of the Madawaska declare due to sickness, Mancke stepped-in and supplied days of generally grueling testimony as federal authorities tried unsuccessfully to dam the declare.

The most recent Atlantic Canada Research convention attracted some 150 professors and researchers. The featured night occasion paid tribute to Parenteau and Mancke’s work in getting ready and profitable the Madawaska Maliseet declare. Chief Patricia Bernard, a 1999 UNB regulation graduate, who submitted the unique declare whereas in her second 12 months of regulation faculty, spent some 23 years preventing for justice for her group.  She credit analysis supplied by Parenteau and Mancke with being important in reconstructing the historical past of her First Nation, filling-in the lacking items over a 100-year span, and integrating the entire wrestle into the broader motion for reconciliation.

The Acadiensis College is now very a lot in transition.  The passing of each Parenteau and Mancke leaves a gap and so does the retirement of long-serving managing editor, Stephen Dutcher, after 21 years of devoted service. Comparatively new developments just like the Acadiensis Weblog curated by MSVU historian Corey Slumkoski present a contemporary outlet for topical analysis commentaries. Whereas the 2 present editors are poised to reinvent the journal with a formidable advisory board, it’s fairly a legacy to uphold at a time when tutorial journals face elevated competitors from digital blogs and open entry publications.

*An earlier model of this commentary appeared in The Telegraph-Journal, Could 19, 2024. 

How important was Acadiensis journal within the uncovering of uncared for facets of, and promotion of recent views on, the historical past of the Atlantic Area?  Did the rise of Atlantic Canada research from the Seventies to the early 2000s characterize a type of ‘golden age’ of historiography within the Maritimes?  What explains the capability of the Historical past Division at UNB to maintain the motion over a fifty-year interval?  What comes subsequent for the Acadiensis College?  

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