The donut Penfold, Steve
The donut,
c2008, 20080112, 2008, 2008-01-12, 20080101
eBook
pBased on a wide range of sources, from commercial and government reports to personal interviews, emThe Donut/em is a comprehensive and fascinating look at one of Canada's most popular products. It ...offers original insights on consumer culture, mass consumption, and the dynamics of Canadian history./p
This article examines the politics of gasoline prices in British Columbia during the 1960s. It focuses on the “one-price” campaign of Cyril Shelford, a Social Credit member of the legislative ...assembly from the Omenica riding in the north. In 1963, Shelford forced Premier W.A.C. Bennett to appoint the Royal Commission on Gasoline Price Structure headed by Justice Charles Morrow. Over its sixty-seven days of hearings, the commission became a debate between two different, but overlapping, conceptions of free enterprise, a popular version built on fairness and opportunity for small producers and a more abstract and ostensibly depoliticized market idea preferred by the oil companies. While Shelford’s campaign attracted allies in the interior and the north, his goal of one wholesale price for gasoline faced considerable obstacles. The politics of knowledge at the commission hearings favoured the oil companies, while equal gasoline prices ultimately did not seem to fit the broader developmental politics of the Bennett government. Still, Shelford’s campaign and the Morrow commission point to the importance of oil politics outside producing areas like Alberta and to the social meaning of energy prices during the postwar boom.
The workers' festival Heron, Craig
The workers' festival,
2005, 20050729, 2005, 2005-01-01, 2005-12-15, 20050101
eBook
The Workers' Festivalranges widely into many key themes of labour history - union politics and rivalries, radical movements, religion, race and gender, and consumerism/leisure - as well as cultural ...history - public celebration/urban procession, urban space and communication, and popular culture.
A mile of make-believe Penfold, Steve
A mile of make-believe,
2016, 2016, 2016-09-13, 2016-09-23
eBook
"A Mile of Make Believe examines the unique history of the Santa Claus parade in Canada. This volume focuses on the Eaton's sponsored parades that occurred in Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg as well ...as the shorter-lived parades in Calgary and Edmonton. There is also a discussion of small town alternatives, organized by civic groups, service clubs, and chambers of commerce."--
"By focusing on the pioneering effort of the Eaton's department store Steve Penfold argues that the parade ultimately represented a paradoxical form of cultural power: it allowed Eaton's to press its image onto public life while also reflecting the decline of the once powerful retailer. Penfold's analysis reveals the "corporate fantastic"--a visual and narrative mix of meticulous organization and whimsical style--and its influence on parade traditions. Penfold's considerable analytical skills have produced a work that is simultaneously a cultural history, history of business and commentary on consumerism. Professional historians and the general public alike would be remiss if this wasn't on their holiday wish list."--
The Eaton’s Santa Claus parade in Toronto emerged as form of “commercial spectacle,” forged in the decades after the First World War, that blended older and newer forms of popular culture with the ...changing dynamics of family, audience, community, and commerce. Although it was a local event, its creators were part of a network of parade-makers in the big cities of North America, who shared ideas and drew upon the same cultural forms. With the advent of television, the Santa Claus parade reached a wider audience across the country. In between the parade’s local performance and its Canadian audience lies the creation of a metropolitan spectacle, a local event that not only synthesized international ideas and fit into larger networks of cultural producers, but also had broader reach, projecting power and influence outward to a vast economic and cultural space. La parade du père Noël d’Eaton s’est transformée en « spectacle commercial », forgé au fil des décennies qui ont suivi la Première Guerre mondiale, alliant des formes plus anciennes et plus modernes de culture populaire à la dynamique changeante de la famille, du public, de la collectivité et du commerce. Même s’il s’agissait d’un événement local, ses créateurs faisaient partie d’un réseau d’organisateurs de parades, s’étendant aux grandes villes d’Amérique du Nord, nourrissant les mêmes idées et s’inspirant des mêmes formes culturelles. L’avènement de la télévision a permis à la parade du père Noël d’atteindre un auditoire plus vaste à l’échelle du pays. Entre sa production locale et son auditoire canadien repose le berceau d’un spectacle métropolitain, d’un événement local qui, en plus d’être le creuset d’idées venues d’ailleurs et de se rallier à de plus vastes réseaux de producteurs culturels, jouissait d’un plus grand rayonnement, brillant de sa puissance et de son influence sur un vaste espace économique et culturel.
For most Canadians today, Labour Day is the last gasp of summer fun: the final long weekend before returning to the everyday routine of work or school. But over its century-long history, there was ...much more to the September holiday than just having a day off.
In The Workers' Festival , Craig Heron and Steve Penfold examine the complicated history of Labour Day from its origins as a spectacle of skilled workers in the 1880s through its declaration as a national statutory holiday in 1894 to its reinvention through the twentieth century. The holiday's inventors hoped to blend labour solidarity, community celebration, and increased leisure time by organizing parades, picnics, speeches, and other forms of respectable leisure. As the holiday has evolved, so too have the rituals, with trade unionists embracing new forms of parading, negotiating, and bargaining, and other social groups re-shaping it and making it their own. Heron and Penfold also examine how Labour Day's monopoly as the workers' holiday has been challenged since its founding, with alternative festivals arising such as May Day and International Women's Day.
The Workers' Festival ranges widely into many key themes of labour history – union politics and rivalries, radical movements, religion (Catholic and Protestant), race and gender, and consumerism/leisure – as well as cultural history – public celebration/urban procession, urban space and communication, and popular culture. From St. John's to Victoria, the authors follow the century-long development of the holiday in all its varied forms.
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