McGill-Queen's University Press

The Supreme Court of Canada has affirmed that legislatures, including Parliament, are bound by the Constitution – even beyond the explicit text of the Charter and the British North America Act. Yet legislatures are increasingly asserting authority through rights-limiting laws and the use of the notwithstanding clause. This tension between parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional rights exposes a dangerous misconception: that Canadian legislators can abolish all of our fundamental rights with ordinary law. By Authority of Parliament demonstrates that legislators do not have this power, and more importantly, they never did. Drawing on rich historical analysis, Ryan Alford traces the transformation of parliamentary sovereignty into an exaggerated parliamentary supremacy and uses habeas corpus to illustrate constitutional limits that governed in England, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Absolute rights and sovereignty appear to conflict only when sovereignty is redefined as supremacy, a shift justified by the influential constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey. As UK courts have recently turned away from this paradigm, Alford argues that Canadian courts should be equally forthright in recognizing that the Diceyan model has never described the Canadian constitutional order. Essential reading for students, lawyers, and judges, this timely book will interest all those engaged in Canadian legal history and constitutional law.

Serving not in uniforms or factories but in orchards, fields, and farms, the women and girls of Canada’s Women’s Land Army – the youngest of whom were known as “farmerettes” – planted, picked, and packed food that sustained the nation while men fought overseas. A Vacation for Victory brings this fascinating Second World War history to life. Blending creative nonfiction with archival letters, newspaper clippings, interviews, and her own grandmother’s recollections, Kelsey Lonie portrays the working lives of women who formed Canada’s farm front. Their stories and photographs reveal how they understood both their labour and their changing place in society. Unlike other Allied countries, Canada did not create a national land army; instead, provinces took the lead. Ontario recruited thousands of women, while British Columbia’s program faltered until prairie women, eager for new experiences elsewhere, signed up. Patriotic duty, however, is only part of Lonie’s narrative: wealthy landowners expanded orchards, leaving the hardest, dirtiest jobs to marginalized workers, thus exposing how racism and capitalism shaped wartime farming industries. Richly illustrated with photographs, postcards, and cultural ephemera, A Vacation for Victory offers powerful accounts of grit, inequity, and resilience, restoring women to the centre of Canada’s wartime effort.

War, sectarianism, and imperialism have eroded diversity in the Middle East. While Egypt has been spared the scale of violence devastating Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq, religious nationalism, economic turmoil, and state repression have deepened tensions between Egyptian Muslims and Coptic Christians – the region’s largest Christian community. Within this context, religious difference in contemporary Egypt is often framed through narratives of separation, violence, and decline. Yet beneath the surface of this tumult, most Egyptian Muslims and Christians live together in community and peace. Drawing on years of participant observation, extensive interviews, and the institutional archives of both Muslim and Christian communities in the provincial city of Beni Suef, this compelling work examines overlapping traditions, practices, and histories at Coptic Christian sites frequented by local Muslims to reveal patterns of confident and casual interfaith crossing. Egyptians remain acutely aware of the history of interfaith distrust, separation, and violence but nonetheless sustain flexible, tolerant, and communal relationships. Isaac Friesen offers a significant glimpse into how provincial Egyptians have experienced revolution, empire, neoliberalism, religious revival, globalization, and the state in their everyday lives. With its vivid settings and engaging portraits of communities and individuals, Crossing Communities tells a story not of lost diversity but of a diversity that is dynamic and enduring.

Written in less than ten days in 1994, The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert became a cultural phenomenon that fundamentally altered mainstream ideas about queer identity worldwide. The iconic imagery of Priscilla still resonates as a symbol of global queer pride and liberation in spite of a critical reception that has varied since its release. Renée Middlemost provides valuable insight into the key debates surrounding the film through an overview of its production, initial reception, and legacy – adaptation into a stage musical, theme for an Olympic float, and inspiration for reality television programs. The evolution of Priscilla’s reputation also offers insight into ever-changing cultural attitudes: wild praise upon release, academic and critical backlash, and finally a nuanced but warm welcome into the history of Australian cinema. Equal parts road movie, musical, and comedy, Priscilla moved between genres, pulling off a radical centring of queer lives for mainstream consumption in the mid-1990s. Passing its thirtieth anniversary, The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert endures as cult object and cultural touchstone, adored by devoted audiences while serving as a reminder of progress made and the work still needed for acceptance. As Middlemost says of her first viewing in a suburban Sydney multiplex in 1994: “It was rude, it was sparkly, it shocked the family members who had begrudgingly taken me; I loved it.”

Canada is no stranger to hate. From Ku Klux Klan rallies in the 1920s and fascist sympathizers of the 1930s to the so-called Freedom Convoy’s occupation of Ottawa a century later, far-right extremism is a homegrown phenomenon, deeply woven into the nation’s political and cultural fabric. Through firsthand interviews with former extremists, policymakers, and experts, alongside historical context, For Blood and Soil shows how hate movements – far from an imported problem – have evolved and rebranded, with extremist ideas moving seamlessly between virtual spaces and real-world violence. Over the past decade, online far-right activity in Canada has surged, connecting with networks of incels, QAnon followers, anti-government groups, and other conspiracy-driven communities. Public attention has often focused on religiously motivated violence, overlooking the threat from adherents to secular ideologies, even as violent attacks have risen. Moving beyond frameworks that focus on the United States and Europe, Stephanie Carvin and Amarnath Amarasingam offer targeted recommendations to address this serious threat to Canada’s institutions and social cohesion. By tracing the experiences of individuals who have joined and left extremist groups, this accessible and authoritative work uncovers how extremist ideologies are financed and facilitated and how personal and political forces sustain hate across generations.

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate. Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice. Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe.

Lake Ontario has profoundly influenced the historical evolution of North America. For centuries it has enabled and enriched the societies that crowded its edges, from fertile agricultural landscapes to energy production systems to sprawling cities. In The Lives of Lake Ontario Daniel Macfarlane details the lake’s relationship with the Indigenous nations, settler cultures, and modern countries that have occupied its shores. He examines the myriad ways Canada and the United States have used and abused this resource: through dams and canals, drinking water and sewage, trash and pollution, fish and foreign species, industry and manufacturing, urbanization and infrastructure, population growth and biodiversity loss. Serving as both bridge and buffer between the two countries, Lake Ontario came to host Canada’s largest megalopolis. Yet its transborder exploitation exacted a tremendous ecological cost, leading people to abandon the lake. Innovative regulations in the later twentieth century, such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements, have partially improved Lake Ontario’s health. Despite signs that communities are re-engaging with Lake Ontario, it remains the most degraded of the Great Lakes, with new and old problems alike exacerbated by climate change. The Lives of Lake Ontario demonstrates that this lake is both remarkably resilient and uniquely vulnerable.

At the quarter mark of the twenty-first century Canada faces two existential threats: runaway climate change and the rising global tide of right-authoritarian imperialism. The inextricable relationship between the two threats requires clear vision and bold policy as Canada reconceives its future. Arguing that peace, order, and good government form the cornerstone of Canada’s national identity, Byron Williston revives the vision of philosopher George Grant to explore how these values can guide Canada in reimagining its identity across its own regions, within the North American context, and in the global political order. In a work that lays out a positive vision for Canada rooted in the ideal of an ecological nation, Williston argues that this country faces a stark choice between this ideal and absorption into the American empire. The key is a refined governance model addressing the failed history of Canadian climate policy and overcoming the false belief that Canada is essentially a land of inexhaustible resources. The nation-building project described here will both benefit all Canadians and avoid capture by the forces of social and political regression. It will help secure a sovereign and flourishing future for this country. The challenges Canada faces are profound. To meet them the country must engage fully with the eco-national project. While daunting, this moment provides a unique opportunity for Canada to link its national well-being to that of planetary health and to create a singularly Canadian political ethic informed by Indigenous knowledge and developed in step with the ongoing project of reconciliation

In Agent of Change Huda Mukbil takes us behind the curtain of a leading spy agency during a fraught time, recounting her experiences as an intelligence officer for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Mukbil was the first Black Arab-Canadian Muslim woman to join CSIS and was at the forefront of the fight against terrorism after 9/11. Mukbil’s mastery of four languages quickly made her a counterterrorism expert and a uniquely valuable asset to the organization. But as she worked with colleagues to confront new international threats, she also struggled for acceptance and recognition at the agency. Following the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the rise of homegrown extremism, Mukbil was framed as an inside threat. Determined to prove her loyalty, while equally concerned about the surveillance and profiling of Muslims and revelations of Western agencies’ torture and torture by proxy, Mukbil started to question CSIS’s fluctuating ethical stance in relation to its mandate. Her stellar work on a secondment to MI5, the British Security Service, earned commendation; this shielded her, but only temporarily, from the hostile workplace culture at CSIS. Ultimately, Mukbil and a group of colleagues went public about the pervasive institutional discrimination undermining CSIS and national security from within. Mukbil’s expertise in international security and her commitment to workplace transparency drove important changes at CSIS. Dazzlingly written, her account is an eye-opener for anyone wanting to understand how racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia undermine not only individuals, but institutions and the national interest – and how addressing this openly can tackle populism and misinformation.

In the late 1980s Sirous Houshmand found himself in the confines of Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, a political prisoner facing a future where survival seemed unlikely. Thousands were killed in mass executions in 1988, including many of Houshmand’s closest prison friends. These memories would shape his life for years to come. The Darkest Night Brings Longer Days is Houshmand’s eyewitness testimony of tumultuous times and of living in two dissimilar countries. Born in Iran, Houshmand grew up in the United States. Following graduate studies and partly driven by the political fervour of the 1960s – the war in Vietnam, the Kent State shootings, the drift towards a consumerist society and conformist pressures – he returned home. There he was a follower of the revolution, worked as a medical aide in the Iran–Iraq War, and was eventually imprisoned in a widespread assault against the opposition. Houshmand shares the brutal realities of incarceration, prompting reflection on today’s political prisoners and asylum seekers while offering insight into the differences and similarities between the United States and Iran, enhancing our understanding of their complex relationship today. After the horrific executions of his friends, Houshmand vowed to honour their sacrifice. In The Darkest Night Brings Longer Days he brings their passionate aspirations for social and economic justice to the fore, reminding us that hope is a powerful force.

Born in Paris in 1905 to a German-Jewish family from Frankfurt and dying a century later in Montreal, Raymond Klibansky lived a life indelibly coloured by the history of the twentieth century. His thought shaped and was shaped by intellectual currents both European and American, and his scholarly work entailed an intellectual reckoning with tradition that was unique in its scope and ambition, long before talk of academic interdisciplinarity. Klibansky, a student of Karl Jaspers and Ernst Cassirer, was educated in the liberal milieu of the Weimar Republic. Forced to emigrate from Germany in 1933, Klibansky spent the war years in London, where he participated in the British war effort. Working in the tradition established by Aby Warburg and the Warburg Library, he completed with Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl the German text of Saturn and Melancholy. The book’s cast metal type was reclaimed for the war effort before it could be printed, but it was eventually published in English in 1964 and has deeply influenced understandings of the interrelations between humanities disciplines ever since. After the war Klibansky came to McGill University, where he enjoyed a brilliant career as a scholar of platonic studies and the history of ideas, mainly in the works of Locke and Hume. Over twelve chapters, each devoted to questions that were dear to Klibansky during his long life, Georges Leroux presents dialogues with his mentor selected from decades of conversation, exploring themes including philosophical traditions, melancholy, tolerance, peace, and the role of philosophy in international relations. Scholarship, interlinked with the events of a turbulent century, is at the centre of these fascinating conversations between student and teacher. A richly illustrated autobiography through dialogue, Raymond Klibanskyis a portrait of a heroic figure in twentieth-century philosophy, a model for a younger generation who can find in his scholarship an admirable example of virtue in the service of peace.

Both modern Ukrainian nationhood and the historical preconditions of the country’s contemporary conflict with Russia are rooted in a complex period of development in Cossack Ukraine. The Making of Cossack Ukraine traces the evolution of early modern Ukrainian political thought and culture from their sixteenth-century origins to 1714. Early modern Ukraine was home to a multitude of interrelated political cultures, including those of the Ruthenian nobility, the Kyivan clergy, and the Cossacks. Zenon Kohut shows how constant interplay between these cultures contributed to the development of political, territorial, religious, ethnic, and national collective visions that reflected early modern concepts of nation, state, and identity. Two persistent narratives – the idea of Ukrainian autonomy and perpetual rights, and the idea of a continuous “Russian” tsardom stemming from medieval times – formed the foundation for not only Ukrainian state and nation building but also Russia’s modern identity and sense of nationhood, creating the ideological underpinning for Russian imperialism. Based in a classical analysis of ethnic, religious, and political ideas developed by early modern Ukrainian intellectuals, The Making of Cossack Ukraine brings to light the origins of present-day Ukrainian political thought.

In the wake of Napoleon's defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with Christian, Greek-speaking elites in southeast Europe shaped national identities and structured global civilizational hierarchies over the decades that followed. Unintended Nations tracks a notion of civilization that developed in early nineteenth-century France. Alex Tipei explores the constellation of ideas, beliefs, and practices this concept invoked – what she calls civilization-speak – and charts the cross-continental networks that employed it as an organizing principle. Drawing on archival and printed primary sources in six languages, Tipei maps out the uses of this civilization-speak on both sides of the continent, focusing on France and the lands that make up significant parts of present-day Greece and Romania. She shows how and why French liberals mobilized civilization-speak to, offering an innovative analysis of liberalism and capitalism's relationship to informal empire. Calling into question long-standing assumptions about the rise of nationalism in southeast Europe, Unintended Nations explores how Franco-Balkan exchanges helped define political, civilizational, and biopolitical boundaries in the post-Napoleonic era.

Céline Sciamma’s 2011 film Tomboy is the central work in the French filmmaker’s coming-of-age trilogy. Bracketed between La Naissance des pieuvres / Waterlilies (2007), an examination of girlhood and teenage desire, and the 2014 film Bande de filles / Girlhood, about the lives of a group of Black girls in their late teens living in the Paris suburbs, Tomboy is a quiet, understated examination of gender and queer selfhood amidst the shifting sands of late childhood and early adolescence. Tomboy is an intimate and luminous film, tender but stark, and never sentimental. Written, cast, and filmed in a matter of months, it follows the experiences and burgeoning friendships of a ten-year-old child who moves to a new town during the summer holidays. First introducing themself as Mikaël, they are, we later learn, Laure to their parents and younger sister. Sciamma’s film is not interested in why the character is passing but in how. Cristina Johnston focuses on specific elements of Mikaël/Laure’s haptic and spatial experience, showing how the filmmaker’s signature engagement with surfaces and textures allows queer potentialities to unfold organically. While Johnston centres her analysis on Tomboy, she also connects the film to broader themes within Sciamma’s trilogy, public reception of the films, and the significance of Sciamma’s identity as a queer director. Ultimately the book offers insight into a film that deserves to be watched and appreciated for its nuanced portrayal of childhood, queerness, and passing as experience rather than ideology.

Literatures of small nations represent a minuscule portion of the global literary marketplace, where books written in English outnumber translated works. The struggle for visibility in relation to dominant languages and cultures is not new in Slovakia, a nation of five million whose literary history has been shaped by the influence of more widely spoken languages including Hungarian, Czech, and Russian. Home and the World in Slovak Writing brings Slovak literature out of this isolation to tell the story of how a nation's literature can survive and thrive despite a small domestic audience and relatively limited circulation in English translation. The book demonstrates how historic events such as the post-Stalin Thaw, the Prague Spring, and the Velvet Revolution moulded the Slovak canon and situates contemporary Slovak literature in broader regional and global contexts. Through case studies of the transformations and adaptations of Slovak literature, contributors examine the changing social roles of writers, the tensions between tradition and innovation, and the dynamic interactions between influences from the outside world and domestic sources of inspiration. Home and the World in Slovak Writing maps the relationship between geopolitical destiny and literary production at a critical moment. As relations between the East and the West are destabilized by war, the question of cultural identity has again become a matter of national survival in Central Europe.

A classic of New Mexican Cinema, Y Tu Mamá También courted controversy with its explicit depictions of teenage sexuality and its forthright perspective on the country’s inequality. The cinematic sensation gained international accolades for its mixing of genres and film styles and inspired a wide body of writing from both critics and scholars. The multimedia lives of Y Tu Mamá También (especially in music, music videos, and social media) have kept the film relevant for audiences too young to have seen it when it debuted.Juan Llamas-Rodriguez revisits Y Tu Mamá También after more than two decades of social, industrial, and technological change to show how it astutely captures a particular moment in Mexican history and film production. The film was a turning point for Mexican stardom on the world stage, and the performances and celebrity of its stars, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, reframed millennial Mexican masculinities. The eclectic and popular bilingual soundtrack is a focal point, read as engendering a queer listening and as an integral aspect of the film’s queering of time. Rather than being legibly classified as gay or bisexual, Y Tu Mamá También flouts sexual mores and national stereotypes and continues to spur new forms of longing and desire among audiences today.Moving beyond heavily debated questions of identity and representation, Llamas-Rodriguez explores the waves of reception, scholarship, celebrity culture, and social media content around Y Tu Mamá También that have shaped its queer legacy, and the circuits of influence that enliven global cinema across media and national borders.