Radios, rinks, churches and art galleries. Explore the vocabulary of how Canadians worshipped, played, shopped and created as modern life transformed everyday culture.
These terms were extracted from Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
An artistic technique that makes use of images that are not clearly representative of conventional visual references.
Abstract pioneers like Kathleen Munn (1887-1974) made connections with the Group but her outlook was simultaneously too modernist and too international for their appetites.
The Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, 1922 to 1932; recommended the creation of what became the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
The recommendation of the Aird Commission was finally realized in the passage of the 1932 Broadcasting Act.
In the context of the history of modern sport, refers to athletes who do not accept pay to play; also implies a middle- and upper-middle class ethos of fairplay and a hostility toward professionalism.
That is, they transitioned from an amateur phase to a professional one.
The Arts and Crafts Movement was an anti-industrial and antimodernist decorative tradition that looked to older hand-built styles of craftsmanship in visual arts, furniture, and domestic architecture.
Early antimodernists fuelled an Arts and Crafts revival movement.
Refers to manufacturing processes that are systematically organized; most often associated in the public mind with the building of automobiles.
The automobile was also modern in that its manufacture increasingly depended on managerial science and the refinements of the assembly line.
A group of nearly two dozen painters based in Montreal whose modernist and urban style was at odds with the Group of Seven's wilderness and nationalist abstractions.
Their contemporaries in Montreal, the Beaver Hall Group, was equally inclusive of women and men and more fully committed to a modernist and urban sensibility that did not echo the Group of Seven’s wilderness ideal of Canada.
Associated with the large scale experiments and processes that became possible after the Second World War.
What is sometimes called big science would emerge in the course of World War II in the form of the Manhattan Project.
Established in 1922, the BBC is a crown-owned public service broadcaster. Its equivalent in Canada is the CBC.
The formation in 1922 of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
In full, the CBC/Radio Canada. Public broadcasting system established in 1932 following the recommendations of the Aird Commission. Its status as a Crown Corporation was clarified under the Canadian Broadcasting Act (1936). Modelled in large measure on the BBC.
“Young in a Small Town” (1967), produced for Camera West, a CBC television program.
Established in 1958 when Canadian-style rugby teams left the Canadian Rugby Union to establish a nine-team professional league.
The link between true rugby and the Canadian Football League is to be found on the Grey Cup itself, said to be the oldest trophy in professional sports.
Racial segregation; specifically, the exclusion of people of colour from activities or services enjoyed by Euro-Canadians.
In the mid-20th century, performers like Oscar Peterson, Joe Sealy, and Eleanor Collins challenged colour barriers on both sides of the border with their extraordinary talents.
In the context of the professionalization of sports and leisure, the process of turning what originally was an informal and voluntary set of practices into a commodity to be bought and sold.
When it comes to music, entertainments, the arts, and so on, the 20th century experienced a commodification of culture that alienated many of its forms from day-to-day practitioners.
Formed in 1939 in Montreal, lasted until the late 1940s; influential in its production and advocacy for modern art.
The rival Eastern Group of Painters was established in the 1930s and one of its members, John Lyman (1886-1967), championed its successor group, the Contemporary Arts Society.
Established in Montreal in 1938.
The rival Eastern Group of Painters was established in the 1930s and one of its members, John Lyman (1886-1967), championed its successor group, the Contemporary Arts Society.
Typically refers to entertainments that divert one's attention from banal features of everyday life.
Canadian cinemas were made more deluxe — this was the era of the movie palace — so as to make the experience of moviegoing still more escapist than the film’s subject matter.
In the context of, principally, professional sports, the phenomenon of fan allegiance to a team or player; manifest in the wearing of sports merchandise or loyalty to a team or club, and consciously encouraged by local media.
Wearing your team’s jersey to the game is a clear sign of fan identification and representation.
Any conservative theological movement that regards holy scripture as literal truth.
Essentially antimodernist in its outlook, sects like the Union Baptists and the Pentecostal Church tended towards a study of and adherence to what they called the “fundamentals” of scripture, and thus became known as fundamentalists.
A group of artists (also known as the Algonquin Group) who emphasized landscape painting as the key to expressing Canadianness.
Such was the case of the Algonquin School, also known as the Group of Seven.
The dominance of a set of ideas or a particular group or social class.
In fact, one might argue that the hegemony of consumerism helps to reinforce existing inequalities.
Also called high style; refers to cultural activities associated with elites; largely consistent across continents; spatially large with little differentiation (in contrast with vernacular styles which are spatially narrow and come in many forms); examples include classical music, liturgies, opera, many visual arts, theatre.
While high style cultural elements could be — and were — imported from abroad, Canadian artists struggled in the first hundred years after Confederation to be recognized.
A phase of modernism beginning in the interwar era and accelerating during WWII; characterized by a deepened confidence in science and engineering. See also big science.
Technological achievements and the increased role of government in the interwar years and WWII put Canada on a course for what is called high modernism.
Established in 1844 under the leadership of young francophone liberal professionals (physicians, lawyers, notaries, teachers) who sought to enrich and secularize Canadien life; provided the intellectual firepower of les Rouges.
Bishop Ignace Bourget (1799-1885) initiated in 1858 what would become a 30-year campaign to destroy the liberal-minded, anticlerical Institut Canadien (shuttered finally in 1885).
Established 1894; responsible for the organization and operation of the Olympic Games (both winter and summer versions).
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose Montreal to host the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Surrealist painters and performers based in Montreal, 1942-48; overlapped with the Contemporary Art Society.
Les Automatistes, led by Paul-Émile Borduas, embraced abstract styles as a critique of the repressive political culture of Duplessis’ Quebec.
Created in 1881, a federation of non-professional sports organizations, including bicycling, lacrosse, and ice hockey clubs; argued for a gentlemanly view of athletics, one which built character and community; opposed to the professionalization of sports and games.
The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (MAAA) promoted a gentlemanly ideal of sport that frowned on paying players.
Public fears of declining values and worsening behaviours that could lead to social turmoil and/or crisis. Examples include temperance, anti-gambling crusades, the 1950s campaign against comic books, and several recurring moral panics regarding adolescents.
This produced a rolling tide of uncertainty and anxieties, some of which we refer to as moral panics.
Also called the Hays Code, operated until 1968; established to address a public relations crisis in the film industry regarding risqué subject matter and scandals in Hollywood; prescribed anodyne subject matter and self-censorship by filmmakers as regards profanity, sex, nudity, and a long list of other perceived offences. It is worth noting that language, sexuality, and humour had a much wider berth in the first 30 years of the century.
The last of these appeared in the late 1930s and very quickly settled into a recognizable format and structure.
Established under the National Film Act, 1939 with a mandate to produce propaganda films during wartime. Subsequently a centre for creative excellence in documentary production.
It was with the nurturing of the documentary tradition in mind that the National Film Board (NFB) was established in 1939.
One of several early 20th century professional hockey leagues and the direct precursor of the National Hockey League.
The National Hockey League was formed in 1917 after a dispute among team owners in the National Hockey Association (NHA).
Established in 1917 after a dispute among team owners in the National Hockey Association. It was, originally, an all-Canadian league but expanded in 1920 to Boston. Its higher salaries and American market led to the decline and disappearance of other professional leagues and the rise of an effective monopoly by the 1940s.
That has not been the case since the 1960s for the NHL, American football, or professional baseball.
One of several early 20th century professional hockey leagues; pioneered use of artificial ice in indoor arenas; merged with the Western Canada Hockey League in 1924.
The Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) pioneered the use of artificial ice in indoor arenas.
Denotes arts, values, and ideas that are entrenched in a large slice of the population. "Popular" in this respect signifies that it is both widely appreciated and desired, and generated by this mainstream population. A 20th century idea, sometimes referred to as "pop culture" in the later 20th century.
Outline developments in the arts, media, sports, and popular culture.
A complex of views arising in the late modernist period that questioned the era's certainties, invited a skeptical analysis of conventions, focussed on pluralism rather than unity (both politically and artistically); contains anti-modernist elements (such as the return to craft and artisanal production) but is not otherwise anti-modern in the way that the original opponents to modernism were.
In this sense, the translation of historic roles and restrictions into postmodern constructions of gender roles in Canada is part of a continuity of transformation, and not only a landscape of change.
Generally, the creation of exclusive policies that limit entry into a particular business or trade, such as the need for a teaching certificate from a recognized institution in order to become a teacher; in sports, the phenomenon of paying players to play, which moved games and athleticism away from the 19th century ideal of gentlemanly and unpaid (amateur) competition.
Science, technology, innovation, and professionalization are other facets of modernity, as is the widespread belief in progress and, implicitly optimism.
The view that the history of humanity is a constant movement forward toward a better and better society.
Science, technology, innovation, and professionalization are other facets of modernity, as is the widespread belief in progress and, implicitly optimism.
A 19th century response to the leisure activities of working people — gambling, competitions of strength, drinking, and low-brow performances, and which sought to replace these with controlled, morally superior, and character building — "improving" — activities.
Fear of youth was, as well, a spur to the rational recreation movement of the late 19th century (explored in Section 10.16) and to the creation of a national militia.
In the context of, principally, professional sports, the phenomenon of athletes whose performance is seen by the community and by fans especially as representing the community and its members; applies to local and to national players/teams.
When the local team wins a championship, the whole town celebrates, showing the representational value of sport.
The separation of church and state; the belief that a modern state is best served by individuals not directly associated with organized religion. See also anticlerical.
Describe the connections between modernism, secularism, and organized religion.
Colloquial for seeking recreation or entertainment in a locale that is associated with a lower socio-economic class or different cultural group than one's own.
Seen most graphically in the persistence of fairground freak shows but also in ethnic entertainments and slumming.
Influence enjoyed by one social group over all others; dominance in tastes, culture, and values, among other indicators.
In fact, one might argue that the hegemony of consumerism helps to reinforce existing inequalities.
Created in 1925 as a result of a merger between three denominations: Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian. Some members of each denomination remained outside of the United Church but it was, nonetheless, immediately the third largest denomination in Canada.
The consolidation in 1925 of the Methodist, Congregationalist, and (most of) the Presbyterian churches into the United Church of Canada strengthened that wing of Protestantism, making it overnight the third largest denomination in the country.
In language, a local dialect; in design and cooking, styles developed in a specific locale and which are, in the case of emigrants, transported to other locations intact where they are reproduced. Examples of indigenous vernacular include Canadien stone houses influenced by the pre-Conquest era and, among immigrants, Doukhobor communal housing.
While these musical styles were rooted in vernacular forms that had, to some extent, developed locally in the Maritimes, they were also an expression of the globalization of entertainment.
Initiatives taken on a large scale on the part of government to provide the population with payments or services that ameliorate the worst effects of economic or social dislocation. Sometimes called a "social safety net".
Partly, it meant managing economic and social life through the welfare state, and a host of new programs came into place, including the Veterans Charter, family allowances (1944), a new old-age pension (1951), and hospital insurance (1957).