Settling Pasts and Settling Futures: Negotiating Narratives of Nation at the 4th Line Theatre Production Company more

SETTLING PASTS AND SETTLING FUTURES: NEGOTIATING NARRATIVES OF NATION AT THE 4TH LINE THEATRE PRODUCTION COMPANY A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Stacy Douglas 2008 Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies M.A. Program September 2008 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures ABSTRACT Douglas The 4th Line Theatre Production Company was established in 1992 by Robert Winslow on his family farm just outside of Millbrook, Ontario. The company, popular for its presentation of outdoor theatre in the barns and the fields of this rural setting, has a stated mandate to “preserve and promote our Canadian cultural heritage through the development and presentation of regionally based, environmentally staged historical dramas” (4th Line Theatre Website). As of August 2008, the company has produced thirty-six shows predominantly written by Winslow and staged with casts and crews from Millbrook, Peterborough, and Toronto (4th Line Theatre Website). This project investigates the 4th Line Theatre Company‟s contribution to the popular conception of local histories and how the reproduced narratives promote and perpetuate dominant ideologies of nationhood. To this end, this project analyzes the 4th Line Theatre as a cultural institution and as such does not specifically take up the theatricality of the productions. Although the scripts from the 2006 season are closely examined, a detailed performance analysis is not included herein. Utilizing materials from the company‟s 2006 season, this thesis provides analyses of the play texts, the theatre company‟s promotional material, and the physical space of the theatre. This analysis is used to make the case that the 4th Line “cultivates” a settler community as its audience. This project focuses on the specific practices of settler identity-making that take place at the 4th Line and how these practices align with a broader state-endorsed ideology of Canadian identity. KEYWORDS Settler, colonialism, nation, theatre, Millbrook, Canada i Settling Pasts and Settling Futures ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Douglas Many people have assisted in the creation of this thesis. I would like to especially thank Robert Winslow, Janette Winslow, and Patricia Thorne from the 4th Line Theatre Company for all of their generous assistance and support over the past year and a half. I would also like to thank Shane Peacock, Gail Corbett, and Wayne Eardley for contributing their time and personal work towards this project. Lastly, I would like to thank Pauline Craig as well as my committee for all of their edits and critical feedback on the work, which have contributed to a more interesting and insightful thesis. This thesis is dedicated to Daemon. ii Settling Pasts and Settling Futures TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents Introduction Chapter One - The Settler State/The State of the Settler Settling Differences: Legal Imperialism in Britain‟s Canada Lawful Authority Imagined Relations Recognizing Difference White Settlers as Subjects Conclusion Chapter Two - The “Our” of Power “We” Settlers Common history Authorized Storytellers An Invitation to a Common Morality and Shared Emotional Reaction Authorized Teachers Cultivating Community Conclusion Chapter Three - 2006, A Space Odyssey The Production of Space The Farm Selling the Farm: Representational Space Drawing Lines: Representations of Space Property as Performance Conclusion Chapter Four - Scripting the Nation: History and Narration in the 4th Line‟s 2006 Season Doctor Barnardo‟s Children Populating the Poles Barnardo Children As Workers Conclusion Douglas i ii iii 1 11 38 69 101 iii Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Chapter Five - The Art of Silent Killing Patriarchal Patriotism Nazis are Evil Canada‟s Immigration Policies Civilian Internment Memorializing Camp X Conclusion Conclusion Appendix A – “Where Our Dollars Come From” Appendix B – “Media Tracking” Appendix C – “Images from the National Film Board” Appendix D – “Complete List of Figures” Works Cited 123 147 151 152 154 156 157 iv Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Introduction Douglas The 4th Line Theatre Company has a stated mandate to “preserve and promote our Canadian cultural heritage through the development and presentation of regionally based, environmentally staged historical dramas” (4th Line Theatre Website). A unique aspect of the company‟s productions is that they occur outdoors and sets often incorporate the nearby woods and barnyard. One of the most popular 4th Line productions, The Cavan Blazers, features horseback riders and burning homes as part of a regional narrative depicting religious conflict between local Protestant and Catholic settlers during the midnineteenth century (Winslow 74). Figure 1.1 Cavan Blazer From a performance of The Cavan Blazers (2004). Photo by and used with kind permission of Wayne Eardley. Source: 4th Line Theatre Website. The 4th Line Theatre Production Company was established in 1992 by Robert Winslow on his family‟s farm just outside of Millbrook, Ontario. Winslow inherited the farm from his grandfather George Winslow who settled in the rural area in the midnineteenth century (Winslow). In the early 1990s Winslow conceived of transforming the former vegetable farm into an outdoor theatre where audience members would sit outside and take in performances on the vast expanse of his family‟s acreage (Atkinson 19). 1 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Since then, the company has produced thirty-six plays predominantly written by Winslow and staged with casts and crews from Millbrook, Peterborough, and Toronto (4th Line Theatre Website). This project investigates the 4th Line Theatre‟s contribution to the popular conception of local histories and how the reproduced narratives promote and perpetuate dominant ideologies of nationhood. 1 Utilizing materials from the company‟s 2006 season, this thesis provides analyses of the play texts, the theatre company‟s promotional material, and the physical space of the theatre. This analysis is used to make the case that the 4th Line cultivates a settler community as its audience. This project focuses on the specific practices of settler identity-making that take place at the 4th Line and how these practices align with broader state-endorsed ideology regarding Canadian identity. I use the term “cultivate” very specifically to highlight that the practices of settler identity-making at the theatre augment the larger project of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. As a crop needs tending, so too the ideological practices of the state need fostering in order to maintain their legitimacy. As the company is invested in a project of producing “our Canadian cultural heritage,” it must necessarily take up the task of defining “our Canadian cultural heritage” (4th Line Theatre Website). Defining a national heritage for the second-largest country in the world, with a population of over thirty-two million and thousands of years of history prior to being colonized by the French and British Empires, is a daunting task. The 4th 1 I define the histories to be “popular” as they appear frequently and uncontested in local, regional and national press coverage. I demonstrate the frequency with which they appear in Chapter Two. Moreover, and as I discuss later, similar renderings of local history are found or endorsed in authorized educational settings in the Peterborough and surrounding area including the Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives, the Lang Pioneer Village, Trent University, and a local public school. Finally, these representations are endorsed by the state through municipal funding and nationally-recognized awards of merit. I describe the specifics of these endorsements in Chapter Two. 2 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Line must necessarily make choices about what it presents as “our heritage” (4th Line Theatre Website). As mentioned above, this homogenizing language is also found within federally-endorsed discourse regarding national identity. For example, the Department of Canadian Heritage‟s Mission is to move “Towards a More Cohesive and Creative Canada” [sic]. Furthermore, the Department homogenizes “Canadian Heritage” by claiming that “our historic places, heritage institutions and organizations enable us to discover our diverse heritage and help us know who we are and what brings us together” (Department of Canadian Heritage). I argue that the common Canadian experience that is constructed by the 4th Line and presented in state-produced programs as “universal” is actually quite specific to a “settler” identity. A settler identity in Canada has its roots in permanent settlement strategies employed first by France and then Britain over the past four hundred years. For my purposes, I define a settler broadly as a member of a non-Indigenous group in what is now known as Canada. 2 By constructing a Canadian experience that privileges a settler identity as the normalized and universal one, the 4th Line naturalizes historical and contemporary processes of settlerhood. I argue that a conception of Canada as naturally belonging to settlers feeds into national narratives that erase violent histories of colonialism and imperialism upon which the nation-state was founded. Furthermore, I claim that naturalizing settlers as models of Canadian subjects constructs settlers as being constitutive of a universalized Canadian community. This construction perpetuates protectionist claims to citizenship, status, and community that exclude those who do not 2 I elaborate on the term “settler” and its gendered, racialized, and sexualized characteristics, as well as its relation to capitalism, more in Chapter One. 3 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas fit into this imagined community. 3 In its resonance with state-endorsed mandates to preserve and promote “Canadian heritage,” the theatre company functions as an apparatus in a larger project of cultivating a nation of settlers. To this end, this project analyzes the 4th Line Theatre as a cultural institution and as such does not specifically take up the theatricality of the productions. Although the scripts from the 2006 season are examined, a detailed performance analysis is not included herein. 4 The primary sources in this analysis come from the 2006 season which was documented as a “record-breaking season” for the 4th Line Theatre Production Company (“Record-breaking”; “4th Line Theatre sets attendance record”). During its fifteenth-anniversary year the theatre company boasted a combined total audience upwards of 12,000. Local news sources reported that “overall the theatre company saw a 20-per-cent [sic] increase in attendance from the previous year” (“Record-breaking”). Mounting two shows that ran a total of four weeks each, the 4th Line stage was dark for only twenty-three nights of the sixty-five-day season between July and September. The timeline chosen for this project provided me the opportunity to access complete and timely sources including the company‟s promotional material and media coverage. The 4th Line website has changed slightly with updates over the past year and a half, but the content which I largely draw on (the company‟s Mandate, Mission, and Artistic Vision) has remained constant (4th Line Theatre Website). Although I chose to analyze the 2006 3 Writing largely in the field of critical studies of nationalism, Benedict Anderson developed extensive thought concerning the creation of what he termed “imagined communities.” Building on other critical reflections on nationalism, Anderson distinguished himself by his commitment to the assertion that communities cannot be thought of as either “true” or “false,” but always entirely constructed (Anderson). 4 For a more detailed analysis utilizing performance theory, see Ric Knowles‟ Reading the Material Theatre (2004), and Marvin Carlson‟s Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (1989) for insightful approaches to the semiotics of theatre. 4 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas season for this project, it does not represent a major departure from the trends that are found within earlier seasons of the 4th Line. I do not include an analysis of materials or performances outside of 2006 (with the brief exception in Chapter One where I discuss The Last Green Hill [2008], a performance that was workshopped in 2006 and presented publicly in 2008); however, the materials I look at do not significantly stray from the work of nation and community building that consistently occurs at the 4th Line. Moreover, although other seasons may have offered more direct linkages to discussions regarding settler identities,5 I am particularly interested in the ways in which even when seemingly absent, discourses of settlerhood are present in the narrations of nation at the 4th Line. It is crucial to note that although I give agency to the 4th Line in cultivating a settler community its work is heavily influenced by considerations of funding and economic viability. As a theatre production company it is dependent on filling seats for its performances. Moreover, ticket sales alone rarely sustain the life of a theatre. In the case of the 4th Line its financial sustainability is also dependent on government subsidies, corporate sponsorships, and community donations (see Appendix A: “Where Our Dollars Come From”).6 Some important questions that stem from these realities are: how do municipal, provincial, and federal government arts-funding agencies and programs invite organizations to take up particular notions of Canada and Canadian identity through their 5 In 2002, the 4th Line mounted a performance of The Bell of Batoche, a script co-written by Greg Daniels and Robert Winslow regarding a bell that was stolen from Frog Pond, a Cree community in Manitoba, just after the Riel Rebellion. Since then the bell has changed sites multiple times at the hands of various vigilante community members who claim ownership of the bell. The show attempts to meld Cree, Metis, and white perspectives on the saga of the bell and the contentious debate over its rightful owner (Winslow and Daniels; Jenish). 6 Forty-nine percent of the 4th Line‟s total annual earnings are constituted by government subsidy, corporate sponsorship, and donations from community members. Fifty-one percent of its revenue comes from ticket and concession sales. 5 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas work? How much do state-endorsed conceptions of nationhood shape funding proposals as well as the final product? These are important questions that relate to the broader objective of demonstrating how the 4th Line functions as one part of a series of encounters with the ideology of the state which constructs the national identity as a settler identity. Popular histories of Peterborough and the surrounding communities often privilege stories of pioneering settlers. People in the area have a close connection to histories of Irish Catholic immigration during the mid-nineteenth century (Cameron). More examples of the privileging of a white settler history and identity are found in other sites within the community. For example, “Early Settlement” and “Immigration Stories of the Past and Present” are two of the established historical Educational Programs at the Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives which both focus on the history of Irish Catholic settlement in the area (Peterborough Centennial Museum). There is also the site of Lang Pioneer Village, an educational museum in the village of Keene which encourages visitors to re-enact the lives of white European settlers through interactive activities such as making dipped candles and building rail fences (Lang Pioneer Village). These sites offer different yet similar experiences of a history of the “local” area as primarily a white settler history and a white settler community. Together they contribute to a larger discourse of the community as naturally comprised of white European settlers, defining who “we” are and actively erasing the existence of Indigenous populations as well as other non-European and racialized 7 European settlers who also inhabited and continue to 7 “Racialized” here refers to people who are deemed as having a race. This term is used in order to draw attention to the point that race as a signifier is never fixed or stable, but instead is a process that is fluid and shifting. However, it is important to guard against concluding that racism does not have concrete and corporeal consequences. To elaborate on the term I invoke Cheryl Teelucksingh‟s work in the 6 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas inhabit the area. Therefore, though I focus on the 4th Line Theatre Company, it must be emphasized that it is one site that operates within a larger community framework in the areas of Millbrook and Peterborough. I come to this project as a former resident of the area, born and raised in a rural setting just outside of the city of Peterborough. This project is very close to me as I personally experienced encounters of settler making practices throughout my childhood and adolescence. School field trips took me to places where, on multiple occasions, I was asked to perform and embody settlerhood by eating harvested food in the name of past pioneers, or forcing my body into manufactured bunk beds like the ones on ships that came from Ireland, we were told, along with thirty of my classmates to see “how it felt” to be a settler. In a few instances the nearby Ojibway/Anishnaabe reserve Curve Lake, approximately thirty kilometres away from Peterborough, was included in course curricula, thanks to a few teachers at my local high school. However, in some ways these encounters were the most effective in naturalizing settlers‟ stake in the land as students were driven in by bus as tourists to gaze at the exotic space of the reserve with little or no discussion regarding historical or contemporary practices of colonialism. Battling with the heavily weighted national rhetoric of the state and local educational institutions, these class trips worked to cement predispositions that the space of the settler, “our” space in Peterborough, was normal and that this “other” place was uncivilized, abnormal, and wild. In this vein, I came to the 4th Line Theatre as another site that informed my introduction of Claiming Space: Racialization in Canadian Cities. “Racialization is not an isolated process, but rather an interrelated component of numerous other political, economic and gender discourses...Exploring the nature of racialization avoids reproducing fixed racial hierarchies because racial meaning, examined and conceptualized as part of an ongoing historical process, is sensitive to context and fluid. Therefore, racial meanings evolve in response to political, economic, and social contexts” (Teelucksingh 4). 7 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures personal relationship as a settler to the local area. Douglas Chapter One is an overview of literature that will inform my theoretical analysis. Beginning with the conception of a “settler state,” I draw out some of the historical forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, contemporary notions of “Canada.” This scholarly work also touches on the institutions of law and education and how they work symbiotically with subjects to regulate relations among individuals, communities, and the capitalist-colonial nation-state. This chapter also introduces the concept of interpellation and how ideology functions to recruit subjects (Althusser; Ahmed). This element of my analysis is of particular importance as it introduces the notion that no subjects are outside of ideology (i.e., all subjects are hailed). It therefore allows me to articulate my specific argument, which is that audiences are already hailed as subjects to a universalizing national identity and that the 4th Line Theatre functions as a small, local site where that dominant ideology is reinforced. This theoretical work will assist in my endeavour to look at how practices of settler ideology are produced and organized through the promotional material and performances of the 4th Line. Chapter Two is an analysis of the 4th Line‟s construction of a universalized Canadian identity through their promotional materials and media coverage. Through this analysis I point to the ways in which through the normalization of what is “quintessentially Canadian” the theatre company reasserts a settler identity as the national identity (4th Line Theatre Website). Consequently, this chapter investigates the practices of normalizing a Canadian identity and how this works to cultivate pre-existing notions of national identity in Canada. Of course, the assumed national subject does not originate at the 4th Line; the ideology of settlerhood is performed and acted out through promotional 8 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas material and media coverage of the theatre company. Specifically, I examine the ways in which the company assumes its audience to have a common history, morality, and emotional reaction to the performances. Moreover, I identify some of the gaps and slippages in the universalizing project that point to the ways in which the normalized Canadian national identity at the 4th Line is specific to a settler identity. In the next Chapter I continue this argument by tracing spatial references to the farm and its rural surroundings through promotional material and media coverage. As they do for the normalized Canadian subject, the promotional materials of the 4th Line work to render the space of the Winslow Family Farm “natural.” Here I discuss some of the fissures in the construction of the space as natural and idyllic. Ultimately, I claim that the rendering of the space of the farm as natural serves as another site through which settler ideology is cultivated at the 4th Line. Using the work of Henri Lefebvre, who wrote largely on how the production of space reproduces the social relations of production, I demonstrate how the naturalization of the space of the 4th Line works to normalize capitalist-colonial relations to the land that maintain settlers‟ social, political, and economic dominance. Once again, a return to the influences of British colonialism as they relate to private property models and lines of inheritance offers a reading of the space as shaped by legal imperialism and the construction of Canada as a settler state. In this chapter I also turn to broader questions of settlers, property, and entitlement as I consider how the naturalization of capitalist-colonial relations at the site of the 4th Line is one encounter in a larger system of what I have termed “compulsory settlerhood.” I use this concept to frame the emergence of seemingly disconnected events of spatial memorialization, which I argue are necessary for the legitimation of a settler state. 9 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas The final two chapters explore the scripts that were mounted by the company for the 2006 season – Doctor Barnardo’s Children8 and The Art of Silent Killing. A textual analysis of these two shows demonstrates how Canada‟s historical legacies of colonialism are simultaneously absent and present in the shows staged by the theatre company. Aside from recognizable nationalist narratives that are apparent in brief overviews of the shows – Doctor Barnardo’s Children is essentially a story about the British metropole populating the colonies and The Art of Silent Killing is a normalization of militarism, war, and the duty to defend national borders – there are other nationalist discourses at work in the morals and values that are inscribed through the performances. These two scripts work to normalize these discourses as well as legacies of strategic settlement policies that are foundational to the colonial settler-state. Ultimately, this project intends to interrogate the discursive and material formation of settler identity/ies in the hopes that such an analysis might contribute to a more complex understanding of deeply rooted legacies of capitalist-colonialism in Millbrook, Peterborough, and the surrounding area. Although my analysis may seem overly negative, it has been my aim to be as responsible as possible to myself, the 4th Line Theatre Company, and the broader goals of the academy while considering the historical and contemporary realities of colonialism with which we are faced on a daily basis. 8 The 2006 mounting of Doctor Barnardo’s Children was the second time it played at the 4th Line. It was first performed during the 2005 season alongside the production That Summer. 10 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Chapter One The Settler State/The State of the Settler Douglas The premise of my investigation relies upon the conception of Canada as a settler state. I invoke the term here as defined by Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis in Unsettling Settler Societies: If we define “settler societies” as societies in which Europeans have settled, where their descendants have remained politically dominant over indigenous peoples, and where a heterogeneous society has developed in class, ethnic and racial terms, then it becomes clear that “settler societies” must be seen as falling along a continuum rather than within clear and fixed boundaries. (3) This anthology of essays edited by Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis aims to trouble oversimplified, dichotomous understandings of settler states that privilege the relationship between colonizer and colonized. In this vein, the authors explore intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and capital that also accompany settler societies in both their historical and contemporary formations. Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis‟ book contains essays dealing with settler states established by British, Spanish, Dutch, and French colonialism. However, both the introduction and the essays make clear that the specific contexts of colonial encounters in each geographical locality greatly effect the ways in which settler states operate and govern. Furthermore, the authors temper their invocation of the concept of settler states by explaining that there are no clear demarcations between settler states and other societies that also have historical colonial relations. A competing yet complementary definition of a settler society comes from Sherene Razack in her anthology Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. 11 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures In her introduction to the collection Razack states that Douglas a white settler society is one established by Europeans on non-European soil. Its origins lie in the dispossession and near extermination of Indigenous populations by the conquering Europeans. As it evolves, a white settler society continues to be constructed by a racial hierarchy. In the national mythologies of such societies, it is believed that white people came first and that it is they who principally developed the land; Aboriginal peoples are presumed to be mostly dead or assimilated. (1-2) For Razack, a conception of settler society must include an understanding of how Eurocentric historical interpretations continue to perpetuate and legitimize settlers‟ stake in the land and its history. As Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis note in their definition above, it is imperative to avoid limiting conceptions of power in settler societies to fixed boundaries such as the dichotomy between colonizer and colonized. According to these authors, to do so is to naively assume that the power relations at play in such societies are linear or dichotomous, and therefore easily understandable. Considerations of gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability are but a few examples of intersubjectivities that also influence and are influenced by power dynamics in settler societies. Moreover, an approach that focuses solely on the relationship between colonizer and colonized can lend itself to perpetuating an overly simplistic conception of power that aggrandizes the power of the state and its settlers. Reducing complex power dynamics to this simple binary erases the ways in which resistance from anti-colonial movements also influence practices of the state. Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis claim that “our resistance to drawing an unambiguous line of demarcation between settler and other…societies is consistent with our 12 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas understanding that the circuits of power are vastly more complicated both globally and in specific locations than any binary division allows” (3). There are also important geographically specific factors to consider in invoking the settler society construction which Stasiulis and Radha Jhappan discuss in their essay “The Fractious Politics of a Settler Society.” According to Stasiulis and Jhappan, the concept of a white settler society in the context of Canada is a limited conceptual tool for four major reasons. First, it is important to emphasize that Indigenous people did not/have not disappeared after colonial contact and that assistance from Indigenous communities was pivotal to the survival of the earliest settlers. Additionally, the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples since contact has been greatly shaped by organized resistance by Indigenous communities to exploitative laws and policies imposed by the colonial state. Secondly, Stasiulis and Jhappan emphasize that immigration and settlement since colonial contact have been quite diverse, a fact that may be erased by prioritizing white settler society in such an analysis. However, the concept of a white settler society as a theoretical tool remains useful in analyzing strategically developed and implemented Canadian federal immigration policies that manage internal populations to serve its capitalist-colonial agenda. 9 Thirdly, homogenizing white European settlers conceals the relations between the British and the former colonial French-Canadian population that complicate a privileging of race in the white settler construction. An historical and ongoing attempt to assimilate the French-Canadian population and their continued resistance to British cultural hegemony unsettles a universalized understanding of 9 One example of population management is the practice of importing low-status racialized immigrants for cheap labour that keeps the racial hierarchy of the settler state intact (Razack, “When” 3; Stasiulis and Jhappan 116). 13 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas settlerhood in the Canadian context. Fourthly, Stasiulis and Jhappan point out that the white settler construct erases considerations of gender, and I would add ability and sexuality, in the formation of the nation-state since colonial invasion. In reality the formation of a settler society was highly dependent on policies and cultures that were at once racialized, gendered, classed, and sexualized (Stasiulis and Jhappan 98-99). Finally, settler state as a primary conceptual tool dangerously re-centers the colonial encounter as the most important determining historical factor in the creation of contemporary Canada. Re-centering settlers in the national narratives of Canada erases thousands of years of history and culture, as well as vast and varied political and legal organization amongst the diverse Indigenous communities who inhabited the land prior to colonial contact. However, the concept of a settler state functions as a useful tool to draw attention to the historical reality of calculated colonial annexation of Indigenous lands. It highlights the contemporary material legacies of colonialism by avoiding vague reference to the nebulous nature of “colonialism” (which is easily relegated to a cloudy history determined by poor decisions made by dead people). Moreover, it articulates a present day individualized, as well as national, culpability through the utterance of the linguistic coupling “settler” and “state.” While the concept presents a limited version of a history comprised of many historical narratives and their attendant nuances, it is useful in describing societies that share some particular attributes – namely, institutional and material legacies wrought by European colonial expansion through permanent settlement strategies. Settling Differences: Legal Imperialism in Britain‟s Canada An analysis of Canada‟s historical construction as a settler state affords the 14 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas opportunity to map legacies of British colonialism to the present day. One of the most salient ramifications of colonial rule was the attendant structures of Eurocentric law that were codified and enshrined by British settlers, and which continue to form the politicojuridical foundations in contemporary Canadian society. Paradoxically, the colonialimposed law at once enveloped and excluded Indigenous people already living on the land. According to Stasiulis and Jhappan, the importation and reproduction of British law in Canada functioned as a key element in the larger colonial project. Rather than military occupation the British enshrined their power through “legal imperialism,” an institutionalized form of power that affected subjects‟ status, mobility, employment, property, and entitlement rights (Stasiulis and Jhappan 107). Freshly imported from Britain these laws upheld notions that were constructed to be “typical” of Victorian England including culturally relative ideals of femininity, masculinity, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, and religion. The enshrinement of British law in Canada had and continues to have material ramifications as well as phenomenological effects for subjects that are racialized, gendered, classed, and sexualized. In its infancy, British legal imperialism took the form of the British North America Act (BNAA) of 1867. The BNAA gave the state the right to have direct and coercive power over the status, mobility, and propertied status of “its” Indigenous populations. Indeed, section 91 gave jurisdiction over “Indians and lands reserved for the Indians” to the federal government. In 1876 the consolidation of all existing legislation concerning native peoples in the Indian Act provided a totalitarian “cradle-tograve” set of rules, regulations and directives to manage Native lives. (Stasiulis and Jhappan 114) 15 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Furthermore, the Indian Act of 1876 categorized Indigenous people into groups that were discernible to Eurocentric law-makers. Ignoring all pre-existing national distinctions among Indigenous peoples, the Indian Act set up four possible categories that reduced all Indigenous cultural heterogeneity (that was acknowledged by the state) to either “status,” “non-status,” “Inuit” or “Metis.” Furthermore, designations were dependent on meeting state-defined requirements such as place of residency (on reserve or off), marital status, family lineage (calculated by percentage), and other empirically quantifiable categories that had little or no connection to Indigenous identity. Status rules, pass laws, and voting rights were all legal statutes held by the Crown and altruistically allocated or denied to subjects who fell under the new imperial order (Stasiulis and Jhappan 115; Razack, “Gendered” 130). Razack claims that the legacies of these laws have contemporary ramifications for subjects‟ relationships to space and mobility. She states that such spatial practices, often achieved through law (nuisance laws, zoning laws, and so on), mark off the spaces of the settler and the native both conceptually and materially…Canada‟s colonial geographies exhibit this same pattern of violent expulsions and the spatial containment of Aboriginal peoples to marginalized areas...processes consolidated over three hundred years of colonization. (“When” 129) In their exaltation of propertied existence, patrilineal lines of heritage, and the institution of marriage, these laws also had profound impacts on the status and livelihoods of women (especially single Indigenous women) and perpetuated moral codes of proper femininity. “The „cult of true womanhood‟, which painted women as fragile, virtuous and subservient to menfolk and to domestic needs, reinforced the subordination of women 16 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas under British common laws affecting sexuality, marriage and motherhood” (Stasiulis and Jhappan 109). Moreover, laws particularly affecting Indigenous women such as the Indian Act, which until 1985 saw women lose status upon marrying non-Indigenous men, demonstrate how the legal formulations of citizenship and status operated not only on gender lines, but also racialized and sexualized ones at the same time. Considering that rights to property and inheritance as well as the right to participate in the public sphere were codified as predominantly white male entitlements, it is clear that political and economic independence for women was systemically discouraged through British legal imperialism. I build on these analyses and how they relate to the site of the 4th Line further in Chapter Three. These laws then set the stage for the further expansion of a white settler society through the development of immigration policies that kept the racialized, gendered, classed, and sexualized lines intact. Stasiulis and Jhappan note that following Confederation and the institutionalized recognition of Canada‟s two founding nations (Britain and France), immigration policies were particularly attuned to recruiting upper and middle-class white British women “whose priority it would be to build a nation that was to be British in outlook and character” (111). However, a national crisis soon followed when it was revealed that expansion of the great northern land would require hard labour to facilitate industrial and agricultural development across the newly formed country. Campaigns directed at recruiting lower-class or racialized Britons, as well as non-British immigrants, for cheap labour soon followed. However, as Stasiulis and Jhappan note, these immigrants were not granted full citizenship status and rights. In order to avoid what was popularly believed to be turning into an “alien” invasion of 17 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas British Canada, strict mobility laws and heavy taxes (which functioned as selective tactics that privileged male migration) were placed upon new immigrants. Women‟s social organizations, government representatives, and clerics advocated for increased surveillance and policing of those immigrants who were admitted (Stasiulis and Jhappan 112). These historical practices of managing populations were integral to the foundation and maintenance of a white settler society. Stasiulis and Jhappan go on to trace the continued privileging of “preferred immigrants” in Canadian immigration policy, and the tenuous rights accorded to those who are admitted (i.e., one can cite the displacement and internment of thousands of Japanese-Canadian citizens during World War II as an example of the Barmecidal 10 rights conferred by the Canadian state). The authors connect the settler state to its practices of creating categories of preferred immigrants for its capitalist-colonial agenda. These practices are malleable and shift to accommodate the needs of the state. For example, preferred immigrants were historically imported as cheap labour for the development of rural Canada, whereas contemporary forms of immigration economics privilege “investor immigrants” from economically “developed” countries (Stasiulis and Jhappan 116-119). Stasiulis and Jhappan claim that “globalization of the Canadian economy and migration have thus not undermined the importance of race/ethnicity and gender for shaping the social structure. They have simply meant that the threads of the social order of the settler colony have been pulled apart and rewoven in new and more complicated patterns” 10 “Patronymic of a family of princes ruling at Bagdad just before Haroun-al-Raschid, concerning one of whom the story is told in the Arabian Nights, that he put a succession of empty dishes before a beggar, pretending that they contained a sumptuous repast - a fiction which the beggar humorously accepted. Hence, one who offers imaginary food or illusory benefits” (“Barmecide”). This term is also used by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities (110). 18 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas (Stasiulis and Jhappan 119). Though the invocation of a conceptual framework of a white settler society does literally suggest a predominantly white society, it is clear through an analysis of the historical legacies of law and immigration policies that the white settler construction is just that. It is an ideological framework imposed from above and has its roots in the earliest forms of capitalist-colonialism. However, the ideology of the settler society continues to shape the material and phenomenological relations that subjects have in and to the state. I argue that it is the legacies of these state-driven practices of strategic settlerhood – at once gendered, racialized, classed, and sexualized – that support the naturalization of settler ideology at the 4th Line. Lawful Authority As I traced trends in the 4th Line‟s work and in their representations in local media, a pattern of repeated claims to symbolic and material inheritance emerged. Ranging from obvious to more subtle, such claims included entitlements to depictions of historical narratives and the right to re-inscribe those narratives not only ideologically within staterun institutions (such as schools11), but also entitlements to re-inscribe them physically on the land in the form of cultural markers such as monuments and plaques. For example, aside from the staging of the performances in the rural landscape, the company‟s promotional materials include multiple references to a monument established for the children who died while under the care of Doctor Barnardo. Moreover, media coverage 11 One example that stems specifically from schools is a letter written by a grade seven student from Millbrook/South Cavan Public School and published in The Millbrook Times. The letter was written in character from the perspective of a Barnardo child who was sailing across the ocean to her new home in Millbrook, Ontario (Wilson 4+). Though there are no direct references to the 4th Line in the letter, as the theatre company was in the development process of the play at the same time, it is possible to consider how these two events may have informed each other. A second instance was in 2000 when fifteen cultural studies students from Trent University worked on a production of the 4th Line while earning course credit (Tuffin 1+). It is worth reflecting on the sites where the discourse of the theatre company bleeds to consider where, how, and why this discourse travels. 19 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas makes reference to the site of Peterborough‟s Pathway of Fame where in 2006, Winslow‟s name was inducted (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 7; “Pathway” C3; Peat A1+). I argue more thoroughly in Chapter Three that these sites serve as elements of a larger system of “compulsory settlerhood” where settlers perpetually reassert their “claims” to the land through public memorialization in everyday spaces. Most interestingly, these subtle “claims” to national narratives made by the 4th Line are couched in a cultural discourse that renders them normative. In other words, rather than “claims,” these assertions to the space become read as common place or casual, arising seemingly naturally out of the land. Similar to crops that flourish, these naturalized claims are nourished and cultivated by multiple sites of identity-making practices which have their roots in state-endorsed ideology that posits settlers as the rightful and entitled owners of the land. In addition to the previously discussed material ramifications of legal imperialism, there is also a phenomenological relationship between a Eurocentric worldview and the formation of law. As an example, terra nullius has been taken up and complicated as a signifier for a broader imperial discourse by many post- and anti-colonial theorists (Mackey 76; McKittrick 123, 129; Razack, “When” 3). Although the concept of terra nullius is not legally applicable to Canada, 12 I would like to invoke the metaphor here as 12 Eva Mackey makes the point that colonialism should be considered in both its particular and general functions and effects. In this vein, she highlights the ways in which British colonial strategies in Canada differed from those of other colonies. As a case in point, terra nullius was not in effect a legal concept employed in Canada. Instead, Indigenous communities were formally recognized by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and thus accorded land rights through the formation of Treaty agreements. According to Mackey, this formal recognition was an intentional strategy employed by the government to suppress the Roman Catholic and French-speaking populations in Quebec. By giving land to Indigenous communities in the West, the state attempted to prevent Americans from moving there in the hopes that they would instead move to Quebec thereby diluting the former French colony‟s culture and language. This significant insight demonstrates how “official recognition” can be accommodated to serve an agenda of colonial control over diverse and multiple populations. Mackey claims that “the recognition of difference 20 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures an introduction to discussing “ways of seeing.” Douglas The legal concept can be understood as a symbol for the hegemonic power of colonial settlers‟ Eurocentric perspectives. Figuratively speaking, in the eyes of settlers the land on which they arrived was uninhabited - a veritable no man‟s land. However, in addition to denying the existence of Indigenous people and deeming the land “uninhabited,” settlers also imposed Eurocentric value systems on these communities which furthered settlers‟ legal entitlement to the land. Legal documents contain terminology such as “unused” or “underused” when assessing land already inhabited by Indigenous peoples. According to this new colonial legal regime, if the land was not being used in ways that made sense to a European law makers‟ worldview, it was being used improperly (Battiste; Razack “When”). Since Indigenous ways of being in the world were not valid according to European social, moral, and political-economic standards, these communities were “invisible” to the settlers. Indigenous inhabitants were therefore actively erased – both symbolically and literally - from the colonial imaginary, displaced from the colonial landscape, and relegated to invisibility through violent imperial legal systems imposed by the colonial order. In her book Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge, Marie Battiste uses a variety of examples to demonstrate the ways in which laws and and the granting of land rights were part of a flexible strategy to manage the colonial project at a difficult and potentially dangerous time” (Mackey 27). Moreover, Mackey also points to the fact that even before the Royal Proclamation, British colonists relied on, and were therefore required to cooperate with, Indigenous communities in order for the success of many of their early systems of colonial expansion such as navigation, resource extraction, and fur trading. Therefore, Canada has a particular history of colonialism that does not literally invoke terra nullius, and of course, a history within which individual Indigenous people and Indigenous communities were also active agents in the process. It is not only crucial to distinguish between various strategies of colonial domination, especially including ones which work to play various groups off of each other, but also to point to the ways in which constructing the colonizers as an almighty force erases important ways of understanding the myriad ways that French and Indigenous resistance to British colonialism has also shaped and continues to shape its processes. 21 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas policies, though evinced in the rhetoric of neutrality, perpetuate Eurocentric ways of knowing. She states that, “Eurocentric strategies…maintain their knowledge is universal, that it derives from standards that are universally appropriate, that the ideas are so familiar they need not be questioned, and that all questions can be posed and answered within it” (5). Battiste explores how the false conception of neutrality or universality, similar to conceptions of terra nullius, plays out in ways that further colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. More than calling for institutional reform to address ongoing problems of representation and accessibility that plague Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, Battiste highlights the very fundamental gap between Eurocentric and Aboriginal ways of knowing that are enshrined in law. As a case in point, Battiste takes up critical points on “self-government” and importantly troubles a concept that is often lionized by left-wing scholars and activists. She notes that the definition of the phrase “self-government” has a very different meaning as an Indigenous concept. In discussions with the Canadian government about the definition of the term, Indigenous representatives were asked to constantly negotiate their terms in order to “make sense” to their state-recognized Eurocentric systems of bureaucracy and communication. To federal officials self-government meant a mode of governance that mirrored that of the nation-state. For Indigenous negotiators selfgovernment represented a style of organization that was radically different from those of the Canadian government. For example, Indigenous self-governance could not emulate a system where powers were divided between provincial and federal jurisdiction. 13 Battiste 13 Moreover, Battiste says, “we knew about the need for and the dignity of self-control and the concept of self-determination, but the concept of „self-government‟ was a Eurocentric concept, an imposed and inanimate idea. It was not similar to an Aboriginal and treaty rights clause; it was an introduction into Eurocentric imaginality surrounding power and government” (Battiste 202-203). 22 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas poetically termed the bureaucrats‟ inability to understand this fundamental gap the “exquisite solitude of constitutional words and the illusion of benign translatability” (Battiste 203). She claims that the culture that government officials mediate in has been made invisible because it is always right before their eyes: It is difficult for most Eurocentric thinkers to glimpse the possibilities of an enlarged awareness of Indigenous thought. It requires them to think beyond their teachings and their artificially constructed frameworks. Yet, daily Indigenous peoples are forced to make this cognitive leap to physically survive, typically on about a dollar a day. (Battiste 290) Battiste highlights the “artificially constructed frameworks” within which “Eurocentric thinkers” are enmeshed. However, this is not to suggest that “Indigenous thinkers” can stand outside of such constructions at a point of truth and objectivity. Rather, Battiste is emphasizing the ways in which subjects are constituted by Eurocentric ideology that is enshrined in Canadian governmental institutions such as education and law. Imagined Relations The 4th Line performances invite spectators to experience the theatre through their engaging outdoor stage setting, their educational story telling and the execution of their unique performance techniques. According to the 4th Line‟s artistic vision “these elements create for the audience a sense of complete immersion in the struggles of our forebears” (4th Line Theatre Website). By participating in the experience of the performance at the 4th Line, audience members are not only being presented with particular narratives of the nation, they are also invited to relate to the stories, characters and emotional pull of the performance. The always already assumed subject is one that 23 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas can reference some agreed upon notion of “Canadian cultural heritage” (4th Line Theatre Website). However, as touched on in the introduction, this discursive assumption does not originate at the 4th Line. The homogenization of a Canadian identity has its origins in larger nation-building schemes. The theatre company does not disrupt this ideology but instead operates as an “arm” or extension of the state in its identity-making project. In attempts to understand the workings of power and ideology, political theorists and philosophers have tried to map the ways in which dominant discourse has shaped individuals‟ imaginations and, consequently, their conceptions of self and others (Gramsci; Hall et al.; Razack “Gendered”). In its most basic sense these inquiries into “subject formation” aim to explore the myriad influences that construct senses of morality, duty, and justice, and consequently the actual and phenomenological ways individuals move and act in the world. In his essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” French philosopher Louis Althusser addresses what he sees to be Marxists‟ inability to theorize a more complex understanding of the operation of the state. A popularly quoted element of this essay is Althusser‟s distinction between “Ideological State Apparatuses” and “Repressive State Apparatuses,” which he suggests offers an important departure from what was only formerly theorized by Marx and Marxists as the “State Apparatus.” Althusser claims that the significant difference between the Repressive State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatus is that the former rules through direct violence and the latter functions through ideology. However, he is also quick to qualify that neither functions solely as either repressive or ideological, as each needs the other to legitimate itself. However, Althusser contends that it can be determined that some apparatuses function more or less 24 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures predominantly as either repressive or ideological (Althusser 145). Douglas What is critical to Althusser‟s notion of ideology is his paradoxical thesis that ideology is at once an illusion and yet also has material effects (Althusser 162-165). Althusser claims that ideology shapes individuals‟ conceptions of themselves in the world through an imagined relationship to their daily lives which conceals their “real” conditions of existence. “What is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live” (Althusser 165). Nevertheless, Althusser contends that imagined relations have material ramifications, as the ideological actions that take the form of practices and rituals sustain the power of Ideological State Apparatuses. To give an example: The individual in question behaves in such and such a way, adopts such and such a practical attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus on which “depend” the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject. If he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance (once it was material in the ordinary sense of the term) and naturally repents and so on. If he believes in Duty, he will have the corresponding attitudes, inscribed in ritual practices “according to the correct principles.” If he believes in Justice, he will submit unconditionally to the rules of the Law, and may even protest when they are violated, sign petitions, take part in a demonstration, etc. (Althusser 167) It is from here, once ideology has been explained, that Althusser makes his theoretical transition to the notion of the subject and its construction through ideology. 25 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas One of the most significant contributions that Althusser made to his philosophical tradition is the concept of the ideological interpellation of the subject. In simplest terms, Althusser proposed that all individuals are shaped by ideology which transforms them into subjects. He states that, “I only wish to point out that you and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects” (172-173). In other words, there are no subjects free from interpellation (i.e., no “true” or “untainted” individuals) and there is no space, place, or time which is unaffected by ideological transformation. In fact, Althusser claims that the very “category of the „subject‟ is constitutive of ideology” (173). In order to explain this theory of interpellation or hailing further, Althusser invokes the following example. Althusser suggests that ideology “acts” or “functions” in such a way that it “recruits” subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or “transforms” the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing, “Hey, you there!” (174) It is in the subjects‟ response to, or recognition of, this hailing that they become unique subjects. Althusser explains that the psychical experience of the individual‟s response to being hailed is the point at which they 14 assume the prevailing ideology, and consequently, identify themselves as a subject to that pending social order. Unlike Repressive State Apparatuses, the seemingly benign spheres which he identifies as 14 I utilize “they” and “their” when referring to singular subjects throughout this thesis in order to avoid using gendered pronouns which reassert binaries of “he” and “she.” 26 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas operating primarily ideologically, such as religion, family, politics, and culture, function in ways that normalize the disciplining of subjects using subtle ideological coercion through hailing. However, what is not clear in Althusser‟s theory of interpellation are the ways in which subjects may be hailed by ideology differently. In other words, are all subjects “recruited” by Ideological State Apparatuses in the same way? How might subjects‟ intersubjectivities affect their relationship to prevailing ideology? Althusser‟s theory of hailing is useful to think about the ways in which subjects are recruited to a national ideology that maintains and bolsters the superstructure of the state. I argue that the discourse of nationalism in the 4th Line promotional material functions as an Ideological State Apparatus, inviting subjects to name, rename and act out their subjectivities through a national identity. The discourse of the theatre company naturalizes a settler identity as synonymous with that which is “Canadian.” The conception of community at the 4th Line is then constituted by two categories of subjects - subjects permitted to access a universalized Canadian subjectivity, and illegitimate subjects who can be categorized as not being part of the community, or as “strangers.” As the theatre company‟s promotional materials and performances produce white settlers as synonymous with “natural” or “normal” national subjects, racialized settlers and Indigenous people are excluded from the national identity. While settlers are produced as “ordinary,” “others” are produced as “strange.” Recognizing Difference In Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, Sarah Ahmed explores the relationship among identity, others, and community through a concept which she terms “stranger fetishism.” By interrogating the notion of “strangers” and “strangeness” 27 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Ahmed attempts to unpack what she perceives to be some of the theoretical limitations in the area of globalization, migration, and community studies, and ultimately map out a more complex understanding of identity and subject formation. Ahmed begins her book by explicitly questioning the possibility of “strangers.” In doing so she actively undermines theoretical approaches that continue to invoke the notion of stranger as a fixed and stable category. She says herself that Strange Encounters “is a book that attempts to question the assumption that we can have an ontology of strangers, that it is possible to simply be a stranger, or to face a stranger in the street. To avoid such an ontology, we must refuse to take for granted the strangers‟ status as a figure” (3). Unlike other projects that purport ideals of radical multiculturalism through the acceptance of that which is strange (i.e., celebrate diversity!), Ahmed demands that the very status of the stranger – as a status with meaning - be questioned. She asks quite simply, does the status of a figure as stranger have meaning (4, emphasis mine)? To elaborate, Ahmed invokes Marx‟s model of commodity fetishism to parallel how figures (for Ahmed) are endowed with illusory meaning, or act as “substitutions,” in the same way that Marx explains that commodities are fetishized within a capitalist system. In the same way that workers are unable to see the social relations of labour that constitute commodities with which they make transactions (they are alienated from the social relations), Ahmed argues that strangers too are created by the transformation of fantasies into figures. In both cases the fetishism “invests the figure of the stranger [or commodity] with a life of its own insofar as it cuts ‘the stranger’ off from the histories of its determination” (5, emphasis hers). Ahmed emphasizes the importance of analyzing the 28 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures social relations which constitute the stranger as a figure with meaning. Douglas Ahmed takes up Althusser‟s conception of hailing as she explores the theme of “recognizing” the stranger. She provocatively suggests that to recognize a stranger is to recognize them as a stranger, as someone who does not belong. In this way the stranger is not foreign or strange; in fact their presence is all too familiar. She critiques Althusser‟s notion of hailing as an overly simplistic conception that assumes that all subjects experience interpellation in the same way. For her hailing is not a one-dimensional act that is experienced uniformly by multiple subjects. She emphasizes the role of “intersubjectivities,” as well as the possibility that some subjects become “differentiated” upon their transformation as subjects. Ahmed cultivates Althusser‟s theory to account for these considerations. She states that inter-subjective encounters in public life continually interpellate subjects into differentiated economies of names and signs, where they are assigned different value in social spaces…To this extent, the act of hailing or recognizing some-body [sic] as a stranger serves to constitute the lawful subject, the one who has the right to dwell, and the stranger at the very same time. (23) Here Ahmed explains that it is the constitution of the stranger that allows for the construction of the lawful subject, and vice versa. The application of Ahmed‟s theory to considerations of community at the 4th Line reveals that the claiming of a universalized Canadian identity (the “we”) is predicated on a series of exclusions (the “them”). Inherent in the cultivation of a particular community is the establishment of both lawful and unlawful subjects who are either permitted or denied status as members of the community based on their shifting relations to the prevailing ideology. In contrast to 29 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Althusser‟s theory Ahmed suggests that, rather than being constituted as subjects through hailing subjects are constantly being interpellated and re-interpellated and thus accorded with different values in shifting contexts. This insight is useful to consider ways in which subjects can come to be legitimate in some settings and in other places or times be deemed illicit. I use Ahmed‟s theory to analyze the production of a Canadian national identity that is synonymous with a settler identity. The production of a national settler identity is predicated on the distinction between subjects who are recognized as belonging to the national community and those who are not. Exclusions are further made within the category of national settler subject that operate on racialized, gendered, classed, and sexualized lines. I explore these exclusions more in my analysis surrounding property and space in Chapter Three. French Marxist Henri Lefebvre developed extensive theories regarding space and the way in which social space is organized to reproduce the social relations of production. In my work I take up his use of the “triad” as a conceptual tool with which to understand the social production of space. The triad, which identifies three key moments in the production of space, assists in understanding the way in which the naturalization of the space of the 4th Line performances normalizes private property ownership and settlers‟ entitlement to the land. Using Lefebvre‟s notions of conceived, perceived, and lived space, I highlight the way in which the naturalization of the politico-juridical foundations of the capitalist-colonial state organizes and shapes subjects‟ relations to access and the distribution of capital. It is useful to consider the social relations of production in the site of the 4th Line as I investigate how multiple encounters with localized state-driven ideology, through the promotional material, performances, and physical space of the 30 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures theatre company, ensure the maintenance of a settler state. Douglas In order to flesh out Lefebvre‟s theories I utilize Eugene McCann‟s article “Race, Protest, and Public Space: Contextualizing Lefebvre in the U.S. City.” Specifically, McCann‟s use of visual examples to explain the production of space through Lefebvre‟s triad illuminates the way in which the “moments of space” come together to form a cohesive framework within which subjects can move without confusion. I mimic McCann‟s exercise in Chapter Three in order to more fully explain my use of Lefebvre. Although neither McCann nor Lefebvre include gender analysis in their work, I utilize their theories to explore the naturalization of patrilineal inheritance lines. White Settlers as Subjects The 4th Line Theatre Company at once tells and re-tells stories of the community that fit into a version of history that does not simply erase legacies of colonialism but instead presents them in particular ways. I distinguish between “telling” and “retelling” here so as to emphasize their dual function in creating new stories (telling) that although being “newly told” ultimately reinforce popular conceptions of the local area and its history (retelling stories already “known” to the audience). As is explicitly expressed on the company‟s website the 4th Line is invested in “bringing history to life on the outdoor stages of the Winslow Farm” (4th Line Theatre Website, emphasis mine). In the last decade there has been a great deal of work produced in Canada in the field of settler studies. The theoretical work that most informs this project stems from critical perspectives led by Eva Mackey, Himani Bannerji, and Sherene Razack, on Canada‟s image as a peaceful, benevolent and multicultural society. These theorists argue, albeit in various ways, that such conceptions of Canada are inherently predicated on complexly 31 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures concealed and deeply enduring legacies of white supremacy. Douglas The sophisticated intersectional feminist, anti-colonial, and Marxist approaches developed by these authors challenge a truncated foray into theories of nationalism to ask, in their fantastical conceptions, what kinds of communities are being imagined? My work builds on theory introduced by Althusser and Ahmed, and combines it with ideas presented earlier by Stasiulis, Yuval-Davis, and Jhappan to further draw out the gendered, racialized, classed, and sexualized underpinnings of notions of community and nationalism. Moreover, Bannerji, Mackey, and Razack situate their work in a Canadian context and therefore attend to the historical particularities of law, policy, and resistance that have shaped nationalism in a specific historic, political, social, and geographic locality. This literature provides a scholarly context for my analysis of the 4th Line in its function as a localized site of a larger ideology of settlerhood proffered by the Canadian nation-state. Critical theorist Sherene Razack has written extensively on the construction of the Canadian national subject as benevolent and well-intentioned. She claims that the notion of the Canadian as inherently good stems from a nationalist mythology that is prominent amongst Canadian citizens who see themselves as representatives of globally renowned and desirable attributes such as peacekeeping, modesty, and politeness (Razack, Dark Threats 9). As a result, instances of violent racism enacted by Canadian national subjects – whether individualized or in the name of the nation - are treated as incidental events that are aberrational to what is assumed to be an otherwise unblemished past largely comprised of good intentions. She claims that these events – such as the violent torture and murder of Shidane Arone by members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia in 1992, or the assault and murder of Pamela George by two college boys 32 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas outside of Regina, Saskatchewan in 1995 – are characterized by national media, law, and the general public as the result of a few “bad apples” (Razack, Dark Threats; “Gendered”). According to Razack, labelling these events as aberrational obscures their linkages to institutionalized racism, classism, and sexism and allows Canadian national subjects to continue to subscribe to the national mythology of Canada as a place of infinite goodwill and thriving multiculturalism (Dark Threats; “When”). Razack consistently advocates for subjects to stake out “the colour line” 15 in nationalist mythologies that work to render it invisible. For Razack, individuals and communities who situate themselves outside of history and deny their connection to legacies of slavery and colonialism hinder a process of accountability that she claims white settler societies need in order to transcend their “bloody beginnings” (“When” 5). Sociologist Himani Bannerji also writes extensively on the invocation of Canada as an uncomplicated whole. Whether as individual identity or nationalist creed, Bannerji argues that “Canada” stands as a signifier for a broader cultural discourse that, though seemingly benign and passive, actively constructs an ideological conceptualization of Canada as “white and European”: “Canada” then cannot be taken as a given. It is obviously a construction, a set of representations, embodying certain types of political and cultural communities and their operations. These communities were themselves constructed in agreement with certain ideas regarding skin colour, history, language (English/French), and other cultural signifiers – all of which may be subsumed under the ideological category “white.” A “Canada” constructed on this basis contains certain notions of 15 This concept was popularized by W.E. DuBois in his book The Souls of Black Folk. DuBois proclaimed that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea” (DuBois 11). 33 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures nations, state formation, and economy. Douglas Europeanness as “whiteness” thus translates into “Canada” and provides it with its “imagined community.” (64) For Bannerji, this universalized Canadian identity is subsumed within a discourse that claims it is neutral even as it is imagined as white and European. In the presence of a homogenous national identity, others who are not included within the category of Canadian are situated as non-Canadian, or “different others” (Bannerji 37). The construction of this universalized Canadian identity, complete with its unspoken but nevertheless present ideological baggage, informs my thesis as I explore the way in which the 4th Line invites an experience of a universalized Canadian national identity. Bannerji, more so than Razack, stresses the role of class and capital in the formation of the colonial Canadian nation-state. Weaving histories of the British colonial project with capitalist expansion Bannerji claims that in the face of Canada‟s settler colonial origin and the weak development of its capital and capitalist class, the state in Canada has been a direct agent for capitalist development and has performed a substantial role in the accumulation of capital. It has also been the chief agent for procuring labour and creating a labour market, and has assisted in the regulation and exploitation of labour. (76) Echoing sentiments espoused by Stasilius and Jhappan, Bannerji‟s analysis of Canada includes considerations of global capitalism which she argues were foundational to the nation‟s origins. An analysis of Canadian immigration policies during colonial expansion and through to the end of World War II reveals patterns of strategic population management tactics for the purposes of labouring schemes and permanent settlement strategies. As a result, Bannerji‟s work informs my theoretical analysis as I revisit 34 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Canadian federal immigration policy and its support for the capitalist agenda of the nation-state. In her book The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada, Eva Mackey investigates Canada‟s national identity as a multicultural and tolerant nation. Using historical inquiry combined with ethnographic analysis 16 she reveals how the project of Canadian identity-making uses Western notions of tolerance and liberalism to construct intolerance and white ethnic nationalism. Unlike other more repressive nationalisms, she argues that Canada has historically had to utilize complex practices of inclusion and strategic recognition among its dominant English, French, and Indigenous populations in order to carry out its agenda of nation-building. According to Mackey this practice of juggling claims with the objective of pressing subjects into the service of the state has continued today and can be found in contemporary policies regarding multiculturalism. She explains that in Canada cultural pluralism is institutionalised as a key feature of the mythology of identity of the dominant white Anglophone majority. Multiculturalism...has as much to do with the construction of identity for those Canadians who do not see themselves as “multicultural,” as for those who do. It examines the cultural politics of pluralism as it is articulated in colonial and national projects, and in the subjectivities of people who conceive of themselves as “mainstream” or simply “Canadian-Canadians.” (Mackey 3) Mackey, like Bannerji, examines the category of the universal “Canadian.” Through 16 Mackey attended various celebrations of Canada‟s 125 year celebrations where she interviewed white Canadians on the topics of Canadian identity, heritage, and multiculturalism (Mackey). 35 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas extensive fieldwork she finds that many of the subjects she interviews believe that the core of Canadian national identity is a white European settler identity. White Canadians that she speaks with continually assume that they are “normal” Canadians, and Mackey demonstrates that this assumption is supported through government identity-making strategies surrounding Canada 125 celebrations and the Charlottetown Accord. She claims that as the national identity is subtly equated with a gendered, racialized, sexualized, and classed identity, it naturalizes the exclusion of some citizens who do not embody these characteristics (Mackey 21). The critical work of Razack, Bannerji, and Mackey on national identity formation in Canada contributes greatly to a broader project of exposing unarticulated characteristics of white settler identity that are commonly presumed to be inherent, natural, and normal. In much the same way that European settlers upon arrival in the colonies unwittingly projected their worldview through language and law that they thought to be universal and therefore free of culture, the legacy of colonialism has entrenched an ability for those who benefit from those legacies to read themselves as universal. This self then is a “carte blanche,” free of “culture” or any signs of “Otherness.” This colonially-constructed myth plays out both in the ways settler subjects move and act in the world, and consequently the ways in which they exercise citizenship. Conclusion The theory I have laid out in this chapter suggests that the ideology espoused through the capitalist-colonial nation-state aligns with historical and contemporary objectives of a white settler society. The following chapters will analyze the ways in which the 4th Line‟s promotional materials and performances serve as a localized site of this ideology. 36 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Chapter Two begins with the creation of a homogenous subjectivity at the theatre company which is discursively linked to both a national and local identity that is framed as “quintessentially Canadian” (4th Line Theatre Website). As the 4th Line Theatre Company‟s materials perpetuate official national narratives regarding who and what is “Canadian” and who and what belongs to “Canada,” it cultivates the ideology of national belonging in the service of the state. This ideology maintains the economic and political dominance of white European settlers in contemporary Canada. 37 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Chapter Two The “Our” of Power Douglas “…all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and possibly even these) are imagined.” - Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (6) In this chapter I explore the ways in which the 4th Line constructs a universalized understanding of “Canada” as informed by national discourses through the company‟s promotional materials and self-representation in media coverage. I argue that this presumed national identity is presented as comprised of a common history, a shared morality, as well as a collective emotional investment in the stories that are presented. An analysis of the materials and media coverage from the 2006 theatre season reveals a pattern of unqualified claims to “our history,” “our community,” and “our forebears” that semantically envelops both the theatre company and the audience into one homogenous group. The promotional materials rely on the discursive production of this homogenous Canadian subject as the company‟s perceived audience. However, even as this group is presented as universal, an analysis of the materials reveals that a particular type of “Canadian” subjectivity is being proffered by the theatre company. As stated in the Introduction and in Chapter One, the presumed national identity is actually one with very direct linkages to a settler identity. I will demonstrate how this discourse extends beyond promotional materials and self-representation in local media and is taken up in theatre reviews and news articles across Ontario. Finally, I investigate the play development strategy employed by the company during 2006, termed a “Community Sounding,” and argue that it too bolsters the ideology of the capitalist-colonial nation-state by naturalizing settlers‟ entitlement to the land. My central question asks how this essential 38 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas national identity is premised on sets of exclusions. This chapter will explore sites at the 4th Line where a universal national identity is asserted as exclusions are simultaneously made. This essentialized Canadian identity requires close attention. Bannerji asserts that the unqualified categories of Canada and being Canadian are most commonly assumed to refer to a particular identity – that of a white European settler. She claims that the invocation of a homogenous Canadian identity most often refers to a “core community” of European settlers, a group Mackey refers to as “Canadian-Canadians” (Mackey 20). Bannerji asserts that from the days of colonial capitalism to the present-day global imperialism, there has emerged an ideological homogenous identity dubbed Canadian whose nation and state Canada is supposed to be. This core community is synthesized into a national we, and it decides on the terms of multiculturalism and the degree to which multicultural others should be accommodated or tolerated. This “we” is an essentialized version of a colonial European turned into Canadian and the subject or the agent of Canadian nationalism. (Bannerji 42) Bannerji is making the case that the national subject is always assumed to be of a particular composition. In other words, though the essentialized Canadian identity being offered through nationalist discourse claims to be equally representative of all subjects, it is influenced by colonial and imperial legacies which privilege some subject positions over others. According to Bannerji, racialized settlers and racialized immigrants cannot make a claim to the universalized Canadian identity in the same way as non-racialized European immigrants. The colonially-infused power dynamics among various subject 39 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas positions enable claims of “Canadian-Canadians” “whose nation and state Canada is supposed to be” to carry more weight. Their place in imaginations of the nation resonate with a commonly adopted historical interpretation of Canada. In revisiting some of the promotional material and media coverage of the 4th Line‟s 2006 season, I demonstrate that this assumed national identity appears central in the discourse of the theatre company. The theatre‟s promotional materials present an uncomplicated national subject that is ideologically complicit with the goals of the Canadian nation-state. Moreover, it does the work of the state in its cultivation of a local audience to produce the image of a homogenous Canada that naturalizes settlerhood. Ahmed writes that an individual experiences national discourses at both a social and psychic level whereby a claim to a nation(ality) can function as a form of identification. She claims that the framing of a nation, complete with both geographic and cultural boundaries, necessitates the formation of a corresponding national identity with which subjects can align or “claim.” Individuals can then identify with having a nationality as well as being a national identity (Ahmed 98). According to Ahmed, the construction of the nation space takes place alongside the production of national character as instances in which “the nation” itself is fleshed out as place and person. The nation becomes imagined as a body in which personhood and place are precariously collapsed. Through a metonymic elision, the individual can claim to embody a nation, or the nation can take the shape of the body of an individual... (99) In order to identify as being a nationality in addition to having a nationality, individuals relate to particular signs and expressions that are emblematic of the stories that constitute 40 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas their national identity. Furthermore, subjects can identify with others who share such stories. More than epic stories of origin, these forms of national identification play out on a day-to-day level as individuals constantly negotiate and renegotiate their nation(al) identity. “The production of the nation involves self-identification in which the nation comes to be realised as belonging to the individual (the construction of the „we‟ as utterable by the individual)” (Ahmed 98). Althusser explains that these everyday negotiations are the rituals which sustain Ideological State Apparatuses. Althusser‟s concept of interpellation is applicable to the case of the 4th Line as, indeed, subjects are hailed to the ideology of nationalism that is proffered by the nationstate and extended by the theatre company. However, my project is not only to look at the ways in which the discourse of the 4th Line functions as an Ideological State Apparatus for all subjects, but also to argue that this necessarily leads to differentiation among subjects. Put differently, certain subject positions are privileged in the hailing of a universalized Canadian subjectivity. It is in the practices of constructing the legitimate national subject that the illegitimate subject is simultaneously created. These excluded subjects, though rendered absent, are actually constitutive of the national identity that is being extended. It is only in the exclusion of illegitimate subjects that the universal national subject can claim its legitimacy. The following analysis of the company‟s promotional materials and media coverage focuses on the processes of creating permissible subjects that then constitute the legitimate national community. I will demonstrate how these practices operate simultaneously and underwrite universalizing claims to a common national identity found in the discourse of the theatre company. “We” Settlers 41 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Within the discourse of a universal subjectivity there are “gaps” and “fissures” that reveal the underpinnings of the normalized identity. Examining gaps in the normalized subjectivity links the identity to its unarticulated historical, social, and political components. By tracing these fissures I demonstrate that the universalized Canadian identity extended through the discourse of the 4th Line is a white settler identity. Moreover, although subjects are hailed to experience a universal “Canadian” community through the ideology of the state, this interpellation also differentiates among subjects along lines of class, gender, race, and sexuality. I have previously demonstrated how this discourse operates through the capitalist-colonial ideology of the nation-state using theory laid out by Bannerji, Mackey, and Razack. Here I will draw on specific examples that stem directly from the site of the 4th Line, including the name of the theatre company, as well as membership campaign strategies from the 2006 season. The theatre company‟s name - the “4th Line” - conjures up linkages to property, rural planning strategies and other elements of a British colonial expansion project. Indeed, the permanent settlement strategies of the British in Canada depended largely on the portioning of annexed Indigenous land and the installation of individualized patriarchal property rights enshrined through British legal imperialism and capitalist expansion. The rural geographical reference to the 4th Line in the company‟s name is a signifier for a history that is undeniably linked to Canada‟s colonial foundations and ongoing strategies of state-organized regulation and capital accumulation that are legacies of British imperialism. Moreover, as maps, compasses and other instruments of colonial navigation serve as signifiers of Eurocentric ways of seeking truth and objectivity, the reference to the fourth concession line also serves as a symbol with direct linkages to the cartographic 42 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures practices of colonizing forces. Douglas In order to endorse the company‟s production of this settler identity, audience members are asked to participate in an experience of the rural setting as a place from which “our” common history can be told. To fulfill the experience of a universalized Canadian identity, it follows that the “4th Line” of the Cavan-Monaghan Township must be a common or familiar space or place in the history of Canada and the identity of Canadians, or at the very least a place from which objective historical depictions can be mounted. This invitation to participate in the establishment of the rural setting of the 4th Line as a common space in the history of Canada is particularly inviting for those who align with a conception of the space as familiar. The space of the 4th Line and the Winslow Family Farm is elaborated upon in Chapter Three. Secondly, a 2006 Membership Campaign brochure for the 4th Line reveals four distinct Membership Levels that produce a normalized settler identity as the national identity. In ascending order beginning with the lowest, the membership levels follow a hierarchy of patriarchal settler roles each of which denotes a different membership contribution level. At the lowest level, an individual can become a Pioneer by donating between $25-$99 to the company. Wagon Driver ($100-$249) is the next level followed by Barn Builder ($250-$499), Harvester ($500-$999) and ending with the highest level, the Artistic Director‟s Club ($1000+). Each membership level has its own benefits ranging from invitations to special readings to recognition on an exclusive donor wall (4th Line Theatre Membership Campaign 2006/2007 Pamphlet). 17 17 Interestingly, the category of “Artistic Director” strays from the specific language of settlerhood that names the other categories. However, sitting at the top of the hierarchy of membership roles, the Artistic Director category is literally comprised of a combination of the other settler roles. I argue that this is an example of the larger practices of identity making that are in operation at the 4th Line. As an identity 43 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas As in the case of the name of the company, these membership roles appear within a discourse that posits that the 4th Line presents a universal Canadian identity; these pioneering duties are also assumed to be part of that universal Canadian identity. This conflation of a universalized Canadian identity and practices of patriarchal nationbuilding establish that a Canadian identity is essentially linked to a masculinist settler identity.18 The cases above demonstrate the ways in which the assumed national identity at the 4th Line is specific to a settler identity. The enveloping language that stems from nationally proffered discourse works to naturalize historical and contemporary practices of settlerhood as well as a national identity that is synonymous with being a settler. In the next section I examine the moments where a universal Canadian identity is asserted through the company‟s promotional materials. These moments include claims to represent a common history, an assertion of a shared national moral code, and universal emotional reaction to the stories presented on stage. These are important examples to note as in their assumed universality these claims perpetuate a particular conception of a national identity that though never articulated posits settlers as “natural” or “normal” category is asserted, it is necessarily comprised of certain imagined characteristics. In this case, the membership category of the “Artistic Director” does not have any settler specific language in its name. However, it is subtly aligned with a settler identity based on the larger context of the hierarchy of membership roles. 18 Next to an article in The Peterborough Examiner on The Art of Silent Killing (Bergen, “Camp X”) appears an advertisement promoting Lang Pioneer Village, a local museum dedicated to preserving the heritage of the surrounding rural area (Lang Pioneer Village Website). Of particular note is that the advertisement is for the annual re-enactment of the “Fur Trade,” and advertises the opportunity to “travel back in time and experience life during the fur trade, ride in a voyageur canoe from the Canadian Canoe Museum, enjoy a variety of demonstrations including scrimshaw, paddle carving, and trade silver” (Lang Pioneer Village). Although it is difficult to draw any clear links between the appearance of said advertisement and the article next to which it appears, it may offer some points of rumination on the proliferation of how settlerhood is naturalized in the wider community of Peterborough and surrounding area. 44 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Canadians. Common History Douglas Claims to a common history are produced and reproduced in the promotional material of the company, in local media coverage, and in reviews and news articles from across Ontario. An analysis of these materials will demonstrate that even in its emergence through seemingly disconnected sources, a cogent chronicling of the 4th Line as representing a single, unified, and shared (“our”) history prevails. Significantly, the 4th Line‟s presentations are also acknowledged and endorsed by a significant amount of local media as representative of the area‟s “common history.” To begin, I turn to the theatre company‟s 2006 promotional materials. The 2006/07 Membership Campaign Flyer for the theatre company reads: At 4th Line Theatre, the stories we bring to life are inspired by our local history and culture. They echo the passions and struggles of our forebears, and celebrate the extraordinary journeys of ordinary people. By examining our past, we become better equipped to meet the challenges of the future. (emphasis mine) The explicit reference to “our” history, culture, forebears and past in this flyer are representative of a dominant trend found within the promotional materials (4th Line Theatre Website; 4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program). The company‟s Mandate and Artistic Vision both make explicit reference to preserving and promoting “our Canadian heritage” and realistically recreating struggles of “our forebears” (4th Line Theatre Website). The plays are described in the company‟s promotional materials as being written by and about Canadians: “small town stories or broad national sagas that touch a nerve in all of us” (4th Line Theatre Website, emphasis mine). By invoking this 45 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas language the producers of the material are presenting the audience with an uncontested construction of Canadian national identity. Through their productive capacity the theatre promotes an ideologically conceived national identity based on a white settler identity. In the 4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program, the company invites audiences to “relax and enjoy the sights and sounds of the country at the Winslow Farm where the works of talented playwrights and our tradition of portraying local history come alive on our outdoor stages” (3). The audience is assumed to be able to have a “relaxing and enjoyable” experience in visiting the theatre and watching local history in a rural setting. Inherent in this invitation is the assumption that these re-productions and the setting in which they take place are completely benign, not possible of rousing discomfort or anxiety amongst spectators. The stories are, by virtue of their presentation by the 4th Line, naturalized as representative of a common history that is shared by its audience. Minor questions of content represent the only legitimate grounds for audience concern established by the theatre company in promotional materials. Speaking of Doctor Barnardo’s Children, a story centering on a British philanthropist who exported poor English children to Canada during the early nineteenth century, Winslow warns audience members about the potentially discomforting emotional content of the show. “„The emotional impact of Barnardo on our audiences was unparalleled in our 14-year history of producing historical drama,‟ says Winslow, artistic director” (Bergen, “Live Theatre” 9). This same quotation appeared in an article by Werner Bergen in Peterborough This Week on December 7, 2005. In another media source Winslow is quoted as saying that “we have a lot of descendents of Barnardo children living in our area, so this issue is really close to a lot of hearts in this community” (“4th Line breaking records”; “4th Line 46 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas The Theatre experiences record breaking season”; “4th Line Theatre booms”). implication of Winslow‟s caution comes as warning that this content may strike “all too close to home.” The content carries the potential to be discomforting only because it is assumed to be already so familiar to a lot of audience members. According to this discourse it is this experience of common history that allows audience members to undergo the discomfort, anxiety, or emotional trauma of these familiar stories. In the promotional materials for the second production of the 2006 season, The Art of Silent Killing, audiences are explicitly warned about adult content in the form of violence and sexuality. These warnings are disseminated through media coverage and emphasize the “mature content” of the show (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 8; Beneteau, “Outdoor theatre sizzles with spies and intrigue”). This warning too has strictly to do with details of the script; at no time is the story itself considered to be potentially discomforting or anxiety inducing. What does this mean for subjects who do not identify, or who are perceived not to identify, with the “common” history? Ahmed contends that the claiming of a fixed or stable identity is contingent on the exclusion of others. In this case, the naturalization of a common history functions as an exclusionary practice, regulating access to the category of national identity. I argue that the universalizing gesture of an assumed “common history” holds potential to carry its own trauma. An adoption and endorsement of a claim to a common experience of history works to conceal internal differences of historical experiences. Moreover, it privileges the rendering of history that is presented by the authorized definer of said history, in this case the 4th Line Theatre Company. Assertions to the 47 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas representation of a universal history assume that the stories presented are of mutual interest and provide a shared experience amongst their audience. Although particular to a settler history, this notion of a common history is established by the company as universal and positions the 4th Line as the neutral arbiter of an accepted rendering of a shared national history. In the universalizing discourse of a common national history, national subjects‟ histories (read: white settlers‟ histories) are necessarily exalted as others are erased. As this ideology is promulgated in localized sites such as the 4th Line Theatre it maintains this racialized arrangement even as it asserts a universalized national community with a common history. Authorized Storytellers The discourse of a shared history is not only confined to the company‟s promotional materials. In various interviews with local media, representatives of the theatre company – most often Winslow, but on other occasions visiting playwrights and individual actors – also perpetuate the construction of the theatre company as recounting what is assumed to be a common past. In an article from July 2006, 4th Line actor Alison Jutzi is quoted as calling the performances “„people‟s history on stage‟” (Gilchrist). Speaking directly about the 2006 performance of Doctor Barnardo’s Children, Jutzi goes on to say that “„it really speaks to the audience‟” (Gilchrist). Perhaps unwittingly Jutzi is echoing the sentiment of the company by presuming that the stories presented at the 4th Line represent a universally agreed-upon history, or at least one that is shared and one of common interest to an audience made up of “the people.” 19 Further statements made by 19 Interestingly, Mackey came across populist language in her research on the Canada 125 celebrations. In these instances “the people” referred to a non-political group of Canadians who stood as authentic representations of citizens. Mackey claims that “„the people‟ are presented as the site of authentic and non-political patriotism, whereas government must be erased because people might perceive it as 48 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Winslow to Peterborough This Week, a local weekly newspaper produced in the nearby community of Peterborough, as well as The Northumberland News published out of the Cobourg area, continue to cultivate the message that these stories “illustrate very different eras of our history” by asserting that the audiences at the 4th Line “enjoy these opportunities to learn more about the history and the work we present on our stages” (“Something old, something new”; Beneteau, “Canadian Stories,” emphasis mine). The discourse found in the promotional materials and through self-representation in interviews such as the ones described above bolsters the supposition that there is a common practice of conceptualizing history amongst national subjects. This discourse transcends the realm of the company‟s self-produced image and enters into the domain of journalism through news articles and theatrical reviews. An analysis of news articles and reviews written by local media demonstrates how the “our local history” discourse is picked up and built upon by both local and regional press. Tracking the journey of this discourse in its occurrences outside of internally produced material illuminates the weight attributed by local media to the 4th Line‟s representation of common history. A number of articles that can be considered general information about the company or the 2006 season and which span publication in local independent media to national mainstream press explicitly venerate the 4th Line for its capacity to tell stories that are historical dramas, based on real-life events, or based on historical fact. Several articles discussed Doctor Barnardo’s Children as dealing with an issue that “was close to a lot of hearts in this community,” thereby implying that the play‟s role was to divisive, political and manipulative. Ironically, it was the government itself that used this opposition to try to legitimate its own actions” (Mackey 117). Mackey is referring here to the government‟s strategic localizing of the 125 celebrations by asking citizens to organize their own community events to mark the date. According to Mackey this served to reduce costs for government spending on the event and also “bolster the appearance of celebrations of „the people‟ as opposed to „the government‟” (Mackey 115). 49 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas tell a local history (see Appendix B). A closer look at some of what others are saying about the 4th Line reveals the extensive resonance of the discourse produced in the promotional materials. A theatre review by Murray Black from The Keene Correspondent, a free monthly that circulates in the Peterborough area, reproduces the promulgated discourse. Black claims that “some times [sic] by looking at our blemished past we can examine our present and prevent history from repeating itself” (Black). This description almost directly duplicates Winslow‟s assertion from the 2006/07 Membership Campaign Pamphlet that “by examining our past, we become better equipped to meet the challenges of the future.” News articles from other communities also attend to the 4th Line‟s construction of itself as purveyor of historical truths. In the Oshawa This Week, a branch of the Metroland Media Group family, Jeanne Beneteau writes on July 28, 2006 that “Millbrook‟s Fourth Line Theatre provides a unique opportunity to watch a bit of local and national history unfold in the backdrop of the Winslow Farm.” Though Beneteau‟s observation does not directly draw on the same universalized presumptions regarding “our” history, she has, with the help of the 4th Line‟s self-depiction, constructed the stories presented on the Millbrook stage as representative of national history. In other media outlets across Ontario similar strands of the discourse are taken up and duplicated in various forms. The Country Connection is self-proclaimed as “Ontario‟s magazine for history, heritage, nostalgia, nature, environment, travel and the arts – a natural choice for country folk, and those that wish they were” (The Country Connection Website). In the summer of 2006, writer Judy Lawless reviewed the 4th Line Theatre, claiming that the performance had given her new knowledge about the local history of the 50 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas area. She wrote: “as a newcomer to this area, I also enjoy learning some of its history through the plays, as most of them are locally written and based on local historical events...I felt the joy; I felt the pain” (31). Lawless‟ experience at the 4th Line gave her the confidence to publicly announce her recent acquisition of local historical knowledge, even though she was a “newcomer.” Furthermore, in a special edition of the regional tourism magazine Ontario Travel Discoveries, author John Farrington applauds community theatres that are “taking the opportunity to teach audiences about local history” (39). In his review of summer theatre in Ontario, Farrington highlights the 4th Line Theatre and its production of Doctor Barnardo’s Children for taking up the role of historical educator and preserving heritage. In an article appearing in The Globe and Mail titled “Plays for your getaway,” author Kamal Al-Solayle also endorses and propagates the discourse of the 4th Line. Building on utterances found in promotional material AlSolayle reiterates the company Mandate: “to stage important but neglected chapters of local Canadian history in an idyllic outdoor farm setting.” As is evidenced by the examples of media coverage illustrated above, the 4th Line has had at least some success in being established as an authorized storyteller of a universally agreed upon, local, Canadian history. Tracking the extensive discourse of “our common history” as it travels from the site of the 4th Line through news coverage demonstrates how the homogenizing language resonates with a larger framework of national ideology. The ideology of the capitalistcolonial nation-state naturalizes the universal Canadian national identity as being that of a white settler. It is clear from the abundance of media sources cited above that the discourse of the nation-state resonates at the 4th Line and in the company‟s media 51 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures coverage in local, regional, and national press. An Invitation to a Common Morality and Shared Emotional Reaction Douglas I argue that the 4th Line promotional materials, in addition to producing a homogenous Canadian identity through the discourse of a common history, also exemplify a normalized moral code which is produced to be synonymous with what is “Canadian.” The promotional materials of the company demonstrate that the audience is assumed already to identify with and emulate a common morality. Additionally, there are assumed emotional reactions that audience members are expected to have upon exposure to 4th Line performances. The presumptions about what is morally objectionable and what is emotionally evocative for “Canadians” conform to codes that align with values and agendas of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Once again I argue that these universalizing practices work to produce lawful and unlawful subjects who are either included or excluded from the ideologically produced national identity. The cases I point to at the theatre include the naturalization of stories of settlement as well as loyalty to the state through militarism and a “natural” suspicion of others. As these codes are reproduced at the localized site of the 4th Line, they work to cultivate the ideology of the state thereby working to sustain the foundations of a white settler society: Idyllic, rural, and quintessentially Canadian, each year the 4th Line Theatre Company presents Canadian plays – written by and about Canadians; small town stories or broad national sagas that touch a nerve in all of us. (4th Line Theatre Website, emphasis mine) This quotation was previously used to demonstrate the company‟s assumption of a common history amongst its audience. However, this description is also an appeal to a 52 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas common emotional reaction which implies that the universalized Canadian subject is similarly impacted by these “small town stories or broad national sagas.” This quotation complexly weaves together the epitomized Canadian subject with a shared emotional affect. These trends can also be traced through the promotional materials and media coverage of the scripts from the company‟s 2006 season. The first play of the 2006 Season, Doctor Barnardo’s Children, follows one family as the children are painfully separated from their father in England to be placed under the care of Doctor Barnardo and his staff at the Barnardo Home. The children are then separated again from each other as some are left in England while others are shipped to Canada. The audience follows the story of the children who are sent to Canada and placed in separate family homes, and is privy to both the hardships and the prosperity that the Barnardo children experience. The show is of interest to the 4th Line since a large number of Barnardo children were relocated to the Peterborough area into various farms and family homes, as well as to an all-girls “boarding house” called the Hazelbrae Barnardo Home, established in 1884 (Corbett 40-49; also see my discussion of the play‟s relevance to the area on pages 46-48). Furthering the claim that there is a prescribed emotional response invoked through the promotional material, five newspaper articles cite Robert Winslow giving similar references to the emotional impacts of Doctor Barnardo’s Children (“4th Line breaking records”; “4th Line Theatre booms”; “4th Line Theatre experiences”; Bergen, “Live Theatre” 9; “Something old, something new”). Through these quotations Winslow draws upon what was for many a traumatic experience of forced emigration and exploitation on farms and in homes in Canada. There are Barnardo “children” from the Millbrook and 53 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas surrounding area as well as their families who were likely to have attended the show. Of course, reliving the story of Doctor Barnardo may be a very emotional experience for these individuals. The point here is not to belittle the emotional connections that audience members may have to the material, but to call attention to the ways in which the emotional impacts of this show are universalized as common to a national identity. Indeed, as these stories are framed to “touch a nerve in all of us,” national subjects are discursively produced to have a shared emotional reaction to Doctor Barnardo’s Children. In the case of The Art of Silent Killing, a common emotional affect is also assumed. The Art of Silent Killing tells the story of a young male soldier and a young female soldier who fall in love while training to become Canadian spies in the Second World War. The story has local significance as it takes place at a spy training facility that was once located near Whitby, Ontario. The promotional materials and the media coverage of the show bill it is as presenting important moral lessons regarding bravery, clear notions of good (versus evil), truth, and love (Argyris; Bergen, “The Art”; Whitnall). The positive attributes that are inferred through these thematic trajectories are framed within the overall discourse of the 4th Line that then posits them as “quintessentially Canadian.” Furthermore, the ways in which these moral values are taken up ultimately enshrine the importance of subjects‟ loyalty to the state through military service, and a vigilant suspicion of “others.” Together they present a moralistic imperative that is necessarily subscribed to in order to achieve access to status as a “normal” Canadian. In an interview, Director Kim Blackwell says that “„I just love that idea of telling this story about extraordinary Canadians and especially extraordinary Canadian women doing 54 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas these amazing things and going back to their ordinary lives. They could be anyone sitting next to you‟” (Bergen, “Camp X”, emphasis mine). According to the 2006 Summer Season Program the play tells the story of two young Canadians who trained to be secret agents during WWII. Part of the play is set at Camp X, the real-life military compound once situated on the border of Oshawa and Whitby where ordinary Canadians with the requisite skills and bravery were trained to relay top-secret information and assume the identities of the citizens of enemy-occupied countries. (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 8, emphasis mine) The lauding of “anyone” bravely embarking on an extraordinary journey and succeeding against seemingly insurmountable odds fits safely within a discourse of liberal individualism. This ideology is also commonly used to bolster support for and fend off critiques of global capitalism while positing that individuals with varied political, social, and economic backgrounds can succeed against the odds if they simply try hard enough. Structural barriers including systemic racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia are rendered unimportant and even imaginary under this ideology. Moreover, the acclamation of individuals‟ extra-ordinariness through their participation in the war resonates with a nationalist discourse that encourages loyalty to the state through military service. In the discourse surrounding The Art of Silent Killing, the ordinary lives of Canadians become extraordinary when subjects choose to do “amazing things” such as become a spy for the Canadian government. The transformation from “everyday” to “extraordinary” hinges on the choice or ability to risk or sacrifice by enlisting in the 55 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas military. The implied moral trajectory is that those who endorse the national military project are “better” moral subjects for being brave, and are “amazing” for enlisting in military service (Bergen, “Camp X”). Absent from these moral codes are considerations regarding who has the “ability” or “choice” to risk or sacrifice. It is implied that all individuals are – or have the potential to be - political, social, and economic equals. Therefore, it is reasonable to require the same risks and sacrifices from all citizens, and to judge individuals‟ capabilities of meeting those requirements. Historical considerations of soldiers during World War II trouble simple understandings of who could qualify as “anyone.” What is missing from this conversation is the historical framing of the situation, including an understanding of the role of conscription and government control over subjects‟ mobility and “freedom” to choose. 20 In the quotations above, both Blackwell and the Summer Season Program establish that anyone can become extraordinary by enlisting and also that anyone can serve in the military. These representatives of the 4th Line normalize military service by subtly aligning it with the category of what is normal or “ordinary.” Within this discourse a naturalized national subject is someone who willingly serves the state by enrolling in the military. The other element of the assumed moral code that I wish to analyze is the repeated references to an intrinsic distrust and suspicion that is presumed to be of “human nature.” 20 Canada declared war on Germany in 1939 under the leadership of then Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Although King was wary about introducing conscription in 1940 under the National Resources Mobilization Act (NRMA), Canadian men and women could be conscripted into domestic service for wartime industries and production. However, after 1943, Canada was facing a shortage of troops. Through a series of dubious drafts from 1943 to 1945, some 30,000 Canadians were effectively conscripted for overseas service (Granatstein 93-94, 177, 186-187). Technically speaking, even under conscription soldiers entering duty had to pass certain age and ability requirements that would have ensured any active duty officer was able bodied and over the age of eighteen. Candidates who were openly gay were also denied entry. Although men and women were both conscripted for domestic duty, the wartime campaigns encouraging voluntary enlistment were heavily gendered, requesting men for active duty and women to support the troops by purchasing war bonds and saving household scraps (Rogers; Odell, We’re in the army now; see Appendix C). This historical framing of World War II adds an important context to the understanding of who these “ordinary” Canadians were. 56 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas The assumption that all humans are naturally suspicious of each other operates squarely within an ideology of liberal individualism that presumes that all subjects are under equal suspicion. In interviews playwright Shane Peacock‟s encourages individuals to relate to the “universal” theme of the show through their own inherently distrustful nature. Firstly, through a series of quotations, interviews, and press releases the show is established as presenting a truth about humans‟ natural suspicion of each other. Peacock sets the stage through interviews with local media. He claims that “„human beings are inherently distrustful and suspicious of each other…But I hope others will learn to coexist within the constraints of human nature. We‟re always going to be driven by the distrust of each other‟” (Whitnall, emphasis mine). The company‟s promotional materials also make these claims regarding an innate sense of suspicion. Within the 2006 Summer Season Program the play is framed as exploring “the distrustful, sometime spy-like nature of the human mind” (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 3, 9). However, even as Peacock testifies that suspicion is “natural,” he claims that “„the play has a lot of implications for today‟s terrorist situation...’” and that “„we live in a world plagued with distrust and terrorism‟” (Argyris, emphasis mine). Contemporary discourse regarding terrorism is encoded with racialized underpinnings (Razack, Casting). A liberal assessment of suspicion as “human nature” erases considerations of social, political, and historical productions of certain individuals from particular ethnic and racialized groups as more suspicious than others. The erasure of power relations that distinguish among subjects on the bases of race, class, gender, and sexuality naturalizes the hierarchies upon which the capitalist-colonial nation-state of Canada was founded and continues to operate. Moreover, Peacock‟s assessment that all are equally distrustful and 57 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas suspicious of each other ignores what Bannerji asserts is fundamentally a discriminating power of normalized or “ordinary” Canadians. According to Bannerji, within white settler ideology it is the perceived “core” of Canadian society, white European settlers, who have the power to decide who is part of the community and who is not. These practices reinforce the ideology of the state as it cultivates conceptions of white settlers as being naturally constitutive of the national community. Furthermore, they perpetuate a conception of the state as inherently benign, thereby working in tandem to legitimize ongoing practices of managing its population in service of capitalist-colonial ideology. The construction of the universal Canadian subjectivity in the case of Doctor Barnardo’s Children and The Art of Silent Killing includes the production of a universal moral code that lauds values that align with those of the state, such as bravery demonstrated through military service and a vigilant suspicion of others, and is understood as inherently “Canadian.” Below I demonstrate how the discourses of an assumed common history, morality, and emotional affect also travel outside of the site of the theatre company. These discourses are lauded as being of pedagogical value to the nation. The following examples support my claim that the naturalizing project at the 4th Line falls in line with larger national discourses that resonate with the ideology of a settler society. Authorized Teachers As expressed through the company‟s promotional material, the theatre company‟s presence in the Millbrook and Peterborough communities for the last decade has served a pedagogical role. The “Message from the Artistic Director” in the 2006 Summer Season Program asserts that at the 4th Line “the past is not brought to life merely as a re-creation 58 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas exercise but as a palpable way to illuminate and inform present day audiences” (3). An emphasis on the educational merits of the company‟s performances is also found in the last sentence of the Mission and Mandate, which has the explicit goal of preserving and promoting “our Canadian cultural heritage through the development and presentation of regionally based, environmentally staged, historical dramas” (4th Line Theatre Website). Indeed, the company consistently asserts that the performances are of pedagogical value to the community (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 3). As has been established, the 4th Line‟s pedagogical role is acknowledged and endorsed by a significant number of local media. The company‟s success in its role has also been supported by the local community and the municipal government. For example, in 2006 the community supported the theatre‟s aims by contributing twenty-three percent of the company‟s total revenue through memberships, fundraising, and sponsorship. In the same year approximately one quarter of the 4th Line‟s endeavours (about twenty-six percent of their proceeds) were supported by the municipal government. Therefore, approximately half of the company‟s income came directly from community and government support, leaving the other half of the annual profits to come from ticket and concession sales (Where Our Dollars Come From). The company also received one of the most formal acknowledgments of its work when it was officially recognized by the British Crown through a decoration of the Queen‟s Golden Jubilee Award for Voluntary Service in 2002 (Kovach; “An Audience”; “Queen‟s Jubilee”). 21 Additionally, Robert 21 It should be pointed out that the Queen‟s Golden Jubilee Award did not explicitly award the theatre company for its work in presenting historical dramas. The award is generally given to “recognize groups of individuals who are giving its time freely for the benefit of others” and was given to the company in recognition of their “significant contribution to their fellow citizens, their community or to Canada” (Queen‟s Award Website; Kovach). However, I argue that given the 4th Line‟s obvious discursive construction of itself and its role in the community as historical pedagogue, the presentation of the award works to confirm this construction whether intentionally or otherwise. 59 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Winslow was inducted into the Peterborough Pathway of Fame in 2006 for “excellence in the community,” and for bringing to life “many aspects of local history through 4th Line‟s compelling and entertaining productions” (“Pathway of Fame”). A quick survey of media coverage of the 4th Line during the summer of 2006 reveals a frequent pattern of references to the company as presenting “real,” “real life,” and “realistic” stories that are based on “reality” and a “true Canadian experience.” 22 Hence, the 4th Line is established as an authorized interlocutor of a common Canadian history by an array of external sources including local, provincial, and national media as well as official state endorsements through funding and awards of merit. These examples clearly demonstrate that the representations of Canadian identity that I argue are connected to a settler identity are in fact part of a larger ideological framework; in Althusserian terms the theatre company functions as an Ideological State Apparatus. As is demonstrated by the magnanimity by which the local community, news media, and state institutions endorse the company as an authorized historical pedagogue, it is clear that the company‟s representations of Canada and Canadians fit safely within popular ideological imaginations of the nation. Cultivating Community As a final gesture in this chapter I turn to the company‟s play development strategy employed during 2006 as another example of the practices of normalizing settlerhood that operate at the 4th Line. This case is unique in that it looks at the ways in which populist 22 “Real” – appears a total of three times in the following configurations; “real place” (Argyris); “real human element” (Argyris); “presence is quite real” (Black); “Real life” - appears a total of three times; once in an article from The Lindsay Daily Post (“Historical society”), once in Oshawa This Week (Beneteau “Outdoor theatre sizzles with spies and intrigue”), and once in The Keene Correspondent (Black); “Realistic” – appears once in The Lindsay Daily Post (Whitnall); “Reality” - appears a total of three times (twice in the same article from The Peterborough Examiner (Bergen, “Camp X”; Argyris); “True Canadian experience” – appears once in The Cobourg Daily Star (Argyris). 60 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas calls to the “local” can also work in service of the settler state. Though much of my emphasis up to this point has been on the ideology that informs the homogenizing language of national identity, here I discuss the way in which an emphasis on the difference between the local and the national can serve the same ends. During the 2006 season Winslow and visiting Director Dale Hamilton headed up a project to collect stories from local community members. These stories were collected through community meetings to serve as inspiration for future stagings at the 4th Line (“Come to a community „sounding‟”; “4th Line Theatre plans”). The company called the process a “Community Sounding” named after “echo sounding,” the nautical process of determining depth and distance from unforeseen objects using sound pulses and sonar technology: “The model is used much like a nautical depth sounding, as a way of recognizing upcoming obstacles, unusual shapes, potential hazards and unseen icebergs, only the tips of which are visible from the surface” (“Community Sounding a great success”; “4th Line Theatre plans”). Winslow and Hamilton hosted a total of three Soundings over the course of four months from January to April 2006 (Bond; “Community Sounding a great success”; “Community Sounding inspire”). It was reported that Hamilton and Winslow would also hold various other smaller Soundings for particular groups including church groups, the Millbrook Business Improvement Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Women‟s Institute, the Agricultural Society and youth groups (Bond 12). All of the Community Soundings were held either in Millbrook or the surrounding rural area and posed the following five questions: “What do you like about your community? What do you dislike about your community? What worries you about your 61 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas community? What is sacred about your community? What can be done to solve the problems in your community?” (“Community sounding a great success”). Significantly, the Soundings were framed as an “attempt to identify a mosaic of perceptions that constitute the local experience” and to solicit opinions from “youth, farmers, rural and village residents, business people, retirees and new arrivals” (“4th Line Theatre plans”). Winslow is quoted in multiple media sources as stating: We‟ve gone in without any expectation or preconceptions about what we want to write… The memories, concerns and ideas of the people in these communities will inform the characters, themes and stories in the play. we [sic] haven‟t yet put pen to paper – we are still in the story gathering stage. Once we have spoken to as many people as we can, we will begin to consider what this play might look like. (“4th Line playwrights seeking”; “Community Sounding inspire”) From media coverage and documentation in promotional materials it is possible to outline some of the outcomes of the “Soundings.” According to The Peterborough Examiner, Hamilton and Winslow expected approximately twenty to thirty people to attend their first Sounding held in early February 2006; however, more than fifty interested people showed up for the public meeting (“Playwrights surprised”). A report from The Millbrook Times documented some of the discussion topics. Participants noted concerns ranging from “sustainable agriculture, to protecting the landscape, to democratic participation. A major theme of the discussion was the need for open dialogue” (“Community Sounding a great success”). After several months of this form of community consultation, Winslow and Hamilton were able to string together themes which culminated in the writing of a new play titled The Last Green Hill. The show was 62 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas mounted during the 2008 season and is described in the 2006 Summer Season Program as follows: In the future a couple of things are very different in Millbrook. First, cowboys are back – in the grand tradition of the old west. And second there is only one small patch of land that has remained green, pristine and undisturbed by development and developers. And you can bet the impoverished hill dwellers are going to fight to protect the green hill from the appointed-elected powers that be. This futuristic Western is a humorous examination of the changes that small town Ontario residents are facing and fighting. (12) I argue that the Community Sounding project, even in its aim to conjure up stories from the local community and “celebrate the uniqueness of he [sic] community of CavanMillbrook-North Monaghan,” serves as a pivotal example of the way in which the theatre company extends the ideology of the capitalist-colonial nation-state by naturalizing settlerhood. The promotional materials used for the play development process were much more focused on the “local” unlike in materials used to advertise more generally for the 2006 season. Instead, the definition of “our community” during the Sounding project was explicitly linked to a particular geography from the outset. Rather than using the homogenizing language of the universal Canadian national identity, the promotional materials for the Sounding only concerned people from the township of CavanMillbrook-North Monaghan (“4th Line playwrights”; “4th Line Theatre plans”; “Come to a community „sounding‟”). The geographical demarcation of community is confirmed by both Winslow and Hamilton through these advertisements and promotions. What is of 63 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas interest here is the way in which the local, rural community is established to be “of the people” or “ordinary.” In several media pieces, Dale Hamilton is quoted as saying: “The soundings are an opportunity for the people who live in and around Millbrook to participate in the writing of this play right from the beginning,” says Hamilton. “In two years, they will be bale [sic] to see themselves on stage – their stories, their worries, their memories. these [sic] are stories worth telling. That‟s something that 4th Line Theatre has always been able to do – to take the stories of ordinary people and turn them into something extraordinary.” (“Community Sounding inspire”; 4th Line playwrights,” emphasis mine) Indeed the entire Sounding process is established to be a grassroots project in its aim to conjure up stories from “the people.” However, in their ideological construction of those who are “ordinary,” Winslow and Hamilton conversely create a category of subjects who are not “ordinary.” In her research on Canada 125 celebrations as well as in discourse surrounding constitutional changes of 1992, Mackey found a strong pattern of populist sentiment in small communities that often drew distinctions among “the people” (who were characterized as non-political and from small, usually rural communities) and “special interest groups” (political individuals or groups, as well as multicultural “others”) and “the government” (categorized as always political, manipulative, and dishonest) (Mackey 114-137). Interestingly, the product of the Community Sounding project - the development of The Last Green Hill - contains similar patterns of distinctions between “the people” and “the government.” 64 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas The 4th Line‟s new play is a thinly veiled metaphor for current conflict between suburban land development in rural southern Ontario and the residents who are resisting urban expansion (Winslow and Hamilton). The description of the play from the 2006 program suggests that a major theme that emerged from the Community Sounding process was that of a community under threat. There are distinct lines drawn between “the government” and “the people” in the new show‟s dominant theme of “impoverished hill dwellers” (read: rural residents of the Millbrook and the surrounding area) struggling against the powerful “elected powers that be” (read: the Cavan-Millbrook-North Monaghan Council). Although this might seemingly disrupt my argument that the Community Sounding process continues to operate as an arm of the ideology of the state, I claim that it does not. By positing the community as being comprised of “the people,” the theatre company naturalizes settlers‟ place on the land. Even in the face of a government-backed development infringing upon their community, these “ordinary” people will not back down. The (“ordinary”) people‟s vehement defence of an inalienable right to the land works in tandem with the larger goals of a capitalist-colonial state in ensuring the naturalization of settlerhood. Moreover, Mackey‟s research on small rural communities‟ defence against urbanization reveals strikingly similar themes to the case of the 4th Line. Mackey writes of an interview with a white, middle aged male resident in which he laments what he perceives to be the impersonal nature of “Toronto.” The man romanticizes his small town life where he can go for a walk and say hello to people on the street. Significantly, Mackey points out that the resident‟s discourse extends a “naturalising image of nationalism (the nation as family and local community)” which creates boundaries of 65 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas exclusion (137). Once again, similar themes are found in the discourse of the 4th Line‟s Community Sounding project. Indeed, the very tenets of the Community Sounding process postulated the need to defend local community boundaries. Though subtle, these references suggest that there is something at odds with the unarticulated values of the local people. In two media pieces Winslow states that “„we are interested in what people value about this area, and what keeps them up at night...What would you stand in front of a bus to protect?‟” (“Community Sounding a great success”; “Playwrights surprised”). Winslow‟s reference to a martyred defence of community suggests that there is something very important in/at this community which must be defended. As described above, the central theme of The Last Green Hill is a defence not only of community boundaries but very specific physical geographical borders. Winslow seems to be referring to the “threat” of land annexation by big city developers and the resulting social and economic decline that he (and the rest of the people who participated in the Community Sounding) presumes will follow. Here the demarcation of the “community” comprised of “ordinary people” becomes increasingly defined as a small-town rural settler community with values that differ from those of the urban dweller. Much like the case of the community from Mackey‟s research cited above, the people of Millbrook and surrounding area are produced to be similar in their unity as ordinary people who must stand together against the money-hungry developers from the city and the government officials who support them. Related to each other as family and united in their protection not only of their small-town values, but significantly of “their land,” this community of “ordinary” people mobilizes hierarchical practices of inclusion and exclusion that mirror 66 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures the population-management techniques of the state. Douglas By extending these particular notions of community, identity, and belonging, the Community Sounding process at the 4th Line serves as an example of what Bannerji refers to as the ideologically produced “core community” of Canada. Already cited at the beginning of this chapter, I reiterate Bannerji‟s assertion here for emphasis: …there has emerged an ideological homogenous identity dubbed Canadian whose nation and state Canada is supposed to be. This core community is synthesized into a national we, and it decides on the terms of multiculturalism and the degree to which multicultural others should be accommodated or tolerated. (42) As the ideology that governs the processes of a white settler society produces settlers as “naturalized” Canadians, this local rural community of “ordinary” people is then instilled with the entitlement to manage “its” community borders. Ultimately, the exercise of the Community Sounding reasserts safe and familiar conceptions of a national identity that continue to naturalize settlers as belonging to “Canada.” Even as the producers put the call out to the community for stories about “the people,” concepts of the “local,” the “natural,” and the “normal” are already operating within ideological conceptions of who and what Canada is. In this way, the theatre company‟s play development process functions as another site whereby subjects encounter ideology of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Conclusion This chapter emphasized that as the theatre company establishes a universal national identity it is predicated on a series of exclusions that posits that a white settler identity is “naturally” Canadian. This construction allows for the foundations of the capitalist- 67 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas colonial nation-state – it being contingent on the historical and ongoing practice of strategic settlement as well as the maintenance of its internal population – to remain intact. Though never explicitly framed, an analysis of some of the theatre company‟s promotional materials combined with state-endorsed discourse revealed that implicit in the national “we” was a hierarchy of subject positions that differentiated between who could claim national status and who could not. In addition, through the case of the Community Sounding I demonstrated how the rhetoric of populism can also serve to bolster the ideology of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Whether through populist or nationalist discourse, the theatre company‟s materials show a pattern of naturalizing settlers‟ entitlement to the land, as was demonstrated through membership campaign strategies and the development of The Last Green Hill. These examples reveal that the land operates as an integral element of settler identity both in its symbolic and material significance. In the next chapter I analyze the space of the 4th Line Theatre and, specifically, how the promotional material of the company works to naturalize a private property ownership model that has historically operated on patrilineal lines of inheritance. I argue that the naturalization of this model as well as the institution of law which enshrines its social, political, and economic power are key factors in the maintenance of settler ideological practices. 68 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Chapter Three 2006, A Space Odyssey Douglas “„I‟ve got a pretty good specialty crop going here.‟” - Robert Winslow, on the future of the 4th Line Theatre Production Company (Atkinson 19) The production of space constitutes a major practice of cultivating a settler community at the 4th Line. Promotional materials are rich with references to the Winslow Family Farm and rural Millbrook as the site of the performances. The space of the farm and the theatre is discursively constructed to be “natural” as audience members are invited to participate in an experience of the farm in a “natural” setting. Furthermore, this natural space is established as beautiful and idyllic. In this chapter I will explore the ways in which the naturalized discourse of the farm works to normalize certain regulating practices such as private-property ownership and patrilineal inheritance lines, which I argue are rooted in legacies of capitalism and colonialism. In the erasure of these legacies, settlers are posited as the legitimate owners of the land and “naturally” entitled to it and its history. As these entitlements are normalized, they seem to grow naturally out of the land, nurtured by the blood, sweat, and tears of settlers to produce a kind of “specialty crop.” Within the broad category of “settler” I also attempt to draw out the gendered, racialized, sexualized, and classed characteristics of this identity and the way that these have been historically managed by the state through patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist legal practices. Once again I point to the ways in which the settler identity at the 4th Line aligns with the national identity promulgated by the state, resulting in the production of a national identity that is largely a white, propertied, heterosexual, masculine settler identity. To this end, I intend to highlight the historical developments that have shaped 69 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas conceptions of space in rural Ontario to demonstrate how these spaces are actively produced as natural. Finally, I will look briefly at three cases of spatial memorialization in Peterborough and the surrounding area and point to the ways in which spatial narratives of settler naturalization are not static but rather, spread into and inform other sites. The Production of Space In his essay, “Reflections on the Politics of Space,” Henri Lefebvre makes one of the most often quoted assertions regarding spatial analyses: Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology and politics; it has always been political and strategic. If space has an air of neutrality and indifference with regard to its contents and thus seems to be “purely” formal, the epitome of rational abstraction, it is precisely because it has been occupied and used, and has already been the focus of past processes whose traces are not always evident on the landscape. Space has been shaped and molded [sic] from historical and natural elements, but this has been a political process. Space is political and ideological. It is a product literally filled with ideologies. (31) Lefebvre implores spatial theorists to do more than simply read space as a symbol or signifier, but to also understand the dialectical relationship between space and its material realities. For Lefebvre space not only effects subjects‟ experiences, but is simultaneously effected by subjects‟ experiences of it. He describes three concepts of social space – conceived, lived, and perceived - which interconnect to create a “triad” within which subjects can move “without confusion” (Lefebvre, Production 40). Conceived space, also known as “representations of space,” is that which is imagined and implemented by 70 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas authorized spatial practitioners through devices such as area blueprints and maps. Urban planners, engineers, and scientists designate and identify space, according to Lefebvre, in line with a system of signs that thereby create conceptualized space. These scientific “technocrats…identify what is lived and what is perceived and what is conceived” (Lefebvre, Production 38). A second “moment” of the triad is lived space or “representational spaces,” which is a way of living space through its association with signs and symbols. Lefebvre claims that “it overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” (Lefebvre, Production 39). One may consider the graveyard, complete with its culturally specific symbolism as an example of representational space. Perceived space, or spatial practice, is described as the association between a subject‟s daily routine and daily reality. This is where subjects work out their spatial practices in everyday situations in relation to conceived and lived space. Lefebvre contends that together this triad forms a framework within which subjects experience space as a cohesive system; however, he asserts that it is never coherent. The concept of the three moments allows for an understanding of space that is at once social, historical, and political. Razack takes up Lefebvre‟s work in the introduction to her anthology Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. Razack includes Lefebvre‟s theory in her efforts to describe the way in which “space” becomes “place.” She explains that a historical-materialist approach to naturalized space can demonstrate that what is seemingly neutral has been produced by very particular historical legacies. Such an approach can highlight how those same historical legacies have contemporary ramifications. Within this analytic framework it may be possible to understand how abstract “space” can come to be understood as a very particular “place.” As discussed in 71 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Chapter One, these places are sometimes kept intact by laws that regulate subjects‟ bodies and mobility. In Canada, legal and spatial practices work in tandem to sustain unequal social relations established through colonialism. Moreover, Razack emphasizes Lefebvre‟s point that subjects also come to “know themselves” within such conceptions of space - as bodies that can or cannot transverse certain borders, subjects who belong or do not belong to a particular community (“When” 5-6). The space of the theatrical performance cannot be disconnected from the social relations that have produced, and continue to produce, it. The production of the performance ranging from the interior design of the performance space to its geographical positioning in (or outside of) the city culminates in shaping audiences‟ experience of the show (Carlson 1989; Knowles 2004). Ultimately, the production of space at the 4th Line cultivates a national settler community by linking spatial signs and signifiers of the farm to what is considered quintessential to a national identity. As Althusser‟s work demonstrates, subjects are ideologically coerced (or “hailed”) into taking up the nationalist rhetoric. Yet, as discussed in Chapter Two, producing the national community simultaneously works to produce the “non-national” community. While the nationalist ideology of the 4th Line invites subjects to align with its production of space, it also invites subjects to differentiate between who belongs to the assumed community and who does not. In this ideologically produced place subjects can experience the land as being free from capitalist-colonial influences and are themselves largely disconnected from its contemporary legacies. In doing so, the production of space reproduces the social relations of a national identity which continues to naturalize a settler identity as “Canadian.” By combining Lefebvre‟s conceptual tools with 72 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Althusser‟s notion of Ideological State Apparatuses, I demonstrate how the representations of the natural landscape at the 4th Line promote the ideology of the state in normalizing colonial-capitalist relations between settlers and the land. Analysis of the historical influences that have shaped the space of the rural theatre and its surroundings may offer insight into the ways in which legacies of colonialism continue to play out at the Winslow Family Farm. The Farm The farm was settled in 1850 by Winslow‟s great, great grandfather George Winslow (Winslow and McLachlan). The company actively highlights the prominent role of the family farm and its historical value. However, the historical framing of the farm maintains a naturalized conception of settlerhood as it normalizes the space and its genealogical connection to capitalism and legacies of colonialism. I argue that the farm is established as a historically unique yet benign site which provides empty physical, historical, and cultural space from which to re-enact naturalized national narratives. These moments of historicization continue to offer an understanding of the various cultural, social, and political legacies that influence the contemporary existence of the Winslow Family Farm as natural and normal. The farm is framed by the company by references to the “old” farm or the “family” farm and even the “Winslow” farm. These adjectives shape the reading of the farm through its association to genealogical inheritance lines and as having a historical presence in that particular place. Secondly, the farm is framed by the company more directly through its association to Founder and Artistic Director Robert Winslow. In the inside cover of all of the 4th Line plays published by Ordinary Press, including Doctor 73 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Barnardo’s Children, there is a brief write-up titled “About the 4th Line Theatre”: Douglas The company was formed in 1992 on the farm of founding artistic director Robert Winslow near Millbrook Ontario [sic]. Robert is the fifth generation on the property, originally settled in the 1850s by his great great grandfather, George Winslow, a native of Fermanagh County, Ireland. Since the theatre‟s founding, 15 original plays based on regional history and culture have been developed by the company and presented in various locations on the farm, including barnyard, fields, woods and clearings. 4th Line‟s mandate is to “preserve and promote our Canadian cultural heritage through the development and presentation of regionally based, environmentally staged historical dramas.” Robert still lives on the farm with his wife Janette. (Winslow and McLachlan) This brief history of the theatre is rich with spatial references and, I would argue, claims to the farm and the land it sits on. In this write-up, the company relays the recent history of the land as being owned by the Winslows since the 1850s. Here the history of the ownership of the land is established for the reader. The assertion of this history, carefully and meticulously traced through five generations and accorded to an “original” settler who himself is given a tangible history (his original county, not to mention his first name), establishes a well documented history of the land and the farm that is constructed as uncontestable. Histories of how George Winslow came to own the land and who had owned the land prior to 1850 are absent. Significantly, settlement strategies that sanctioned the violent expulsion of Indigenous communities through colonial law are present in the 4th Line‟s rendition of the farm‟s history. However, settlement is naturalized in this representation and dislocated from its history of violence. Moreover, 74 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas the legacies of these practices, namely settlers‟ normalized entitlement to the land through a colonial-capitalist private property ownership model, are subsumed in a discourse of naturalization. The story of George Winslow‟s farm creates a history that naturalizes the role of colonial-capitalist relations to the land in contemporary southern Ontario. In such an environment stories about settlers‟ legitimate entitlements to farms and the casual enjoyment of natural landscapes can be created and proliferated without interrogation. I wish to consider the ways in which the notions of property that are espoused in the discourse of the 4th Line are influenced by colonialism, capitalism, and considerations of gender, sexuality, race, and class. I purport that an understanding of these subjectivities‟ relationships to property and inheritance in Canada requires an historical investigation into the origins of the capitalist private property system as it was installed in Canada through British legal imperialism. According to British legal and historical scholars, the origins of modern conceptions of private property in states that practice common law 23 extends from the decline of feudalism in Britain (Bryan 2000; Delano-Smith and Kain 1999). This shift in British structures of governance included the transition from “commonly-held” tracts of land that were owned and overseen by the Crown to the creation of individual plots of land now owned by British subjects. The advent of a private property ownership model greatly altered the social and economic dynamics of land organization and modes of governance 23 A definition of “Common Law” is given by Blomley in Law, Space and the Geographies of Power: “The „common law system‟ of England, Canada, and the United States, as defined by the Oxford Companion to Law (1980), is distinguished by its historical basis in the customary law of England, unified by royal justices from the twelfth century onward. Legislation, although increasingly important, is generally seen as something of an interloper. Importance is placed on judicial opinions, which are regarded as binding or persuasive on later courts. Academic lawyers are granted a lesser function than under civil law. Procedure is accusatorial as opposed to inquisitorial, with extensive use of the jury” (Blomley, Law 69). 75 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas in Britain at the time. Scholars such as Nicholas Blomley and Peter Fitzpatrick point to the ways in which the reorganization of land also had symbolic and material ramifications (Fitzpatrick 1999; Blomley 1994): As the legal definition of real property became increasingly defined, so the spaces of possession were mapped with increased exactitude. Increasingly, property was no longer a relation between superiors and mesne lords, but a thing, to be rationally measured, commodified, and possessed, both legally and conceptually. (Blomley, Law 97) In addition to a simple transfer of power and ownership, the institution of private property also introduced the commercialization of agricultural property by individual land owners and modes of individualized taxation based on land, also commonly known as property tax. In their introduction to Of Property and Propriety, Himani Bannerji, Shahrzad Mojab, and Judy Whitehead claim that these concomitant elements of the shift to a private ownership model were key in instituting a capitalist social and economic system: “In regions where laws of contract, property, and commercialization existed, [commodity relations] were utilized by the colonial administration to construct a ruling apparatus which included both agrarian-feudal and capitalist forms of legal and moral regulation” (Bannerji, Whitehead, and Mohab 19). The historical tenets of private property and its links to capitalist modes of social and economic restructuring urge a consideration of the Winslow Family Farm‟s historical links to the foundations of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. The development of private property especially in the Canadian context cannot be separated from its links to colonialism and the intentional settlement strategies employed 76 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas by Britain. The process of surveying and organizing land into townships and counties served the desires of the Empire as it installed a mode of governance that mirrored that of Britain‟s and legally enshrined loyalty to the Crown. According to the first Land Registry Act passed in 1795, upon the completion of surveys land owners accorded with property were required to register their land title (Thomson 223). The acts of surveying property, drawing lines, and building fences were taken as a given by English colonists. The directive from the motherland was that the land of Canada should be arranged in a way that most resembled that of Britain. Therefore, “culturally accepted practices, such as house building and agricultural „improvement‟ and the building of fences,” not to mention according individual rights and family names to plots of portioned land, were instilled as the founding principles of Canadian law and governance (Blomley, Law 9). Furthermore, these rights of individual property owners were influenced by legal frameworks that were gendered, sexualized, racialized, and classed (Bannerji, Whitehead, and Mohab 19). For example, until the Married Women‟s Property Act of 1882 was passed, married women could not own “real” property because they were legally consolidated under their husbands. Under the patriarchal and heteronormative doctrine of coverture, any personal property that they had previously owned also became the property of their husbands (Davies 54). Public rights and responsibilities were also interconnected with property ownership. The British Great Reform Act of 1832 gave the vote to Protestant adult males who owned 10 pounds of property or more (Davies 55). Legal entitlements have of course been extended to some others over time; however, it is only because the laws have changed that these rights are now attainable. Subjects who can currently access rights to 77 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures property may only do so as a result of changes to the law. Douglas Moreover, laws have historically regulated all subjects‟ access to capital and therefore effect their contemporary existence. For example, until 1985 federal law stipulated that any Indigenous woman who married a non-Indigenous man lost her native title which included her legal right to property and inheritance of her family‟s assets (Stasiulis and Jhappan 124; also see my discussion on “Settling Differences” on pages 14-19). In this case, the law has had direct effects on the lives and material existences of Indigenous women. In juxtaposition, subjects who were initially conferred with inalienable rights to property through the British politico-juridical framework have had fewer institutional barriers to accruing and maintaining capital. Therefore, all subjects - propertied and otherwise - are still deeply connected to the legal framework of the nation that was established through British legal imperialism. Thus, historical foundations of property and its weight with regards to public status are far from benign or natural. In fact, these historical legacies have been passed down through processes of law so as to effect subjects‟ contemporary relationships to the land. Though rendered invisible, legacies of capitalism, colonialism, and propertied existences have been inherited much as the Winslow family farm was literally inherited. Given the historical underpinnings of the development of private property, the “Winslow Farm” cannot be considered to be a neutral interlocutor of universally celebrated “Canadian” stories. Within this historical framing of the Winslow Farm, a private property ownership model is posited as the natural relationship to the land and settlers are established as the legitimate owners. This rendering of the space perpetuates hierarchies that are at once 78 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas racialized, gendered, classed, and sexualized and sustains the spatial and legal practices that constitute the foundations of a settler society. To elaborate further, I invoke Lefebvre‟s triad to draw out the ways in which space at the 4th Line is organized to maintain the social relations of production within a settler society. Selling the Farm: Representational Space The representational space of the theatre is established through depictions of the farm and contiguous rural landscape that are found in the company‟s promotional materials and media coverage. These images stand as signifiers of the space and produce the farm as “natural” and “idyllic.” The company relies heavily on outdoor staging in its promotional materials and is celebrated in local media for its commitment in doing so. In the company‟s Mandate and Artistic Vision there is explicit reference to maintaining an “environmental theatre aesthetic” in the work and also to making an effort to “preserve and promote our Canadian cultural heritage through the development and presentation of regionally based, environmentally staged, historical dramas” (4th Line Theatre Website). To this end, the company is committed to performing its shows outdoors and making use of the natural surroundings. The shows begin early in the evening – usually around 6:00pm - to accommodate for natural lighting from the sun and are always cancelled in the event of rain (4th Line Theatre Ticket Jacket; Farrington 38). The following text is broadly displayed on the company‟s homepage: “Bringing history to life on the outdoor stages of the Winslow Farm” (4th Line Theatre Website, emphasis mine). Underneath the heading is a large image taken from the company‟s production of Fair Play (1999). The image is a line of young girls, walking through a green field, carrying various coloured flags whipping wildly in the wind, all of which are caught here in a frozen moment. 79 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Figure 3.1 Outdoor Theatre From a performance of Fair Play (1999). Photo by and used with kind permission of Wayne Eardley. Source: 4th Line Theatre Website. Although the location is not the “stage,” there is still a scene being set through these promotional materials. The narratives construct a site that is rural and pastoral, an inviting rustic getaway from the urban centre for some, or the familiar surroundings of the “great outdoors” for others. From the emphasis on “natural” lighting to the company‟s tag line broadcast in large upper case font on the permanent banner on every page of the website, “OUTDOOR THEATRE – EPIC IN NATURE!,” there is an assertion that the rural setting of the 4th Line is “natural” (4th Line Theatre Website). Figure 3.2 Epic in Nature! Promotional Website Banner. Source: 4th Line Theatre Website. 80 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas In the promotion of their “environmental aesthetic” the company semantically equates “the Winslow Farm” with such natural environmental elements as the sun and the surrounding meadows: Attending a production at 4th Line Theatre is an extraordinary experience. We stage our plays outdoors; the barns of the old Winslow Farm our backdrop, the setting summer sun our stage light, and the surrounding meadows our expanse of theatre. Located just outside of the small Ontario town of Millbrook -- the setting alone is more than worth the price of admission (4th Line Theatre Website, emphasis mine). As the company paints the pastoral scene found at the 4th Line, the “barns of the old Winslow Farm” are inserted as a primary element of the composition. Alongside sunsets and meadows, the Winslow Family Farm is a part of the naturalized landscape that constitutes the “experience” of the theatre. Furthermore, there are explicit references made to the Winslow Farm as a “backdrop” or an “outdoor stage” throughout printed promotional materials, on the company‟s website, and in the Artistic Director‟s message (4th Line Theatre Website; 4th Line Theatre 2006 Season Program 3). The space of the farm is constructed to be a stage for the actual production through assertions such as: “Bringing History to Life on the Outdoor Stages of The Winslow Farm” (4th Line Theatre Website), “the barns of the old Winslow Farm our backdrop” (4th Line Theatre Website; 2006/07 Membership Campaign Pamphlet), and through an invitation to “relax and enjoy the sights and sounds of the country at the Winslow Farm where the works of talented playwrights and our 81 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas tradition of portraying local history come alive on our outdoor stages” (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 3). The farm is presented as an empty space, free of cultural influence and disconnected from the stories that are mounted on it. However, as has been established, the space of the theatre is far from natural; it is produced through capitalist-colonial legacies of the nation-state. As the company reveres the farm as natural it normalizes practices of settlerhood that work in tandem with the ideology of the settler state. Furthermore, the celebration of the land‟s “natural beauty” affirms that the capitalist-colonial relationship to the land is not only normal but also connected to a larger cultural discourse of what is honoured and admired. This discourse is also taken up in media coverage of the company. Figure 3.3 Selling the Farm The back of the 2006/07 Membership Campaign Pamphlet. A look at the advertised setting of the theatre. From a performance of The Art of Silent Killing (2006). Taken by and used with kind permission of Janette Winslow. Source: 4th Line Theatre 2006/2007 Pamphlet. Membership Campaign 82 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Beyond internally produced promotional materials, print news coverage in the towns of Oshawa, Lindsay, and Northumberland County, as well as national coverage in The Globe and Mail, also frame the space of the farm as a benign interlocutor of the performances. Most commonly, audiences are invited to sit back and watch the stories “unfold” with the farm as a mere backdrop (Beneteau, “Dramatic Camp X”; Beneteau, “Canadian Stories”). In other cases the stories are framed as coming to life on the stages of the farm (“Record-breaking”) and as being mounted in an idyllic farm setting (AlSolayle). Significantly, the stories do not entirely erase histories of colonialism; instead theatre reviews and articles about the company naturalize settlers‟ entitlement to the land even as they include histories of settlement at the Winslow Farm. Literally “setting the stage” in The Northumberland News, Jeanne Beneteau writes: Now celebrating its 15th season, the 4th Line Theatre Company presents Canadian plays written by and about Canadians on an outdoor stage made up of an array of century old barns and the countryside of Millbrook‟s Winslow Farm...4th Line has...brought the stories to life in the backdrop of the rolling hills, ponds and meadows. (“Canadian stories”) The Cobourg Daily Star reports that the “4th Line Theatre has built a considerable reputation on delivering compelling drama, based on true Canadian experience, in the open-air setting of the century farm belonging to Robert Winslow, artistic director of 4th Line” (Argyris). Suzanne Atkinson covered the story in Out Here where she also 83 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas inscribes the genealogical historicization of the farm in the title of her article, “4th Line‟s Amazing Run: With open air settings all over Robert Winslow‟s 100-acre farm, the theatre has presented 16 original scripts derived from local history.” She goes on to say: But the creator of the 4th Line Theatre doesn‟t till the clay loam on 100 acres south of Millbrook settled by his great, great grand father [sic] in 1850. Instead, he farms the fertile history of this fragile rural community which is teased by the empty glitter of urban bleed. (2) Here Atkinson poetically weaves a rural, settler connection between the space of the farm and the stories that are told there. The Globe and Mail sends the message nationally that the company presents “neglected chapters of local Canadian history in an idyllic outdoor farm setting” (Al-Solayle, emphasis mine). This media coverage takes up and reproduces a narrative that stems from the framing that has already been produced by the theatre company. The media coverage relocates the narratives of the theatre company by extending them from the setting of the farm to other sites. The proliferation of this discourse in various media outlets demonstrates that the naturalization of the land in its use and ownership by settlers does not begin at the 4th Line. It is a discourse that stems from state-endorsed ideology that itself is rooted in the very foundations of the settler state. The depictions of space in the 4th Line promotional material as well as in associated media coverage serve as an example of Lefebvre‟s concept of lived or representations of space. The various images of the rural setting constitute one of the moments of Lefebvre‟s triad in the production of social space as these images overlay the space of the farm with symbolic meaning. The second aspect of Lefebvre‟s triad is representations of space, where the scientific or authorized ways of conceiving space 84 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures shape and are shaped by subjects‟ interactions. Drawing Lines: Representations of Space Douglas The conceived space or representations of space at the 4th Line take the form of directional maps that are given to audience members on the back of tickets and posted on the website (4th Line Theatre Ticket Jacket; 4th Line Theatre Website; see Figure 3.4). These maps mark the place of the farm in relation to the network of roads and the nearby village which have Figure 3.4 Drawing Lines Directional Map. Source: The 4th Line Theatre Website and Ticket Jacket. historically been established by planners and developers as conceptualized understandings of Millbrook and the surrounding environment. The map functions as a normalized way of understanding how to arrive at the theatre, thereby allowing visitors to navigate their way efficiently through the space. Created by those whom Lefebvre refers to as “technocrats,” these maps are connected to institutionalized practices of spatial planning in Canada which have their roots in British imperialism. As was briefly discussed in Chapter One, the very name of the theatre company conjures up legacies of 85 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas colonial cartography through its direct association to a place defined through processes of land allotment, mapping, and surveying. Indeed, the “4th Line” literally refers to the fourth concession line of a township. Concessions were mapped and plotted by British surveyors by decree from King George VIII in the name of the Royal Instructions of 1763 (Thomson 220). Donald W. Thomson explains that the initial pattern of survey in what is now Ontario came to be known as the singlefront system and was in vogue from 1783 to 1818. A single-front township was one, as we have seen, in which it was customary to survey the township boundaries and the fronts of concessions and to establish lot corners on such front lines. (221) British military officers were charged with the duty of surveying what was then Upper Canada. Each lot was given a specific area size which was decided upon by the surveyors. The following correspondence between Peter Frederick Haldimand and John Collins dated 11 September 1783 explains further: The method of laying out townships of six miles square I consider as the best to be followed, as the people to be settled there are most used to it, and will best answer the proportion of lands I propose to grant to each family, viz: 120 acres, of which six are to be in front, which will make 19 chains in front and 63 chains 25 links in depth, so that every township will have 25 lots in front and 4 chains 75 links will remain for roads, with 7 concessions in depth. Fifty-eight links will remain for a road, by which distribution each township will contain 175 lots of 120 acres. (qtd. in Thomson 221) Previously held “common” land was transformed into many small plots, to be accorded to 86 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas new settlers in Upper Canada. This plotting system is illustrated below in Figure 3.5 which shows a map of single-front township lots in the Millbrook area from 1861 bearing the family owners‟ names and lot numbers (see Figure 3.5). I do not mean to suggest that prior to formal surveying there had been no cartographic exploration, or that the land was free of legal frameworks. To presume such falsities would be to actively erase the presence of various Indigenous communities who had mapped (albeit using different signs and symbols) and would continue to map out the land for their own purposes. Moreover, such an assumption would obscure the colonial cartographic frameworks imposed by earlier imperial expeditions. I refer here to the already existing national boundaries distinguishing between the territories of Upper and Lower Canada. Figure 3.5 Tremaine’s 1861 map of Cavan Township. Source: Millbrook and Cavan Historical Society Fonds: Trent University Archives, 1861. Rather, my intention is to explore the very specific invocation of the township and county land survey system that divided up large tracts of common land into small, privately owned lots. 87 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas This colonially-imposed system of single-front township land organization has had various effects. According to Thomson in his commissioned account of the history of surveying in Canada, the establishment of counties and townships in Upper Canada served three ends: to “promote loyalty to the crown, to establish the framework of a n effective democracy, British style, and to provide a basis for representation in the House of Assembly” (Thomson 234). Undeniably, this cartographic configuration established direct links between the land in Canada and the laws and governing relations of the Empire. It exacted a spatial reordering to facilitate the establishment of a system of government that would mirror one which was already established in Britain. Indeed, surveyors self-imposed a politico-juridical “legibility” of the space for subjects in the colony by asserting spatial boundaries on the geo-political terrain. Therefore, the vast expanse of unsurveyed land was made “visible” through its transformation into quantifiable hectares. Individual subjects of the crown were then rendered visible through their association to a colonial official who had been charged with representing a particular county or township. Through this system of governance, individuals could then approach their representative to have their claims taken up in the House of Assembly. Thus, the earliest form of formal democracy in southern Ontario was installed through the survey work of British colonists. In addition, the imposed system of land organization also served to regulate individuals‟ relations with the state. In creating a private property ownership model in Canada, the Empire simultaneously created a reflexive relationship between colony and metropole whereby colonial subjects were prescribed a model of governance through their association to the land. The rules of the imperial order codified a set of acceptable and thereby normalized interactions between subjects and the state in 88 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas order to mirror Britain‟s democratic structure. In her essay that appears in Nationalism, Racism and the Rule of Law, Eve Darian-Smith writes that law and legality are intimately connected to the ways discreet geographical settings structure social and political power relations and also influence people‟s ideas about, and ultimately access to, legal arenas. At the same time, places should be recognized and understood as embodying certain global dimensions that impinge upon and shape local contexts. (38) The name “4th Line” stands as a reference to a colonially-imposed system of land organization and is historically connected to legacies of colonialism under the British Empire. Viewed in the context of Lefebvre‟s analysis, the historical work of surveyors represents a prime example of conceived space. As the land has been shaped by historical forces of colonialism, so too have subjects shaped the land by endorsing modes of governance which are inherently connected to it. The representations of space created through surveying and mapping, which have in turn shaped the practices of democracy and land organization, form one moment of the triad which works to reproduce the social relations of a settler state. Finally, the experience of the space for the audience members (Lefebvre‟s spatial practices or perceived space) melds the two moments of Lived and Conceived Space together. Thereby the three conceptions of space work together to constitute a framework within which subjects move in a coherent way and “without confusion.” Lefebvre‟s triad functions as a model that demonstrates how the historical underpinnings of space are rendered invisible and subjects‟ experience of space can then be normalized. Within this framework, the 4th Line Theatre Company normalizes a settler identity through the 89 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures naturalized space of the Winslow Farm (see Figure 3.6). Douglas Figure 3.6 Lefebvre‟s Triad A rendering of Lefebvre‟s triad aligned with spatial practices at the 4th Line Theatre. Inspired by Eugene McCann‟s article “Race, Protest and Public Space: Contextualizing Lefebvre in the US City” (McCann 178). Photograph of audience seating permission of the 4th Line Theatre taken by and used with kind Production Company. Lived/Representational Space Membership Campaign Flyer Photo Conceived/Representations of Space – Area Map Perceived/Spatial Practices – Audience Seating However, the spatial and legal practices identified at the 4th Line are not isolated to the space of the Winslow Family Farm. With this view I turn to larger questions of space to consider how the normalization of the space at the 4th Line serves as a microcosm of a larger framework of settlerhood that extends beyond the space of the theatre company. Property as Performance 90 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas As was discussed in Chapter One, Battiste as well as Stasiulis and Jhappan contend that Canada is a settler state. Using their work I traced the state-led practices of creating and maintaining a settler state through the invocation of laws that at once created and enshrined settlers‟ entitlement to the land in the politico-juridical foundations of the nation-state. Here I am investigating the practice of overlaying those legal strategies with a discourse of naturalization. The settler ideology of Canada ensures that national subjects encounter the naturalization of colonialism and its resulting economic, political, and social hierarchies in both national and local identity-making sites. Indeed, the constant maintenance of these hierarchies as well as their naturalization maintain the very existence of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Questioning settlers‟ natural entitlement to the land in Canada means questioning the very foundations of the country – not only the shape and place of its geographic borders, but also its history and its future. Indeed, property constitutes one of the most salient factors in settlers‟ continued power in maintaining capitalist-colonial relations in Canada. Both Carol Rose and Nicholas Blomley have referred to property ownership as a kind of performance. Rose specifically refers to possession as a form of speech-making whereby the property holder is required to continue speaking so as not to lose their title (Rose 14). Blomley refers to property ownership as a “continued doing” or an “enactment” that is necessary in order to uphold a particular representation of property that of the private ownership model and its associated institutions (Blomley, Unsettling 22-23). For settlers, claims to the land must be made over and over again and in different ways in order to maintain their legitimacy as rightful owners. Because the status of the settler and their association to the land is entirely constructed and maintained by 91 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas institutions that serve the capitalist-colonial nation-state (such as law), it is easily exposed as a tenuous entitlement to ownership (though applied and maintained through aggressive and coercive state-endorsed force). Indeed, one can employ one‟s imaginative capacity to consider that territories are established through processes of human interactions – whether they be mutually agreed upon negotiations or violent encounters – and not the natural or organic materialization of fixed, boundaried property. To assert such a claim in a settler state however, would be tantamount to heresy as it would call into question the very legitimacy of the state. In order to maintain the facade of settlers as “natural” and “entitled” land owners, claims must be asserted at every turn and the capitalist-colonial institutions which enshrine and protect settlers‟ ownership of the land must be constructed as neutral bodies that objectively extend the legal title to the rightful owners. It may be helpful to think of this as what I am terming “compulsory settlerhood.” 24 I invoke the concept of compulsory settlerhood to explicitly articulate that settler ideology in Canada operates as a system whereby white European settlers as members of permanent, colonial settlement strategies are discursively established as “natural” Canadians. Compulsory settlerhood describes the operations that normalize colonialcapitalist relations both through state institutions and their apparatuses, such as property ownership and also in sites where settlers assert – and indeed, have to assert - ownership to the nation in more casual and everyday ways. One example of an operation of compulsory settlerhood is the practice of making informal land claims in the form of monuments and plaques. These sites of memorialization serve to naturalize legacies of 24 The term “Compulsory Heterosexuality” first appeared in Adrienne Rich‟s essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Rich‟s original theory posited some essentializing notions about women and womanhood; however, her original observation about the presumed and ever-present “naturalness” of heterosexuality as it is both institutionalized and practiced in the everyday is helpful to illustrate my point. 92 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas settlerhood through the “everyday” space of the nation-state. It is compulsory in the sense that the capitalist-colonial nation-state is built on fundamental assumptions of settler entitlement to the land. Indeed, the continued existence of the state in its current form is dependent on the maintenance of a capitalist-colonial social, political, and economic structure. To abandon the project of settlerhood and renounce entitlement to the land is almost unthinkable for individuals and certainly for the nation, as it would require a concession of the nation itself and its boundaries as they currently stand. Therefore, the imperative project of normalizing settlerhood must operate in multiple sites and all the time in order to sustain the ideological conception of settlers‟ natural belonging. Furthermore, settlerhood is compulsory for all subjects, including Indigenous communities and individuals, as they must abide by the rituals set out by the settler state. Participating in practices which legitimize the settler state such as Canada Day parades and entering into formal negotiations with the federal government over land claims do not disrupt the nation-state‟s capitalist-colonial agenda. However, individuals and communities who challenge or confront settler practices are privy to the fine line between the ideological and repressive arm of the state. Althusser made the important point that state apparatuses work primarily as either Ideological or Repressive but that neither was entirely separate from the other. Organized reclamations of Indigenous land are affronts to the foundations of the politico-juridical framework of the nation and so they are dealt with by the authoritative regulation of the state. 25 25 Specific cases of organized Indigenous land reclamations that have been dealt with through the arm of the Repressive State Apparatus include the armed confrontation between the state and Mohawk protestors at Oka, QC in 1990 (Ciaccia), the police raid of the Indigenous protest at Ipperwash Provincial Park which lead to the shooting death of Dudley George by the gun of an OPP officer in 1995 (Edwards), the ongoing policing of the protest at Six Nations/Caledonia since 2007 (Brean), as well as the arrest and charging of Paula Sherman and Bob Lovelace over their participation in the blockade at Ardoch First Nation/Sharbot Lake in 2008 (“Courts Used”). 93 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas The following three examples of compulsory settlerhood practices employ narratives of settlerhood that travel from the site of the 4th Line to other sites in and around the Peterborough area. These three cases of cultural markings are connected to the 4th Line and were publicized by local media during the 2006 season. The public memorials function to simultaneously disperse and localize narratives of settlerhood thereby normalizing the history and culture of settlers. These examples serve as three instances from a vast array of other practices of compulsory settlerhood that serve the maintenance of a settler society. The first case is a small photo exhibit showcasing pictures from the 4th Line‟s performance of Doctor Barnardo’s Children that was on display at an independent coffee shop in Peterborough. On 14 July 2006, The Northumberland News reported that “a photo exhibit from the theatre‟s 2005 „Doctor Barnardo’s Children‟ production, courtesy of Millbrook photographer, Marlon Hazelwood, is also on display until the end of the month at Stickling‟s Bakery and Bistro, 191 Charlotte St. in Peterborough” (Beneteau). This photo exhibit recreated images from the company‟s production in a new location removed from the rural landscape of the Winslow Farm. The photo documentation serves as a sort of testimonial, not only to the 4th Line and its production, but also to the history that it presents in its performance. I claim that this testimonial also serves to legitimate the cultural inheritance and celebration of these stories amongst the wider community. Moreover, ideology of the settler state asserts that the landscape of the colonial nationstate is naturally entitled to settlers. This photo exhibit is a testimonial to settler ideology, emerging seemingly naturally out of the land, much like Winslow‟s specialty crop. 94 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Figure 3.7 Barnardo Photo Exhibit as Representational Space. Taken from The Peterborough Examiner documenting the exhibit. Photo by Clifford Skarstedt. Source: “Barnardo Play Art.” The Peterborough Examiner 12 July 2006. In a second example, the theatre company makes several references to a plaque that was erected by the Hazelbrae Home to commemorate the death of thirteen Barnardo children more than one hundred years earlier. The company writes in their 2006 Summer Season Program that “the [Hazelbrae] group raised the funds to place a heritage marker on the site where the Hazelbrae Home was located and created a monument in Little Lake Cemetery in memory of 13 children who passed away while at the home” (7). The plaque, appropriately referred to as a “heritage marker,” serves as the materialization of a forgotten history. The story of the Hazelbrae Home is memorialized in the form of a landmark where it is reinscribed into a space in downtown Peterborough. Memorializing these events in this way serves as a tool for collective remembrance. However, there are ways in which these cultural practices also serve to spatially and geographically inscribe 95 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas settlers‟ historical narratives and historical claims through the landscape of the settler society. Though more subtle than a national flag, these monuments work in similar ways to declare or attest to the ownership of space. Figure 3.8 Hazelbrae Heritage Marker Images of Hazelbrae Heritage Marker located at 751 George Street in Peterborough, Ontario. Source: Personal photograph by author. 15 July 2008. . The third example is a project initiated by the municipality of Peterborough titled The Pathway of Fame to honour local citizens‟ contributions to the surrounding community. The project was initiated as a millennium project and seeks to induct new citizens each year. Categories for nomination include: visual arts, literature, journalism, drama, community betterment, Good Samaritan, and musical entertainment (Peat A3). The pathway follows the Otonabee River, a major waterway running through downtown Peterborough. In an interview in July 2006, inductee Munroe Scott claimed that “„this kind of tribute is important, because cities should know and recognize their contributors‟” 96 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas (Peat A3). The Pathway of Fame is linked to the theatre company because in 2006 Robert Winslow was nominated and subsequently honoured in the “Dramatic” category. The founder and guiding spirit behind 4th Line Theatre, he [Winslow] created a unique theatrical experience that has added an enthusiastic dimension to the tourism life of the Kawarthas. As writer and director, he has brought to life many aspects of local history through 4th Line‟s compelling and entertaining productions. (“Pathway” C3) Figure 3.9 Peterborough‟s Pathway of Fame Images of Peterborough‟s Pathway of Fame located at Del Crary Park in downtown Peterborough. Source: Personal photographs by author. 15 July 2008. In an anthology titled Feminist Perspectives on Land Law, Penny English writes on the significance of national monuments and questions their function in recreating particular notions of history. In addition to considering trends of representation in practices of physical memorialization (and how they may be affected by questions of gender, culture, and religion), English considers the very format of the monument. Drawing on the work of Doreen Massey, English claims that “in identifying individual places for protection, it 97 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas attempts to fix their meaning, to create „a view of place as bounded....a site of authenticity, as singular, fixed and unproblematic in identity.‟ It takes them out of both place and time and fossilizes the past by its emphasis on the monumental” (English 53, quoting Massey 4-5). The three cases explored above, as well as the very construction of private property plots arranged in a larger township system, all serve as examples of memorialized space. The symbolic and material value of these spaces to the settler state ensure that they are – however causally - designated for protection. These instances of geographically inscribed cultural markings and monuments function as symbolic “claims” to the land. They are illustrations of Lefebvre‟s representational spaces in that they are overlain with cultural symbolic meaning and reproduce the social relations of a settler society. The space of the nation-state as ideologically conceived space (representations of space based on colonial cartographic practices and private property ownership models) constitutes the second moment of Lefebvre‟s triad. What is at work here is the continued normalization of a settler identity and specifically, a settler‟s natural entitlement to the land and its historical narratives. The very presence of the cultural marker and its role in the performance of ownership (the “speech” or the “enactment”) sustains the construction of settlers‟ natural entitlement. I return to considerations of how speech-making constitutes ownership in my analysis of the script The Art of Silent Killing in Chapter Five. The benefit of considering land ownership as what Blomley and Rose refer to as a sustained “performance” is that it allows the opportunity to contemplate the ways in which settlerhood is simultaneously hegemonic and incoherent. Rather than asserting that settlerhood is completely inescapable, reading it as a “performance” forces an 98 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas examination of the ways in which it is always being constructed. Inherent in the claim of settlers‟ natural ownership of the land is the production of something else: the possibility that settlers are not the natural owners of the land. In settlers‟ panicked requirement to assert their “natural” ownership, their claim (to being natural owners) is exposed as “unnatural,” or a construction. Settlers‟ need to constantly declare their right to the land through heritage markers that attest to white settlers‟ history (this is the speech-making), demonstrates the extent to which they must sustain the performance of their “natural” entitlement. The acts of inscribing claims to the land then reveal other possibilities: considerations of other owners, of no owners, of the incoherence of settlers‟ ownership. Using the concept of compulsory settlerhood provides an opportunity to consider slippages in the ideology of settlerhood and allows for readings of resistance to the practices of capitalist-colonial ideology. As in the case of Lefebvre‟s triad of social space, settlerhood works as a cohesive framework but is never fundamentally coherent. Conclusion This chapter takes up the 4th Line‟s discursive construction of the land and the positioning of their place on the land as natural. This construction naturalizes historical and contemporary practices of settlerhood by normalizing the private property ownership model and patrilineal inheritance lines. A historical revisiting of the work of British surveyors in the eighteenth century points to the ways in which the land upon which the theatre currently sits is directly linked to forms of legal imperialism imposed through strategies of colonialism. Upon a closer investigation a legal genealogy revealed that notions of entitlement to land are not only connected to settlerhood, but also to a particular settler identity that is gendered, racialized, sexualized, and classed. To this end, 99 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas I have also pointed to the ways in which the institution of law is implicated in carrying out the agenda of a capitalist-colonial nation-state. The installation of this colonial legal framework served to naturalize settlers as legitimate national subjects through the legal foundations of the nation-state. Lefebvre‟s theory on how the social production of space reproduces social relations demonstrates how those historical entitlements continue to shape subjects‟ relationships to the state. Indeed, settlers‟ relationship between land ownership and parliamentary democracy in Canada (as discussed on pages 85-87) stands as a particularly poignant example of how space directly affects subjects‟ access to the rights and privileges of being a Canadian national subject. In this chapter I also drew out a theory of compulsory settlerhood to elaborate on how the naturalization of practices of settler identity at the 4th Line are part of larger stateendorsed ideology in which settlers constitute the “normal” national identity. Using three examples of how discourses of settlerhood appeared in “everyday space” in the Peterborough area (in the form of a monument, a plaque, and a photo exhibit), I demonstrated how these public “testimonials” - performances or “sustained speeches” of entitlement to the land in the form of physical memorialization - are key to the project of naturalizing settlers‟ entitlement to the land. However, the practices of settler ideology are not limited to performances of naturalized land ownership. The capitalist-colonial state also requires the performance of national narratives that erase violent histories of colonialism and imperialism and posit settlers as the natural and entitled national community. The next two chapters analyze the scripts mounted for the 2006 season at the 4th Line Theatre and explore how the narratives and themes of the shows constitute practices of settler identity-making. 100 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Chapter Four Scripting the Nation: History and Narration in the 4th Line’s 2006 Season “It‟s history it‟s not just a play.” - character of Rose, from Doctor Barnardo’s Children (qtd. in Bergen “Doctor Barnardo‟s Children”) The 2006 season at the 4th Line Theatre saw the production of two shows: Doctor Barnardo’s Children which ran from July 4th to July 30th and The Art of Silent Killing performed from August 8th until September 3rd. Both shows were written by local playwrights and, in accordance with the 4th Line‟s Mandate, drew on local stories in an effort to preserve and promote Canadian heritage. Each production had twenty-one shows scheduled, all playing from Tuesday to Saturday with Monday nights off and cancellations in the event of inclement weather. Both shows were inspired by true stories and informed by primary research (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program 3). The scripts mounted for the 2006 season serve as two more sites where settler ideology is reproduced at the 4th Line. Described as “quintessentially Canadian,” the scripts reinforce the homogenizing language of the state and naturalize the histories that they present – histories of settlers – as synonymous with what is “Canadian.” The result of this unspoken equivocation or what Ahmed termed a metonymic elision (Ahmed 99; see my use of this quotation on page 40) is the production of a hierarchy of subject positions, allowing some to be a part of the national identity and not others. Although the 101 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas characteristics of a national identity are not explicitly articulated in the scripts, they reveal themselves through the themes, values, and plot development of the performances as the playwrights approach the stories through the perspective of white settler subjects. In Chapters One, Two, and Three I demonstrated how the 4th Line‟s promotional material invoked a universalized national identity and naturalized the space of the theatre company thereby promoting the naturalization of settlerhood and, consequently, serving the agenda of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. In much the same way the scripts themselves also work in the service of the state. Indeed, the stories of settlers are “quintessentially Canadian” in that they are necessary to uphold the foundations and ensure the maintenance of a white settler society. The 4th Line operates as a localized site where the national discourse is reproduced. The historical accounts here, like those that get national play, perpetuate sanitized narratives of Canada that naturalize practices of colonialism and obscure the Canadian state‟s strategic projects of building and managing its populations through immigration controls. Moreover, the histories of Canada and Canadians are asserted to be naturally good and benevolent. Any discrepancies within this construction are established as peculiar cases that diverge from the otherwise unsullied national norms. According to Razack, revisiting national narratives about Canada‟s claim to inherent benevolence is of the utmost importance. She asserts that when a mythology of Canada and Canadians as intrinsically good, moral, and unassuming is perpetuated, it allows national subjects to see themselves as outside of history. Razack claims that an understanding of history that erases one‟s own subject position constructs subjects as individuals who can see themselves as being apart from this history and therefore 102 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas separated from the painful elements of a past constituted by colonialism, racism, and violent imperial strategies: Along with references to our national goodness come attitudes that are bound up with an identity that “imagines itself in a geographically conceived world.” Canadianness as a structure of feeling stands in the way of our pursuit of accountability. It is a way of knowing ourselves that discourages those hard questions about what men from the North are produced historically to feel about...themselves in the world. (Razack, Dark Threats 144) The recirculation of narratives that situate Canada‟s history and Canadians on the moral side of civility entrenches nationalist mythologies that distance subjects from legacies of racism and simultaneously makes intimate the unsullied stories of Canada‟s national origins. Inherited from generation to generation much like bed-time stories, these narratives paint a picture of Canadian civility that is informed by stereotypical notions of Canada as a peace-keeping nation, Canada as a multicultural haven, and Canadians as overly polite and accommodating. Through this narrative, settlers can then reflect on a history of the nation – complete with symbolic origin stories and material resources - as naturally belonging to them (Razack “When”). In my analysis of the scripts from the 2006 season at the 4th Line, I point to the ways in which they bolster mythological themes of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Specifically, the scripts naturalize practices of nation-building as the central storylines of the shows revolve around federal immigration schemes (Doctor Barnardo’s Children) and national security (The Art of Silent Killing). It is my aim to analyze these scripts and the ways in which their themes subtly align 103 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas with discourses that Razack has identified as “standing in the way of...accountability” to settlers‟ roles in historical and contemporary forms of colonialism (Dark Threats 144). The narratives and the values that the scripts espouse cannot be separated from the historical legacies from which they emerge. Here I am not only referring to the particular historical cases that each script focuses on, but also the ongoing effects of colonialism and strategic settlement policies that underwrite both the The Art of Silent Killing and Doctor Barnardo’s Children. Doctor Barnardo‟s Children Doctor Barnardo’s Children, written by Robert Winslow and Ian McLachlan, tells the story of “thousands of impoverished British children [who] were brought to Canada by Thomas Barnardo, a Victorian philanthropist and visionary. This play tells the stories of these children in both the early and late stages of their lives” (Winslow and McLachlan). Doctor Barnardo’s Children frames the story of the Barnardo children as set apart from a strategic emigration and labouring scheme established between Britain and Canada. In this way the story naturalizes the historical processes of settlement strategies in Canada and presents the legacy of Doctor Barnardo and the Barnardo Homes as a series of benevolent actions by one man. Barnardo children‟s roles in developing the colonialcapitalist nation through forced labour on farms, in domestic work, for national railroads, as well as service in the war, are erased. The story avoids representing the very specific practices of population management employed through immigration policies (policies of both the Barnardo Homes and the Canadian government) that discriminated among children according to religion, gender, and ability. The omission of considerations of strategic regulative practices in the history of Doctor Barnardo‟s work allows for the 104 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas continued normalization of the practices of a white settler society. The script separates the story of the Barnardo children from historical processes in which it is enmeshed. The ideology of the nation-state is dependent on naturalizing the historical processes of settlement to maintain its legitimacy and further its capitalist-colonial agenda. Doctor Barnardo’s Children follows the past and present of a character named Walter Murphy, a character based on the life of a survivor of the Barnardo Homes, beginning in England and then later in Canada. The audience meets Walter as a young child, though his adult self is ever-present, phantasmically looking on and reflecting on his childhood years before, during and after the time he spent under the care of Doctor Barnardo. The story unfolds as Walter and his brothers and sisters are begrudgingly given up by their impoverished father to a Home run by the philanthropist Doctor Thomas J. Barnardo. Upon entering the Home the family is immediately split up despite promises made to them by institutional staff that they would be kept together. The children are subjected to intense and repetitive working conditions in the Home and denied access to information about each other and the rest of their family, including the fact that their father has requested their removal from the institution. The Murphy family are written as Catholics and, picking up on historical records that demonstrate Doctor Barnardo‟s Protestant evangelicalism and spite for Roman Catholicism, it is suggested that they may be treated more harshly as a result of their religious beliefs (Winslow and McLachlan 36, 43; Wagner, Barnardo 219). Near the end of the first act, Doctor Barnardo personally approaches Walter and his young friends, Billy, Dasher, and Freddie, to give them jobs as “ambassadors” to Canada (Winslow and McLachlan 42). This is the first point in the performance at which 105 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Barnardo‟s forced emigration scheme is introduced. Although the boys are suspicious of the utopian image of Canada that Barnardo describes to them, they realize they have no choice in the matter. After an adventurous scene wherein Walter infiltrates the girls‟ quarters in disguise to locate his sister and tell her of his departure, Act One ends with the children singing The Mariner’s Hymn aboard a ship bound for Canada. Lily and the rest of Walter‟s family remain in England as the young boys sail away destined to “help build that great land” (Winslow and McLachlan 43). Though never explicitly stated in the play, Doctor Barnardo‟s work fell directly in line with agendas of Britain and their Dominion in Canada. More than simply sending poor British children abroad for better lives in a new land, Barnardo‟s scheme provided the colonies with new settlers who would claim property in the annexed lands and help to instil the values and culture of the homeland. Populating the Poles The story of the Barnardo children fits into a larger scheme of forced child emigration employed by the British Empire. A brief history of child emigration strategies enacted by England reveals that these tactics were not limited to Canada. Beginning in the early seventeenth century, children were exported to British colonies not only to populate the outposts, but also to help relieve London of its over-congestion. Gillian Wagner who researches Barnardo and the history of British child emigration writes that in 1607 five little vessels...left the shores of England carrying emigrants from all over the country to found a colony on the coast of Maine in North America...Eleven years later, in 1618, the City of London agreed to send one hundred unwanted children across the Atlantic to Virginia and thus could effectively be said to have inaugurated the movement to emigrate juveniles overseas, a movement which was 106 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas to last until the Second World War and which would affect the lives of tens of thousands of children. (Wagner, Children 1) In addition to North America, British children were also sent to South Africa and Australia 26 (Wagner, Children 11). It was almost two hundred years later when Barnardo began his work with children on the streets of London. Wagner reports that “of the hundred thousand children who were to cross the Atlantic in the next decades, a third would be sent by the Barnardo organisation...At that time more than a thousand children a year were sent by Barnardo‟s to Canada” (Wagner, Children 104). The framing of Barnardo‟s endeavours as purely philanthropic intervention certainly can be called into question considering the history of child emigration strategies employed by Britain. The placement of children into organized agricultural and domestic programs upon their arrival in Canada also problematizes a reading of Doctor Barnardo‟s work as distinct from the nation-building designs of the state. These practices are examined further in my analysis of Act Two of Doctor Barnardo’s Children. First, however, I trouble the scripted narrative that maintains that Barnardo did not discriminate amongst children he sent to Canada (in the script Walter and all of his friends are sent). In fact, historical records show that indeed there were set policies instituted that would determine which children were fit to be sent abroad and which were not. Barnardo used both a set of Emigration Principles and a document titled “The Canada List” to discriminate among children being sent to the colony. Barnardo‟s “Emigration Principles” were as follows: 26 Barnardo Homes also sent children to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Between 1867 and 1906, 473 children were sent from Britain to Barnardo facilities in these three colonies (Barnardo and Merchant 183). 107 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures EMIGRATION PRINCIPLES I. CANADA Douglas was to be the principal direction of emigration because it was the nearest British colony; the journey was short and inexpensive; the weather was admirable and the demand for settlers was insatiable. II. CHARACTER: Only the “flower of the flock” would be emigrated. They should be honest, industrious and capable; taught to revere the Bible as God‟s word; free from taint. III. PHYSIQUE: Each child was to be thoroughly sound and healthy of body with no predisposition to disease; no disablement in limb and no failure of intellect. IV. ACQUIREMENTS: The Barnardo Child [sic] was to have the rudiments of a plain English education; the boys trained in agricultural or industrial pursuits, the girls in domestic science. V. GUARANTEES: Barnardo promised systematic visitation and regular correspondence with the young emigrant; in case of moral failure the Barnardo child would be returned to England at Barnardo‟s expense. (Corbett 26-28; Barnardo and Merchant 167) As outlined in the five Emigration Principles, there were clear stipulations for children to meet before they would be considered eligible for export. Considerations such as physical fitness, education levels, and religious denomination all affected a child‟s potential qualification. Principle IV clearly outlines that all children must speak basic English and 108 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas also be aptly trained in their appropriate gender-specific roles – boys in agriculture and girls in domestic science. While the Emigration Principles were primarily concerned with procuring children who were generally of good physical health, the “Canada List” focused more specifically on ensuring that exported children were able-bodied. Corbett quotes Louisa, one of the Barnardo Children: “„My sister and I were picked to go to Canada together but they found something wrong with her eye. They wouldn‟t let her come with me. My heart was broken‟” (Corbett 29). Able-bodied children were streamlined for the colony while those who did not meet the requirements were kept in Britain under the care of Doctor Barnardo. Both of these policies suggest that the exportation of Barnardo children was far from a simple matter of unpremeditatedly rounding up and transplanting needy children. Instead, these documents demonstrate that the process was well established and subject to planned policies drawn up by Barnardo and his staff. Much of the philanthropic rhetoric suggests that the main goal of sending children abroad was to ensure lives of success, health, and happiness which would not be available for them in Britain either as a result of poverty or what was perceived to be a dangerous or immoral domestic situation (Barnardo, Something 202-203; Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes May 1910 6, 7; Aug. 1912 5). However, it is crucial to note that many of the children in the homes, as is touched on in the performance, were not without families and were shipped without consent from their parents or guardians. Under the Poor Law Act of 1888, any child put under the care of a home was put under the custody of that institution. In 1890 a new act was passed titled the “Child‟s Custody Act,” also known as “The Barnardo Act,” that gave the homes the legal authority to ship children away without 109 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas parental consent (Corbett 31). This information is particularly interesting in how it relates to strategies of colonialism. The discourse of the Barnardo scheme claimed to find children better homes away from their immoral and tainted families; however, the intention behind those claims comes into question when in a 1903 edition of Ups and Downs it is revealed that Barnardo children were encouraged to assist in the immigration of their families back in Britain. Ups and Downs was a publication produced and distributed by Barnardo Homes to Barnardo children in Canada; it covered stories of travel and settlement in the new colony (Corbett 56). According to Corbett, in this particular edition of Ups and Downs a young Barnardo child writes that “each time we go over we carry a big list of mothers, sisters and brothers of boys in Canada whom we are commissioned to hunt up and bring out at the expense of the boys, who provide the necessary funds from their savings” (Corbett 31). The inconsistency in these two seemingly contrasting policies once again troubles the legitimacy of the purely humanitarian perspective that is used to bolster much of the work done by Barnardo, and relates it much more directly to practices of nation-building. After analyzing Barnardo‟s policies regarding the Emigration Principles and the “Canada List,” as well as British-backed agendas to populate and settle Canada, it is difficult to accept this individualized rhetoric of benevolence at face value. The emigration processes were influenced by policies that discriminated among bodies, determining which were fit for particular forms of work to be done in the colony. In the absence of these considerations, the narrative of Doctor Barnardo’s Children as performed at the 4th Line produces the history of Canada as not only set apart from strategic settlement policies employed by Britain, but also as separate from ongoing 110 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas practices of population management based on gender, race, class, religion, and ability. Moreover, it offers an understanding of contemporary forms of immigration policies and social organization as seemingly naturally flowing and not a product of historical regulative practices that operate to manage populations (maintaining the gendered division of labour and ensuring the immigration of an able-bodied work force) within the nation. This historical rendering of Barnardo works in the service of the colonialcapitalist state to reproduce and naturalize the social relations of power and reinforce the prevailing ideology of the settler state. Barnardo Children As Workers Act Two of Doctor Barnardo’s Children begins in Canada with a scene titled “The Promised Land” in which the Barnardo children emerge from the farm‟s surrounding fields carrying their belongings towards a crowd who has gathered to greet them in their new home in southern Ontario. The children are taken home by various individuals and couples from the crowd, separated again from their friends and loved ones, and from here the story follows the experiences of Young Walter and his good friend Billy Fiddler. The duration of the show tells the story of Young Walter‟s time with the farmer Jamieson on a farm in Springville. Walter‟s experiences are presented as rough at times but softened by the companionship of Miss Mary, the farmer‟s sister who was recently widowed and takes Young Walter under her wing. Although Young Billy is adopted by a family in Manvers Township, he is reintroduced into Walter‟s life after running away from his home – a decision he makes after the farmer (known as “Hunt”) tries to attack him with a pitchfork. This element of the show highlights some of the documented cases of murder, manslaughter, and assault of Barnardo children on Canadian farms (Wagner, Barnardo). 111 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas After this incident Billy comes to live with Walter on his farm in Springville. The scene set here by Winslow and McLachlan establishes that children who were sent away to Canada were expected to become members of a family. The case of Billy and his experience with Hunt in Manvers Township is presented as a sad, unfortunate, yet atypical case in what was otherwise a worthy humanitarian project of finding good homes for the children. What is left out of this construction is any reflection on how Barnardo children were intentionally sent to Canada in order to serve as workers for settler families, thereby extending and continuing the British agenda of settlement in Canada. Beyond simply shipping the children away in order to find a happy home for them, Barnardo‟s programs fed directly into agricultural labouring schemes that were preestablished between Britain and its government in Canada. Although Winslow and McLachlan‟s production informs the audience that the Barnardo children were directly taken in as help around the home by families in Canada, it is not made clear that the emigration strategies were intentionally employed to provide agricultural labour for settlers in the colony. In his published memoirs, Barnardo himself mentions how his work directly benefits the Empire as well as agricultural settlers in the colony: We in England, with our 470 inhabitants to the square mile, were choking, elbowing, starving each other in the struggle for existence: the British colonies over seas were crying out for men to till their acres, to feed their national life, to add to their human resources...Here was a boundless field for settlers...boys and girls of good physique, of tested moral character, of upright habits, able to make trained use of their hands, with few ties to bind them to the mother country, and at an age when they were easily adaptable to almost any climactic experience. (Barnardo, Something 182-183) 112 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Canadian representatives also commented on the potential benefit of having children as agricultural labourers. In 1825 the Honourable Peter Robinson and the Reverend Thomas Socket both suggested that poor and homeless children should be brought to Canada to serve as labour on settlers‟ farms (qtd. in Corbett 23). In 1912 Canadian immigration inspector Mr. Louis Stafford was quoted as saying that “„Canada could do with a number of these lads‟” (qtd. in Corbett 25). Sir Edward Clarke was certainly making connections between Barnardo‟s work and the work of nation-building when at a meeting on behalf of the Homes he declared: In my mind the twentieth century is to be Canada‟s century...It is because I am looking forward to the future of Canada, it is because I look forward to the stretching of our Empire westward and to the prosperity of that great Dominion, that there is, to my thinking, a national side as well as an individual side to these homes; that as we are helping children to brighter and higher lives, we are also helping forward the progress of that Empire. (qtd. in Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes, Aug. 1917 17) However, beyond verbally stated ties to the Canadian government, there were also financial arrangements that linked Barnardo‟s work directly to the settlement of the colony. The Federal Canadian Government implemented a plan whereby the arrival of each new child immigrant earned their sponsoring institution two Canadian dollars (Wagner, Children 70; V. Knowles 72). The existence of this incentive program leaves little room for deliberation on whether or not Canada endorsed these schemes and, further, whether or not it is possible to relate the Barnardo children to organized settlement strategies. The following quotation removes the possibility of any lingering 113 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas doubt about the relationship between Barnardo‟s work and the work of settling the land, especially through agricultural development: In 1893, Canada‟s High Commissioner to London, Sir Charles Tupper stated, “I am proud to stand here tonight to bear testimony to the great and good work which Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes are performing in that country. Among those that bear testimony is the Hon. John Carling, Minister of Agriculture and Immigration in Canada. After having subjected this great work to the most careful examination, he has placed on record that 98% of Barnardo Children in Canada have been successes.” (qtd. in Corbett 61) Barnardo had a second major instalment to his work in Canada that involved building a large industrial farm in Manitoba. Barnardo directly claimed that this scheme would provide labourers to assist in the settlement of the west (Corbett 67). His project in Manitoba was supported by financial contributions from other wealthy individuals, many of whom had direct ties to Canadian railroad companies who also had a vested interest in available labourers for railroad construction (Corbett 61; Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes, May 1910 7). In addition to working the land while they were children, boys who came of age (over eighteen) and left the farm were awarded 160 acres of land and equipped with various pieces of agricultural equipment, including an ox, plough, cart, and harness (Corbett 72-73; Barnardo, Something 198; Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes, May 1914 8). The provision of labourers endowed with resources for agricultural development fit well within the agenda of the settler state to expand and lay claim to the undeveloped west. The moulding of Barnardo children into good settlers also resulted in benefits for the capitalist state through profits incurred by the Bank of Commerce. All Barnardo children 114 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas were given accounts there that were maintained and monitored by the Homes. Additionally, the pool of Barnardo children provided young able-bodied soldiers for the impending World War (Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes, May 1910 5-6; July 1916). According to Corbett, “eleven thousand Barnardo proteges enrolled in the Great War and over half of these were from Canada” (Corbett 63). The work of Barnardo cannot be taken out of the political and historical context in which it was situated. Britain had a political investment in shipping children to the Canadian colony and British representatives there largely encouraged the process as it assisted in populating an “unsettled” land and contributed to a new capitalist economy. Indeed, the case of the Barnardo children offers opportunities to consider Canada‟s foundations as a settler state and to highlight how strategies of colonialism have historically been constructed as intertwined with other state-related institutions such as national banks, the railroad, and the military. Chivalrous Philanthropy In the script‟s emphasis on the individualized philanthropic actions of Barnardo and the life of Walter, it fails to articulate the ways in which larger historical practices (such as the ones cited above), or other foundational themes such as patriarchal protectionism and philanthropy, fit into discourses of settler ideology. These themes, like the naturalization of settler relations in Canada, are also part of a federally recognized discourse and align with a patriarchal nationalism espoused by the state in taking care of “its” population. Moreover, in the capitalist-colonial state, philanthropy is perceived as a necessary element of a functional society where charity, rather than extensive social welfare programs, is perceived as necessary to fill the gap to “help the needy.” The lack 115 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas of autonomy for the recipient of the “care” in the practice of philanthropy is rarely questioned. Rather, in a philanthropic system of exchange, those who donate are most commonly extolled for being selfless while the recipients are expected to be grateful. Furthermore, Razack claims that masculinist protectionism and philanthropy are inherently linked, especially in the national discourse of Canada where white settlers “come to know themselves” as inherently humanitarian in their attempts to save others through masculinist projects such as peacekeeping (Razack, Dark Threats). Significantly, themes of philanthropy and masculinist protectionism are built directly into the script of Doctor Barnardo’s Children both through the main characters and the subject of child welfare. In the case of Doctor Barnardo’s Children, both the characters of Barnardo and Walter suffer anxiety around their inability to “help” or “save” the women and children in their lives. The less developed characters of the women and children whom these men are established to save and protect - are infantilized as they are passively assumed to accept the “benevolence” that is conferred upon them. In their desire to save the women and children, the patriarchal tendencies in the characters of Barnardo and Walter extend a masculinist national identity that is presented to be a naturally flowing characteristic and not fundamental to the ideology of a heteronormative, patriarchal capitalist-colonial society. A running theme throughout the script is the question of whether or not the work done by Barnardo was of overall benefit to the children. Winslow and McLachlan offer several opportunities for critical reflection on Barnardo and his work. The audience witnesses scenes of violence and degradation committed against various Barnardo children as well as the tortured longing that Walter suffers as a result of being separated from his family 116 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas (Winslow and McLachlan 50, 92-93, 79-84). Various scenes highlight the violent punishment employed by staff at the homes, the highly surveilled existence of the children in the institutional settings and the dangerous, isolated environments where children were placed upon their arrival in Canada and which led to cases of sexual, physical, and psychological violence (Winslow and McLachlan 23-24, 80, 92-93). In one scene the character of Rose is questioned by unnamed adults at a public meeting regarding the role and intentions of Barnardo: ADULT #1. It was great he took them off the streets though, wasn‟t it? ROSE. (thinking of the pros and cons of the question) Oh yeah. Some of them didn‟t have much of a home life. I mean the families were struggling. Still, it was hard to leave even a struggling parent. Any child feels that. ADULT #2. A lot of these people just let their kids run wild in the streets. That‟s what I read anyway. ROSE. Maybe some. A lot – you have to realize a lot of them were in the streets trying to make a few bob to help their families or maybe taking their little brothers and sisters out in the pram. There was a real community there for them. (Winslow and McLachlan 7-10) However, the narratives regarding the question of whether or not Barnardo‟s work was beneficial leave fundamental questions about Barnardo‟s project of philanthropy unasked. The naturalization of Barnardo‟s philanthropic mandate bolsters a capitalist-settler ideology through his attempt to “save” children by instilling gender norms and by moulding them into employable workers. Historical documents reveal that Doctor Barnardo kept a library of before and after 117 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas pictures of all of the children admitted to his homes (Barnardo Camera). The “before” picture was purported to catch the child in their original wretched state of poverty and despair. The “after” picture was used to demonstrate how much the work of the Homes had done in rehabilitating the child, not only to be a happy, motivated member of society, but one with applicable trade skills (Wagner, Barnardo 84, 297-98, 305; Dr. Barnardo‟s Homes, Aug. 1912 9). During a trial wherein Doctor Barnardo was accused of exploitation and neglect of children put under his care, it was publicly revealed that he often over-dramatized “before” images of children by intentionally making their clothing look more ragged, and arranging them in particularly demeaning poses. The character of Rose in the script is used in many instances to address some of the more questionable practices that were employed by Doctor Barnardo. Early in the show she mentions Barnardo‟s contentious use of photographs: ROSE. (to the audience) These children all had a number when they were admitted to the Homes. Barnardo‟s sure kept some detailed records, I‟ll tell you. And he used to – see, Doctor Barnardo at first, he took before and after pictures. And he – sometimes the kids he took in, he dressed them up in rags to make them look even more desperate than they were. (We see Barnardo carrying out this process with Dasher and Freddie as Rose describes it. Rose addresses the on-stage audience.) Can you believe it? He got into trouble for that though. See, he‟d sell these photographs in packets to help raise money for his Homes. What a character, eh? But they stopped him doing that and – after a while he just took these pictures when they came in – when they were admitted like – and they all had a number. (Barnardo puts numbers on the children) And you rarely see 118 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas photos of brothers and sisters together though a lot came into the Homes together. (Winslow and McLachlan 6-7) Within the scripted narrative, Barnardo is criticized for dramatizing the poverty and subsequent “rehabilitation” of children in the photographs. However, the logic that underwrites Barnardo‟s aims and intentions, that a reformed child is an employable child, is never questioned in the script. The production of the good, reformed subject through their adoption of trade skills is characterized as normal, or not worthy of mention. As a result, Barnardo‟s practices of “saving” children by moulding them into employable workers are naturalized as an innate element of the charitable institution. Barnardo‟s rehabilitation scheme is never framed as particular to a capitalist society where subjects are valued based on their ability to reproduce the relations of production. The naturalization of the capitalist logic of workfare in Doctor Barnardo’s Children works in tandem with the ideology of the nation-state. Additionally, both of the men in the script suffer from anxiety about their inability to “save” the women and children in their lives. In the case of Doctor Barnardo, his deep personal fears concerning his inability to save poor homeless children are revealed in one scene; Barnardo is presented as tortured by these thoughts as we see him having nightmares in which he attempts to save several drowning children but fails (Winslow and McLachlan 14-15). In the case of Walter, even at a very young age he is deeply concerned about his sister Lily. The siblings are separated through the operation of the Barnardo Homes; however, Walter makes risky attempts to make contact with Lily and when he finds her he tries to force her to escape with him (Winslow and McLachlan 49). Early in the script it is established that Walter conceives of himself as in charge of Lily‟s 119 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures protection and general well-being. Douglas Interestingly, Razack claims that anxieties such as these are widespread amongst Canadians, as national myths about collective identity continually posit Canadians as humanitarian interventionists. In fact, she argues that Canadian subjects are particularly inclined to be traumatized by their inability to “help.” For her, the discourse of humanitarianism that Canadians align with their national identity continually establishes Canadians as more civilized than others. She claims that Canadians perceive themselves as standing on the “moral side of things” in their roles as benevolent peacekeepers and compassionate diplomats both in their everyday experiences as well as in their nation‟s place in the global political arena. In Doctor Barnardo’s Children, Walter and Lily are separated when Walter leaves for his new home in Canada. Throughout the show Walter is concerned about the whereabouts of his sister. Walter writes letters to an old address but he receives no word back. In the absence of a response, Walter pushes on seeking any clue to her location. He is left with no information about her until, as an old man with children and grandchildren of his own, he encounters a woman who works on behalf of the Hazelbrae Community Group, a group dedicated to creating a social community for Barnardo children and helping families reconnect. Walter informs Rose that he is looking for his long lost sister and after some searching Rose surprises Walter by finding that Lily has been in a nursing home less than fifty miles away from Walter for the past eighty years (Winslow and McLachlan 107). The prospect of being reunited with Lily fills Walter with immense joy. However, the happy reunion comes to an abrupt end when Lily‟s Alzheimer‟s disease renders her unable to stay with Walter. After an episode during which Lily does not 120 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas recognize Walter, she is taken back to the Home and Walter is left alone and “terribly sad” (Winslow and McLachlan 108). It seems that the relationship between Lily and Walter is predicated on his ability to act as her protector and that embedded in the discourse of national identity are patriarchal norms regarding masculine and feminine roles. Through the characters of Walter and Barnardo, a duty to protect is naturalized as the role of the masculine subject. This theme reappears in the script of The Art of Silent Killing which I address in the next chapter. Conclusion The fluid use of time and space works to illustrate how the legacies of being a Barnardo child are not isolated to the past. Much like the spectre of the character of Old Billy who traverses time and space, the memories of the experiences seem to haunt Walter in his old age, leading him, for example, to confuse his granddaughter Emily for his sister Lily. Beyond telling a simple moralizing tale about the plight of the Barnardo children, the playwrights chose to explore complex themes such as memory, remembrance, and “truth.” However, the artistic rendition of the Barnardo children at the 4th Line erases the story of forced child emigration for labour purposes by way of British colonialism that set the stage for work done by religious zealots like Barnardo. The script maintains a framing of Barnardo‟s scheme as executed by a single man, and not part of a larger history of organized child emigration that was a tactic of British colonialism and foundational to the formation of Canada as a settler state. An examination of historical British child emigration strategies, as well as state policies implemented to foster the population and cultivation of the colonies, draws important links between the work of Barnardo and larger state-executed designs entrenched in 121 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas colonialism and capitalism. Although the personal stories in Winslow and McLachlan‟s artistic project demonstrate many of the individualized ramifications of Barnardo‟s work, the story maintains a sanitized version of Canada‟s history as having been peacefully settled through humanitarian projects like those of Doctor Barnardo. Difficult questions regarding the nation‟s origins and ongoing practices of population management are left unarticulated. Moreover, the script naturalizes current capitalist and patriarchal relations as intrinsic to the values of Canada. In these complexly layered ways, the script acts as another site in which the practices of the ideology of the capitalist-colonial state play out. 122 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Chapter Five The Art of Silent Killing Douglas “Memory implies its opposite – forgetfulness. As a community, we forget as much as we remember, and what we choose to forget tells as much about us as what we choose to remember.” - Daniel Francis, National Dreams: Myth, Memory and Canadian History (11) The second show of the 4 th Line Theatre Company‟s 2006 season was The Art of Silent Killing, written by Shane Peacock. The play follows the lives of John Clay and Violet Dumont, who are enlisted in the Canadian service during World War II. As the play begins, both characters arrive at a mysterious rural location with several other young men during the summer of 1943. They are told that they have been recruited to a Special Training School (STS) of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) known as STS 103. The historical school was popularly referred to as “Camp X” or “the farm” and was located just outside of the small town of Whitby, Ontario. The soldiers‟ commanding officers explain that they will be trained as spies and employed to seek out enemies of “Canada, the British Empire and freedom” (Peacock 8). Upon meeting, John and Violet fall in love and find themselves attempting to carry out orders in the name of national security while simultaneously trying to hide their romantic relationship. After their time in the military, which includes a mission to German-occupied France in early 1944 to cut Nazi communication lines and sabotage railway networks, John and Violet marry and settle in the town of Oshawa, Ontario. The play draws on actual historical events of Camp X, which did in fact exist just outside of the town of Whitby and only a few kilometres from the site of the Winslow Farm in Millbrook. The script was written over the course of three years and uses extensive research from previously classified historical 123 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas records as well as stories from men who were trained at Camp X. Peacock used these materials in an effort to make the show as “authentic” as possible (4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Program 9). I will argue that settler ideology is produced and organized by the particular historical representations that Peacock chooses to portray in The Art of Silent Killing. Peacock‟s artistic representations of Canada in the 1940s fit safely within stateendorsed discourse on the subject of Canadian life during the time of the Second World War. In his recount of the war, Peacock draws on conventional themes of nationalism including the construction of the moral masculine crusader fighting against evil and saving vulnerable women from being defiled by barbaric Nazis. Nazis are constructed as monstrous in contrast to the moral and just Canadian soldiers. The exaltation of conventional gender norms and the demonization of Nazis are stereotypical themes in Canadian state-driven propaganda from the war-period (see Appendix C). Peacock‟s representations recreate an image of Canada‟s role in World War II as primarily one of defending freedom which perpetuates a myth of the nation-state and its subjects as inherently good. Peacock‟s recounting of World War II avoids considerations of Canada‟s own historical record of anti-Semitism and xenophobic immigration policies during that time period which would offer a very different interpretation of the history of the war. As was argued in Chapter Two, the 4th Line Theatre Company has been constructed as a historical pedagogue of national narratives. The presentation of The Art of Silent Killing by the 4th Line associates Peacock‟s artistic rendering with a history that is presumed to be representative of all Canadians. Although this narrative is posited as a representation 124 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas of “our history,” its representation establishes a very particular history of World War II which is primarily - and in some ways exclusively - concerned with the experiences of white Canadian soldiers. Peacock inscribes a narrative of the nation during the Second World War that centres a white settler experience27 and reinforces a racial ordering of the national community. White settlers‟ histories of World War II are remembered, memorialized and valourized through this narrative while histories of racialized Canadians during the war-period are erased. Indeed, the valourization of Canada‟s role in World War II includes the erasure of racist practices that would sully the image of the nation as good and well-intentioned. As Peacock‟s script hails subjects to the ideology of the settler state, it simultaneously constitutes who and what is excluded from the “natural” national community. I further argue that The Art of Silent Killing memorializes the former space of Camp X, thereby laying a white settler claim to the land of the old military base. This land claim privileges the histories of white settlers and naturalizes processes of settlerhood that have been established on Indigenous land. By choosing to set the story at Camp X, Peacock asserts that the space and remembrance of the military training centre is of national importance. As the space is overlaid with a national narrative of white settlement, other stories of the space – an unresolved land claim between the Mississauga Nation and the federal government which I will expand on later in the chapter, for example - are suppressed and ignored. I reintroduce Lefebvre here to discuss how the 27 As noted in my introduction, race as a signifier is never fixed or stable. It is especially important to note that some European settlers that may currently be considered to be “white,” were racialized at the time of the war. Consequently, racialized European settlers had very different experiences of the war-period than non-racialized white settlers. As mentioned above, racialized settlers and those labelled as dangerous citizens due to their presumed political affiliations were part of the population interned by the Canadian state in the 1940s. I further qualified this category in Chapter Two through considerations of the ways in which gender, sexuality, and ability shaped the demographic of Canadian soldiers during World War II (see my discussion on page 56). 125 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas spatial practices at work in The Art of Silent Killing produce a sanitized landscape upon which the social relations of the settler state are cultivated. The infusion of the land with the racialized discourse of the capitalist-colonial nation-state reinforces an ordering of the nation that maintains white settlers‟ dominance. As the epigraph of this chapter states, “as a community, we forget as much as we remember, and what we choose to forget tells as much about us as what we choose to remember” (Francis 11). Peacock‟s representations of Canadian wartime efforts fit neatly within the national myth-making strategies employed by the state during the war. These strategies when represented in contemporary Canadian public theatre act to reinforce and reproduce the myth-making strategies of the war-time effort. Peacock‟s representation of Canada at this time works counter to the historical record of various injustices committed by the Canadian state during World War II. Peacock‟s ideological representations of Canada during the war-period produce settlers as natural Canadians, exclude accounts of strategic, state-driven population management techniques and reinforce a national narrative that creates other histories as “alternative” to the “real” story. Ultimately, the script functions to perpetuate a narrative of nationalism that bolsters the ideology of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Patriarchal Patriotism Peacock chooses to represent typical tropes of Second World War narratives that act to maintain the ideology of the settler state. These narratives valourize and thereby simplify an understanding of the military effort as only praiseworthy while asserting stereotypical gendered conceptions of war and patriotism. Peacock‟s decision to represent very particular aspects of the war-period in Canada during the 1940s and to present this 126 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas portrayal as a shared national history for all Canadians is ideologically complicit with the agenda of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. The following examples point to the ways in which Peacock‟s choices work in tandem with the aims and objectives of the settler state. The history of World War II, according to Peacock, is primarily constituted by a battle for freedom between moral crusaders of the West versus evil Germans. The playwright establishes the conventional trope of man versus nature, or civilization versus savagery. The foundations of this narrative are directly tied to masculine projects of war, honour and patriotism. The central story in The Art of Silent Killing is about man‟s ability to save, where the “man” represents the values and virtues of the nation-state. Peacock constructs an image of the masculine, moral crusader through his production of Canadian soldiers fighting a moral and just war. John is recruited under the rhetoric of defending “freedom,” which is established as inseparable from Canada. Soon after arriving at Camp X, John Clay is told by his superior officer (John Brooker) that the enemies of “freedom” are also the enemies of Canada: BROOKER. You have been carefully selected to train for dangerous activities…to take on the enemies of Canada, the British Empire, and freedom. JOHN. In…Whitby, sir? BROOKER. In Whitby…Johnny-Bear. (Peacock 8-9) This officer, and presumably the military he represents, affirms that Canada is a country that is “free.” Not only does Peacock‟s artistic rendering of the 1940s portray the war as a moral mission to preserve “freedom,” but it also represents stereotypical notions of gender through the valourization of masculinized conceptions of honour and patriotism 127 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures juxtaposed with the degradation of feminine qualities. Douglas The result is a gendered nationalist discourse that constructs the moral crusader as masculine. On four separate occasions during military training at Camp X, Fairbairn and other officers demonstrate the necessary qualities of being a soldier in the war. According to Fairbairn‟s suggestions soldiers must invoke aggressive techniques in order to fulfill their obligations to the military and, by default, to their country and “freedom”: FAIRBAIRN. …Fight dirty. Get tough! Strike him from behind when you can. Drive your fingers into some part of his throat; go for his testicles. You have license to kill. Break his limbs by all means, but only if that helps you eliminate him. Do it without a sound. I will show you how. (Peacock 16) FAIRBAIRN. The best way to search a Nazi is to kill him first. If in the unfortunate event you are prevented from doing so, try the following. Force him to the ground, face down, take the butt of your rifle and strike him in the back of the skull as hard as you can...Then search him. (Looks at the audience.) This isn‟t a game. (Peacock 16) FAIRBAIRN. The use of the gun. Forget everything you know or have imagined about using a firearm. You must aim in a split-second and hit the target dead on. I will teach you to draw your gun and pull the trigger in two instantaneous motions. Point shooting: point and fire. You will learn how to kill a man at close range. Take him out, without thinking, This must be a trained response. Think and you‟re dead. Speed and aggression! (Whirls and fires in his trademark crouched position.) Just do it. (Peacock 16) VOICE. Fitness training. A secret agent must be strong and virile. 128 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures (RED grabs a rope and leaps from a tower.) Douglas VOICE. Survival and evasion. Dropped into the Rice Lake area with nothing but the clothes on their backs, they return as promptly as possible. (GUY emerges from a field with a map and compass, looking dirty and tired.) VOICE. An interrogation. A man must know how to keep a secret. (JOHN is strapped to a chair by an actor in a Nazi uniform.) (Peacock 18) Elsewhere in the script, soldiers are berated with insults that insinuate that they have feminine characteristics and on three separate occasions a military officer attempts to demean soldiers by referring to them as “ladies” or “girls” (Peacock 23, 35, 36). The designation of being “feminine” or doing a task in a “feminine” way is presumed to be insulting and offensive to the soldiers. Within this hierarchy of gendered characteristics, those that are masculine are assumed to be of more value to the state and to larger notions of freedom. Feminized qualities are admonished for being of low calibre and, in fact, are ways of being that must be eradicated from soldiers who are going to be successful in their fight against evil. Though Peacock‟s representations of these gendered discourses may be an attempt to accurately portray military culture or societal sentiment regarding gender during the 1940s, his choices bolster the ideology of the nation-state. Certainly there is evidence to suggest that these stereotypes align with popular conceptions of gender binaries prevalent within military culture and amongst societal sentiments during the war-period in Canada (Arnup; see Appendix C); however, my goal here is not to investigate whether the representations are objectively accurate. Reasserting these conventional gender norms aligns with the construction of masculine subjects fighting a moral and just war against 129 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas evil, which is prevalent within state-endorsed propaganda of the time. Nationalist conceptions of gender also appear later in my analysis of discourses of barbarism concerning Nazis. The playwright‟s choice to invoke this traditional trope serves to construct the military mission as that of the moral man fighting the savagery of the Nazis. I do not mean to assert that the Nazi project is not one worth defeating, but instead I point to the ways in which Peacock uses this discourse to construct the moral, national, male subject in The Art of Silent Killing. The military project then becomes one of the civilized man saving the world from the inhuman Germans. Nazis are Evil The script is driven largely by characters who are Canadian and British military agents. As a result, it is not surprising that Nazi soldiers are consistently characterized as evil in nature and therefore justifiably disposable. However, in the play both the Canadian soldiers and the British officers work together to construct the Nazis as more evil and monstrous than themselves by citing the Nazis‟ dishonourable fighting techniques (Peacock 17, 32), by claiming that they have unnatural fetishes for watching gruesome mass murders (Peacock 14, 15, 23), and by insulting their physical appearance (Peacock 24). In addition, characters who are not involved directly in training at Camp X also demonize the Nazis. Peacock has written in the character of Ian Fleming, a British Navy Commander who is perhaps most famous for his creation of the character of notorious spy James Bond, Agent 007. Fleming introduces himself to the young Violet in the office in New York City. In the discussion that follows, Fleming offers a characterization of Hitler that reinforces a conception of the Nazi leader as barbaric and inhuman: FLEMING. …But it just so happens that I‟m developing a thriller about a secret 130 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas agent who travels around the world dating women, much more interesting than you, and keeping the world free from monsters like Herr Hitler. (Peacock 21) Building on the theme of Hitler and the Nazis as fundamentally malicious, there are three additional, explicit references to the German army as the devil, as many devils, or to their occupied territory as “hell” (Peacock 16, 24, 36). The play constructs the Germans as savages and so it becomes easy to uphold the allied forces as morally just in their aim to defeat the German army. Moreover, the Nazis are confirmed as the worst kind of monsters late in the show as they threaten to rape the pregnant Violet in front of her lover John in order to force John into giving them important information (Peacock 65). Rape has already been established earlier in the script as a kind of ultimate weapon and one that is of the lowest moral calibre. In a mock interrogation scene, Fairbairn has Violet tied up as a captured soldier while the other soldiers observe for instructional purposes. After a series of violent attacks including calling her a “bitch,” pulling her hair and punching her, the trainer/interrogator claims that he has had enough of these “games.” In order to intensify his torture tactics he insinuates that he will rape the female captive: BOB: …Enough games. I‟m allowed to do what I want to women. You‟re tied down…wide open. (There is silence. The men look anxious. JOHN stops himself from rocking on his feet.) (Peacock 37) At this point one of the soldiers is unable to contain his sentiment for the female victim and steps in front of the acting interrogator. He demands to be put in the chair in place of Violet. It is then revealed that the exercise was in fact implemented to observe the capacity of the male Canadian soldiers to watch a female prisoner be brutally interrogated 131 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas without intervening. The escalation of violent tactics performed by the interrogator culminates in the threat of male on female rape. This ordering of violence establishes a hierarchy that privileges rape as the ultimate offence. Later in the show when Violet is actually being held by the Gestapo, the Germans affirm the expected by threatening to rape her on two occasions. The first time that rape is introduced as a threat is in a scene that features a Gestapo agent, Violet and the recently captured John. The agent attempts to get information from John by using the threat against Violet as his weapon: GESTAPO. Oh, don‟t mistake what I say for nobility. I‟m not offering you much. Nobility isn‟t affordable, for your side or mine. But I will give you my word about this woman. Tell us what we need to know. Otherwise, well...my friends here, they are lonely men: they haven‟t had a woman in a long time, except a Jewish camp whore or two...and they are violent sorts even in matters of love...Then we will send her to Buchenwald. I don‟t know if you‟ve heard of it? She will die there...kneeling down or on a hook...bullet to the temple. (Peacock 63) On a second occasion only a few pages later, the escalation of torture tactics culminates, as it did in the mock scene back at Camp X, to a threat of male on female rape. Following days of steadfast resistance, which has provided no intelligence reconnaissance for the Germans, the Gestapo agent realizes that beating his captives and pulling out their toenails has had no effect and so he moves to implement the ultimate tactic: GESTAPO. Let‟s do this here. JOHN. (Quietly.) No. God no. 132 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas GESTAPO. Do it here, Scharfuhrer! And when you‟re done…kill her too. This shouldn‟t take more than a few hours. (TO JOHN.) I‟m going to hold your head up! Pin your eyes open if you try to close them! (The GESTAPO man grabs JOHN by the hair and pulls his head back, turning it towards VIOLET. The HENCHMAN approaches her, taking off his shirt. He begins unfastening his belt. VIOLET lowers her head.) GESTAPO. (At JOHN.) Watch! (The HENCHMAN begins undoing his pants, a fist clenched.) (Peacock 65) In an attempt to thwart the German‟s invocation of the ultimate violence, John gives up the valuable information, thus saving Violet from being raped and ensuring that both their lives are spared. Interestingly, in both the mock scene as well as the real hostage situation, the threat of rape as the ultimate tool is contingent on an observer with emotional attachment being present. In both cases, in order for the threat to have any weight these observers must be men ensconced in ideologies of chivalry and with the power to stop the act. As such, the threat of rape is most violent because of its offence to the patriarchal sensibilities of the men observing the act and not as a result of the act itself. It is the men‟s inability to stop the act that constitutes the torture. Under these circumstances, the modern Western man (John) who is fighting for freedom and justice but who also believes in his role as protector of women, cannot endure the barbarism of the Germans. It appears that the German project is one that is coupled with dishonourable and barbaric tactics of war that offend the values of the countries of the allied forces that are free and just. Here again we see the gendered mechanism of patriotism emerge where the masculine subject who represents values and virtues of the nation, is impotent to stop 133 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures the female from being raped. Douglas The construction of the precious vulnerable woman in danger of being desecrated by savagery also aligns with conventional tropes of nationalism that glorify the image of the uncorrupted female. The sanctified woman stands as both a metaphorical and biological reproducer of the nation (Yuval-Davis 31). Peacock‟s construction fits neatly into conventional gendered nationalist discourse that establishes women as the community‟s or the nation‟s most valuable possessions; the principal vehicles for transmitting the whole nations values from one generation to the next; bearers of the community‟s future generations – crudely, nationalist wombs; the members of the community most vulnerable to defilement and exploitation by oppressive alien rulers. (Enloe 54, emphasis hers) The anxiety experienced by the soldiers who cannot save Violet in The Art of Silent Killing almost directly mirrors the themes of patriarchal protectionism that were present in Doctor Barnardo’s Children. In both scripts the central male characters suffer as a result of their inability to save the women and children in their lives. In The Art of Silent Killing, the men‟s most significant emotional experience revolves around their impotence to help the future of the nation where, I argue, children are the future and women are the biological carriers of the future. Although there are some notable differences as to how the protectionism plays out, all of the cases establish the male characters as the authorized managers of women and children. Moreover, according to Razack, desires to help and save are not only gendered but also deeply rooted in the way Canadian subjects think and feel about themselves (Dark Threats). These feelings stem from nationalist discourses that consistently establish Canadians and Canada as inherently good. As 134 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas discussed in Chapter Four, Razack encourages Canadian subjects to consider the ways in which feelings of national goodness are connected to sanitized historical representations of Canada‟s past. Interestingly, the narrative of The Art of Silent Killing contains the anxiety of subjects‟ inability to help as it simultaneously establishes a history of Canada‟s role in World War II as moral and just. Within the narrative that posits Nazis as purely evil, the Western forces are the principled crusaders of justice, carrying out an objective ethical agenda to destroy and eliminate the evil impetus of the Germans. These connections are not left up to the audience to deduce on their own. There are several moments in the script where the discourse of diabolical Nazis is bolstered by a supporting narrative of revered Canadians intervening in the name of truth and justice. Soldiers and officers are referred to a s protectors of the Western Hemisphere (Peacock 19), and describe themselves as “risking [their] lives for freedom” (Peacock 45). In other places, Europe is characterized as under siege and in need of liberation by Western heroes (Peacock 21) and indeed, these heroes are considered to be the only chance to “save the world” (Peacock 25). Installed as moral crusaders, the Canadian soldiers are justified in their aggressive pursuit and violent destruction of any and all Nazi sympathizers. Although Canadian and British soldiers claim to want to “eliminate those bastards” (Peacock 23), “tear Hitler a new asshole” (Peacock 8), and kill them with their bare hands (Peacock 13), their desire for brutal revenge is never framed as barbarous. Instead, their violent fantasies are normalized and justified, not only as a result of their role within military culture, but also because they are constructed to be civilized: representing truth, justice, and freedom. Within the narrative of The Art of Silent Killing, Canada‟s role in the Second World 135 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas War was primarily to defeat the evil crusade promulgated by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. This artistic rendering reasserts nationalist discourses that are identified by Razack as standing in the way of settlers‟ accountability to historical and contemporary forms of racism and colonialism. Subjects who encounter this depiction of the Second World War can stand outside of history and revisit it through a narrative that leaves out other “realities” of the 1940s in Canada. Specifically, The Art of Silent Killing ignores the historical record of state-fostered anti-Semitism in Canada during the Second World War that was made visible by federally enacted anti-Jewish immigration policy. The script also avoids any consideration of the domestic internment of 22,000 Japanese-Canadians that took place during the war. Peacock‟s rendition of World War II reasserts a white settler experience of the war by providing a narrative that maintains that the history of the war was primarily about Canadians as moral crusaders who are saving the world. However, this construction begs the question, who are Canadians saving the world for? The erasure of racist practices of the state in this wartime rendition postulates that the historical realities of racism are not worthy of consideration in white settlers‟ recreations of the nation‟s history. Canada‟s Immigration Policies The construction of the morally outfitted Canadian soldiers versus the ethically corrupt Germans erases Canada‟s own implication in not only fostering an anti-Semitic environment, but also violating civilians‟ rights under the rhetoric of national security during the Second World War. Considerations of Canada‟s history of anti-Semitic immigration and refugee policies as well as the internment of thousands of Canadian citizens during the war raise questions about how far the British colony can distance 136 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas itself from what are constructed as “evil” strategies employed by the Germans at the time. A brief history of Canada‟s immigration policies in the early twentieth century will help to highlight the ways in which, by the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, Canada had a highly selective immigration policy that discriminated against Jewish refugees attempting to flee Nazi forces in Europe. Initiated in the early 1800s, Canada had a history of selective, pro-agricultural immigration policies. These policies worked to encourage the immigration of settlers who would help bolster the growing agricultural sector of capitalist-colonial Canada. As was also discussed in Chapter Four, this included intentional strategies to import child labour from British foundations (such as those run by Doctor Thomas Barnardo) for agricultural assistance. However, although there was a push for suitable agriculturalists as immigrants, black farmers were not welcomed through Canada‟s immigration policies. Citing desires to keep Canada free from “the Negro problem” and racist stereotypes about black immigrants‟ inability to acclimatize to Canada‟s weather patterns, the Superintendent of Immigration William Scott wrote in 1912 that “the fertile lands of the West will be left to be cultivated by the white race only” (qtd. in V. Knowles 90). While assistance was provided to other capital-owning farmers desiring to immigrate, similarly classed and experienced black farmers were actively discouraged as would-be settlers and nearly outright prohibited from immigration by the Liberal government under Wilfred Laurier (V. Knowles 90; Kelley and Trebilcock 154-155). From 1901 until 1923 Canada saw the formalization of its immigration policies as they were gradually enshrined into law and amended over time to suit the desires and demands of the Immigration Branch. An analysis of some of the formal and informal politics inside the Canadian Immigration 137 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Branch during the 1930s and early 1940s reveals that there was an institutionalized antiJewish sentiment against the settlement of Jews in the country, largely as a result of cultural stereotypes and anti-Semitism. Between 1933 and the outbreak of war in 1939 only 4,000 Jewish refugees were admitted into Canada, compared with 140,000 to the United States, and 73,500 to Britain (Darragh x). Even after the war, although numbers increased drastically from the previous decade, Canada maintained a strict policy with regards to Jewish immigrants. From 1 April 1945 to 31 March 1947, Canada admitted 2,918 Jews, three quarters of the number of those admitted during the previous decade in one fifth of the time and yet this still only comprised three percent of the total number of immigrants during this period (Bialystok 38). Finally, aside from Canada‟s role in actively deterring Jewish immigration during the time leading up to and including World War II, Canada also participated in the internment of Jewish refugees from Britain as well as approximately 2,500 Canadian civilians in the name of national security. I offer these national histories in an effort to compare them to the themes espoused in the script of The Art of Silent Killing. Canadians are venerated in the script for their commitment to a morally just fight in defence of millions being persecuted by the Nazis. In this context, how does one reflect on federal immigration policies that seem to contradict supposed national characteristics of multiculturalism and benevolence? To do so confronts ideologically weighted nationalist discourse contending that Canadians are inherently benevolent. Furthermore, nationalist narratives of World War II that re-centre the story of white settlers ignore the nationstate‟s project of managing its internal population through selective immigration policies. In so doing, The Art of Silent Killing erases and normalizes the practices of racial 138 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures ordering upon which the settler state is predicated. Civilian Internment Douglas During the Second World War the Canadian government implemented measures to detain approximately 2,500 of its own citizens in the name of national security. Of those 2,500, about 847 were German-Canadians, 600 were of Italian heritage, and approximately 100 were Communists (Iacovetta and Perin 4; Radforth 2000; Whitaker and Kealey 137). Section 21 in the Defence of Canada‟s Regulations (DOCR) “gave the state power to arrest and intern anyone deemed to be acting contrary or in a manner prejudicial to public safety or the safety of the state” (McBride 148). However, the largest attack on any one group‟s civil liberties was on Japanese-Canadians who, after the attack on Pearl Harbour, were suddenly assaulted with an onslaught of infringements upon their property and mobility rights. Directly after the attack, Japanese-Canadian fishing boats were confiscated, impounded and licenses were revoked. One year later in 1942, the government ordered the internment of 22,000 Japanese-Canadians who had been living on the Pacific Coast but whose potentially strategic location for an attack was now deemed a security threat. Some were sent to detention camps in the interior of British Columbia while others were sent to work camps in other provinces. These civilians were held for the duration of the war and upon release in 1945 were faced with a “voluntary repatriation scheme” presented by the government, which would have Canadian citizens give up their status and move to Japan (V. Knowles 124; Oikawa 87; Sunahara 118-128). A conception of Canada that bolsters its appearance as a diverse and tolerant nation ignores much of the historically xenophobic and selective practices of immigration policy employed by the nation-state. All of the above-noted history - largely centred on 139 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Canada‟s policy towards Jewish immigrants - leaves out considerations of Chinese, Indian, Ukrainian, and other citizens who were also historically discriminated against through racist immigration policies (Whitaker and Kealey 130). In the case of World War II, Canadian domestic immigration policies towards Jewish refugees attempting to escape a widely broadcasted holocaust make it difficult to situate Canada as a great defender of justice and freedom in Europe. Moreover, in the absence of historical narratives that demonstrate the state‟s calculated control of national “belonging,” the script normalizes population management strategies employed by the state. This normalization allows for a conception of the state as non-ideological and not invested in broader projects of tactical nation-building. The history of white settlers‟ experience of World War II is recast in The Art of Silent Killing while other histories of the war are forgotten. Francis claims that “memory implies its opposite – forgetfulness,” and this sentiment resonates with Ahmed‟s theory about national identity. Ahmed claims that as some subjects are hailed to the imagined community of the nation, others are excluded. Casting narratives of a national history creates stories that embolden the community they represent. By being framed as a story about “our” Canadian history, The Art of Silent Killing produces the national community as constitutive of those subjects who can claim ownership of its plot and themes. Subjects who cannot claim ownership of the themes represented within the script are excluded from the national community and constructed as strange. These same sets of exclusions are at work as the script memorializes the space of Camp X. Memorializing Camp X The Art of Silent Killing is significant to the 4th Line because the location of the story 140 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas - Camp X - existed in close proximity to the site of the theatre company. The script memorializes the space of the military training camp through its exaltation of it as a part of national history. Memorializing the site serves as a way of asserting a claim to the land of the old military facility. This claim comes from white settlers who privilege their history of militarism during the Second World War over other histories of that location, including those of Indigenous communities. The act of memorializing the site of Camp X through narration, as opposed to a physical heritage marker, continues to operate under a framework of compulsory settlerhood (discussed in Chapter Three). Through Peacock‟s narration, the space of Camp X is overlaid with symbolic meaning, and constitutes Lefebvre‟s concept of representational space. As this particular piece of land just outside of Whitby is cloaked with Peacock‟s national narrative, the land is produced as central to white settlers‟ histories. The naturalization of the space serves both a symbolic and material function. It symbolically produces the land as central to the imagined histories of a settler state. Simultaneously, the memorialization of the Camp materially accords the right of settlement of the land to white settlers who, the script maintains, are the natural inhabitants of the nation. The symbolic and material significance of the memorialization of the space in The Art of Silent Killing works in tandem to sustain the social relations of a settler state. A further analysis of the area will demonstrate how land is central to settler ideology, and conversely, how settler ideology is central to conceptions of the land. As Lefebvre asks, “what is an ideology without a space to which it refers…?” (Lefebvre, Production 44). The ideology of the capitalistcolonial nation-state requires space upon which it can assert its geo-political terrain. Likewise the space of the capitalist-colonial nation-state, if it is to continue to function as 141 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas such, needs the ideology of the settler state. The space is asserted to be an important part of “our history” and serves to naturalize the land and its history as belonging to white settlers. In accordance with my note in Chapter Three, I do not suggest that Camp X should be forgotten; however, I wish to draw attention to the ways in which particular narratives are remembered as others are ignored. As these legacies are naturalized, they maintain the political, social, and economic dominance of white settlers. Camp X was located outside of Whitby in southern Ontario. The towns of Whitby, Oshawa, Port Hope, Cobourg, and Trenton sit on land that was illegally annexed by the British through the infamous “walking treaty,” as noted by Bonita Lawrence. This treaty was drawn up in 1783 and did not mark the boundaries of the land that it claimed. In 1923, after years of complaints from the Mississauga Nation whose lands were taken by this treaty, the federal government gave $375 to the Ojibway of Alnick, Rice Lake, Mud Lake, and Scugog as compensation. According to Lawrence, “the land not legally ceded was bought for a pittance” (41). Peacock‟s script overlays this history of the land with a history of white settlers‟ experiences during the Second World War. In its own way, The Art of Silent Killing does the direct work of the state in covering over this historical blight with an account that erases the story of the annexed Indigenous land with a story of white settlers. This further serves to make the space intimate to white settlers‟ national history. The land is infused with historical meaning for white settlers and is produced as precious to their identity and culture. Peacock‟s script works within the broader context of the 4th Line in cultivating a local history and a local community that excludes as it attempts to include. Peacock‟s rendition of World War II functions as a practice of compulsory settlerhood as it aligns with the ideology of the 4th Line and, in turn, that of the nation- 142 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures state. Douglas The history of white settlers is literally built on stolen Indigenous land. The memorialization of Camp X serves as an ideal example of compulsory settlerhood as the stories of settlers‟ experiences in World War II produce the land as naturally belonging to them. As was discussed in Chapter Three, Rose and Blomley both refer to property as a kind of speech-making. The narrative of The Art of Silent Killing overlays the space with a speech that constitutes an act of ownership. This practice of compulsory settlerhood is a performance of ownership (it is never complete) that must be continually asserted through national narratives that posit settlers‟ stories as the stories of the land. Furthermore, stories that erase Indigenous claims to the land legitimize the material inequalities that the settler state has produced and continues to produce through the annexation of Indigenous land. As settlers reap the benefits of capitalist production on stolen land, Indigenous communities are blocked from accessing these material benefits through the politico-juridical framework of the capitalist-colonial nation-state, a state which positions settlers as the natural and entitled owners of the land. Of the many “camps” that are associated with World War II in Canada, Peacock chose to focus on Camp X as opposed to those that held thousands of Japanese-Canadians or other “suspicious” civilians. These “other” camps took the form of internment, roadside, and work camps and, although commonly assumed to be relegated to the province of British Columbia, they were also scattered throughout Ontario (Nakano; Oikawa; Sando). These spaces are directly linked to Camp X since all of the sites were part of a larger military project of the nation-state. Peacock‟s choice to memorialize the site of Camp X serves the aims and objectives of the settler state by contributing to a system of organized 143 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas forgetting. Stories that actively erase these histories produce and sustain the exclusion of Japanese-Canadians‟ experiences from those of the national community. Mona Oikawa attempts to re-map spaces of the internment in her article “Cartographies of Violence: Women, Memory, and the Subject(s) of the Internment.” Through interviews with women who experienced the violence of the internment, Oikawa draws out the lost stories of traumatic separation and relocation of Japanese families during the war. As Oikawa remaps histories of violence onto the landscape of Canada, she demonstrates how the “mapping” of Canada that erases these painful memories serves to maintain the racial exclusions of particular subjects. She claims that her project “reveals the ideological framework through which Canada was made and the forgetting of violence that is essential to...nation-building and the making of citizens” (75). Oikawa goes on to demonstrate how the spatialization of race continues to operate in day-to-day encounters through the spaces of the city such as racially organized neighbourhoods like “Chinatowns.” Oikawa states that “to counter-map the mythologized terrain of Canada, we must understand how social relations are used to create, legitimize, perpetuate, and forget spatial segregations” (Oikawa 79). Though not explicitly using Lefebvre, Oikawa and Lawrence demonstrate through their respective work the ways in which social relations organize and are organized by space. As space is organized and understood through national symbols and narratives, the landscape of the nation is ordered by the ideology of the settler state. Racial arrangements of Canada‟s imagined community are projected onto the land where they produce and maintain the dominance of white settlers. Oikawa and Lawrence highlight how the landscape of the nation, in this case the site of Camp X, is sanitized through 144 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas national narratives that ignore the ways in which space is racially ordered. National narratives of settlers‟ entitlement to the land are cultivated upon this cleared landscape creating, as Winslow claimed, a kind of specialty crop with both symbolic and material meaning. Conclusion In this chapter I have demonstrated that The Art of Silent Killing presents the history of World War II from a white settler perspective, constructing Canadian soldiers to be crusaders of freedom and justice against the barbaric Nazis. The playwright employs conventional tropes of moral crusading men versus savage barbarians, which work to valourize military projects and traditional notions of patriarchal patriotism. In doing so, he reasserts values and virtues that align with the ideology of the settler state. Peacock‟s representation of the war-period further bolsters national narratives of the Second World War that erase racist practices of the nation-state. The 1940s as presented by Peacock do not include considerations of Canada‟s own anti-Jewish immigration policies or the forced internment of Japanese-Canadians. These are important observations to make especially since the narrative is claimed by Peacock to be “authentic” and it is set within the larger discursive framework of the 4th Line Theatre Company as a presentation of Canadian history. I have drawn out the ways in which the play‟s representation of World War II in the space of the 4th Line Theatre Company maintains particular conceptions of national history that inform subjects‟ notions of who and what belongs to the national community. White settlers‟ histories are continually posited as the history of Canada, thereby producing and maintaining a racialized hierarchy of national belonging. The stories of 145 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas racialized settlers and Indigenous peoples are relegated to a status of “other” histories that exist in the shadow of the commonly accepted story. Understanding the ways in which these “alternative” histories are produced offers insight into Razack‟s “bad apple” theory. In The Art of Silent Killing the history of World War II is produced to be predominantly about white settlers‟ experiences fighting evil Germans thereby constructing other narratives of the war period as extraneous. The racist and exclusionary practices of the capitalist-colonial nation-state are manufactured through this primary narrative to be set apart from the “real” history of the war. In this context, histories of “other” national subjects can be framed as examples of a few “bad apples” in an otherwise good and prosperous history of a nation. Questions about the deeply entrenched racialized makeup of the state are rendered invisible and therefore naturalized. The normalized values of a capitalist-colonial nation-state presented herein do not disrupt practices of settler ideology but instead reinforce them by contributing to the larger agenda of nationbuilding. 146 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Conclusion Douglas This thesis focuses on the 4th Line Theatre Production Company as a site that operates in accord with the capitalist-colonial ideology of the Canadian nation-state to maintain dominant social relations which sustain the political, economic, and social dominance of settlers. To begin this project I introduced the concept of Canada as a settler state through the theoretical work of authors Stasiulis, Yuval-Davis, Razack, and Jhappan. These authors demonstrated that both historically and in a contemporary context, Canada is deeply invested in the maintenance of a settler state. Historically, the permanent settlement strategies of Britain were the very foundations of the modern nation-state. In a contemporary context the longevity of the country in its current geo-political formation relies on the ongoing naturalization of the territory, its borders and its settler population. The central aim of my thesis was to research a localized site where practices of settler ideology were at work in order to better understand its complex processes of inclusion and exclusion. To this end, I invoked Althusser‟s theory of the state to consider the ways in which the 4th Line operates as an Ideological State Apparatus in its bolstering of practices of white settler nation-building that are foundational to the agenda of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. Within this theoretical framework the theatre company was not considered as the originator of these practices, but instead as one site or one moment on a continuum of encounters in the naturalization of settlerhood in Canada. However, to characterize the project of settler naturalization as being part of a continuum may be misleading as it insinuates that it functions on a teleological trajectory – that it is a project that grows in strength as it moves closer and closer to one end goal. Indeed, my project demonstrated that national identity-making practices are not confined to any 147 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas particular time, place or medium. Central to my investigation was an analysis of how the ideology of the state is fostered through the company‟s promotional materials, performances, through the space of the theatre and beyond it in local and national media coverage. Moreover, the concept of compulsory settlerhood, introduced in Chapter Three, further asserted that the project of normalizing and naturalizing a settler state necessarily operates in multiple locations and through different mediums in order to maintain an appearance of being natural. In this way, the ideology of the state functions as the land upon which settler identities are cultivated. With this view then, the 4th Line Theatre‟s crop is not a “specialty” crop. Rather, the seeds of the theatre company‟s nationalist discourse were planted through the initial formation of the settler state through colonialism and imperialism. Those seeds have since been nurtured by ideological practices of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. The 4th Line‟s crop is similar to those cultivated at other localized national identity-making sites, such as the Lang Pioneer Village and the Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives. In my analyses of the theatre company I drew out the multiple ways in which the assumed national identity, or the “ordinary” Canadian subject, was actually particular to a white settler identity. At the 4th Line, these simultaneously homogenizing and exclusionary practices took the form of assertions to a common history, a common morality and a common emotional reaction to the company‟s performances. Further examples were drawn out through membership drive campaigns and play development strategies from the 2006 season. Through a textual analysis of the themes of the scripts as well as narratives of nationalism in the promotional materials, the assumed universal subjectivity was further revealed to be organized on lines of gender, race, class, and 148 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures sexuality. Douglas References to previous scholarship authored by Mackey and Bannerji highlighted how practices of naturalizing settlers as the national subjects are not exclusive to sites such as the 4th Line. Throughout their work both theorists have demonstrated how the national identity that is commonly asserted to be “ordinary” and “normal” in Canada is constitutive of white European settlers who in their naturalness are able to make claims to what and who “belongs” to the national community and who and what do not. These constitute the subtle practices of exclusion which Ahmed argues are central to national identity formation. Ahmed‟s theory builds on Althusser‟s concept of hailing by considering the ways in which subjects come to know themselves or find their stable identity by the exclusion of others. Ideological practices of “knowing” who is familiar and who is strange are deeply connected to politico-juridical frameworks such as law which have naturalized capitalist-colonial relations to the land as well as to modes of governance. As was discussed in Chapters One and Three, the very foundation of law in Canada has its roots in the ideology of the settler state. The Common Law system was installed in Canada through British imperialism to mirror the governing structure of the capitalist Empire. The installation of a private property ownership model in Britain‟s Canada not only enshrined individual settlers‟ rights to their place in the national community, but it also ensured settlers‟ long term entitlement to land, capital and a stake in the country‟s mode of governance through individualized property rights. In Chapter Three I investigated the ways in which the company naturalizes capitalist settler relations to the land through the production of the theatre space. I argued that this production of space 149 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas maintains the social relations of power which continue to privilege settlers as the rightful and entitled owners of the land. To flesh this argument out I employed Lefebvre‟s concept of the triad with which to consider the social production of space. Through this exercise I demonstrated how the space was overlain with signs and symbols that naturalized a settler ideology. Together these various sites at the location of the 4th Line – the promotional materials, the media coverage, the performances, and the space - provide encounters with productions of national identity that align with the ideology of the capitalist-colonial nation-state. In doing so, the company does the work of “cultivating” this ideology and ensuring that foundations of a white settler society remain settled. 150 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Appendix A – “Where Our Dollars Come From” Douglas Source: Millbrook: 4th Line Theatre Production Company, 2007/08. 151 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Appendix B – “Media Tracking” Douglas Out of twenty-two articles that I determined to be considered “general information” about the company or the 2006 season, seventeen venerate the 4th Line for its capacity to tell stories that are historical dramas, based on real life events, or based on historical fact. At least five make the point that Doctor Barnardo’s Children is “close to a lot of hearts in the community.” In this chart I have also included the three articles from my self-prescribed category of “general information” which made no such references. # Title Author Publication Date Pg. Histori Based # cal on Real Drama Life Events Based on Historical Fact/”Our History” “Close to a lot of hearts” 1. “Millbrook family Bond, Cathy The Millbrook 29 June 2006 5 enjoys being part of 4th Line Theatre.” Times X 2. “Dramatic Camp Beneteau, X story is captured Jeanne. in Northumberland‟s great outdoors.” sets attendance record, again: Dr. Barnardo‟s Children sold out, Camp X hit 95 per cent.” Oshawa This 28 July 2006 28 Week X th 3. “4 Line Theatre The 5 October C3 Peterborough 2006 Examiner X 4. “4th Line‟s Atkinson, Amazing Run.” Suzanne theatre, Bergen, music festivals and Werner art shows. [sic] What more could you ask for this summer?” Out Here June/July 2006 18- X 19 5. “Live The 21 June 2006 9 Peterborough Examiner X X 6. “Record-breaking season for 4 th Line.” 7. “Summer embraced Line.” theatre Gilchrist, at 4th Lauren. The Lindsay 13 October B2 Daily Post 2006 The Kawarthan July 2006 8 X X X 152 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures 8. “Something Old, Something New.” 9. “Canadian stories Beneteau, captured in the Jeanne great outdoors.” 11 “4th Line takes a Whitnall, . walk on the darker Catherine side.” 12 “The Art of Silent Argyris, . Killing is layered, Eileen brutal, based on reality.” 13 “Outdoor theatre Beneteau, . sizzles with spies Jeanne and intrigue.” 14 “Open Air Theatre Black, . is more than a Murray Breath of Fresh Air.” Peterborough 7 December B8 This Week 2005 The 14 July 2006 21 Northumberla nd News The Lindsay 4 August B7 Daily Post 2006 The Cobourg 17 August 5 Daily Star 2006 Douglas X X X X X X X Oshawa This 18 August C32 Week 2006 The Keene August 2006 4 Corresponden t The Lindsay 18 August B8 Daily Post 2006 X X X 16 “Historical society . keeps camp alive.” 17 “Doctor . Barnardo‟s Children.” Bergen, Werner X X X X The 29 June 2006 C8 Peterborough Examiner The Country Summer Connection 2006 3031 18 “Theatre in the Lawless, Judy. . Rough.” th 19 “4 Line Theatre . experiences record X X X The Millbrook 27 July 2006 5 Times The Lindsay 28 July 2006 B8 Daily Post Peterborough 28 July 2006 32 This Week The Peterborough Examiner 5 August C7 2006 breaking season.” th 20 “4 Line breaking . records for ticket X sales.” th 21 “4 Line Theatre . booms.” X 22 “Camp X is really Bergen, not Werner . theatre, cinema.” 23 “Plays for your Al-Solayle, Kamal . getaway.” Off: Farrington, 24 Showing Staging Summer John . Shows in Ontario.” The Globe 21 July 2006 R21 and Mail Ontario Travel April 2006 Discoveries 3840 153 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Appendix C – “Images from the National Film Board” Douglas Examples of gendered war propaganda that posited that women‟s roles in the war were through their domestic capabilities such as mothering, cooking and saving scraps of metal from around the house. Also present in these selections are common examples of the dehumanization of Nazis through physiognomy. Image from the National Film Board Information Archive Keep These Hands Off! Buy the New Victory Bonds. 1941-42. Odell, Gordon K. Source: National Film Board Archives Online. 2008. National Film Board of Canada. 15 April 2008 <www.nfb.ca/ww2/home front/propagandathe-battle-for-hearts-and-minds.htm>. Attack On All Fronts. 1943. Rogers, Hubert. Source: National Film Board Archives Online. 2008. National Film Board of Canada. 15 April 2008 <www.nfb.ca/ww2/home-front/propagandathe-battle-for-hearts-and-minds.htm>. 154 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas We’re in the army now. 1940-41. Source: National Film Board Archives Online. 2008. National Film Board of Canada. 15 April 2008 <http://nfb.ca/ww2/home-front/women and-the-war.htm>. Recruiting Poster. 1941-1942 Aldwinckle, Eric and Albert E. Cloutier. Source: National Film Board Archives Online. 2008. National Film Board of Canada. 15 April 2008 <http://nfb.ca/ww2/home-front/ recruitment-and-conscription.htm>. 155 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Appendix D – “Complete List of Figures” Douglas Figure Number 1.1 Figure Title and Description Page Reference “A Cavan Blazer” 1 Image from The Cavan Blazers (2004). Taken by Wayne Eardley. Used with photographer‟s permission. “Outdoor Theatre” 80 Image from Fair Play (1999). Taken by Wayne Eardley. Used with photographer‟s permission. “Epic In Nature!” Image of Banner from the 4 th Line Theatre Website. 80 3.1 3.2 3.3 “Selling the Farm” 82 Image from The Art of Silent Killing (2006) and appearing on the back of the 2006/07 Membership Campaign Flyer. Taken by Janette Winslow. Used with photographer‟s permission. “Drawing Lines” 85 th Directional Map. Image from 4 Line Theatre Website as well as on the back of the 4 th Line Theatre Ticket Jackets for 2006. “Tremaine‟s 1861 Map of Cavan Township” 87 Map to illustrate the system of single-front township lots in the Millbrook area. “Lefebvre‟s Triad” 90 Example of Lefebvre‟s conception of social space as related to the 4th Line Theatre Production Company. “Barnardo Photo Exhibit as Representational Space” 95 Image from The Peterborough Examiner (12 July 2006) documenting the exhibit. “Hazelbrae Heritage Marker” 96 Photos of the heritage marker that was erected near the former Hazelbrae All-Girls Boarding Home at 751 George Street. Taken by the author. “Peterborough‟s Pathway of Fame” Three photos of The Pathway of Fame. Taken by the author. 97 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 156 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Works Cited Douglas “4th Line breaking records for ticket sales.” The Lindsay Daily Post 28 July 2006: B8. “4th Line playwrights seeking public input for new production.” The Peterborough Examiner 6 April 2006: C3. 4th Line Theatre 2006 Summer Season Program. 4th Line Theatre Production Company. Peterborough: Lazer Graphics, 2006. “4th Line Theatre booms.” Peterborough This Week 28 July 2006: 32. “4th Line Theatre experiences record breaking season.” The Millbrook Times 27 July 2006: 5. 4th Line Theatre Membership Campaign 2006/2007 Pamphlet. 4th Line Theatre Production Company. Peterborough: The Vincent Press, 2006. “4th Line Theatre plans „sounding‟ research meetings.” The Peterborough Examiner 21 January 2006: C6. 4th Line Theatre Production Company Website. 4th Line Theatre Production Company. Spring 2007. Nexicom. 10 April 2007 <www.4thlinetheatre.on.ca>. “4th Line Theatre sets attendance record, again: Dr. Barnardo‟s Children sold out, Camp X hit 95 per cent.” The Peterborough Examiner 5 October 2006: C3. 4th Line Theatre Ticket Jacket. 4th Line Theatre Production Company. 2006. Abella, Irving and Harold Troper. None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2000. Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge, 2000. Al-Solayle, Kamal. “Plays for your getaway.” The Globe and Mail 21 July 2006: R21. 157 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Aldwinckle, Eric and Albert E. Cloutier. “Recruiting Poster.” 1941-42. National Film Board Archives Online. 2008. National Film Board of Canada. 15 April 2008 <www.nfb.ca/ww2/home-front/recruitmentandconscription.htm>. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards An Investigation.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. 127-188. Trans. of “Idéologie et Appareils Idéologiques D‟Etat: Notes Pour une Recherche).” Paris: La Pensee, 1970. “An Audience with the Queen!” 4th Line Theatre Newsletter. 4th Line Theatre Production Company. November 2002. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1983. Argyris, Eileen. “The Art of Silent Killing is layered, brutal, based on reality.” The Cobourg Daily Star 17 August 2006: 5. Arnup, Katherine. “Education for Motherhood: Creating Modern Mothers and Model Citizens.” Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings. Eds. Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn and Robert Menzies. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002. 247-271. Atkinson, Suzanne. “4th Line‟s Amazing Run.” Out Here. June/July 2006. 18-19. Audience Seating. Personal photograph by the 4th Line Theatre Production Company. 2006. Auger, Martin F. Prisoners of the Home Front: German POWs and ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Southern Quebec, 1940-46. Toronto: UBC Press, 2000. Bannerji, Himani. The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism 158 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures and Gender. Toronto: Canadian Scholars‟ Press, 2000. Douglas Bannerji, Himani, Shahrzad Mojab and Judith Whitehead. Introduction. Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism. Eds. Himani Bannerji, Shahrzad Mojab and Judith Whitehead. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2001. 3-33. “Barmecide.” Oxford English Dictionary. 10th ed. 2002. “Barnardo Play Art.” The Peterborough Examiner 12 July, 2006: D5. Barnardo, Syrie Louise Elmsie, and James Marchant. Memoirs of the Late Dr. Barnardo. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907. Barnardo, Thomas J. The Camera and Doctor Barnardo. National Portrait Gallery. 1974. --------. Something Attempted, Something Done! J.F. Shaw, 1889. Battiste, Marie. Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge. Eds. Marie Battiste and James (Sa‟ke‟j) Youngblood Henderson. Saskatoon: Purich, 2000. Beneteau, Jeanne. “Canadian stories captured in the great outdoors.” The Northumberland News 14 July 2006: 21. Beneteau, Jeanne. “Dramatic Camp X story is captured in Northumberland‟s great outdoors.” Oshawa This Week 28 July 2006: 28. Beneteau, Jeanne. “Outdoor theatre sizzles with spies and intrigue.” Oshawa This Week 18 August 2006: C32. Bergen, Werner. “The Art of Silent Killing Comes to 4th Line Theatre.” The Peterborough Examiner 25 May 2005: D5. Bergen, Werner. “Camp X: It‟s really theatre, not cinema.” The Peterborough Examiner 5 159 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures August 2006: C7. Douglas Bergen, Werner. “Doctor Barnardo‟s Children: Remounting 2005‟s hit presents challenge for the 4th Line Theatre.” The Peterborough Examiner 29 June 2006: C8+. Bergen, Werner. “Live theatre, music festivals and art shows. [sic] What more could you ask for this summer?” The Peterborough Examiner 21 June 2006: 9-10. Bialystok, Franklin. Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community. Kingston: McGill-Queen‟s University Press, 2000. Black, Murray. “Open Air Theatre is more than a Breath of Fresh Air.” Rev. of Doctor Barnardo’s Children by Robert Winslow and Ian McLachlan, and The Art of Silent Killing by Shane Peacock. 4th Line Theatre Production Company, Millbrook, ON. The Keene Correspondent August 2006: 4. Blomley, Nicholas. Law, Space and the Geographies of Power. New York: The Guilford Press, 1994. Blomley, Nicholas. Unsettling the City: Urban Land and the Politics of Property. New York: Routledge, 2004. Bond, Cathy. “4th Line Theatre‟s „Sounding‟ a lively affair.” The Millbrook Times 2 February 2006: 1+. Bond, Cathy. “Millbrook family enjoys being part of 4th Line Theatre.” The Millbrook Times 29 June 2006: 5. Brean, Joseph. “McGuinty Asked to End Native Bargaining.” The National Post 29 April 2008: A6. Bryan, Bradley. “Property as Ontology: On Aboriginal and English Understandings of Ownership.” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1 (2000): 3-31. 160 Settling Pasts and Settling Futures Douglas Cameron, Wendy. “Peter Robinson.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. Library and Archives Canada. 30 June 2008 <www.biographi.ca>. Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Ciaccia, John. The Oka Crisis: A Mirror of the Soul. Dorval: Maren Publications, 2000. “Come to a community „sounding‟.” Advertisement. 4th Line Theatre Production Company. January 2006. “Community Sounding a great success.” The Millbrook Times 16 February 2006: 3. “Community Sounding inspire playwrights.” The Millbrook Times 6 April 2006: 9. Corbett, Gail. Nation Builders: Barnardo Children in Canada. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2002. “Courts Used to Intimidate Natives.” The Toronto Star 28 February 2008: AA5. Darian-Smith, Eve. “Law in Place: Legal Mediations of National Identity and State Territory in Europe.” Nationalism, Racism and the Rule of Law. Ed. Peter Fitzpatrick. Sudbury, MA: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1995. 27-44. Darragh, Ian. Foreword. Blatant Injustice: The story of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II. By Walter W. Igersheimer. Kingston: McGill-Queen‟s University Press, 2000. vii-xxiv. Davies, Margaret. Property: Meanings, Histories, Theories. New York: RoutledgeCavendish, 2007. Delano-Smith, Catherine, and Roger J.P. Kain. English Maps: A History. 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