Trent University Professor Bryan Palmer Launches
New Book Exploring Impact of 1960s: Rebellions on the Canadian Identity
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Just How Rebellious Were Canadians in the 1960s?
And What Lasting Effects Did That Rebellion
Have On Canadians’ Sense Of Self?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009, Peterborough
The social and cultural effects resulting from the tumultuous events
of the 1960s is the focus of a new book just published by Trent
University professor and Canada Research Chair Dr. Bryan Palmer
entitled Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era.
Focusing on the major movements and personalities of the time, as
well as the lasting influence of the period, Canada’s 1960s
examines the legacy of this rebellious decade’s impact on
contemporary notions of Canadian identity. Prof. Palmer, who is
also chair of Trent’s Canadian Studies Department, demonstrates
through this book how after massive postwar immigration, new
political movements, and at times violent protest, Canada could no
longer be viewed in the old ways. National identity, long rooted in
notions of Canada as a white settler Dominion of the North, marked profoundly by its
origins as part of the British Empire, had become unsettled.
Concerned with how Canadians entered the Sixties relatively secure in their national (if
mythical) identities, Prof. Palmer explores the forces that contributed to the post-1970
uncertainty about what it is to be Canadian. Tracing the significance of dissent and
upheaval among youth, trade unionists, university students, Native peoples, and
Québécois, Prof. Palmer shows how the Sixties ended the entrenched, nineteenth-century
notions of Canada. The irony of this rebellious era, however, was that while it promised so
much in the way of change, it failed to provide a new understanding of Canadian national
identity. A compelling and highly accessible work of interpretive history, Canada's Sixties
is the book of the decade about an era many regard as the most turbulent and significant
since the years of the Great Depression and World War II.
-30-
For further information, please contact Professor Bryan Palmer, chair of the
Canadian Studies Department at (705) 748-1011, ext. 6061.