Welcome to the 2013 Canadian Studies Roundtable

The Canadian Studies program at Western Michigan University is calling to order the 2013 Annual Canadian Studies Roundtable on Friday, March 22, 2013 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Fetzer Center.

We invite scholars, teachers, students and the general public to join us for a day of workshops and analysis of current events regarding the United States-Canada relationship.

Registration information

9 a.m. Registration and refreshments

9:20 a.m. Opening remarks

9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

"Politics and Society in Contemporary Quebec"
Eric Marquis
Head of Post, Quebec Government Office, Chicago
Eric Marquis officially began his mandate as Québec Government Representative in Chicago on October 31, 2011. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Marquis was Director for Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, at the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec. A graduate of the University of Victoria in British Columbia and Concordia University in Montréal, he taught American history and American foreign policy in various Québec universities. Marquis has been working for the Québec government since 1999, and his work has generally focused on Québec-United States relations. He has held a number of positions both in Québec and abroad, including a three-year mandate as director of the Québec Government Office in Washington from 2004 to 2007.

10:45 to 11:45 a.m.

"237 Years of Canada-U.S. Relations -- In an Hour"
Roy Norton
Canadian Consul in Detroit
Representing Canada in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky since 2010, Roy Norton holds many degrees, from Carleton University, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Norton served at various positions representing Canada, including at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., notably as responsible of relations between Canada and the U.S. Congress.

11:45 a.m. Luncheon lecture

"Archaeological Contributions to the Study of New France: The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project"

Dr. Michael S.Nassaney
WMU Professor of Anthropology
Michael S. Nassaney (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst) is a professor of Anthropology at Western Michigan University and principal investigator of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, an interdisciplinary program in community service learning that examines the history and archaeology of the fur trade and colonialism at the 18th-century site of Fort St. Joseph in Niles, Mich. His research interests include historical archaeology, French colonial archaeology, the fur trade, social identity, and material analysis, and have led to more than 100 publications. He is also editor of "Le Journal," the quarterly publication of the Center for French Colonial Studies.

 12:45 p.m. 

"French Traders and Trace Goods in the Western Great Lakes Region, 1715-1760"

Dr. Dean Anderson
Dr. Dean Anderson is the State Archaeologist for Michigan. He has a long-standing interest in the history and archaeology of the French period fur trade. He has been involved in research at archaeological sites of the French period in the western Great Lakes region, including both trading post sites and Native American sites.

By the beginning of the 18th century, the French period fur trade was conducted directly with Native American groups in the western Great Lakes region.  The system hinged upon canoe transport of trade goods and furs and a far-flung web of trading posts scattered across the region.  French traders assembled cargoes of trade goods based on patterns of trading behavior they observed in their Indian trading partners.  These patterns of trade were, in turn, reflected in patterns of purchasing by French traders as they acquired trade goods from merchants in Montreal.  Business records kept by Montreal merchants offer fascinating insight into the trade system in terms of the range of types of goods purchased by traders and the types of goods that dominated the trade.

1:45 p.m.

"This Post ... Will be the Paris of New France: Colonial Detroit's Development into and Atlantic Entrepôt, 1701-1796"

Dr. Catherine Cangany
Dr. Catherine Cangany is an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.  She received her Ph.D. in early American history and Atlantic studies from the University of Michigan in 2009.  She currently serves as the vice president of the Center for French Colonial Studies and as a consultant for the Greater West Bloomfield Historical Society. In this PowerPoint presentation Dr. Cangany argues that success as a fur-trade outpost allowed Detroit to expand its commercial endeavors after 1730 into two new arenas: transnational merchandising (luxury goods for the permanent French population) and manufacturing (export goods like moccasins).  Both endeavors point to Detroit’s economic and cultural incorporation into the wider Atlantic world, and to Detroit’s development into a frontier seaport, an entrepôt located in the West but also thoroughly linked to the eastern seaboard and to Western Europe.

3 p.m.

"French Land Occupation in the Detroit River Region, 1730s-1790s"
Dr. Guillaume Teasdale
Dr. Guillaume Teasdale teaches in the Department of History at the University of Windsor, Ontario. He has co-edited French and Indians in the Heart of North America, 1630-1815 (Michigan State University Press, 2013). His research interests focus on the eighteenth-century Great Lakes region.

Prior to the development of Detroit as a major urban center of the Midwest during the nineteenth century, thousands of French settlers from the St. Lawrence valley, in present-day Quebec, inhabited that region. Originally, they lived within Fort Detroit, established in 1701. However, by the 1730s they established agricultural settlements on both sides of the Detroit River. This presentation examines the context in which these settlers took possession of the land along the Detroit River during the New France era and after the British conquest. It also looks at the impact of the French land occupation on the early urban planning of the cities of Detroit and Windsor.

4 p.m.
Film screening and discussion

Mesnak
Yves Sioui-Durand, the film's director and producer will lead the discussion.

"Mesnak" was produced in Quebec in 2011 and runs for 96 minutes.
English subtitles.

Film description: Dave, an urban aboriginal in his early twenties, is a Montreal actor. His adoption at the age of 3 has erased all memory of his Native culture. When he receives his first-ever contact with his biological mother through a photo in the mail, Dave leaves for Kinogamish, the reserve where he was born. And where his biological mother, Gertrude, still lives. The reunion does not unfold as expected and Dave becomes disoriented, confronted with a world that seems hostile and foreign. Although alienated from his Native culture, can Dave find a home there? Like Hamlet, the Shakespearian hero who he is working on in theatre class, Dave starts to experience an identity crisis. His unplanned return to this desolate community causes upheavals and chain reactions, while dredging up a painful past scarred by secrets and lies.