Chambers begins with stories about her Irish and Scottish-Canadian heritage, and her ancestors’ emigration from the United Kingdom to its colony in Canada. Through the lives of her grandparents and other relatives, Chambers outlines a short history of those settlers who moved to the North, their reasons for going, and the types of landscapes they encountered. The history of Canada’s use of northern resources is told at the same time: the gold rush, the northern treaties, and the interactions between Northern settlers and Indigenous peoples. It is a personal exploration of the links between curriculum studies, heritage, history, landscapes, and responsibilities.

Abstract:

I’m a commoner by birth, with no inherited rights of property or privilege other than race (color white) and language (English): Irish peasants onmy mother’s side, landless Scots on my father’s side. My mother cursed my father: “You, son of a coal miner!” The men in my father’s family went underground to mine shale, not coal, (AAPG n.d.), a distinction that my father was careful to point out, and which my mother was careful to ignore. My father’s retort was to call my mother “Irish,” with all the disdain of a curse, one that accounted for her various shortcomings: a voice too loud, a tongue too quick, and manners too coarse. One March 17th, long after my mother had died, my father phoned from Vancouver to wish me a happy St. Patrick’s Day, adding, “Well, you are Irish!” A quick reminder of what is uncommon between us. Although, both my 90-year-old father and I know that lowland Scots and northern Irish have bonked back and forth across Irish Channel since the Battle of the Boyne. Such national leapfrogging makes purity of identity based solely on nationality fictional and hard to defend, though defend, my ancestors did. While my father’s father, Thomas Chambers, was born in Scotland, his father was born in County Antrim, Ireland. However, Thomas Chambers would become enraged at the mere insinuation that he was Irish.

Access this Resource:

Chambers, Cynthia. “‘We are all treaty people’: The contemporary countenance of Canadian Curriculum Studies.” Reconsidering Canadian Curriculum Studies: Provoking Historical, Present, and Future Perspectives, edited by Nicholas Ng-A-Fook and Jennifer Rottman, 23-38. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.