Just Watch Us: rcmp Surveillance of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Cold War Canada (original) (raw)

2019, Canadian Historical Review

kilometres, it soon became involved with general civil service duties, and its officers, in a departure from the practice back east, served as magistrates. Dunn vividly conveys the challenges faced and hardships experienced by the force in its early years. As noted above, the author acknowledges the vulnerability and sufferings of the Plains First Nations, and he provides plenty of examples of ambivalent attitudes toward, and relations with, Indigenous peoples on the part of the police, ranging from racial prejudice and intimidation to respect and intermarriage. Yet Dunn avoids the big issue of how the nwmp, to borrow from Daschuk, helped clear the Plains. He does acknowledge that by the early 1880s, "the honeymoon" between the police and many First Nations was over (624). He also provides glimpses of how the Metis in the NorthWest Territories aided the police and acted as a type of "buffer" with the Indians (619). Readers will be troubled by the use of the pejorative term "squaw" to describe Indigenous women: it is one thing to include it in a quotation from a primary source but another to use it in one's own writing. Additionally, a photograph of a naked First Nations woman seems gratuitous, especially as it is attributed to a newspaper in Montana and has no apparent connection with the nwmp. The author is a fan of Commissioner Acheson Gosford Irvine (1880-6), whose career was cut short due to the government's loss of confidence following the performance of the nwmp during the NorthWest Rebellion. He calls the failure of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (dcb) to cover Irvine "ridiculous." Describing it as "silly revisionism of Canadian history" or "academic ineptitude," Dunn is seemingly unaware that the dcb depends on volunteer authors to provide entries. The dcb also attempts to portray representative individuals from Canada's past, including the "unimportant Indians[,]. .. minor Mounties and criminals," who Dunn sees as less worthy (754). The size of the book and the amount of detail may intimidate some readers, and academics may be troubled by the apparent tendency of the author to accept all sources at face value. Yet the chapters are of a reasonable length, and the narrative, enlivened by countless anecdotes and human-interest stories, will hold the attention of most readers. The book contains roughly 150 photographs or illustrations, a useful timeline, and an index of names.