Published March 7, 2024

Taylor Clark

LJI Reporter

Historian and Carleton University professor Anne Trépanier stopped by the Chartwell Monastère

d’Aylmer on February 21 to give a sneak peek of her new book De l’hydre au castor.

“How can all discordant interests be reconciled around a common project? This is the question of

Canada,” said Trépanier.

Organized by the Partenaires du secteur Aylmer, attendees dived into Trépanier’s research on

how the Canadian Confederation was understood through representations of unborn Canada in

satirical newspapers.

“Were there common representations of what Canada was going to be like in 1867? The answer

is yes. There are several common representations, but they are all negative,” said Trépanier. “We

see that Canada is a source of combined fear and hope, and then Confederation is the result of

the tension between the peril of assimilation and that of belonging to a great fear.”

Among the most common representations found by Trépanier were forced marriage and

monsters, but while their form was consistent, their meaning would shift. She explained,

“That is to say that there are characters, fables, allegories which repeat themselves, but do not necessarily

express the same thing, depending on the place where the newspaper is produced.”

Interests of the region, sentiments toward the union, as well as the intellectual, physical,

economic, and cultural environment would shift interpretation.

Trépanier explained that forced marriage represented political alliance, “the overhaul of heritage

and the domination of one group over the other.” The theme developed from 1843 and

throughout the pre-Confederation due to the union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada.

She said it was no coincidence the image of monsters also reared its ugly head with the first

occurrence as a seven-headed hydra.

“This monster precisely expresses divergent interest. How can this big body move if there are

several heads? That’s the idea.”

In both cases, Trépanier explained the deeper meaning lies with submission or belonging.

“The territories which would enter the Confederation in 1867 did not yet communicate in this

imagined community that the Canadian nation would become through numerous nation-building

efforts. But the pictorial story of what it could become nevertheless helped to constitute it.”

The metaphor of forced marriage, the image of the monster and other representations during the

Canadian Confederation are examined further in De l’hydre au castor: Imaginaire et représentations de la Confédération dans la presse de l’Amérique du Nord britannique.

Photo caption: Historian and professor at Carleton University Anne Trépanier signs a bookmark

at her presentation of Canadian Pre-Confederation history through caricature on February 21.

Photo credit: Taylor Clark

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