Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music (University of Toronto Press, 2009).

Book Blurb: The Guess Who. Gordon Lightfoot. Joni Mitchell. Neil Young. Stompin' Tom Connors. Robert Charlebois. Anne Murray. Crowbar. Chilliwack. Carole Pope. Loverboy. Bryan Adams. The Barenaked Ladies. The Tragically Hip. Céline Dion. Arcade Fire. K-oS. Feist.

Musicians are national heroes to generations of Canadians. But what does it mean to be a Canadian musician? And why does nationality even matter? Canuck Rock addresses these questions by delving into the myriad relationships between the people who make music, the industries that produce and sell it, the radio stations and government legislation that determine availability, and the fans who consume it and make it their own.

An invaluable resource and an absorbing read, Canuck Rock spans from the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s through to today's international recording industry. Combining archival material, published accounts, and new interviews, Ryan Edwardson explores how music in Canada became Canadian music.

Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood (University of Toronto Press, 2008).

Book blurb: A nation is given shape in large part through the cultural activities of its builders. Historically, nationalists have turned to the arts and media to articulate and institute a sense of unique national identity. This was certainly true of Canada in the twentieth century. Canadian Content explores ways in which nationhood was defined and pursued through cultural means in Canada throughout the last century.

Canadian Content looks at Canada as an ongoing postcolonial process of not one but a series of radically different nationhoods, each with its own valued but tentative set of cultural criteria for orchestrating and implementing a Canadian national experience. Considering the relationship between culture and national identity, this study offers an idea of what it means to be Canadian, and suggests just how adaptable, problematic, and ongoing the pursuit of nationhood can be.

'Canadianization: Culture and Nationhood in the Postwar Years', in Catherine Briggs, ed., Modern Canada: 1945 to the Present (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2013).

That the Canada of today is not the Canada of fifty years ago (or of the fifty years before that) is obvious. Nonetheless there is an overwhelming sense of ‘one’ Canada, a core nation, its existence a given. Yet whereas countries are built through political, economic, and industrial infrastructures, nations are not so much built as they are conceptualized into existence through a shifting and contested collection of signs and symbols. As ideological constructs, nations require periodic adaptation. Culture, and the ways in which it has been used, has made possible both the imagining as well as re-imagining of the nation, promoting an essentialistic reality while also adapting it to changing demographics. Canadianization can be thought of as a paradigm or process by which culture is used to identify and popularize a Canadian national sense of self. Characteristic of this is how the identification of just what was cultural, and the model of nationhood for which it was being rallied, has changed dramatically.

‘Other Canadian Voices: The Development of Ethnic Broadcasting in Canada’, in Camille Nelson and Charmaine Nelson, eds., Racism, eh? A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology on Race in the Canadian Context (Toronto: Captus Press, 2004): 316-325.

Directed by a dualistic British and French-Canadian mandate, Canadian broadcasting regulators actively restricted and marginalized ethnic broadcasters and their audiences during the first half of the twentieth century. Consequently, by the 1950s entrepreneurs increasingly turned to private stations for access to air-time. It was a mutually beneficial relationship: private stations accessed marginalized and neglected commercial markets while audiences received the desired broadcasting services. The popularity of minority-language programming challenged the national hegemony, however, and the government enacted regulations that required ‘ethnic’ programming to be offset with assimilationist content, thereby attempting to integrate audiences into the British-French conception of Canadian identity. Despite the hurdles established by governmental broadcasting regulators, by the 1960s the popularity of ethnic programming led to the founding of stations dedicated to serving numerous ethnic and language communities, carving out new relationships and solidifying their place in an increasingly multicultural mosaic.

‘A Canadian Modernism: The Pre-Group of Seven ‘Algonquin School’, 1912-1917’, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol.17, No.1 (2004): 81-92.

Despite the claims of many Canadian nationalists for over seventy years, the Group of Seven did not produce a distinctly Canadian art which shed all traces of its European heritage. In order to understand the origins of Canadian modern art, one must recognize that European modern art came to Canada in the 1911-1917 work of Tom Thomson and future Group of Seven artists J.E.H. MacDonald, Lauren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, and F.H. Varley. While the Group of Seven was not formed until 1921, it was in the previous decade that these artists developed the art which provided the foundation for the Group of Seven’s notoriety. Although these artists had individual artistic interests, some of which included portrait painting, the existence of collaboration and consensus in artistic direction by 1913 which focused on Canadian landscapes cannot be denied. The shared desire to paint the Canadian landscape provided an early group identity, called The Algonquin School by some. As in much of Canadian society, Canadian modern art was developed as a hybrid of foreign influences and domestic desires; European modern art aesthetics were infused into a Canadian landscape art tradition and a burgeoning nationalist consciousness, producing a synthesis for what would become a heralded national art. Through these pre-Group of Seven artists, modernism came to Canada.

‘The Many Lives of Captain Canuck: Nationalism, Culture, and the Creation of a Canadian Comic Book Superhero’, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol.37, No.2 (Nov. 2003): 184-201.

Reprinted in Cynthia Comacchio and Jane Errington eds., People, Places and Times: Readings in Canadian Social History, Volume II, Post-Confederation (Thomson Nelson: 2006): 393-403.

Published from 1975 to 1981, Captain Canuck was adistinctly Canadian comic book series which provided Canadians with an exciting superhero and adventures thatincorporated national myths, symbols, and locations. Despite its popularity, due to the expense of publishing in Canada the comic ceased production several times. Yet this was not the end of Captain Canuck. Recognizing the value of popular culture superheroes, the Canadian government revived Captain Canuck as a national symbol. This article is about the creation of a Canadian superhero and how, following its demise, the nation it served incorporated and popularized it as an important part of Canadiana.

‘Of War Machines and Ghetto Scenes’: English-Canadian Nationalism and The Guess Who’s ‘American Woman’, American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol.33, No.3 (Autumn 2003): 339-356.

The most popular Canadian rock and roll song ever produced, The Guess Who’s “American Woman” is also the strongest musical manifestation of Canadian anti-Americanism. Its 1970 release coincided with a period of tremendous English-Canadian nationalism, vocalizing the concerns and hostility of many Canadians towards the United States. The song’s value transcends the sphere of popular music--it is an important continental popular culture artifact. “American Woman” constructed a straw-man (or straw-nation) out of stereotypes and preconceptions of an oppressive, militaristic, ghettoized, superficial society, drawing on and disseminating a specific image of the United States. “American Woman” illustrates how public consciousness can shape, and be shaped by, popular music. This article explores “American Woman” as a cultural artifact created and interpreted within a specific and contentious period of English-Canadian cultural and national consciousness.

‘Kicking Uncle Sam out of the Peaceable Kingdom: English-Canadian ‘New Nationalism’ and Americanization’, Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol.37, No.4 (Winter 2002): 131-150.

This journal article examines the English-Canadian nationalist intelligentsia’s reaction to Americanization and the attempt to reclaim Canadian sovereignty during the 1960s and 1970s. Ranging from moderate to radical, the so-called ‘New nationalism’ boomed as English-Canadians indulged in producing and consuming Canadiana. While the movement failed in its political goals, it succeeded in drawing attention to domestic problems and in providing a ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ sense of place during a time of national renegotiation and international insecurity.

‘Narrating a Canadian Identity: Arthur R.M. Lower’s Colony to Nation and the Nationalization of History’, International Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol.23 (Fall 2002): 59-75.

Released in 1946, Arthur R.M. Lower’s Colony to Nationwas one of the most popular Canadian history texts ever produced. It informed and educated a generation of EnglishCanadians with its exciting story of heroes and victims, triumphs and tragedies, and a colony which developed into a nation. It was more than an historical text, however, it was Lower’s attempt to unite English and French Canadians in a shared, historically-rooted identity. Emplotting a selective nationalist narrative, Colony to Nation was a combination of history, storytelling and manifesto. As a relic of Canadian nation-building, it serves as an example of how history can be used to tell the past while attempting to shape the future.