Canadian Ethnic Studies, Special Issue: Ethnic Art and Architecture, XVI (Fall 1984). Calgary: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association, 1984. Pp. 186. Illustrations. $7.00 All Rights Reserved © Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 1986 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 21:39 Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine Canadian Ethnic Studies, Special Issue: Ethnic Art and Architecture, XVI (Fall 1984). Calgary: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association, 1984. Pp. 186. Illustrations. $7.00 John C. Lehr Special Issue on the History of Canadian Housing Policy Volume 15, numéro 1, june 1986 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1018901ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1018901ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine ISSN 0703-0428 (imprimé) 1918-5138 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce compte rendu Lehr, J. C. (1986). Compte rendu de [Canadian Ethnic Studies, Special Issue: Ethnic Art and Architecture, XVI (Fall 1984). Calgary: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association, 1984. Pp. 186. Illustrations. $7.00]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 15(1), 97–98. https://doi.org/10.7202/1018901ar https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/uhr/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1018901ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1018901ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/uhr/1986-v15-n1-uhr0856/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/uhr/ Book Reviews/Comptes rendus Throughout they fail to estabish a sufficient context for comparison, to present the Calgary experience in the light of development elsewhere. How sycophantic is journalism in other Canadian cities, how are other civic exhibitions man- aged, which other cities have coped better with explosive urban growth? Only the discussion of construction accidents shows just how bad the local record was compared with other provinces and against the earlier Alberta figures. The other arguments presented are too often without a clear frame or solid foundation. The recital of instances of mismanagement, manipula- tion, and waste records some useful material for a future history of the boom years, and will win the reader's agree- ment that all this is deplorable, that somehow things should be better, but fails to suggest what improvement is likely, or how it might be achieved. The one contributor with experi- ence of political office, one-time alderman Elaine Husband, explains that she chose not to run again despite strong sup- port because she had no interest in playing "loyal opposition." Organized community power was more important, she felt, in improving the balance of a political process dominated by business interests. Her choice seems to confirm a disheart- ening message: representative government doesn't work, the representatives are either pawns or powerless; the best you can do is join the manipulators by establishing your own power block. Urban evolution is reduced to social Darwin- ism. Stampede City was clearly not intended to address the larger questions of civic life and growth. Nonetheless they are implicit in the experience presented and the perspective taken. What roles should and do power blocks, administra- tors, politicians and voters play in shaping the city, and the experience of its citizens. Can and should everyone's imme- diate interests be equally powerful? What place is there for the vision of a Burnham and the ambition of a Drapeau? In the light of their efforts, Calgary's ambitions, and its fail- ures, seem modest. This collection reminds us of both. Michael McMordie Faculty of Environmental Design University of Calgary Canadian Ethnic Studies, Special Issue: Ethnic Art and Architecture, XVI (Fall 1984). Calgary: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association, 1984. Pp. 186. Illustrations. $7.00. The Canadian scholarly journal, Canadian Ethnic Stud- ies, published three times a year, periodically devotes special issues to specific themes in ethnic studies. The recent Fall issue of 1984 was one such volume, devoted to the topic of ethnic art and architecture in Canada, some 186 pages with nine major articles, one research note, a review article, sev- eral book reviews, and a special bibliography centred upon the theme of the issue. Although the declared topic is ethnic art and architec- ture, the thrust of the issue is clearly towards ethnic architecture. Of the major papers only two deal directly with ethnic art; the review article and the research note address the art component of the theme, but in general it appears that ethnic art receives short shrift. Although it may be argued that architecture is an art form, it seems unfortunate that the editors did not separate out the two themes as dis- tinctive manifestations of ethnicity, and devote an issue to each theme, rather than attempting to integrate them in a single issue. Architecture and ethnicity is covered here from a variety of standpoints. The approaches range from the analytical to descriptive and from the innovative to conventional. Taken together they provide a good baromètre of the level of schol- arship in the field and provide a ready indication of those fields which are making significant contributions to this facet of ethnic studies in Canada. The collection of articles opens with papers by Trevor Boddy and Radoslav Zuk, who address, respectively: "Eth- nic Identity and Contemporary Canadian Architecture," and "Architectural Significance and Culture." The following articles range across domestic and religious vernacular eth- nic architecture, from the structure and symbolism of a Swiss-German Mennonite farmstead of Waterloo County, Ontario; through Doukhobor architecture; to ethnic reli- gious architecture as exemplified by three churches in Sydney, Nova Scotia. In Canada there is an unfortunate but common miscon- ception that ethnic contributions to the Canadian architectural heritage are confined to the quaint or pictur- esque heritage of European folk architecture transferred to Canada by those who pioneered the agricultural frontier- lands of the New World. In his opening article Boddy refutes this as he argues that recent immigrants and Canadians from ethnic and religious minorities have enjoyed considerable success as architects. Of these, the Edmonton Métis, Doug- las Cardinal, the Winnipeg Franco-Manitoban, Etienne Gaboury, and the Toronto-based Japanese-Canadian, Ray- mond Moriyama, are perhaps the best known. Through a review of their careers Boddy attempts to isolate the one factor which has caused them to rise to the top of their profession. He argues that the role that their ethnicity has played was, and is, that of a "simulacrum which focuses and forges character within a far-too-homogenized culture" (p. 13). More prosaic, but probably of equal significance was the position of all three outside the social elite of Canada's two "founding nations" and their consequent exclusion from a social network through which contacts could be made and contracts awarded. Pushed by circumstance to obtain work strictly upon their own demonstrated merits they made Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine special use of design competitions as a democractic way of obtaining commissions and demonstrating their architec- tural qualities. This led to their being typed as "high design" prima donnas with no overt manifestation of their ethnic heritage appearing in their major designs. The ethnic tradi- tion, indeed, was displayed mostly through a ready sensitivity to the relationship between architecture and environment, more especially, between building and the regional environ- ment. It is this quality which offers the most promising opportunities for the development of distinctive and appro- priate regional styes of architecture in this country. This concern with image, meaning, and an embodiment of sense of place in building design is central to Radoslav Zuk's article dealing with architectural significance and cul- ture. Zuk, a professor of architecture at McGill University and a practising architect of Ukrainian background, is well known for his innovative designs of Ukrainian-Catholic churches. Here Zuk explains his approach toward design of ethnic architectural icons. Briefly put, his philosophy is that the organization, presence and image of a building, which relate, respectively, to the functional, absolute, and expres- sive aspects of architecture, need expression beyond the traditional forms and materials of pioneer immigrant build- ing. New materials, changed economic circumstances and transformed landscapes demand a re-expression of the Ukrainian spirit in modernistic forms within which tradi- tional values are maintained in a conceptual way. The implementation of this thesis is well illustrated — both lit- erally and figuratively — through a discussion of his evolving approach toward the design of five Ukrainian churches, commissioned between 1964 and 1982. Both Boddy and Zuk address an issue too often neglected in the study of "ethnic" architecture in Canada: the place and role of ethnicity in the modern landscape, which for most intents will entail a study of the function of ethnicity in high-style urban based building. In following articles Nancy-Lou Patterson examines Mennonite farmsteads in Waterloo County and William Thompson addresses the question of meaning in Hutterite architecture and patterns of settlement. Both adopt an ana- lytic approach in an attempt to achieve an understanding of the underlying forces which shape the respective cultural forms associated with both group». Mark Mealing pursues a similar approach to the explanation of Doukhobor archi- tectural forms as found in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, tracing the evolution of Doukhobor architectural forms from the beginning of the sect in seventeenth century Russia and assessing the changes which contact with the wider society and an evolving theological debate have had upon the Doukhobor's building traditions. A study of three churches in Sydney, Nova Scotia, by Elizabeth Beaton-Planetta adopts a somewhat different approach, relying more upon the description of the churches and their communities to illustrate the diversity of architec- ture built, and still maintained, by ethnic groups in a Canadian urban setting. Unlike the foregoing papers she makes no real attempt to analyse the expression of symbolic meaning within the context of the built form and the paper, though well researched and thorough, lacks the intellectual challenge found earlier. The final paper, which is devoted to an architectural topic, is that by geographer Audrey Kobayashi, "Emigration to Canada and Development of the Residential Landscape in a Japanese Village: The Paradox of the Sojourner." This is a fascinating account of the ways in which emigration affected the landscape and architecture of one village — Kaideima — in Japan, and by extension, illuminating the process of landscape change in the homeland as initiated by the process of emigration and return. Kobayashi's paper is noteworthy on a number of counts: it poses new questions, provides new insights, and may well serve as a model for future work on landscape change and the emigration pro- cess. Most scholarship has simply viewed the cultural transfer associated with emigration as a one way affair: the emi- grants export culture to the new land. Kobayashi shows that it is not always so, that the process is complex and defies simplistic interpretation. All this notwithstanding, Kobayashi's paper leaves many questions unanswered. She readily acknowledges this, and concludes by noting that further studies are needed to show "different dynamics of preservation and change, and con- firm the claim that the value of 'tradition' is interpreted according to individual and group circumstances" (p. 128). If these further studies maintain the excellent quality of this pioneer article then Kobayashi will have made a major con- tribution to the understanding of the emigration process and the ethnic impact upon landscape. This brief revue has dwelt only upon those papers which focus upon ethnic architecture. Together they comprise an excellent collection, diverse in approach but still preserving a strong sense of unity. It is unfortunate that those articles which are devoted to ethnic art seem misplaced within the context, or imbalance, of the volume. That, however, is no reflection upon their content, but it seems to this reviewer that it was somewhat injudicious to place them amongst a set of papers devoted to architecture. They deserve place- ment in a similar volume wherein ethnic art is more fully considered. John C. Lehr Department of Geography University of Winnipeg