NOUVEAUX CAHIERS DU SOCIALISME

LaGrenade, Pierre. “Salaberry-de-Valleyfield : un nom, une histoire.” Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme, number 22, fall 2019, p. 16–20.

“Its history is closely linked to workers’ and citizens’ struggles and resistance. This is an important working-class town.”

Read on Érudit : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/91521ac (in French)

HISTOIRE QUÉBEC

Giroux, Monique T. “L’industrie du vêtement, une marque indélébile de l’histoire de Victoriaville et sa région.” Histoire Québec, volume 24, number 1, 2018, p. 25–28.

“The Industrial Revolution profoundly transformed people’s living conditions.”

Read on Érudit : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/88329ac (in French)

NOUVEAUX CAHIERS DU SOCIALISME

LaGrenade, Pierre. “Une classe ouvrière qui résiste.” Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme, number 22, fall 2019, p. 49–56.

“Throughout its history, Salaberry-de-Valleyfield has been marked by an extraordinary fighting spirit among its workers.”

Read on Érudit : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/93217ac (in French)

Northern Living

How do we think about the cold world, the “North”, the Arctic, even winter and all the phenomena and signs that make it up? Although winter, the North and the cold are not new, until recently they have been little studied and thought about as phenomena. There are several reasons for this lack of knowledge, noted as early as the 1960s by Quebec geographer and linguist Louis-Edmond Hamelin, who called for a critical rethinking of the neologisms he proposed at the time, which have become dynamic research programs: “nordicité” (the state of the North) and “hivernité” (the state of winter). Both concepts involve a multidisciplinary approach, calling for the study of physical, social, psychological, economic, urbanistic, cultural, literary, linguistic and aesthetic aspects. Finally, they allow us to define North and Winter without associating them with their opposites, but rather in terms of their components and how they function in their own right. This allows for a fertile reversal, identifying the possibilities of the cold world in a positive way, rather than considering it only in terms of “adaptation” to models imagined for more temperate climates.

So, when he coined the neologism “nordicité” in his Quebec City laboratory in the 1960s, Hamelin wanted to make up for the lack of vocabulary in the French (and, by extension, English) language to designate the climate and environment in which he lived. Little did he know how popular this notion would become, and how it would become part of the identity of Quebecers and other northern peoples. Over the course of his career, Hamelin created hundreds of other words to describe the physical, social and cultural realities of the “North”. He felt that, without the right words, we remained “illiterate” about the realities around us. Not having words to describe the world not only restricts us to a lack of knowledge, but also to discomfort, and even rejection of what we perceive.

Today, thanks to these advances, we can initiate new comparisons between Nordic cultures and societies (from Quebec, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and Finland) that do not only concern their climatic aspects: the notion of the “imaginary of the North” opens up a new perspective for understanding all the signs, phenomena, behaviours, representations and practices associated with living in a space marked on the one hand by the differentiated seasonal alternation of light and darkness, and on the other by the alternation between a temperate and a cold climate. How can we take advantage of cold, snow, darkness and ice? How can we better imagine and live the inner retreat (psychological and physical) that is winter? How do we think about the North within ourselves? These are the fascinating questions raised by nordicity, and the intellectual challenges they impose on researchers to find ways of living better, and happier, in the cold world.

Daniel Chartier, professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal and director of the Laboratoire international de recherche sur l’imaginaire du Nord, de l’hiver et de l’Arctique.