Book Launch: Canada in the World /w Tyler Shipley

Launch of Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination (Fernwood Books, 2020), with author Tyler Shipley, as well as Cassandra Kislenko, Sara Jaffri, and Veldon Coburn.

Canada in the World is an accessible and empirically rich introduction to Canada’s engagements in the world since confederation. Colonialism – the project to establish settler capitalism in North America and the ideological assumption that Europeans were more advanced and thus deserved to conquer the Indigenous people – argues Shipley, lives at the very heart of Canada, as well as in Canada’s role around the world. Through a close examination of Canadian foreign policy, from crushing an Indigenous rebellion in El Salvador, ‘peacekeeping’ missions in the Congo and Somalia, Cold War interventions in Vietnam and Indonesia, and participation in the Global War on Terror, Shipley highlights continuities across more than 150 years of history and probes the colonial imagination that has shaped Canada. Challenging this requires rethinking the fundamental nature of Canada itself.

Tyler Shipley is Professor of Culture, Society and Commerce at Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning.

Recorded online, 17 September 2020.