Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Holiday Wrap-Up 

• A message from our Director
• Quviaksukvik, the Inuit winter festival
• Holiday recipe: Traditional Canadian eggnog

Academic Opportunities

• Call for proposals: Association of Canadian Studies in Ireland 21st Biennial International Conference
• Call For papers: International Journal of Canadian Studies

External Events

• Cirque du Soleil returns to the Bay Area

 Happy Holidays from Canadian Studies! 

Dear friends,

As we wrap up 2023, I would like to take a moment to look back on a year of change and give you an update on the upcoming year. In my first six months as director, I have been very gratified by the engagement our community has shown us. Fall semester highlights include one of our students winning a national prize in Canadian studies. I am more confident than ever in the ability of our program to encourage outstanding work in this field.

Our Spring Colloquium will continue to highlight diverse perspectives in Canadian studies. We will be examining a wide variety of Canadian identities and experiences. I look forward to sharing our speaker lineup with you soon, and hope you can join us for what promises to be a standout semester. In addition, we have new initiatives in the works for next year that should bring increased student engagement with the Program.

Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to those of you who made a financial contribution to the program over the last year. Our program relies on philanthropy for our funding, so your support is directly responsible for continued success. Whether you give during the Big Give in March, or you prefer a year-end gift, we ask that you consider making a donation to Canadian Studies. Your gift will be put to immediate use supporting our students and activities.

For now, I wish you a Merry Christmas, a happy (though belated) Hannukah, or simple Happy Holidays. From all of us at Canadian studies, we wish you the best for 2024, and look forward to seeing you in the new year!

Sincerely,

Program Director 

CANADIAN CULTURES

Quviaksukvik, the Inuit Winter Festival

Canada’s Inuit communities step into the new year a bit earlier that the rest of the country. That’s because the first day of the Inuit new year falls on Christmas Eve. From December 24 to the first week in January, Inuit communities celebrate Quviaksukvik (literally, “the time and place of Joy”). While Quviaksukvik is today the Inuktitut word “Christmas”, its origins are older, and its significance as a time of sharing and renewal has roots that predate the arrival of Christianity in the Arctic. As Inuit communities encountered European explorers, traders, and missionaries, they incorporated European practices into their traditional winter festivals, until eventually, Christmas supplanted those celebrations. However, the earlier traditions never fully went away, and, like celebrations of Christmas elsewhere, today’s Inuit Christmas customs display a syncretism of Christian and pre-colonial practices.

Image: A Christmas inuksuk, or Inuit cairn, at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. From CambridgeBayWeather on Wikimedia Commons.

The pre-contact celebration of Quviaksukvik had no fixed date, and could occur from late fall to early winter, at a time called Qitinguk (literally, “in between”). The festival was meant to bring good luck for the upcoming hunting season, and was closely connected to Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea and owner of all sea life. From its earliest recorded celebrations, communal sharing of goods was a major aspect of the holiday. The village shaman would lead the community in a prayer of prosperity for the coming year. Afterwards, participants would exchange gifts, with the expectation that the goddess would show favor proportional to one’s own generosity.

Anthropologist Franz Boas made extensive notes on traditional celebrations he witnessed off Baffin Island in November 1883, which included many games and gift exchanges. A ritual reenactment of Sedna’s killing was followed by a great feast. Following a race around the village, the men would go hut to hut, and the women would throw small gifts into the crowd. This was followed by a tug-of-war between the villagers born in winter (called “ptarmigans”) and those born in summer (called “ducks”), with the winning team an omen for the upcoming winter weather. All the villagers would drink in turn from a communal kettle, each stating their name and birthplace. Two men dressed as spirits in tattooed sealskin masks would menace the village and pair men and women up as couples, only to be later driven off and “killed” by the men.

Image: Inuit village on Baffin Island, c. 1865. From Wikimedia Commons.

Even at the time of Boas’ visit, Quviaksukvik celebrations were already absorbing European influences through contact with visiting whalers and traders. Boas’ published account of the festival omitted aspects that he thought resulted from foreign influences, such as the Inuit wearing their best clothes or building coal-eyed snowmen to shoot at.

These European influences accelerated as permanent Christian missions were established in Inuit villages and instituted the celebration of Christmas. The similarities of custom and timing soon led to a merging of the holidays, such that within a few years of its introduction the old winter feasts were no longer celebrated except by the elderly. Nevertheless, many aspects of older traditions were incorporated into Inuit Christmas celebrations. This is particularly true for those that resembled European customs, especially gift-giving, but also games and house-to-house visits (compare “mummering“, as practiced in Newfoundland and Labrador). Communal celebrations and dances in the big igloo remained central for many communities. And sharing food, which is the most important way the Inuit maintain community bonds, also became a major aspect of the holiday, as a Canadian Living columnist reported in 2011.

Today, most Inuit celebrate Christmas, which is a statutory holiday in Nunavut as in the rest of Canada. However, for some, the holiday brings conflicting feelings about the impact of colonialism on traditional Inuit culture. One example is the singing duo PIQSIQ, composed of sisters Tiffany Kuliktana Ayalik and Kayley Inuksuk Mackay. In 2019, the sisters released a Christmas album titled Quviasugvik: In Search of Harmony, which incorporates techniques of traditional Inuit throat-singing (or katajjaq) in a cappella renditions of popular Christmas carols. For the sisters, the album is an act of cultural reclamation; throat-singing was banned for decades by colonial administrators. The songs are an amalgamation of cultures, honouring the complex feelings many Indigenous people have around Christmas while creating a space where they can nevertheless enjoy the holiday.

Holiday Recipe: Traditional Canadian Eggnog

For many Canadians, winter wouldn’t be complete without a frothy glass of delicious eggnog. Made of eggs and cream, spiced with vanilla and nutmeg, and usually spiked with a strong spirit, the drink is widely consumed across North American throughout the holiday season.

Eggnog is believed to descend from the medieval British drink posset, a spiced mix of milk curdled with wine or ale. However, the first use of “eggnog” was recorded in Colonial America in 1775. The drink was popular on both sides of the Atlantic during the 18th century, but the local availability of ingredients affected its development. While it was originally made with fortified wines, Americans soon switched to cheaper home-brewed liquors like whiskey or bourbon when trade with Britain was disrupted by the American Revolution. And while it had early associations with Christmas, these were heavily reinforced during the Victorian era until it became a purely seasonal drink.

Today, eggnog continues to be a Canadian holiday staple. Statistics Canada reports that in 2021, Canadians bought enough eggnog to fill 2,327 fire trucks. And if you feel like making your own, Dairy Farmers of Canada provides a traditional recipe from the 1975 Milk Calendar. Cheers!

Image: Photo of eggnog glass from Statistics Canada.

ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITIES

Deadline: December 22, 2023

The Association of Canadian Studies in Ireland (ACSI) invites proposals for presentations at its 2024 Biennial Conference, to be hosted by the Centre of Canadian Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. The conference’s theme is “Canadian Anthropocene(s): Pathways to Sustainable Futures”, but ACSI welcomes proposals on any dimension of Canadian Studies and from any academic discipline or field of practice. ACSI greatly values the breadth of contributions that typically characterise our conferences and Canadian Studies at large.

Please submit proposals here by Friday, December 22.

Deadline: January 1, 2024

The University of Toronto Press has put out a call for papers for a special issue of the International Journal of Canadian Studies, on the subject of “new geographies”. The term “new geographies,” pays attention to alternative forms of territoriality or spatialization in Canada, and to the new concepts to apprehend them (ecocriticism, environmental humanities, settler colonial studies, border studies, etc.), which have emerged over the past two decades and that render traditional environments and their definitions too parochial or limited. This call for manuscripts seeks original articles from all disciplines inspired by a new generation of scholarship or new practices that look to reconsider and revisit the geography of 21st-century Canada.

Full details and submission information can be found here.

EXTERNAL EVENTS

Cirque du Soleil Returns to the Bay Area

January 17-May 26, 2024 | Buy tickets

One of Canada’s best-known entertainment companies returns to the Bay Area this January! Founded in Quebec in 1984, Cirque du Soleil was an innovator in “contemporary circus” and remains one of the leaders in the industry. Their new show, Kooza, brings their signature mix of daring acrobatics, exotic spectacle, and humour in show that received acclaim from the Toronto Star as a perfect introduction to the company for newcomers.

Tickets are available online for performances in San Francisco from January 17 to March 10, and in San Jose from April 18 to May 26.

See you all in 2024! 

Canadian Studies Program

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