Canadian Studies Announcements 

In This Issue:

Holiday Wrap-Up 

 Boston’s Christmas tree: A symbol of Canadian-American friendship

 Anthony Bourdain in Quebec: Food as cultural storytelling

 Holiday recipe: Ragoût de boulettes

 Season’s Greetings from Canadian Studies! 

As the year draws to a close and winter break begins, we extend our warmest holiday wishes to our Canadian Studies community on both sides of the border. We hope this season brings moments of rest, good conversation, and wonderful memories shared with family and friends.

This time of year also invites reflection: on traditions, on connections, and on the histories that continue to shape the Canada-US relationship. Below are a few stories that remind us of how culture and exchange are often most visible during the holidays!

As we look ahead to the new year, we are grateful for your continued engagement and support. We are excited to carry these conversations forward through upcoming events, speakers, and shared inquiry into Canada’s cultures and histories.

Wishing you a joyful holiday season and a bright start to the year ahead. 

CANADIAN CULTURES

Boston’s Christmas Tree: A Symbol of Canadian-American Friendship

One of the most charming aspects of holiday traditions is how they serve to unite people, even those divided by borders or politics. For over fifty years, the people of Nova Scotia have sent a tree to Boston to serve as the city’s official Christmas tree. The tree is a gesture of thanks for the aid sent by Boston after the 1917 Halifax Explosion, which destroyed much of the city. The first tree was donated by a Nova Scotia farmer in 1971, to commemorate the 100-plus years of friendship between the two cities. The 2025 tree is a 45-foot tall white spruce from Lunenburg County, outside Halifax, where the 1971 tree also came from.

While visiting Nova Scotia last month to take part in the tree-cutting ceremony, Boston mayor Michelle Wu reasserted the strong ties between the people of Boston and Canada during a joint meeting with Halifax mayor Andy Fillmore. She stressed that despite the ongoing political tensions, the friendships forged between Bostonians and the people of Canada “can’t be shaken by a temporary political situation.”

More than just a festive display, the Boston tree is a living symbol of cross-border solidarity, one that quietly reaffirms how the impact of local actions can persist more than a century later. The tree stands as a reminder that diplomacy is not only practiced in policy, but also through interpersonal relations and shared history. Image from Boston.gov.

Anthony Bourdain in Quebec: Food as Cultural Storytelling

The late chef and writer Anthony Bourdain was beloved for his down-to-earth, human-centric travelogues that revealed the richness of the human experience through the cuisines of the places he visited. He approached each meal not as a tourist, but as a listener – and his visit to Québec twelve years ago was no different.

During his winter visit to Quebec on Parts Unknown (available on platforms such as Hulu and HBO), Bourdain shared meals from Montreal’s finest kitchens to the remote countryside. Joined by chefs David Macmillan and Frédéric Morin (owners of Montreal staple Joe Beef), he witnessed how the French tradition of excellence in food combined with a Québécois hardiness and hospitality for a unique culinary experience. Bourdain enjoyed foie gras with truffles in an ice fishing shack; travelled across snowy fields by train; ate stewed beaver for the very first time; shared a post-hockey meal with friends; and experienced a maple overload at chef Martin Picard’s sugar shack.

Bourdain also explored how food reflects language, class, and identity in Francophone Canada. He discussed the then-recent “Pastagate” incident, a controversy over French language laws sparked by Quebec government agents threatening a Montreal Italian restaurant for using words like “pasta” instead of their French equivalents. But in the end, Bourdain’s work offers a compelling reminder that cuisine can serve as an entry point into larger conversations about belonging, history, and cultural survival, especially during a season so closely tied to communal eating.

Holiday Recipe: Ragoût de Boulettes

During Canada’s cold winter months, nothing could be more satisfying than a hearty meat stew. In Quebec and other parts of Francophone Canada, that dish is commonly the ragoût de boulettes, a rich meatball stew that’s popular around the holidays. Spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg give the dish a hint of a classic Christmas flavor profile, while luxurious pork meatballs ensure that the diner is satisfied and ready for winter hibernation!

The stew’s origin is debated. According to researcher Jean-François Foucault, it is believed to have originated from the ragoût de pattes, a stew made from pig’s feet. Because even cheaper cuts of meat were a luxury for the poor, the stew was typically made to celebrate important occasions, such as weddings, baptisms, or New Year’s Day (hence, it was also called ragoût du Jour de l’An in older cookbooks). The first known recipe was published in 1840 in La Cuisinière canadienne. In the book, the recipe is immediately preceded by another for pork meatballs, so Foucault speculates that enterprising cooks experimented with adding the meatballs to the stew. Today, while ragoût de pattes and ragoût de boulettes are formally two separate dishes, the boundaries between the two are blurred and it has become a common practice to combine them.

Variations of this disk can be found throughout Francophone families in Canada. Canadian Living offers a meatball-only recipe from the family of André Beauchamp in Ottawa, while Montreal-based celebrity chef Ricardo Larrivée offers a combination recipe including ham hocks. Image from RicardoCuisine.com.

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 Season’s Greetings! 

Dear Michael,

As we enter the final weeks of 2025, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for your unwavering support of the Canadian Studies Program. This has been an eventful year, marked by new challenges and opportunities in the field of Canadian Studies. Both Canada and the United States are in a period of transition, testing longstanding assumptions about both countries and the Canada-US relationship. Nevertheless, your continued support has enabled us to navigate a changing academic and political landscape with renewed purpose. It is always such a pleasure to engage with our friends, and see the enthusiasm and unique perspectives that you bring to our community.

If you appreciate the work we do, I ask you to consider making a year-end gift to the program. Your donation will help us sustain and expand our public programs, support talented young scholars in the field, and host crucial dialogue between Canadianists from across North America. Your support ensures that we remain a vibrant space for critical conversations, groundbreaking scholarly inquiry, and the celebration of Canada’s rich and diverse heritage.

With warmest wishes,

Dr. Hidetaka Hirota
Director, Canadian Studies Program
Thomas Garden Barnes Chair in Canadian Studies

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Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News

• New Sproul Fellow Troy Vettese explores relationship between capitalism and energy extraction

• Program director Hidetaka Hirota quoted in Globe & Mail article on US immigration crackdown

Local News

• CBS Bay Area: Why a Silicon Valley software engineer is heading back to Canada

PROGRAM NEWS

New Sproul Fellow Troy Vettese Explores Relationship Between Capitalism and Energy Extraction

The Canadian Studies Program is pleased to announce that Dr. Troy Vettese has been awarded the John A. Sproul Visiting Scholar Fellowship for Spring 2026. The Fellowship provides supplementary support to postdoctoral fellows who are studying Canada while in residence at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Vettese is an environmental historian and a Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management. He studies Canadian history, with a focus on the tar sands industry and conservative environmental thought. He is interested in understanding what the shift from conventional to non-conventional oil means in terms of how capitalism relates to the Earth, with resources increasingly “made” rather than “found”. He is also writing a book on neoliberal environmental thought, titled Business Climate, that will focus on the contribution of Canadian economists to applying Hayekian principles to problems of “externality”, which eventually led to the intellectual breakthrough of cap-and-trade in the 1960s.

Dr. Vettese studied history as an undergraduate at McGill University and then completed two master’s degrees at the University of St Andrews and the University of Oxford. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at New York University, which traced the history of neoliberal environmental thought. Since graduating in 2019, Dr. Vettese has held fellowships at Harvard University; the European University Institute; Copenhagen University; and the New Institute, Hamburg. His research has been supported by the DAAD, the University of Chicago, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and the Independent Social Research Foundation. His first book, Half-Earth Socialism (Verso 2022), was co-authored with climate scientist Drew Pendergrass and has been translated into half a dozen languages.

As a Sproul fellow, Dr. Vettese will organize a workshop in the spring of 2026 on the energy transition to non-conventional fossil fuels that will put the Canadian experience into a comparative perspective. Several leading energy scholars will contribute papers to the workshop, which will then be submitted together for a forum at an interdisciplinary journal. The aim of the forum is to reinvigorate energy studies, divine new directions for the field to travel, and relate developments in Canada to a broader global perspective.

Program Director Hidetaka Hirota Quoted in Globe and Mail Article on US Immigration Crackdown

Canadian Studies Program director Hidetaka Hirota was quoted in an article published in The Globe and Mail Saturday. The article, “Trump administration steps up immigration crackdown with multiple new measures“, recounts the various policy changes made by the present US administration to tighten entry requirements for foreign nationals, including both immigrants and tourists.

Professor Hirota compares the administration’s new policies, such as an indefinite ban on immigration from nineteen countries, to late 19th- and early 20th-century immigration law. During that time, the US suspended immigration of Chinese laborers. After 1924, US immigration law operated under a discriminatory quota system, intended to maintain the racial composition of the United States and discourage the immigration of people deemed “undesirable”. The US abolished this unequal quota system in 1965. (Similar policies were also in force in Canada during this period, before being scrapped in favor of the points system in 1967.)

Professor Hirota explained how such policies were organized around a “core concept {of) racial hierarchy of desirability” that informed which populations would be welcomed, and which would be excluded. The article points out that such rhetoric is echoed by the current administration, with the President complaining that the US has too much immigration from “disaster” countries like Somalia instead of Norway or Sweden.

Yet while the US administration has gone farther than many countries in rhetoric and policy, it is only the most prominent example among a global backlash against migration sweeping from Europe to South America. Even famously immigrant-friendly Canada has seen a “cratering” in public support for immigration, and the Carney government has made high-profile cuts to immigration targets, calling the Trudeau-era high-water mark “unstainable”. However, while the Canadian backlash does have its own particular racial dynamics – largely felt among the South Asian population – Canadian leaders insist that the discontent is simply a response to the number of newcomers, and does not represent a fundamental nativistic or xenophobic impulse among the Canadian public.

LOCAL NEWS

A job in Silicon Valley is the career pinnacle for tech workers around the world. About 66% of Bay Area tech workers are foreign-born, and competition for such jobs is fierce. Yet even as the US tightens the screws on skilled immigrants with policies like a $100k fee for new H1-B visas, the country’s political climate is causing some immigrants to reconsider their options. As CBS News Bay Area reports, such is the case for Hesham Alshaebi, a Yemeni-born tech worker who is packing up to return to Canada – voluntarily.

Alshaebi completed a software engineering degree at Carleton University and obtained a permanent residency for himself and his family in Canada. However, he always dreamed of working in Silicon Valley; a dream that came true three years ago, when he moved to California after landing a job with a major tech company.

However, Alshaebi says he quickly became disillusioned with the United States because of the government’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and its support of wars in the Middle East, including his native Yemen. Alshaebi, who previously considered moving his family to join him in San Francisco, says it is important to him to live in a country that “more closely aligns with his personal beliefs”. While he is giving up financial and job security to return to Canada, he says that his “moral compass” is pointing him north.

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Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Upcoming Events

• Panel: Canada at a Crossroads: Evaluating the Carney Government’s First Nine Months

Academic Opportunities

• Call for proposals: Canada’s Peoples, Places, and Polities from Below: A View from the US

• Summer program: Study French culture and communication in Montréal

• Call for papers: Two Days of Canadian Sovereignty Conference

• Call for papers: Association for Canadian Jewish Studies 50th Anniversary Conference

UPCOMING EVENTS

Tues., Dec. 2 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

When Mark Carney won the 2025 Canadian Federal election, he assumed leadership of a nation facing multiple structural problems and widespread discontent. Canadians had united against threats from the United States, but major debates remained over issues such as housing costs, immigration, and Canada’s stagnant economy. During the campaign, Carney distanced the Liberal Party from its Trudeau-era platform and promised to be a steady hand to deliver urgently needed reform. Nine months on, how well is the Carney government delivering on those promises? Join our panel representing Canada’s major political parties as they debate Carney’s performance in tackling the country’s most pressing challenges.

About the Panelists

Andrew Bevan is the CEO of the strategy firm Catalyze4. He was the campaign co-director for the Liberal campaign in the 2025 federal election. With over 30 years of public service experience, he previously served as Chief of Staff to the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, and Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister of Canada.

Parm Kahlon is a founding partner and strategist at Core Firm. She served as Special Assistant to Alberta premier Rachel Notley, and worked with various MLAs with the BC NDP. She has also served as managing director for UFCW 1518, one of British Columbia’s oldest and largest unions.

Jordan Paquet is the vice-president of Bluesky Strategy Group. Over the course of his nearly 20-year career, he has worked across multiple levels of Canadian government, including the Prime Minister’s Office under Stephen Harper; as Principal Secretary to Conservative Opposition leader Rona Ambrose; and most recently as the Chief of Staff in Prince Edward Island’s Government Members Office.

This event will have a remote attendance option via Zoom. Please select the “virtual attendance” in the RSVP form to receive the link.

If you require an accommodation to participate fully in this event, please let us know with as much advance notice as possible by emailing canada@berkeley.edu.

ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITIES

Call for Proposals: Canada’s Peoples, Places, and Polities from Below: A View from the US

Deadline: January 31, 2026 | Learn more

ACSUS is preparing an edited volume on how US-based scholars understand Canada amid growing cross-border tension and renewed debates over Canadian identity. The UC Berkeley Canadian Studies Program is honored to cosponsor this exciting project, along with Canadian Studies programs at Western Washington, Bridgewater State, Maine, and SUNY Plattsburgh.

ACSUS invites proposals for chapters exploring how Canada’s identities, communities, and sociopolitical dynamics are studied from the United States. Work may address themes such as multiculturalism, Indigenous perspectives, regional identities, policy debates, arts and media, migration, and more. Scholars at all career stages are welcome. Please direct questions to the Center for Canadian-American Studies at WWU, canam@wwu.edu.

Summer Program: Study French Culture and Communication in Montréal

June 23-Aug. 31, 2026 | Learn more

Western Washington University Education Abroad is offering an exciting opportunity to learn French while experiencing the vibrancy of Montreal!

This 5-week program in both a university and urban setting focuses on place-based French language and cultural competency. Morning sessions center on improving oral fluency and how to communicate in French using real-life situations. Afternoon sessions are spent engaging in cultural activities and research that highlight the historical and contemporary significance of Francophone Canada. Weekends provide students opportunities to take optional field trips to Quebec City, Mont Tremblant, and Ottawa.

The program is designed for students at the B1 level of French. There is an additional fee for non-WWU students.

The program will be led by Christina Keppie (keppiec@wwu.edu), a professor of French and Linguistics and director of the WWU Center for Canadian-American Studies.

Call for Papers: Two Days of Canadian Sovereignty Conference

Deadline: January 16, 2026 | Learn more

The Centre for Canadian Studies at Brock University, in collaboration with the Departments of History, Political Science, Popular Culture, and Film, invites submissions for Two Days of Canadian Sovereignty, to be held on March 26 and 27, 2026 in St. Catharines, Ontario.

This conference, part of the Centre’s annual Two Days of Canada conference series, will bring together students, scholars, and researchers from diverse fields to address the issue of Sovereignty in Canada and of Canadian Sovereignty. While there will surely be a great deal of interest in this topic in relation to current events, as well as the future of Canada, sovereignty has always been a thorny and fascinating issue in this country, one worthy of our sustained attention. Canada is a pluralist society, and, accordingly, the issue of sovereignty has taken on a variety of forms, including Indigenous, French, British, and Canadian variations, among others.

In addition to faculty members and graduate students, we are also interested in proposals from community members and groups outside of the academic sphere. Please send any inquiries or session proposals to canadianstudies@brocku.ca.

Call for Papers: Association for Canadian Jewish Studies 50th Anniversary Conference

Deadline: January 16, 2026 | Learn more

The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies / l’Association d’études juives canadiennes (ACJS) invites proposals for its 2026 annual conference, “Fifty Years of Canadian Jewish Studies.” The conference will take place at York University, Toronto, from Sunday, May 31 through Tuesday, June 2, 2026.

Founded in 1976, the ACJS is the first and only scholarly organization devoted to promoting and disseminating research on the Canadian Jewish experience. To mark its fiftieth anniversary, the association is convening a conference that highlights the richness, diversity, and interdisciplinarity of Canadian Jewish studies—past, present, and future.

The conference welcomes submissions in English and French on any topic relating to Canada’s Jews, reflecting both historical depth and current cultural issues. For questions and submissions, please contact the conference co-chairs, Jonathan Slater and Matthew McKeown, at acjs@yorku.ca.

Canadian Studies Program

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