Book Review: Dominion Over Palm and Pine: A History of Canadian Aspirations in the British Caribbean
| Author | Asa McKercher |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221143283 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
unskilled labor, while not wanting to include them as permanent fixtures within the
Canadian populace”(274). Anti-Blackness as an historically entrenched and systematic
tool of oppression used in Canada is highlighted in Bonner’s chapter. Similarly, it
proves useful for informing policy to reform Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker
Program, wherein Jamaican workers are forced to work in adverse conditions, for little
pay, and for long periods.
Across sections five through eight, the contributors cover a variety of themes from
national education of the Black population to “Black Women’s Orality and Knowings”
as a methodology and practice in Black Canadian Feminist scholarship. Despite this
vast coverage, the real strength of Unsettling the Great White North rests in its emphasis
on memory as a research method in working toward upending particular narratives
associated with and subscribed to by Canada. By exploring and mobilizing the his-
torical account of African descendants and their lived experience, the book show s that
the Black experience in Canada was—and continues to be—one that is wrought by
enslavement, racism, and systemic discrimination. It therefore challenges claims of
Canada as a land of refuge while demonstrating how Black people fought and resisted
colonial domination.
By reifying a narrative of diversity and openness for all and historically forgetting its
affair with Black enslavement, Canada has created distance between itself and its anti-
Black history, as if the two are not constant bedfellows. However, Unsettling the Great
White North, provides a timely and relevant critique of these prominent Canadian
narratives and Canada’s unique ability to situate itself as the second shining city on top
of a hill. This book is more than just a history book, as it attends to the contemporary
lacuna in many disciplines in Canada, forcing a discussion around the anti-Blackness
that continues to reproduce itself in today’s political and cultural moment.
Paula Hastings
Dominion Over Palm and Pine: A History of Canadian Aspirations in the British Caribbean
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. $140.00 (cloth). $39.95 (paper)
ISBN: 978-0-22801-129-3, 978-0-22801-130-9
Reviewed by: Asa McKercher,(asa.mckercher@rmc.ca), Royal Military College of Canada,
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
DOI: 10.1177/00207020221143283
Quite simply, Paula Hastings’sDominion Over Palm and Pine is proof that good things
come to those who wait. Based on her PhD dissertation completed at Duke University,
this book has been a long-germinating project, teased in a variety of articles and book
chapters over the past decade or so. In it, Hastings, a professor at the University of
Toronto, marshals a breathtaking array of research –from multiple archives in over half
a dozen countries, and scores of newspapers, magazines, and journals from Canada, the
Book Reviews 535
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