History
History
Department Head/Professor
History
Abbotsford campus, D3020
Phone: 604-504-7441 local 4389
email BarbaraMost recent Teaching Experience:
2019
Professor
2002- 2019
Associate Professor, History
University of the Fraser Valley
Abbotsford, British Columbia
[1990-1995 sessional instructor],
Canadian history, especially Canadian political and constitutional history, Migration history
Upper-division Courses developed:
Hist 399G Historical Biography
Hist 430 Canada and Migration
Hist 330 Canada, 1867-present Politics and Personalities
Hist 331 Canada, 1837-67: Rebels, Reformers, and Realists
Directed Studies: Canadian Constitutional History
PhD History, 2003
University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh, Scotland
Elected Fellow, Royal Historical Society, UK, 2009
Selected Publications:
Barbara J. Messamore, Times of Transformation: Canada’s 1921 Election. forthcoming with UBC Press, 2024.
Raymond Blake, Jeff Keshen, Norman Knowles and Barbara Messamore, Conflict and Compromise: Pre-Confederation Canada and Conflict and Compromise: Post-Confederation Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2017).
Raymond Blake, Jeff Keshen, Norman Knowles and Barbara Messamore, Narrating a Nation: Canadian History Pre-Confederation and Narrating a Nation: Canadian History Post-Confederation (McGraw Hill Ryerson, 2011).
Canada’s Governors General, 1847-1878: Biography and Constitutional Evolution (University of Toronto Press, 2006).
editor, Canadian Migration Patterns from Britain and North America (University of Ottawa Press, 2004).
[forthcoming] “Keeping the Human in Humanities: reflections on biography in research and teaching,” Transnational agency in data driven biography, ed. D. Meister and D. Veltman.
“The nascent North Atlantic Triangle: the realpolitik of Sir John A. Macdonald and Alexander Mackenzie,” in Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats: Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy, ed. Patrice Dutil (UBC Press, 2023): 38-72.
“The enduring Crown in Canada: reflections on the office of Governor General at the Platinum Jubilee,” A Resilient Crown: Canada’s Monarchy at the Platinum Jubilee, ed. D. Michael Jackson and Christopher McCreery (Dundurn, 2022).
“The Governor General is Gone; Long Live the Governor General,” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 15:2 (June 2021).
“What the Payette Episode Teaches us About Fit and the Office of the Governor General,” 26 January 2021. Policy Options.
[invited op ed] “Sir John A. Wasn’t Perfect but he chose to act, dared to err,” National Post, 31 December 2020.
“George VI’s 1939 Royal Tour of Canada: Context and the Constitution,” Royal Studies Journal 5:1 (2018): 126-146.
“Confederation, Continuity, and the Crown,” The Canadian Kingdom: 150 Years of Constitutional Monarchy, ed. Michael Jackson (Dundurn, 2018): 29-48.
[invited op ed] “Governor General Should Stick to Script,” National Post, 7 November 2017.
“A Critique of Bill C-569: Some Historical Background to the Appointment and Removal of Governors General,” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 9:3 (2016): 187-193.
“Justin Trudeau and Canada’s 2015 Election,” The Round Table, 105:1 (February 2016): 81-4.
“John A. Macdonald and the Governors General: a prime minister’s use and abuse of the Crown,” in John A. Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies. ed. Patrice Dutil and Andrew Smith (Dundurn, 2014).
“British North America (Canada), 1783-20th c.” Encyclopedia of Empire (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell online library, 2014).
“Conventions of the role of the Governor General: Some illustrative historical episodes,” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 4:3 (December 2010): 479-486.
“‘The Line over which he must not pass’: Defining the office of Governor General, 1878,” Canadian Historical Review 86 (September 2005): 453-483.
“Diplomacy or Duplicity? Lord Lisgar, John A. Macdonald, and the Treaty of Washington, 1871,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, no. 2 (May 2004): 29-53.
“Mary Ellen (Spear) Smith (1863-1933),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Forthcoming.
Other selected activities:
Expert witness report and testimony, 2-8 June 2023, in Crown allocation stage in the case of Red Rock First Nations et al v. Canada and Ontario. Testimony on the meaning and context of the Dominion government’s assumption of provincial debts and liabilities at the time of Confederation.
2020 through present: media interviews on the Crown in Canada. Examples include: panel discussion for NewsX television in India; “The Royal Fascinator,” CBC; Yahoo News; Joe Brean of the National Post; Paul Haavardsrud, “The Cost of Living,” CBC; Canadian Press; Kristy Cameron of Ottawa Now on radio CFRA for CTV; Arlene Bynon, “The Roy Green Show,” Global News Radio; others on Corus/Global News Radio Network; “Rundown” with Andrew Nichols on CBC television; “The Agenda” with Steve Paikin on TVO; television interviews with Ashley Burke, CBC; radio call in shows, such as CBC Ontario Today, with Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco; interviews with John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail; CBC’s Power and Politics with Vassy Kapelos; CBC News Network Morning Live with Heather Hiscox; Aaron Wherry, CBC; Ian Austen, New York Times; and Jacques Gallant, the Toronto Star.
2021: invited member of the Editorial Board of H-Biography, an international online network for historians working in the field of biography. H-Biography is under the umbrella of the prominent H-Net online network.
10 December 2020: invited witness, House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure, to give evidence on the use of prorogation under Standing Order 32(7).
January 2018: Named to Board of Directors, Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, Massey College, University of Toronto.
Invited speaker, “Canada at 150: the Hinge of our History?,” Canadian and Polish Upper Silesian Perspectives, 28 April 2017, University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland.
Keynote speaker, “Canada at 150: What are we Celebrating?,” Discover Canada, National Event for Polish High School Students, 7 April 2017, Żory, Poland.
“Confederation Myths,” Canada 150 Conference, 3 March 2017, Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen, Hungary.
Invited speaker, “It’s a Minority: Who Gets to Govern?” 7 October 2015, Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre forum, Vancouver, British Columbia.
Expert witness report, 31 August 2015, “The Dominion’s assumption of provincial debts and liabilities at the time of British Columbia’s entry into Confederation,” Songhees Nation, v Her Majesty the Queen in right of British Columbia et al., DOJ File No. 4368038
Invited speaker, “The Meaning of Canada’s Confederation: Three Weddings and a Divorce,” Humanities Research Forum,13 March 2014, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge.
Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies, teaching Master’s program students in the American Studies Program in areas of Canadian Constitutional History and Canadian International relations, April – June 2017, University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland.