Centennial Sightseeing for the Canadian Multicultural

Imperial Oil Contributions and Maps

Judith Ellen Brunton

PhD student, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

In the ten years surrounding Canada’s Centennial, the contributions department at Imperial Oil made a significant number of donations to museums, galleries, community centers and exhibits. During this period, the Imperial Oil public relations department was also hard at work, distributing “Happy Motoring” maps and guides from their service stations across Canada, all with listed sites of interest. With these donations and publications, Imperial Oil tells a certain story about how Canadians should explore, navigate, and memorialize the landscape. This paper will trace the idea of land and history communicated here, and theorize the imaginary of the Canadian road trip as a ritual of oil publics.

For Sites of Memory workshop participants — read more (password protected)

With the support of the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, Dr. Pamela Klassen of the University of Toronto and Prof. Dr. Monique Scheer, Director of the Ludwig-Uhland-Institut of Historical and Cultural Anthropology, University of Tübingen, are directing a research project on Religion and Public Memory in Multicultural Societies. The project runs from 2015 to […]

How Should We Understand Indigenous Spirituality (in English)? A reflection on the philosophy of listening Indigenous spirituality matters to Indigenous peoples. In this discussion, I am broadly interested in how Indigenous spirituality is used in contemporary Indigenous politics. More specifically, I ask the question: How should we understand Indigenous spirituality in English? My discussion involves […]