Canadian Friends Historical Association

Author: CFHA

  • Save the Date: Hybrid AGM – Join Us In-Person and Online

    Save the Date: Hybrid AGM – Join Us In-Person and Online

    Save the Date!

  • The 2024 George Richardson Lecture at Fox at 400

    The 2024 George Richardson Lecture at Fox at 400

    Held jointly by the CQHA/CRQS/QSRA, the Fox at 400 conference held this past June included the 2024 George Richardson Lecture. Historian Nigel Smith presented “Back to the Light: A Fresh Approach,” examining Quaker activity from its origins to the early 18th century. Past lectures are on Woodbrooke’s website, and those interested in Smith’s talk can view it below.

     

  • FHA Virtual Lecture – “William Penn: Enigmatic Quaker, Founding Father” by J. William Frost

    Join the Friends Historical Association in celebrating the 400th anniversary of George Fox’s birth with a focus on his contemporary, arguably the second most important leader in the early Quaker movement: William Penn. Events include an in-person tour of Pennsbury Manor on May 19 and a virtual lecture by J. William Frost on May 29. These events are all free but registration is required. Details are on FHA’s website.

    Wednesday, May 29, 2024 – “William Penn: Enigmatic Quaker, Founding Father” by J. William Frost (virtual event)
    12:00 PM ET (find my local time)

    18th Century Engraving Print of William Penn

    For the 400th Anniversary of George Fox’s birth, J. William Frost will present a virtual talk on William Penn that excavates his life as a deeply religious man who experienced personal triumph and success as well as tragedy and failure, as well as his connections to George Fox. While many recognize William Penn as the founder of Pennsylvania and a defender of religious liberty, much less is known about Penn as a man of faith. Frost’s forthcoming book, William Penn: A Radical, Conservative Quaker (Penn State University Press, November 2024) examines Penn as a deeply religious man whose contradictions reflect, at least in part, his turbulent times. This intriguing history fills significant gaps in writings about Penn–particularly concerning Penn’s faith and its intersection with his work as a statesman and politician.

  • The Future of Quaker History and CFHA

    In early February,  Martin Kelley (Quaker writer and senior editor at Friends Journal) wrote a blog post responding to an event titled “The New History of Quakerism.” The free Zoom event was hosted by Haverford College and featured talks from historians Ben Pink Dandelion and Robynne Rogers Healey (the talk is available to view on Vimeo). Kelley’s response focused on the price inaccessibility of academic publishing, asking, “I understand we’re all caught in these capitalist and academic systems. I just wonder what we can do.” The entirety of Martin Kelley’s post can be found on his blog, Quaker Ranter, but will also be reposted below with the author’s permission.

    Comments from CFHA’s Eve Schmitz-Hertzberg: “The founders of CFHA in the early 1970’s felt that Canadian Quakers were forgetting their history. CFHA was founded in an attempt to bring Canadian Quaker history to Quakers. It is important for Quakers to know where they came from and where they are going. CFHA was a mix of Quakers, others interested in history, and academics interested in furthering Quaker history. It seems today that it is the academics who are not connected to CFHA who are taking up what study of Quaker history is taking place. It has not all been said before and history can be revisited to find further understanding.

    Martin Kelly is very concerned that leaving the study of Quaker history to the academics and publishing to academic institutions is making this information inaccessible to the average person. Quaker meetings have small libraries that are loaned on a trust basis. They cannot afford to buy the expensive academic books and once on their shelves they easily disappear.”

    QUAKER RANTER
    A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
    The New Quaker Histories
    February 8, 2024

    I watched a great Zoom talk this week, hosted by Haverford College and featuring Ben Pink Dandelion and Robynne Rogers Healey. The topic was “The New History of Quakerism” and its focus was on the shifts happening in Quaker academic histories since the 1990s. Dandelion did a fantastic job putting the last 150 years of Quaker historiography in context and laying out the positives of more recent developments: more academic rigor, a wider diversity of voices, changing foci of topics, and strong interest by academic publishers.

    Healey identified three major fields in which the new histories are challenging what are often comforting apologetics of previous Quaker studies: the equality of women, slavery and indigenous relations, and pacifism. All these are much more complicated than the stories we tell. She then listed three trends: decentering London and Philadelphia, reevaluating the so-called quietist period, and including academics and histories of the Global South.

    Dandelion said these changes were “all for the better,” and while I agree wholeheartedly with him in regards to content, there’s one way in which the new publishing opportunities are failing us: to be blunt, price.

    Take the Penn State University Press series, “The New History of Quakerism,” that both panelists have written for. The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830 – 1937 edited by Stephen W. Angell, Dandelion, and David Harrington Watt is $125. Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690 – 1830 edited by Healey is $90. Quaker Women, 1800 – 1920, edited by Healey and Carole Dale Spencer is $125.

    Both Healey and Dandelion acknowledged the problem of inaccessible prices in their talk. Dandelion suggested that meeting libraries might be able to purchase these books but I think that’s more hopeful than realistic. My small meeting certainly couldn’t. I went to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Library and they wouldn’t let me check out The Quaker World (FJ review), the 2022 collection edited by my friends C. Wess Daniels and Rhiannon Grant. It’s got a lot of great authors and I heartily recommend it, but only in absentia because at $250 I’m never going to read it.

    As an amateur Quaker history lover, these are all volumes I would love to read, but I’m not writing this because of my own personal anguish (real as it is!) but because the prices are breaking what has been an essential transmission system for new histories. In the late 1980s, Thomas Hamm published The Transformation of American Quakerism, 1800 – 1907 with Indiana University Press. It was $25 and I splurged. It became an important source in my understanding of Quaker divisions and nineteenth-century quietism. Still, decades later, when I write blog posts, or teach Quakerism 101, or answer an online question, I’m often regurgitating perspectives I learned from Hamm.

    Go to Facebook, go to Reddit, and people aren’t sharing these groundbreaking histories. Just now, randomly opening Facebook, there’s a post by someone asking about James Nayler, with someone answering it by referencing Hugh Barbour’s mid-1960s history. I love Barbour but he had his own filters and we’ve learned a lot since then.

    Every meeting I’ve been a part of had a small number of history nerds in residence who led the Quakerism 101 classes or hosted book groups or Bible study, and they brought their nerdiness to their meeting tasks. To use Healey’s list, many Quakers in the benches still think of Friends’ race relations in terms of abolitionism, still consider early Friends as unalloyed feminists, and rarely give a thought to Friends in the Global South. I recently read a new article about a local meeting that was founded by one of the largest slaveholding families in the area and the only mention of slavery was its much-later anti-slavery society; I really want these kinds of stories to be too embarrassing to publish. Quakers in the benches need the perspectives of these new historians to understand ourselves.

    Are there ways that academics can repurpose their inaccessible work so that it can trickle down to a general audience? I’m glad this Zoom talk was open to the public and well publicized: at least some of us could watch it and know the outlines of the changing historiography. But how else can we work to bridge the gap? Blog posts, articles in general publications, podcasts, Pendle Hill pamphlets? What are we doing and what more could we do? I’m in Quaker publishing, obviously, and so part of the problem if there’s a breakdown in transmission. We review the books and QuakerSpeak often dives into history. My friend Jon Watts’s Thee Quaker podcast has some wonderfully nerdy episodes. But all these feel like snippets: ten minutes here, 2000 words there. When I go to learn more, I’m stuck by the limitations of the open internet, caught in JSTOR articles I can’t access, or histories only available in print for $100-plus.

    I’m not blaming anyone here. I understand we’re all caught in these capitalist and academic systems. I just wonder what we can do.

    Also, special shoutout to Rhiannon Grant, who is the only Quaker academic I know of who is seemingly everywhere: Blog, articles in FJ, installments in the “Quaker Quicks” series, podcast segments on the BBC and Thee Quaker (she even guested on one of my FJ author chats!). Plus she’s on Mastodon, Bluesky, and TikTok and has her own welcome-to-Quakers page. I don’t think this ubiquitous approach is at all replicable for other academics. Even I’m not a proponent of social media ubiquity, preferring to focus on a few platforms.

    See Quaker Ranter for more from Martin Kelley.

  • Event: “The New History of Quakerism” Tomorrow with Ben Pink Dandelion and Robynne Rogers Healey

    The Libraries and Quaker Studies at Haverford College is hosting a free Quaker history zoom panel on Wednesday, February 7th at 12:00pm EST. 

    The way that we understand the history of the Society of Friends today is very different from the way that we understood it one hundred–or even ten–years ago. In this session two distinguished scholars, Ben Pink Dandelion and Robynne Rogers Healey, will highlight some of the most important differences between “the new history of Quakerism” and older interpretations of Quaker history.

    See the event page for more details and further zoom information.

    Robynne Rogers Healey and Ben Pink Dandelion, courtesy of Haverford College.

    Ben Pink Dandelion

    Professor of Theology and Religion; Honorary Professor of Quaker Studies; Director, Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies

    University of Birmingham, UK

    His publications include The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830-1937 and The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies.

    Robynne Rogers Healey

    Professor of History; Chair, Department of History; Coordinator, Gender Studies

    Trinity Western University, Canada

    Her publications include Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690-1830 and Quaker Women, 1800-1920.

    Please click the link below to join the webinar:
    https://haverford.zoom.us/j/93969172098?pwd=Y0JuRmxwSDRTOHM3ZXpFR2hSS2hRZz09
    Passcode: 057906

  • Report of the Annual General Meeting 2023

    Report of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Canadian Friends Historical Association (CFHA) held September 23, 2023 on Zoom 

    CFHA board must call the members of Canadian Friends Association to meet an annual general meeting. CFHA was incorporated 2009 and is subject to the Ontario Non-Profit Incorporation Act. CFHA is also a Canadian Charity (Federal) and can be found on Canada Helps: https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/canadian-friends-historical-association/

    Elaine Bishop chaired the AGM as interim chair of CFHA. Reports were given:

    At the beginning of the AGM Jim Thompson joined to report that in January 2024 CFHA should receive a legacy bequest of $75,000 from Gordon Thompson, former chair of CFHA who died in January 2022.

    • Interim chair report (Elaine Bishop). Elaine stepped down at the conclusion of the meeting.
    • Financial statements for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2023 (Robert Barnett)
    • Presentation of the budget for fiscal year June 1, 2023 – May 31. 2024. A deficit budget.
    • CFHA bylaw change to state our fiscal year is June 1- May 31
    • Transition to Business Sherpa Group (BSG) to manage our financial affairs. (Chris Landry has left)
    • Membership report. CFHA uses CiviCRM to manage membership. Membership year starts September 1.
    • CFHA space at Friends House (Haslam Room), 60 Lowther Avenue, Toronto. Much of the material had been at Gordon Thompson’s house. All of the material in Unionville has not been moved. Haslam Room material needs to be sorted out, inventoried, and some culled.
    • Report of Friendly Fridays which continues every other Friday reading George Fox’s Journal (Donna Moore and Chad Dionne). Those who participate feel spiritual inspiration.
    • Canadian Quaker Library and Archives (CQLA) report (Elaine Bishop, chair of the CQLA committee). CQLA is owned by Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM) trustees and the committee that looks after it reports to CYM. The Archives receives and cares for minutes, records and related materials of the Yearly Meeting and its committees, and the constituent Monthly Meetings. The Archives is available for Yearly Meeting, academic, genealogical, and other research use by appointment. CFHA donates annually $500 to CQLA
    • Report of CFHA digital archivist (Allana Mayer) Allana manages the CFHA website.
    • Sydney Harker is the contact for the blog. She uploads material to the blog. She offers to edit submissions to the blog.
    • Nominations: Sylvia Powers has joined the executive board.
    • Discussion about the future of CFHA. The decision was taken that CFHA will continue as a not for profit organization and the executive board will meet as necessary to further the association’s organizational needs and its mandate.

    The CFHA executive met 16 November, 2023. Evelyn Schmitz-Hertzberg chaired the meeting and will continue to do so until the next AGM in September 2024. We are looking to hold an in person AGM and are looking for a topic for a lecture and historic site visit in conjunction with the AGM. Volunteer help would be greatly appreciated.

    CFHA is in a quiescent period. The loss of Gordon Thompson has made a big decline in the CFHA board. Other executive members have also stepped down. The board has legal status, but in the past was also the organizational body for the CFHA events/pilgrimages to Quaker sites. The pandemic forced CFHA to hold its AGMs on Zoom. Members of the board were located at great distances across Canada and this made in person meetings difficult. CFHA as with many organizations has migrated to online meetings (AGM and lectures). This can be alienating for many who have interest in Quaker history and may be non-academics. CFHA was not started by academics though Professor Arthur Dorland gave it his blessing, and CFHA has attracted over the years many who are not trained as academics in history or archives in records and information management. At the threshing session held October 2022, Rob Leverty of the Ontario Historical Society which has been in existence since 1888, stated that “people want…to protect history. If Quakers don’t save their history, it isn’t going to happen…Quaker history is a critical voice during this crisis of democracy and civil society. Groups such as ours can be exhausted and consider folding…Groups can go into hibernation or make a big shift in what they are trying to accomplish…He recommends we keep our executive alive. We may slip down to three executive directors legally and can always revive.”

    “The mission of the Canadian Friends Historical Association is the preservation and communication of the on-going history and faith of Friends (Quakers) in Canada and their contribution to the Canadian Experience.” This is not the same as the Canadian Quaker Library and Archives mandate: “The Archives receives and cares for minutes, records and related materials of the Yearly Meeting and its committees, and the constituent Monthly Meetings. The Canadian Quaker Archives also includes the Arthur Garrett Dorland Friends Historical Research Library with the Rendell Rhoades Quaker Discipline Collection as its core.”  CFHA was started 1972 to encourage the study of and to communicate Canadian Quaker history. The Quaker Archives was located at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) and was moved to Pickering College in Newmarket in 1983. It is clear that the two groups do similar work and as such must have a cooperative and collegial relationship.

    CYM clerks’ opinion in May 2023 was that they were not interested in an amalgamation of CFHA and CQLA. They suggested rather that CFHA be laid down.

    It has been stated that what can be said about Canadian Quaker history has already been written about. There is however much that still remains to be said. Quaker history has continued to be made in the past 50 years of CFHA. Our understanding of who we are as Quakers is evolving. Past events and people could be revisited on that basis. The next generation of Quakers is hopefully interested in our history. Marcus Garvey famously wrote: “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”. Quakers must not become an unarchived group.

    CFHA was started in 1972 and is therefore 51 years old. 40 years in 2012 was wonderfully celebrated at the AGM held in Isaiah Tubbs Resort and Conference Centre in Prince Edward County (PEC). Quakers had settled Prince Edward County (PEC) in the 1790’s and CFHA toured the county as part of the celebration. Gordon Thompson wrote a lovely article about the time in PEC: Canadian Quaker History Journal 77 (2012). https://cfha.info/journal77p1.pdf

    CFHA and others at Meeting for Worship Bloomfield 2012.

    If anyone is interested in the details of the reports from the AGM please contact me:
    Evelyn Schmitz-Hertzberg
    November 30, 2023
    [email protected]

  • Online Event: “Assimilate or Be Exterminated” by David Raymond

    “Assimilate or Be Exterminated”
    Presented by David Raymond (Mi’kmaw descendant)
    December 4, 2023, 7pm Eastern Time

    David Raymond, a Quaker from Ottawa, will be giving a talk titled “Assimilate or Be Exterminated” this coming Monday, December 4th. David used the CFHA transcription of the Genessee Yearly Meeting minutes and other CFHA resources in his research. He has collected a trove of supporting documents found at other online sources.

    Registration: https://friendspeaceteams.org/assimilate-or-be-exterminated-2023/

    For much of their existence, the Quaker Yearly Meetings of Turtle Island and Britain pursued the eradication of Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and matriarchies as a means to save Indigenous Peoples from the supposed necessity of their extermination (mass killing).

    In his presentation, David Raymond will examine Quaker writings and deeds from the late 18th century to the present and will offer reflections on the impact of the truth on his faith journey.

    David is a Quaker from Ontario, Canada. He is of European and Mi’kmaw ancestry and is reconnecting to Mi’kmaw culture. For several years he has been researching Canadian Quakers’ historical role in the attempted forced assimilation of Indigenous Peoples.

    “Assimilate or Be Exterminated”
    December 4, 20238 pm Atlantic time7 pm Eastern Time6 pm Central time5 pm Mountain time4 pm Pacific Time

  • Register for Quaker Theological Discussion Group 2023

    Register for Quaker Theological Discussion Group 2023

    Quaker Theological Discussion Group (QTDG) is welcoming registrants for their 2023 meeting. These panel discussions will be held via Zoom on December 1–2, 2023 at 8–10am PST / 11am–1pm EST / 4–6pm GMT (find the time in your time zone). These events are free! 

    The theme for QTDG 2023 is “Tradition & Transformation: Quakerism 400 Years After the Birth of George Fox.” This will be part of a year-long conversation and celebration organized by Friends World Committee of Consultation, with events all over the world recognizing George Fox’s 400th birthday.

    Image credit: Marcela Teran, Liberation Works
    • Panel 1, Dec 1: Reconsidering Fox’s Rejection of Rituals
      Panelists: Alice Elliott-Sowaal and Diego Navarro, Barbara Birch, George Busolo Lukalo, Welling Hall

      • “Why We Need to Return to Practices that Can Move Us Beyond Inadvertent Somatic Individualism,” Alice Elliott-Sowaal and Diego Navarro
      • “Throwing out the Baby,” Barbara Birch
      • “Worship Tradition and Transformation Among Kenyan Friends,” George Busolo Lukalo
      • “Insights into Quaker Silence from Otto, Thurman, and Panikkar,” Welling Hall
    • Panel 2: Dec 2: A Great People Gathered? Quakers in Global Context
      Panelists: Emma Condori Mamani, Mark Russ, Rhiannon Grant, Robert J. Wafula

      • “Bolivian Indigenous Quakerism,” Emma Condori Mamani
      • “Whiteness and the Roots of the Quaker Universalist Discourse,” Mark Russ
      • “Theological Diversity as Growth and Foundation,” Rhiannon Grant
      • “New forms of orientation for the 21 century Africa Quaker movement,” Robert J. Wafula
    • Business meeting, Dec 2: if you can, stay after the panel on Saturday to learn more about Quaker Theological Discussion Group and Quaker Religious Thought, and help us brainstorm topic ideas for next year.

     

  • Upcoming Event: An Introduction to the History of Quakers in Canada

    Upcoming Event: An Introduction to the History of Quakers in Canada

    Winnipeg Monthly Meeting is hosting an online religious education event open to everyone on the history of Quakers in Canada. The event will be facilitated by Elaine Bishop on Thursday, November 30th.

    Some quiz questions for an Introduction to the History of Quakers in Canada:

    1. Who were the earliest Quakers in Nova Scotia?
    2. How many Winnipeg Monthly Meetings have there been?
    3. How many Yearly Meetings have had the word ‘Canada’ in their names?

    You can let Elaine know ([email protected]) what you want to know about Canadian Quaker history! If you would like to attend this event, please email Glenn to signal your attendance and to receive the online link ahead of time at [email protected].

    About the speaker: Elaine Bishop has been involved with Canadian Quakers for most of her life, having been taken to Quaker Camp NeeKauNis as a child shortly after her parents brought her to Canada from England in 1951. She has worked for Quakers in Scotland and Canada. Her interests include Quaker history and Indigenous rights, including reparations and relationships between land and peace through the lens of Quaker peace testimony. She now Clerks the Canadian Yearly Meeting Archives Committee which oversees the Canadian Quaker Library and Archives.  

  • CQHA / CRQS / QSRA Joint Conference in June 2024

    For the 400th anniversary of the birth of George Fox—credited with the establishment of The Religious Society of Friends also known as Quakers—the 2024 Joint Conference will be held in Lancaster in June, in the area at the epicentre of early Quakerism. The anniversary offers a valuable point for reflection by historians, archivists and others to consider the life and times of Fox as well as his legacies, and a coming together of new and exciting ideas around Friends and their history. This conference is ideal for anyone researching Quakerism or those interested in the findings of the research. This is a major transatlantic event and a very exciting opportunity to hear the latest scholarship in Quaker studies.

    The conference organizers invite proposals for presentations from all disciplines in the academy, from archivists and heritage practitioners, and from scholars from all backgrounds at any life stage. This year the organizers encourage proposals on the following topics:

    • George Fox focused:
      • George Fox in the Midlands / 1624 Country
      • Ancestry, parents, relatives of George Fox
      • Places and spaces of Fox and his heritage
      • The saintliness and hagiography of Fox, challenges to this
        • What is lost by focusing on Fox as the founder of Quakerism
    • Fox in the digital age
    • Quakerism beyond George Fox
    • The Valiant 60
    • Margaret Fell and other early Quakers before Fox
    • Women and religion in the 17th century
    • Weavers, shoemakers, printmakers: apprenticeships in the mid-1600s England
    • Archives and material culture of early Quakers

    In addition to individual paper presentations (20 minutes), they welcome proposals for panels of complete sessions (2-3 papers), roundtable discussions (60 or 90 minutes), workshops (up to a half day), or other collaborative formats. They also seek participants for a session of lightning talks (5-7 minutes each), a format especially well suited to works-in-progress, summaries of recent publications, or ongoing projects. All presenters are required to register for the conference.

    Complete proposals should be sent via email to Mary Crauderueff and Jordan Landes, program co-chairs, at [email protected]. The deadline for proposals is December 4, 2023.

    Please see the CQHA’s website for more information on proposals and registration.

    Questions? [email protected]
    Conference Website: http://libguides.guilford.edu/cqha
    Registration website: https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/courses/crqs-qsra-cqha-quaker-studies-conference-fox-at-400/
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quakerhistoriansandarchivists/