Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada

by Tina Loo

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Canadian government relocated people living in rural and urban communities, often against their will, in order to alleviate the alltoocommon lack of social services and economic opportunities. Moved by the State offers a completely new interpretation of this undertaking, focusing on the bureaucrats and academics who designed and implemented these relocations – and on the larger development project they were pursuing. Tina Loo's finely crafted history reveals the optimistic belief underpinning postwar the power of the interventionist state to do good.

Genres: Canada, History

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 11, 2019

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loo carefully deconstructs the complicated relationship between the state and citizen during Canada's post-war period of relocations. While she emphasizes the individuals within the state that did the moving and shows the state's human and accountable side, Loo does not diminish the negative impacts the moves had on citizens. As such, the state's intention to provide resources for citizens to help themselves is revealed and demonstrates such officials' hopes to deliver a modern and democratically involved life to marginalized Canadians. More discussion around the long-term consequences of relocation's effects on citizen participation may have provided a deeper understanding of the programs' real success. Nonetheless, Loo successfully demonstrates the pervasive belief that state officials held around solving poverty and bringing modernization and participation to marginalized communities. Loo achieves this through engaging with a myriad of regional and national archival documents, interviews, and films. The analysis in Moved by the State helps illuminate why Canadians experienced such relocations.