Rome in Canada: The Vatican and Canadian Affairs in the Late Victorian Age

Gerald J. Stortz is an assistant professor of history at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

This book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning historiography of the
Catholic Church in Canada. It also indicates the dramatic revival of
Canadian religious history in general. Not that Perin is exploring new
topics: subjects such as the Conroy mission, the New Brunswick and
Manitoba school controversies, and the Jesuit Estates Act have been
explored before. But Perin has access, for the first time, to the other
side of the story. He has been involved in a project identifying sources
relevant to Canada in the Vatican archives. These sources make this book
unique.

The general reader may encounter some problems. The book bears all the
encumbrances of academic scholarship, such as lengthy explanatory
endnotes that should not be ignored but that prove disruptive to the
textual flow. The publisher, however, deserves credit for assembling the
notes by page number as well as by chapter title, which makes finding
them far less onerous. The author should also be commended for his
introduction outlining the history and structure of the Canadian
Catholic Church, which makes the actual text much less daunting.

Restrictions on the use of material in the archives necessitated the
seemingly arbitrary 1903 cutoff date, but the material used still allows
particular problems and trends to be examined in detail. Past authors
have often portrayed the Vatican as insensitive, if not oblivious to the
Canadian situation. Perin shows this was not the case.

This book has already become a seminal work in Canadian Catholic
history. It undoubtedly will become a staple text for the growing number
of religious history courses, particularly at Catholic colleges. It also
provides an excellent source for those wishing to understand various
problems plaguing both the Church and the country in this century, many
of which have their origins in the late Victorian age.