A Samaritan State Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Foreign Aid

In 2016, I had the immense pleasure of participating in the A Samaritan State Revisited conference in held at the Global Affairs Canada (GAC) offices in the Lester B Pearson Building in Ottawa, ON, Canada. 

Taking it's name from Keith Spicer's (continually) influential text, A Samaritan State? External Aid in Canada's Foreign Policy, (1966), the symposium brought together a host of emerging and established scholars and practitioners together to reflect on the past 50 years, and beyond, of Canadian foreign aid, official and civil-society based. 

Organized in collaboration with GAC, and history departments at Bishop's and Carleton universities, the two days resulted in gathering the collection of essays reproduced in this volume, edited by Greg Donaghy and David Webster (2019).

I really have to thank again Dr. Dominique Marshall, Carleton University, for introducing me to Greg, then head historian at GAC, and the amazing staff and former staff in the photo collection and communications department who made my contribution possible. Without their support, the GAC --or really the former CIDA photo collection--would have again remained un-represented. So often photography and visual culture gets displaced or overlooked, considered as irrelevant or superficial distractions from the main events (e.g., policy meetings, political debates). Recent critical histories of visual culture in the fields of human rights and humanitarian action challenge the view that pictures matter little. My chapter in this volume aims to broaden perceptions around the seemingly innocuous but vastly powerful role photography plays in the imagination and practice of development assistance. And the importance of taking a historical perspective, with respect to images and actions, in working towards a more equitable and just future. 

Overall this volume is a timely contribution to a growing scholarship on critical global histories of aid, and it is an overdue collection focusing specifically on Canadian development actions. Pick up you copy from the Calgary University Press today.