Donica Belisle
Dr. Donica Belisle

Donica Belisle

Power leaves a paper trail. I follow it into corporate and colonial archives to find out who has been erased, and why.

Professor of History, University of Regina

Speaker bio →

I follow supply chains. I started with department stores – who they were built for, who they excluded, what vision of Canada they were selling. Then I followed the chain further back. I learned that the sugar that sweetened Canadian consumer life came from Fiji, from plantations that forced indentured people from India to work in conditions of violence and starvation. The distance between the candy counter and the cane field is what I write about.

Books

Three books. One argument: settler consumer capitalism conceals the extraction that produces it.

Violence of Sugar: Girmit and Canadian Business in Colonial Fiji
Violence of Sugar
Girmit and Canadian Business in Colonial Fiji
Forthcoming
Purchasing Power: Women and the Rise of Canadian Consumer Culture
Purchasing Power
Women and the Rise of Canadian Consumer Culture
University of Toronto Press, 2020
City of Regina Book Award, 2021
Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada
Retail Nation
Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada
UBC Press, 2011
Pierre Savard Award Best Book in Canadian Studies Honourable Mention, Sir John A. Macdonald Prize Shortlisted, John W. Dafoe Book Prize

Current Research

Currently I am researching Canadian sugar history. My manuscript, Violence of Sugar: Girmit and Canadian Business in Colonial Fiji, is under peer review.

Public Writing

Who did the work, who had the power, and who took the credit? My writing digs deep into the archives to find the people and places that time forgot. Recent work published by The Conversation, BC History Magazine, and Active History.

Recent Highlights

Research Areas

Indenture · History of Capitalism · Business History · Food Studies · Gender & Women's History · Imperial & Colonial History · Settler Colonial Studies · Labour History