Remembering Elizabeth Mancke, part II

Dynamism and determination, wisdom and warmth: the late Elizabeth Mancke (1954-2023) exuded each of these positive attributes as well as countless others, as anyone who had the good fortune of knowing her can readily attest. Her recent passing is a massive loss for the many communities to which she contributed, whether as a pathbreaking historian, an engaged citizen, or, as was frequently the case, both. Composed by scholars and friends of Elizabeth’s from across the United States and Canada, the following reflections offer a glimpse of the breadth and profundity of her influence, and of the brilliant legacy she leaves to posterity. Cumulatively, they are the second in a two-part series; the first appeared on Tuesday. Please feel free to provide your own reflections on Elizabeth’s life and work below.

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I spent hours in the tattered green leather armchair in Elizabeth’s office. No matter the topic that started us off, she always expanded the framework, inevitably making some connection to Portugal in the Atlantic world. As a mentor, she was compassionate and insightful. In this space, I’d like to highlight the role that she played in shaping this forum on early Canadian history. Borealia was born out of the intellectual community Elizabeth created while Denis McKim was a post-doc and I was a PhD candidate at UNB. Elizabeth was enthusiastic about the project from the outset, even providing funding for start-up costs. She contributed several essays herself over the years and, as was her modus operandi, collaborated with grad students on others. As a Canada Research Chair, Elizabeth used her position to partner with others, to build capacity, to grow networks, and provide opportunities for grad students. We were honoured to join other partners in important SSHRC projects for which she was a driving force:

• Unrest, Violence, and the Search for Social Order in British North America and Canada;
• Military Service, Citizenship, and Political Culture: Studies of Militias in Atlantic Canada;
• and a project just getting underway, on Ecologies, Knowledge, and Power in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region.

Elizabeth’s name was often on our lips when we had editorial discussions, and even in the past weeks she was sending us encouraging notes from her hospital bed about the future of the blog. We’re grieving and we are grateful.

Keith Grant

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My first encounter with Elizabeth happened shortly after she moved to Fredericton to take up the position of Canada Research Chair at UNB in 2012. We were at a book launch event (back in the glorious Chapman Fund days when wine was still considered to be collegial), and she asked me how my dissertation was going. I don’t remember my exact reply, but it was bleak enough for her to drag me into a classroom with a whiteboard. We spent the next hour mapping out the remaining chapters and the introduction. She just kept asking me questions until I could coherently explain my project and why it mattered. Elizabeth’s intervention (and that’s the proper word for it! As anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of her intellectually curious cross-examinations can attest) put me on the right track to finish the project and to move on. Elizabeth had a rare and profound conceptual appreciation and understanding of constitutional law, history, and interdisciplinary studies. Since that first evening at the whiteboard in Tilley, I have run every one of my research projects by her. Even when she was in the hospital this past summer, she eagerly discussed (and tore apart!) my current and future research agenda. Elizabeth made me a better scholar, and I will be forever grateful for the attention she gave me at a particularly vulnerable stage in my career. She was an exceptional mentor, and inspirational colleague, and a dear friend. I shall miss her.

Nicole O’Byrne

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Elizabeth’s long interest in British North America expressed itself in many ways. Although she had been a visiting assistant professor in Maine in 1988-89, and I only arrived at UMaine in 1997, I was lucky that her cross-border commitment (and fascination with Maine) remained fulsome even when she took posts outside the region. Her return in 2012 intensified her contributions to borderlands scholarship, but her humane passion for connecting scholars, especially graduate students and junior faculty, was even more transformative. I will miss her probing conversations at conferences and her infectious delight in new ideas. Many feel her loss.

Liam Riordan

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I first met Elizabeth Mancke in the fall of 1990. I spent that winter in Halifax beginning my PhD dissertation, while she was there on a post-doc. We spent several evenings talking history over beer and fish & chips at the Henry House. I have no idea what I was talking about, though I do recall spending part of that autumn chasing threads on grindstone cutters at Minudie. Perhaps it was that because what I recall Elizabeth talking about was the relationship between constitutional forms and local governance, issues that would lie at the centre of her first book Fault Lines of Empire. As someone with an inkling that small-scale stories were powerful entry-points for bigger analyses, these conversations were inspiring. History from below was not simply about the recovery of ordinary people’s experiences; those experiences allowed us to understand the real relationships between settlers, governments and constitutions. Heady stuff for a guy with a forestry degree.

Many things impressed me about Elizabeth, but two things stood out. The first was this powerful combination of confidence in her views, combined with a firm belief that collaboration could do better. Her commitment to Atlantic studies, to Atlantic Canada studies, and to the community of scholars in those fields, was total. She could – and would – disagree forcefully, and she would listen to anyone who could offer alternatives to her strong views. I don’t think I ever had a conversation with Elizabeth where I didn’t learn something new, or when I wasn’t compelled to at least consider something in a different way. She positioned herself on the edges of most academic and political matters, not outside them but sufficiently removed to allow her to pursue the poorly supported conventional wisdoms and groupthink that stalls so many debates.

Second, was her willingness to stand apart, but not in isolation. It was this that made her love working in Atlantic Canada, and with Atlantic Canadian scholars and activists. She believed that studying Nova Scotia allowed her to ask new questions about the Atlantic world, questions that appeared one way from Massachusetts or Virginia, but quite different here. She was a scholar of very high international standing working on a place sometimes understood to be marginal to the wider Atlantic world, at a small university on the fringes of Canada, never mind the world, and she made all that work. She published with major figures like Philip Morgan, Carole Shammas and Nicholas Canny, with major presses like Princeton, Cambridge, and Oxford, on huge topics like modernity and the broader visions of empire, and at conferences from London to Chapel Hill. But she also wrote with grad students, published in Acadiensis, and Borealia, and did critically important work along with Bill Parenteau on the Madawaska land claims case, demonstrating a powerfully important reach. It would be easy to highlight these as very different worlds, but for Elizabeth it was all part of the world she loved, and which loved her. Her work, her drive, her ethic of active research, brought her respect from Cambridge to Madawaska.

I last saw Elizabeth this past March when I was in Fredericton for a lecture. We only had time for coffee, but we talked. We talked about the importance of teaching, not grad teaching, but first-year teaching. We quibbled over some details, bonded over others. I walked away from that discussion with more to think about, like always. I’ll miss those meetings very much.

Danny Samson

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I first met Elizabeth “At the Counter of the General Store,” just one of her works that I admired as a student. When I moved to Prince Edward Island to take up the “junior” version of her Tier I Canada Research Chair I confess that I penned some Mancke fan mail in the first month of the job. Despite her impressive workload, she did not leave it unopened. I was pleasantly surprised by her willingness to engage, share, invite, and participate in several initiatives over the next five years, and I was thrilled to join her on the Ecologies, Knowledge, and Power in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region project. It will continue in her honour, but like the rest of Atlantic Canada Studies, it will take years to complete even part of the work she started in the region.

Joshua MacFadyen

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Early in my career I presented a paper at a conference. Sitting in the first row, busy knitting, sat an intense woman. When the individual designated with the official comment effectively abandoned his task by proclaiming “there is nothing that connects these three papers,” the needles stopped clicking and the woman raised her hand. After starting with an abrupt rejoinder that should be familiar to all who knew her – “nonsense” – she launched into a cogent and seamless critique of all three papers and provided numerous thematic connections that merited consideration. All without the benefit of having read the papers before the conference. Such was my introduction to the fierce and compassionate scholar, colleague, teacher, mentor, and friend that I had the pleasure to share the road with over several decades. I shall miss Elizabeth terribly, especially her passion and laughter, and know I’ll spend the rest of life waiting for her probing question that follows the moment when I think I have something figured out.

Scott See

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Dr. Elizabeth Mancke was a friend, mentor, and role model. She had an incredible ability to see people for who they were and, more importantly for her graduate students, what they could become. As a mentor and co-author, she was strictly honest with her feedback and suggestions for improvement. As a friend Elizabeth was gracious with her time, charismatic, passionate, insightful, and fun loving. I will always cherish the memories of Elizabeth playing hide and seek with my then three year old son Allister on the lawn in front of Tilley Hall during the summer of 2022, just as I will reflect fondly on the countless hours we spent talking about our own work.

For the scholarly community, with the loss of Elizabeth comes the absence of a leader, an advocate, and most importantly, as her finished and unfinished projects attest to, a community builder. In the pursuit of her own scholarship Elizabeth built relationships that helped to define a generation of scholars. For those who have benefited from the scholarly networks Elizabeth helped to create, a great responsibility has been passed on to us. As we go forth as part of her legacy, we must do so with an abundance of thoughtfulness and care for our scholarship and for the needs of the less fortunate amongst us because that is what Elizabeth gifted us with the power to do.

Zachary A. Tingley

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Over ten years, Elizabeth played so many roles in my life. She was my teacher, my mentor, my PhD supervisor, my friend and a part of my chosen family. Her capacity to choose to do what was right, rather than what was convenient, made Elizabeth a force for good on UNB’s campus. Her unwavering compassion, kindness, and love for her students made Elizabeth the glue that held us together when the difficulties of graduate school almost broke us.

Many admired Elizabeth for her extraordinary scholarship, but her students will always remember her as their greatest advocate, ally, and as a champion for academic integrity.

Murray Yeomans

These reflections are being cross-posted with our friends at the Acadiensis Blog.