'Theirs was a deeper purpose': The Pennsylvania Germans of Ontario and the Craft of the Homemaking Myth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The article analyses the immigrant narrative of the Pennsylvania Germans who settled Upper Canada between the 1780s and the 1830s, using Orm Øverland's framework of a 'homemaking myth.' The Pennsylvania-German myth first appeared in the 1890s and claimed a share of the United Empire Loyalists' foundational myth, drawing upon its themes of loyalty and sacrifice. Later authors modified and amplified these themes to distance the Pennsylvania Germans from the Germans whom Canadians were fighting in the First World War. Soon after the conflict, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recognized the Pennsylvania-German migration to Upper Canada as an event of national significance, highlighting the success of the homemaking myth's message. Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, authors contin ued to promote the theme of loyalty, but with the dawn of official multiculturalism in Canada the Pennsylvania Germans regained their Germanness, becoming founders of the German-Canadian community. The article suggests that the historical analysis of other immigrant groups in Canada may benefit from the interpretive framework provided by the homemaking myth, and argues that the Pennsylvania-German narrative highlights a need to rethink how local and amateur histories contribute to a shared sense of Canadian identity. Dans l'article, on analyse les récits d'Allemands de Pennsylvanie ayant immigré au Haut-Canada entre les années 1780 et les années 1830, à l'aide du modèle d'Orm Øverland d'un « homemaking myth ». Le mythe des Allemands de Pennsylvanie est apparu pour la première fois au cours des années 1890 et s'est approprié une partie du mythe lié à la fondation des Loyalistes de l'Empire-Uni, en empruntant les thèmes de la loyauté et du sacrifice. Par la suite, les auteurs ont modifié et amplifié ces thèmes pour distinguer les Allemands de Pennsylvanie des Allemands que les Canadiens combattaient durant la Première Guerre mondiale. Peu après le conflit, la Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada a reconnu que la migration des Allemands de Pennsylvanie vers le Haut-Canada a été un événement ayant une portée nationale, ce qui met en évidence le succès lié au message du homemaking myth. Pendant le reste du XXe siècle, les auteurs ont continué de promouvoir le thème de la loyauté. Toutefois, avec la montée du multiculturalisme officiel au Canada, les Allemands de Pennsylvanie sont redevenus Allemands, pour devenir les fondateurs de la communauté germano-canadienne. L'article montre que le modèle interprétatif du homemaking myth peut être utile dans l'étude d'autres groupes immigrants au Canada. De plus, on soutient que les récits des Allemands de Pennsylvanie soulignent à quel point il est nécessaire de revoir comment les histoires locales et amateurs contribuent au sentiment général d'identité canadienne.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".