Jim Clifford

Celebrating Three Years

May 1, 2012

By Jim Clifford Three  years ago, in the lead up to the Canadian Historical Association meeting, Christine McLaughlin, Ian Milligan, Thomas Peace, Jay Young and I founded ActiveHistory.ca.  At the time we were all graduate students in the history department at York University. The website emerged out of the Active History symposium held in September [...]

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History vs. Geography and Sourcemap.com

March 12, 2012

The interactive map above, produced by Leo Bonanni, the CEO of Sourcemap.com, demonstrates the impressive power of geographical analysis in the early 21st century. The map shows the supply chains for a typical laptop computer and provides a fascinating insight into the complicated mix of natural resources and manufacturing labour needed. It raises questions about [...]

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Boston IRA Tapes in the Courts

January 30, 2012

Northern Ireland experienced three decades of violent conflict until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Many of perpetrators never faced justice and some of these individuals have been brought into the political system as a part of the peace deal. This past creates multiple tensions in the present and leaves significant questions [...]

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New book review: Reynolds on Spooner’s Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960-64.

January 18, 2012

Today we are publishing ActiveHistory.ca’s tenth book review. This month Ken Reynolds, an historian with the Department of National Defence, reviews Kevin Spooner’s recent book about Canadian peacekeeping in the Congo: Notes prepared for Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s attendance at a Commonwealth conference in March 1961 summed up Canada’s position on Africa, noting that Canada [...]

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Historical 2012 Olympic Tour (1st Edition)

December 5, 2011

By Jim Clifford British politicians and planners are using the 2012 Olympic games to “revitalize” the Lower Lea Valley, a post-industrial landscape, situated between four inner-suburban boroughs in the East of London, including West Ham, which was the focus of my dissertation research. A century ago R. A. Bray described West Ham “as that of [...]

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EHTV Episode 10: A Town Called Asbestos V

November 25, 2011

On this final episode of a five-part series on the history of asbestos mining in Quebec, Dr. Jessica Van Horssen examines the effects of the decline of the asbestos industry and its impact on the people of Asbestos, QC. Furthermore, she discusses the internationally condemned policy of the federal government to abandon the use of [...]

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A Town Called Asbestos: a NiCHE EHTV series by Jessica van Horssen

October 28, 2011

Over the next few Fridays, ActiveHistory.ca is re-posting a five part series of YouTube videos created for the Network in Canadian Environment & History’s EHTV. This week EHTV presents the first part of a fascinating history of Quebec asbestos by Dr. Jessica Van Horssen. For more than one hundred years, Quebecers have mined this unique [...]

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Following the Freedom Trail through Boston

October 24, 2011

Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In [...]

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H-Net and Current Events

September 6, 2011

Last Wednesday I posted an essay by Dr. Patricia Daley that I first read on an H-Net Listserv, H- Urban. This is one of the hundreds of free email lists facilitated by the H-Net organization. Long before academic blogs, websites, and Twitter accounts, these H-Net lists were a key form of electronic communication among academic [...]

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Do you edit Wikipedia?

June 27, 2011

I started editing a few Wikipedia articles lately. While I’ve been interested in the project for years, I never seemed to have the time to become involved. Before this past week, I had created an account and fixed a few small details on pages directly related to my expertise, but I never added much content [...]

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