History and Policy

Backward as Forward: Reflections on Canada’s “Modern” Political Scene

May 13, 2013

By Christine McLaughlin While it is too soon for the historian to comment on the long-term effects of recent changes on the Canadian political landscape, the larger rightward shift is perhaps best evidenced by the federal New Democratic Party’s decision to “modernize” its constitution at its recent convention by “toning down” references to socialism. Pointing [...]

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The New History Wars?: Avoiding the Fights of the Past

May 7, 2013

The new history wars are not battles over the meaning of Canadian history. They are battles over public financing of historical research and historical preservation.

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The Need for Speedy History in the Post-War Canadian North

April 29, 2013

By Ken Coates and Bill Morrison Things change – but rarely as fast and comprehensively as in the Canadian North. As late as the 1950s, most Indigenous people in the territorial and provincial North lived off the land, traveling seasonally to fish, hunt, trap and gather. The hand of Ottawa had just begun to be [...]

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“Leveraging the Synergies” or a return to the past?: The decision to do away with CIDA

April 4, 2013

By Jill Campbell-Miller On March 21st, the Canadian government released the 2013 federal budget and in a paragraph did away with the 45-year-old Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The budget announced that CIDA would be amalgamated with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) to become the newly-renamed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade [...]

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Canada and the Right to Food

March 28, 2013

By David Webster “More lies from Amnesty International!” screamed a headline in a Kenyan newspaper, back in the 1990s. When assailed for their human rights records, the unimaginative response of many governments has been to attack the messenger. If Amnesty International criticizes a repressive regime, the regime tends to shout back that Amnesty is being [...]

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History Wars: Terms of debate

March 25, 2013

By Thomas Peace Last month, Terry Glavin wrote a syndicated op-ed piece that appeared in The Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver’s The Province, delivering a strongly worded dismissal of the historical profession in Canada. Historians and others have responded elsewhere to his indictment of the profession (see here, here and here). Today, I want to respond [...]

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The Politics of Place: Local History and the Megaproject

March 14, 2013

By Pete Anderson Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environment, and the Everyday, 1953-2003 Joy Parr University of British Columbia Press Paperback, 304 pages, $32.95 Just as all politics can be viewed as local, so, too, can history. Joy Parr’s Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953–2003 (UBC Press, 2010) explores local reactions to a series of [...]

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Canadian Museum of Civilization, Stalked by a Trojan Horse

March 11, 2013

By Dan Gallacher, PhD FCMA Ancient Troy withstood pressures at its walls for a decade. Ultimately the Greek attackers, applying an extraordinary ruse, swept in looting or destroying everything. Located on a major trade route with acquisitive Hittite hordes to its east and an aggressive Mycenaean host west across the Aegean, Troy was a highly [...]

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History Slam Episode Fourteen: Tim Stanley

March 6, 2013

Podcast: Play in new window | Download By Sean Graham B.C Premier Christy Clark has spent the better part of the last week apologizing for the provincial Liberals’ classified plan to win the “ethnic vote.” While the scheme had clear ethical issues by using provincial staffers for political purposes, what has garnered the most attention [...]

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Why Maritime Union Is a Bad Idea: An Environmental Historian’s Perspective

March 5, 2013

By Mark McLaughlin [Originally published on the Historians of the Environment of the Atlantic Region blog] Maritime Union, or one united Maritime province, is an idea that predates Canada. The original rationale for the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, which eventually led to Canadian Confederation (1867), was a meeting of Maritime leaders to discuss some form of union between [...]