This essay is part of an ongoing series reflecting on this summer’s Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI). By Katherine MacDonald My childhood summers were spent on the shores of Lake Huron, visiting my grandmother in Amberley. Together with my brother, we would explore the woods and play by the water’s edge, collecting shells and feathers, and listen to the… Read more »
By Thomas Peace Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of Jack Granatstein’s provocative polemic Who Killed Canadian History, a book that laments the perceived steep decline in Canadians’ knowledge of our past. It is rare for any book to have such staying power. Earlier this month, for example, the book was drawn upon extensively in an op-ed column for my local… Read more »
This month, I wanted to take a break from reviewing the provinces’ History and Social Studies curricula to return to a question I posed in a 2011 blog post following the data collection for my doctoral dissertation. The question is: Who is History education for? Seven years on, I feel no closer to an answer and feel like, in many ways, exploring… Read more »
This essay is part of an ongoing series reflecting on this summer’s Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI). By Phil Henderson On the shores of Lake Mindemoya, Alan Corbiere talked about how Nanabush escaped from the Haudenosaunee by running up the length of the Saugeen/Bruce Peninsula and paddling across Lake Huron to Manitoulin Island. In the local coffee shop that… Read more »
By Frank Cogliano On a recent trip to Sweden I encountered an elderly gentleman out walking his dog. We engaged in a brief conversation. Hearing my accent, he detected that I was an Anglophone and asked me if I’m English. “No,” I replied, “American.” He broke into a smile, laughed, and made a Nazi salute and said, “Trump!” We continued… Read more »
By Daniel Heidt In July 2016, when Canadians were beginning to think about Canada 150, I posted a brief article on ActiveHistory.ca about an emerging and largely crowdsourced project – The Confederation Debates – an initiative to digitize and popularize over 9,000 pages of Canada’s founding historical records. I am pleased to say that Canadians were eager to contribute to this important… Read more »
Andrea Eidinger I would like to acknowledge and thank the many academics who have reached out to me on this subject over the past few months. Once again, I am profoundly grateful and honoured by their strength and generosity. Special thanks to Ian Mosby for permission to include his story in this piece. Everything in academia has its season: SSHRC… Read more »
This is the fourth in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Ellen Scheinberg As I was working on a family archival project for a client this month, I learned about the passing of his great uncle, Alfred Benjamin Geldzaeler, from influenza in late October 2018. Albert, or “Alfie”… Read more »
This is the third in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Mike Clare The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19 had a profound impact on Canadian culture and public policy. But is it worth acknowledging? As an approach to teaching the Canadian experience, the Spanish Flu Pandemic could be… Read more »
This is the second in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Esyllt Jones For all the times scholars of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic have referred to its “forgotten” aspect, in homage to Alfred Crosby’s 1989 title for the influential book that a decade earlier had been published as… Read more »
