Search Results for: year in review

Medical Cannabis: The Canadian Physicians’ Perspective

By Murray Opdahl, MD, BSPE, CCFP As of April 1, 2014, Health Canada stopped authorizing use of marijuana in Canada and placed this responsibility on physicians who were not particularly interested in having this responsibility. Currently, physicians can choose to provide a “medical document” that authorizes the patient to obtain marijuana from a licensed producer. Under the previous system, physicians… Read more »

The Ninth Floor: Finding Black Power in Montreal

By Camille Robert Translated by Thomas Peace This review originally appeared in French on Artichaut magazine and HistoireEngagee.ca In many way, the image of Montreal in the 1960s is defined by the 1967 World’s Fair. Often celebrated as one of the key moments in the Quiet Revolution, official imagery of the city situated it as a centre-point in a modernized and… Read more »

Virtual Histories of Disability and Assistive Devices

Introduction to the Exhibit by Dominique Marshall on behalf of Carleton University’s Disabilities Research Group Machines of the past hold many of the secrets for designers of future technologies. This is why in the 1960s, a mechanic from Gatineau with 2% vision, personally collected precious old Braille printing machines.  Roland Galarneau laboured in his basement for over a decade, in… Read more »

Why Non-Indigenous Canadians Need to Share the Burden of the Residential School System

An earlier version of this post was originally published on 49thShelf.com as part of a special series of essays and book recommendations called Talking History. Follow the link to see the rest of the series and to explore the more than 80,000 Canadian books listed on the site. The author would like to thank Crystal Fraser for her comments and feedback. By… Read more »

Film Friday: The Revenant is Beautiful, Disappointing Art

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Stacy Nation-Knapper The Revenant is not history. Yes, as the film trailers, posters, and advertisements boast, the film was “inspired by true events” and it represents an amalgam of multiple historic fur trade events during the years 1820-24, and fantasy. Most of the non-Indigenous characters in the film existed. Other writers, including Clay Landry for the Museum of the Mountain… Read more »

Truth, Reconciliation, and the Politics of the Body in Indian Residential School History

By Evan J. Habkirk and Janice Forsyth In March 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada completed its six-year investigation into the experiences of Indian residential school students who had survived years of neglect, abuse, and trauma at these institutions. More than 6,000 witnesses testified at hearings held throughout the country. The purpose of the Commission was to collect… Read more »

Conversations with my Father’s paintings: writing my relations back into the academy

By Zoe Todd   My research engages the relationship between people, place, stories and time. This manifests in my doctoral work with examinations of human-fish relationships in the context of colonialism in the Western Arctic. But closer to home, in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), my work examines people’s relationships to place through story and art — fish stories, land stories, stories of movement… Read more »

‘Tis the Season (for Social and Economic Change): Depression-Era Christian Socialism and an Alternative Meaning for Christmas

by Christo Aivalis If one peruses their televisions, computers, and streetscapes, they can’t help but forget that we have been in the throes of the Christmas season since November. But this form of Christmas celebration, tied so deeply with capitalism, belies the transformative optimism Christmas provided working-class socialists in the Depression, and still today. Much as Pope Francis’ criticisms of… Read more »

“‘Tomorrow Sunny’: The Rise and Fall of Solar Heating in Canada, Part 4”

Henry Trim In the final part of this series on solar energy we will examine the unhappy results of solar advocates’ overreliance on optimistic simulations and the difficulty of commercializing economically marginal technology. Tragically for development of renewable energy, neither solar technology nor the energy market developed as projected. Generous federal funding combined with the installation of solar collectors on… Read more »

Pork Cuts: The Sharp Edges of Nativism in Southern Europe

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By Aitana Guia Too many political leaders are banking on politicizing migration today. Culture has become a fertile battlefield. Food represents familiarity and safety. Eating is a daily activity that connects parents to their children, to their schools, and to their extended families. Social life in Southern Europe revolves around food and food rituals. Donna Gabbacia, a historian of the… Read more »