By Jonathan Weier Last year on Activehistory.ca I wrote about the lack of federal government funding for First World War commemoration. Despite the fact that the First World War centennial period has started, the federal government continues to offer little support for First World War commemorative activities. The coming federal election, the recent decline in oil prices, as well as… Read more »
This post is the second in a series of four marking the 35th anniversary of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope. By Jenny Ellison Just months before his death in June 1981, Fitness and Amateur Sport Canada (FAS) announced the first annual “Terry Fox Marathon of Hope Day.” A series of 10-kilometre runs in locations across Canada would “commemorate Terry’s great… Read more »
By Jamie Swift In the 1985 Argentinian film, The Official Story, one of the characters, a student, angrily proclaims that his country’s history textbooks had been “written by assassins.” Stories, as we know, vary considerably in the telling. The dominant narrative – to use the now shopworn term – tends to be recounted by the loudest voices. Hardly assassins. But… Read more »
ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to announce the publication of Gregor Kranjc’s new paper: “Memory Politics: Ottawa’s Monument to the Victims of Communism.” Know that evil comes in many forms and seems to reinvent itself – Nazism, Marxist-Leninism, today, terrorism – they all have one thing in common: The destruction, the end, of human liberty. Ideologies that promise utopias lead to… Read more »
By Conrad McCallum There has been a renewed interest in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century story of the female match workers at the former E.B. Eddy Match Factory in Hull, Quebec. For me, this is another good example of recent efforts to regionally situate the big themes of social history in Canada. It also illustrates the challenges of trying to… Read more »
By Teresa Iacobelli In 1964, fifty years following the start of the First World War, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) aired the seventeen-part radio series In Flanders’ Fields. Now, at the centenary of the Great War, the CBC has again leaned upon this series as one of its programming highlights to commemorate the anniversary. In Flanders’ Fields recently re-aired as… Read more »
By Thomas Peace Over the past week, ActiveHistory.ca has run a couple of posts about the politics of naming and local commemoration. These essays reminded me of a debate that Paul Bennett and I had a couple of years ago over the merits of renaming schools as the Halifax school board decided that the name Cornwallis was no longer an… Read more »
By James Daschuk Ok, first things first: I do not hate John A. Macdonald. At the risk of maddening some colleagues out there, I am wary of trying to contort huge historical events and consequences into how they apply to a single individual’s psychological makeup, political vision or personal ambition. As a self-professed environmental historian, I have even joked with… Read more »
By Christa Zeller Thomas “[Confederation …] will make us historical.” John A. Macdonald “History is not the province of the ladies.” John Adams Did Canada’s Confederation women give birth to the new dominion in 1867? Sir John A. didn’t have women in mind when he made his statement (above) about entering history. He was mainly referring to himself. And yet,… Read more »
By Timothy J. Stanley Racisms are central to the creation of Canada through European dominance over the vast territories of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. A case in point is provided by John Alexander Macdonald and his enactment of Asian exclusion and the genocide of the people of the southern plains.[1] Macdonald not only excluded the Chinese, he… Read more »
