Active History

How the History of the Anti-mask and Anti-vaccination Movements Hang Together

October 10, 2025 No Comments

Thomas Schlich and Bruno J. Strasser

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is best known as a vaccination skeptic, but he is also skeptical about using masks for infection control. At the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC in May 2024, Kennedy Jr. recalled being asked during the pandemic whether he was scared of dying of COVID-19 since he wasn’t wearing a mask. His answer at the time was: “There’s a lot worse things than dying,” including “living like a slave”. The audience broke into applause.

Such an opinion is not new. A century earlier, during the influenza pandemic, citizen Frank Bobich told a Sacramento police officer that he would rather “be killed or hanged” than cover his face with a mask. Bobich had a mask in his pocket but refused to comply with the city-wide mask mandate. These blusterous statements reveal that for many people masks mean much more than protection against infectious diseases. They are not about health, but freedom. For this reason, the history of masks – and opposition to mask mandates – offers a unique window into the tense relationships between scientific expertise, medical authority, and state power.

Book cover of history academic text on the topic of mask. Cover depicts two men, in sits, wearing helmets and gas masks.

Bruno J Strasser & Thomas Schlich’s new book, The Mask, is out now with Yale University Press

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Bridging the Gap: The Legacy of the Soviet “Revisionist Turn”

October 9, 2025 No Comments

Stan Vassilenko

Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick before the Moskva River during her first visit to Moscow in 1969. Image courtesy of Sheila Fitzpatrick.

Academia continues to face a knowledge gap between scholarship and the public sphere, a fact that is especially prevalent when it comes to how we talk about Russia. In today’s world where headlines and social media tend to be people’s chief information suppliers, the resurgence of Cold War narratives of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian monolith or an autocracy by tradition colour Russia’s identity in public discourse, especially since the invasion of Ukraine. This suggests that changes in disciplinary perspectives occur separately from popular opinion, which calls on the historian to modify their tactics for writing history in the public eye.

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Women United – What’s Old is News

October 8, 2025 No Comments

By Sean Graham

This week I talk with Peggy Nash, one of the co-authors of Women United: Stories of Women’s Struggles for Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Union. We discuss women’s contributions to the union in its early years, how negotiating priorities were shaped, and the Second World War’s influence on the labour movement. We also chat about the impact of the Autopact and free trade on labour, women’s leadership in the modern labour movement, and what it’s like to be in the room negotiating against an employer.

Historical Headline of the Week

René Morisette, “Unionization in Canada, 1981 to 2022,” Stats Canada, November 23, 2022.

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Call For Contributors: Join the Active History Project This Fall!

October 7, 2025 No Comments

As we head into the fall season, we want to invite new contributors to help build the Active History Project! Activehistory.ca invites proposals for standalone blog posts, thematic blog series, and other contributions, all of which explore new research, innovative historical approaches, and history that matters today.

We welcome submissions from historians and scholars in related disciplines who engage with historical questions and would like to connect with the wider historical community in an accessible and easily digestible format. Whether you’re a graduate student, early-career scholar, or someone working outside of traditional academia, we encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and community-engaged research.

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The Continuing Relevance of Museums in Canada

October 3, 2025 No Comments

Cara Tremain

Group of young university students handle archeological materials in classroom setting. — *SFU archaeology students handling materials from the department’s diverse teaching collections. Photograph by Cara Tremain.*

This summer, the Government of Canada helped to promote visits to museums through the Canada Strong pass. While initially focused on seven of the country’s nine national museums, other provinces and territories also opted to offer reduced and free admission. Ultimately, 87 museums across the country were part of the initiative, and early data indicates that it helped to boost attendance. While the removal of admission fees increases accessibility, and – in turn – public enjoyment and appreciation of museums, the reality is that museums across the country are suffering from a lack of resources. To be effective stewards of the cultural heritage that they care for, museums need adequate financial support. However, as outlined in the 2023 report concerning renewal of the national museum policy, the majority of the country’s museums (~1500) do not receive funding from the federal government even though there is public support for them to do so.

While it remains to be seen whether a new museum policy will bring improved financial backing, the government are financially stepping up to contribute $50 million to the forthcoming Nunavut Inuit Heritage Center. This support emphasizes the government’s responsibility to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which includes several articles outlining rights to cultural heritage and associated cultural expressions. While Canada continues to lack a national repatriation policy, the country’s museums have been facilitating access to – and return of – Indigenous belongings for some time. At the Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (MAE) at Simon Fraser University, for example, repatriation has been an important element of its practice and teachings for decades.

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When Protest Becomes News: The 1970 Abortion Caravan and the Politics of Media Coverage

October 2, 2025 No Comments

By Hailey Baldock

With a black coffin strapped to the top of their van and a fiery determination to scrap Canada’s abortion laws, the women of the 1970 Abortion Caravan knew they had to make a scene. And they did.

Abortion Caravan, Toronto. (York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, ASC04612.)

Over the course of two weeks, the Caravan moved across the country from Vancouver to Ottawa, rallying supporters and drawing crowds, all while carrying the memory of women who died from unsafe abortions along with them.

Although the Caravan has since been recognized as a landmark in Canadian feminist and reproductive history, the media coverage at the time tells a very different story–one that reveals as much about Canadian newspapers as it does about the women involved in the protest.

When I began this research for my Master’s degree, eager to build on the work of media historians such as Barbara Freeman, I expected to encounter some unsavoury headlines and articles condemning the protest. And I did. What I didn’t anticipate, however, were the numerous, often explicitly gendered, criticisms directed against the women involved. The value of blending feminist history with media studies became quite clear to me, as the Abortion Caravan’s legacy is as much about how it was reported as about what it achieved.

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Military Experimentation – What’s Old is News

October 1, 2025 No Comments

By Sean Graham

This week, I talk with Matthew S. Wiseman, historian of science and medicine in modern Canada. We discuss why militaries engage in scientific research, the civilian benefits of that research, and how scientists navigated their research during the Cold War. We also chat about research consent within a military environment, the challenges of researching the Cold War era, and the legacy of scientific research in the mid-20th cenetury,

Matthew will be the delivering the second session of the Shannon Lecture series on Monday October 6 entitled ‘Cold War Consent? Military Experimentation and Research Ethics in Mid-Century Canada.’

Historical Headline of the Week

Matthew S. Wiseman, “Canada Created a Cold War Isolation Laboratory. It Ended in Scandal,” The Walrus, July 31, 2025.

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On the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation

September 30, 2025 No Comments

Ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its final report on the history of residential schools in Canada. Mandated to “inform all Canadians about what happened in residential schools”, the “TRC documented the truth of Survivors, their families, communities and anyone personally affected by the residential school experience.” It found that residential schools were part of a broader policy of elimination that was “best described as cultural genocide.”

In 2021, the Canadian Historical Association affirmed the TRC’s findings. The association declared: “…historians, in the past, have often been reticent to acknowledge this history as genocide. As a profession, historians have therefore contributed in lasting and tangible ways to the Canadian refusal to come to grips with this country’s history of colonization and dispossession.” The Canadian Historical Association statement concluded with the following call, “Our inability, as a society, to recognize this history for what it is, and the ways that it lives on into the present, has served to perpetuate the violence. It is time for us to break this historical cycle.”

The findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the self-reflection that followed in many quarters, including amongst the membership of the Canadian Historical Association, highlighted the need for “education for reconciliation”. According to the Commission, “Educating Canadians for reconciliation involves not only schools and post-secondary institutions, but also dialogue forums and public history institutions such as museums and archives. Education must remedy the gaps in historical knowledge that perpetuate ignorance and racism.” Crucially, the Commission noted that “education for reconciliation must do even more.” As the Commission explained, “Survivors told us that Canadians must learn about the history and legacy of residential schools in ways that change both minds and hearts.” (Calls to Action 62, 63, 64).

On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which the federal government created to honour “the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities”, members of the Active History editorial collective offer suggestions on scholarship and resources they have found helpful in their own work and learning journeys.

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Jean de Brebeuf: Colonial Tensions and Spiritual Healing c. 1649-1660

September 26, 2025 No Comments

Abigail Beckett

September 26^th marks Jean de Brebeuf’s Feast Day to celebrate his life and legacy as a saint. Brébeuf was part of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, and participated in religious missions in colonial Canada in the early 17^th century. Brebeuf, along with his colleague Gabriel de Lalemant, were killed in 1649 on one of these missions. After their martyrdom, a fervent Christian cult emerged around Brébeuf and his bodily remains. Brébeuf, along with the other Canadian Martyrs, were canonized in 1930 by Pope Pius XI. Brébeuf’s remains were offered by the Jesuits of Quebec to the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ontario in 1992 where they remain today. These remains include only half of his skull as the other half remains in the Augustine Monastery in Hotel Dieu encased in a silver bust. In 2024 Brébeuf’s skull toured throughout the United States and in 2025 in Western Canada as part of the Martyrs’ Shrine relic tour. Even now, Brébeuf’s relics are sought after for their spiritual powers. People pray to the relics, leave prayer intentions on paper and place them in a basket, or press their holy cards to the reliquaries to bring home. The popularity of his story and relics warrant more attention to be place on his role in spiritual healing in the colonial and medical context of the 17^th century.

On March 16, 1649, Father Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649) and his colleague Father Gabriel de Lalemant (1610-1649) were captured, tortured, and killed by the “Iroquois” in St. Ignace, Ontario. The martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalemant was first recounted by fellow Jesuit of the Huron mission, Christophe Regnault. Although Regnault notes that he did not witness the incident himself, the events were told to him by Christian Wendat (Huron) who were taken captive by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). The story goes that Brébeuf and Lalemant left the mission to go to the nearby village of St. Ignace to instruct the new Christian Wendat. Everyone back at the mission camp, including Regnault, saw a fire in the direction of the village and soon after, some of the Wendat fleeing toward them. The Wendat told Regnault that the Haudenosaunee came to the village and seized Brébeuf and Lalemant. What was recounted after was vivid: according to the Wendat the two Jesuit Fathers were brutally tortured and cannibalized. Flesh was consumed, blood was drunk, and Brébeuf’s heart was torn out and eaten, as narrativized in the Catholic writings of the Jesuit Relations. The Relations is a useful source to understand how the Jesuits maintained information networks, but it is crucial to consider the potential hyperbole in these accounts as demonstrated in specific language employed like barbarism, cannibals or Caribs, and sauvage.

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Triceps, Traps, and… Tiaras?: Gender Performance and Subversion in Women’s Bodybuilding through Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)

September 23, 2025 No Comments

Aidan Hughes

Two black-and-white photos of a woman, viewed from behind. Her hair is curled and in an elaborate updo and she is wearing frilled briefs and wrapped in sheer cloth. She is flexing her muscles to show of the musculature of her back and arms. — *Miss Charmion, a sideshow strongwoman and trapeze artist. 1904. From* The Circus Book, 1870s-1950s by Frederick Whitman Glasier. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Casual fans of bodybuilding’s breakout docu-drama starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pumping Iron (1977), may not be aware of its mildly anticipated sequel. In 1985, filmmakers George Butler and Charles Gaines produced Pumping Iron II: The Women. It followed women bodybuilders at a bodybuilding show in Las Vegas during 1983, but mainly focused on two vastly different competitors to explore the expressions and understandings of femininity in the masculine-coded sport. Rachel McLish, the reigning Ms. Olympia champion, performed a socially accepted version of bodily femininity in the film; she was very lightly muscled with some body fat that contoured her body. On the other end of the film’s gender continuum was Bev Francis, a powerlifter-turned-bodybuilder who carried more muscle mass than female bodybuilding had ever seen.

Gender subversion was embodied in Bev Francis. Francis was far more muscular than the other competitors, and the film used her subversive body to drive the plot forward.^[1] Conversations between competitors, judges, and onlookers were often in reference to Francis’ body; it is unlikely that femininity would have been as intensely debated had Francis not been a competitor.^[2] She challenged women’s bodybuilding so much so that the judges and officials called an emergency meeting to discuss the competition’s ruleset after seeing Francis’ body. Ben Weider – who was second to his brother Joe Weider as the most powerful person in the sport and business of bodybuilding and co-founder of the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB), the premier professional bodybuilding organization – stated “We hope that this evening we can clear up the definite meaning… of the word femininity and what you have to look for. This is an official IFBB analysis of the meaning of the word.”^[3] Meditating – and maybe even fantasizing a little – on what kind of woman he wanted to see on stage, Weider explained “what we’re looking for is something that’s right down the middle. A woman that has a certain amount of aesthetic femininity, but yet has that muscle tone to show that she is an athlete.”^[4]

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