In the Shadow of Genocide: Elizabeth MacCallum Challenges Anti-Jewish Racism and Zionism

      No Comments on In the Shadow of Genocide: Elizabeth MacCallum Challenges Anti-Jewish Racism and Zionism
Elizabeth MacCallum. Source: Queen’s Alumni Review Vol. 27, November 1952, p. 215, photo by Van’s Studio Ottawa.

John Price

This is the first post in a two-part series based on a recently published article in the International Journal, “Resisting Palestine’s Partition: Elizabeth MacCallum, the Arab World and UN Resolution 181(II).” 

“I am a Zionist,” declared Justin Trudeau just before stepping down as prime minister.

“No one in Canada,” he stated, “should ever be afraid to call themselves a Zionist.”

Trudeau’s remarks came during a National Forum on Combatting Anti-Semitism. In response, the Israeli embassy in Ottawa welcomed his remarks, while UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Francesco Albanese, asserted that fighting antisemitism is a duty but that Zionism infringes on Palestinian’s right to self-determination.

These contrary responses reflect sharp divisions in Canada about Israel-Palestine and also about the definition of antisemitism. For supporters of Zionism, the focus is on Hamas and its October 7 attack that killed approximately 1200 people including civilians. Supporters of Palestine point out that the Israeli response has been disproportionate and indiscriminate with over 50,000 in Gaza killed, mainly women and children.

Both sides assert the necessity of countering antisemitism but differ on what constitutes antisemitism.

Rather than helping to clarify these complex issues, Trudeau’s declaratory performance simply aligned himself with one side in what has arguably been a long and complicated history of anti-Jewish, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab racism in Canada.

The Nazi genocide and its aftermath marked a watershed moment in this history, one that Elizabeth MacCallum had to navigate as a newcomer to Canada’s Department of External Affairs.

Continue reading →

Queering Histories of Divorce and the Family in Nova Scotia

      No Comments on Queering Histories of Divorce and the Family in Nova Scotia
Image of Countway v. Countway decision as it appears in Can LII database, CanLII: Canadian Legal Information Institute.

Erin Gallagher-Cohoon 

In June 1968, a young woman petitioned the Nova Scotia Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes for a dissolution of marriage on the grounds of legal cruelty. She had lived with her husband in both Halifax and Western Shore in Lunenburg County for five years before briefly separating in 1965 and then again, this time for good, in 1967. They had one son, and the wife described the first years of their marriage as “normal.” Over time, however, their relationship suffered and he “refused sexual intercourse and said that he did not love her and, finally, he told her that he loved another man. He said ‘I’m queer.’” Revealing of the climate at the time, the term “normal” was used repetitively in the judge’s summary of the wife’s petition and was always inherently heterosexual. In contrast, in similar family law cases, queer sex was often described as “unnatural,” “unusual,” or “abnormal.” This post queers Nova Scotian family law by delving into Countway v. Countway: the earliest reported Canadian divorce case in which a spouse’s queer sexuality was interpreted as legal cruelty.

According to the wife’s account in Countway v. Countway, the couple continued to live together after her husband’s declaration, but their relationship became increasingly strained. According to the wife, he had introduced his lover to their son and would invite his lover and friends over in the evenings while she was at work. Private house parties of this sort were popular queer social spaces in many Canadian cities prior to the development of a gay bar scene. Mrs. Countway convinced her husband to see a psychiatrist, which he did once before refusing to continue the sessions. Crucially, Mr. Countway’s refusal to return can be understood within a longer history of psychiatric pathologization.  In 1968, homosexuality was still listed as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It was not until 1973 that queer activists were successful in their fight to have “homosexuality” removed from the DSM (gender diversity, in contrast, continued to be pathologized under a new term). 

Continue reading →

Taking Care of the Truth: A Call for Collaborative, Community-Engaged Residential School Research

      Comments Off on Taking Care of the Truth: A Call for Collaborative, Community-Engaged Residential School Research
By Sean Carleton and Adina Williams, members of the Squamish Nation’s Yúusneẇas Project

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released the executive summary of its final report 10 years ago, in June 2015. In the decade since, many Indigenous Nations have carried on the TRC’s work of putting truth before reconciliation and learning more about the residential school system and its ongoing legacy.

Following the Tkemlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s 2021 announcement about the location of potential unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, many Nations have specifically taken up the TRC’s Calls to Action 71-76 about locating and honouring missing children and unmarked burials at former residential schools.

This work, which includes the use of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) among other research practices and technologies, is not about proving anything to Canada or Canadians. Church and state records have already confirmed more than 4,000 Indigenous children died at residential schools across the country, and this part of the history is outlined in Volume 4 of the TRC’s final report. Instead, Nations are undertaking new work to continue the truth-finding and truth-telling processes needed to facilitate internal healing and justice for Survivors and communities.

Continue reading →

Two Lefts, Two Paths: Quebec Left Politics and the Immigration Question through Bill 84

      1 Comment on Two Lefts, Two Paths: Quebec Left Politics and the Immigration Question through Bill 84

Francesco Coirazza

“Multiculturalism finally no longer applies to Quebec! […] It’s a model that has always been harmful to Quebec,” claimed Minister of the French Language Jean-François Roberge in the salon rouge of the Quebec legislature on 28 May 2025. On that day, Quebec’s National Assembly passed Bill 84: An Act Respecting National Integration, a controversial law introduced by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government. Spearheaded by Roberge, the bill establishes a new integration framework aimed at preserving Quebec’s French language and cultural identity by shifting further away from Canada’s multicultural immigration model. Two parties that, at one time or another, have claimed to be on the left voted on the bill that Wednesday morning. They landed on opposite sides of the ledger. The Parti Québecois (PQ), arguably a social democratic party for a significant part of its existence, voted with the CAQ, while the younger and more unambiguously leftist Québec solidaire (QS) voted against the bill.[1] As we will come to recognize, these opposing responses underscore a deep ideological split within Quebec’s nationalist Left—one increasingly defined by the immigration question. In this particular case, Bill 84 can be used as a lens to reveal how two progressive parties—the PQ and QS—have grown apart (with the PQ making a sharp departure from leftist politics), especially when considering the hot topic of immigration in Quebec. By retracing their respective historical progressions, we are able to understand how nationalism in Quebec can be used both as a tool for exclusion or a foundation for solidarity and inclusion along cultural lines.

Founded in 1968, the Parti Québécois emerged out of the Quiet Revolution and the growing support for Quebec sovereignty. It was initially a party of the left, combining social democracy with cultural nationalism. André Bernard outlines how “during the time of its first mandate, from 1976 to 1981, the PQ government followed typical practices that other social-democratic maintained during that same era.” Furthermore, Bernard notes, “most PQ members during the seventies called themselves social-democrats. René Lévesque, their leader, often defined himself as such and supported social-democratic resolutions.” [2] The PQ’s first electoral victory in 1976 marked the beginning of a government that emphasized francophone empowerment but also advocated progressive measures such as the integration of newcomers. As Martin Pâquet explains, PQ policies in the 1970s were grounded in the theory of “Autant de façons d’être Québécois” (Many ways to be Quebecois) — a pluralist ideology that recognized diverse cultural contributions within a common national identity.[3] Immigration rapidly diversified under the PQ: by 1980, immigrants from the Maghreb, Latin America, and Southeast Asia made up 53% of Quebec’s immigration intake, compared to 27% in 1973.[4] This increased acceptance of allophone immigrants reflected a deliberate policy of openness in early PQ policy. Under the PQ in the 70’s there was a much more even playing field for all potential immigrants, francophones and allophones alike. Gérald Godin, former PQ Minister of Immigration (and, interestingly, October Crisis detainee), embodied this inclusive vision. He hoped Quebec would become “ a global model, a homeland where a brotherhood between diverse peoples will have been achieved.”[5] Godin’s efforts to regularize the status of 10,000 undocumented Haitians in 1981 (despite pressures from the federal government) further confirmed this progressive stance.[6]

Gérald Godin, 1969. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Continue reading →

2SLGBTQ+ Youth, Parental Rights, and Alberta Standards for School Libraries

      No Comments on 2SLGBTQ+ Youth, Parental Rights, and Alberta Standards for School Libraries

Nancy Janovicek and Karissa Patton

This button is from Nancy’s political button “archive.” She first wore it in the 1990s when groups attempted to ban books from libraries, including Lesléa Newman’s classic children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies.

On July 10, the Alberta government introduced new standards for school libraries “to ensure school library materials are age-appropriate.” The ministerial order responds to a group of parents who raised concerns about sexual acts, drug and alcohol use, derogatory language, and self-harm in coming-of-age-books available in school libraries in May. The government launched a survey that asked who should be responsible for determining whether books containing sexually explicit material are age appropriate; the options included librarians, teachers, school officials, students, and parents.

On social media, the premier defended the May announcement that the government would present new rules stating that “parents are right to be upset.” She is again invoking parental rights to defend government policies that target 2SLGBTQ+ youth, restrict access sex ed, and community resources for queer youth. Active History is reposting our May 2024 article on community education and sex ed in Alberta that responded to anti-trans legislation that also included a requirement that parents opt-in to lessons on sexually education, sexual orientation, and sexual health. We encourage readers to reflect on the  themes of parental control over youth’s access to education on bodies, relationships, and sex in the original article in light of these recent events in Alberta.

Continue reading →

A Review of Peter Fortna’s The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History

      No Comments on A Review of Peter Fortna’s The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History

Maegan Ellis

Peter Fortna’s The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History presents a compelling and community-centered account of one of northern Alberta’s long-standing yet often overlooked Métis communities. The book offers a significant contribution to both Indigenous history and the growing field of community-engaged scholarship. Beyond a regional study, Fortna’s work reflects how communities assert identity, maintain continuity, and navigate evolving relationships with the land, the state, and industry.

A defining strength of Fortna’s monograph is its rootedness in the community’s own voice and experience, grounded in respectful collaboration. Rather than writing about the Fort McKay Métis Nation (FMMN), he worked with them. Having the full support of the community, Fortna’s work was reviewed and partially funded by the FMMN itself. As Fortna highlights in his introduction, earlier iterations of this work drew on oral histories and interviews, family genealogies, land-use documents and reports, newspaper articles, and correspondence between community members and various organizational bodies to marshal historical evidence that Fort McKay’s Métis population holds section 35 rights under the Constitution. This research was initially undertaken to support Fort McKay’s legal claim to consultation rights and formed part of a larger submission that resulted in the Alberta government recognizing the FMMN’s “credible assertion” as rights-holders under section 35 in 2020. Fortna’s monograph expands on that work, turning evidence assembled for legal purposes into a deeper historical account of Métis identity, continuity, and community authority.

Continue reading →

An Historian Beyond the University

      No Comments on An Historian Beyond the University

Adam Bunch

This post is part of our series of Essays on the Future of Knowledge Mobilization and Public History Online.

I didn’t expect to get into public history. I’ve been lucky enough to find an unconventional path into it, almost accidentally, from a strange multimedia project to online writing to books and teaching and now a wide enough variety of projects that I’m able to make my living doing it. But I’ve never had a clear plan. My work is incredibly rewarding and I find it endlessly fascinating, but my day-to-day is usually a chaotic scramble of deadlines and unanswered emails, so I don’t often get a chance to stop and take a step back to wrap my head around my work and my approach. Thankfully, last year Active History invited me to take part in a workshop about “The Future of Knowledge Mobilization and Public History Online.” It was a wonderful two days, bringing together historians from across the country and giving me the chance to take that step back and try to articulate my own experiences.  

Continue reading →

Relevance and Resistance: Steering a Critical Course on AI

      1 Comment on Relevance and Resistance: Steering a Critical Course on AI

Mack Penner and Edward Dunsworth

In his case for “steering a middle course” on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the history classroom, written partially as response to earlier pieces by each of us, Mark Humphries makes a number of points with which we agree. First among those points of agreement are the value of a historical education and the skills that such an education develops in students. We agree, also, that a certain media literacy and technological capacity are important skills not just for our students but for us as historians, too – and that developing those skills can be an important pedagogical goal in our classrooms. We disagree, however, with a number of Humphries’s other arguments in favour of the AI middle course, and finding those disagreements both significant and worthy of reply, we want to further the discussion here.

Among Humphries’s key arguments is one about relevance: to reject AI is to “retreat into a purist position that is likely to make us irrelevant” in the ongoing discussion about AI implementation, he claims. But to reject AI is not to ignore it, and neither is it to vacate the field of discussion. We have no interest whatsoever in pretending that AI doesn’t exist, as Humphries implies that we do. On the contrary, from a place of intense concern for how AI might warp our discipline (not to mention our world more generally), and diminish the intellectual development of us and our students alike, our position is critical rather than ignorant.

There is something unsettling about Humphries’ arguments for relevance. He seems to suggest that only by falling in line behind the ascendant power of AI can historians have any effect whatsoever in the classroom. Resistance is futile. “This is the world in which we and our students must live. So how can we simultaneously reject AI while also claiming to prepare students to live, work, and think critically in such a world?” Humphries asks. We don’t agree that teachers’ ability to reach their students is dependent on the use of the technology du jour. (Neither do we accept that this is the world in which we must live, but more on that later). Both of us attended university after the take-off of personal computers and the Internet and had professors who integrated those technologies minimally – or not at all – in their teaching. In our own experiences as students, the use or non-use of technology had absolutely no correlation with the quality of instruction. We strongly suspect that this observation rings true to many readers. Universities offer students a wide-range of pedagogical approaches that may or may not inform their future paths. Some professors are embracing AI, while others are rejecting it. But surely even AI optimists can recognize the value to students in this pedagogical diversity.

Continue reading →

Professors or Propagandists? McGill’s Socialist Professors and their Students in the 1930s

      No Comments on Professors or Propagandists? McGill’s Socialist Professors and their Students in the 1930s

This is the final post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s.

Raffaella Cerenzia

1930s McGill was a small, tight-knit place. Only 3,000 or so students roamed the university’s campus. They were taught by a short roster of professors; the Department of Economics and Political Science numbered just six in the early thirties. In this intimate setting, “One got to know one’s classmates and teachers fairly easily.”[1] The McGill You Knew, a collection of McGill memories, is replete with stories of casual and friendly student-professor interactions, many of which took place outside of the classroom or even off campus.[2] In such an environment, professors were likely to know their more vocal students’ political leanings. Economics professor Stephen Leacock, a known Conservative, once told one of his socialist students not to write an assigned essay “because, he said with a Leacockian grin, his ulcers acted up at the thought of having to read it.”[3]

In this context, it’s easy to imagine that individual professors had the ability to influence or shape their students’ political philosophies. It’s also quite hard to imagine that when socialism cropped up among students and staff, the two cohorts operated independently. Certainly, McGill’s top administrators found it entirely plausible, or even definite, that McGill’s handful of socialist professors were propagating their beliefs among the student population. Professors Eugene Forsey and Frank Scott were considered the ringleaders, poisoning lectures and students with their socialist propagandizing.[4] Throughout the 1930s, McGill’s administrators returned repeatedly to the question of whether radical professors were converting students to their ideology. While evidence suggests that these professors did influence at least a handful of their students, it also indicates that administrative fears were rather overblown. In fact, it seems that the professors’ greatest impact was made outside the classroom, among students who were already involved with socialism to some extent.

McGill professors Eugene Forsey and F.R. Scott. Library and Archives Canada; McGill University Archives.
Continue reading →

The Chancellor and His Principals: Administrative Reponses to Socialist Professors at McGill, c. 1930-1941

      No Comments on The Chancellor and His Principals: Administrative Reponses to Socialist Professors at McGill, c. 1930-1941

This is the second post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s.

Raffaella Cerenzia

As the 1930s unfolded, the soaring unemployment and general miseries of the Great Depression breathed new life into the Canadian left. Socialism began to take root in federal politics, a process exemplified by the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1932. As an institution that catered to elites, McGill University was in many ways protected from the worst the Depression had to offer. Even so, the tensions playing out across Canada could be found on McGill’s campus. Balancing the books was a consuming struggle for the decade’s administrators, and they remained preoccupied with keeping socialist influences on campus in check. Throughout the 1930s, McGill’s handful of socialist students and professors were active and vocal. Early in the decade, socialist students printed a CCF-aligned publication. Socialist professors engaged repeatedly in public newspaper debates and lectures. Both groups’ activities drew significant public attention. For McGill’s governors and donors, who were largely drawn from the ranks of Montreal’s business elite, this was a source of great consternation and outcry.[1] Protecting McGill against this perceived threat to its reputation became a major preoccupation for the university’s leadership during the Great Depression.

McGill’s principalship was no steadying force amid the turmoil. From 1930 to 1941, the position passed hands four times. For the two years when there was no principal at all, the chancellor, Sir Edward Beatty, took the reins instead. All of the head administrators wanted to protect McGill’s reputation and preserve academic freedom, but each defined those concepts in very different terms. The principals’ reactions to socialist professors thus flip-flopped throughout the decade, passing from unhappy acceptance to active support, and then to active resistance. As the principalship rapidly rotated, Chancellor Beatty remained a stable, influential, and decidedly anti-socialist presence.

Edward Beatty in his office at the headquarters of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Montreal), where he served as president, 1919. Image: Queens University Archives.
Continue reading →