Author Archives: Guest

Accountability for the Roman Catholic Church’s Role in the Residential School System: Urgent Actions Needed Immediately

Here, I outline 3 urgent actions that need to be addressed by the Roman Catholic Church immediately as part of taking responsibility for its significant role in the residential school system. The 3 urgent actions are: 1) an apology from the Pope, 2) a statement by the CCCB outlining how they have engaged and will continued to engage with TRC’s Calls to Action 59, 60, and 61, and 3) payment of $21.3 million by the Roman Catholic entities to Indigenous healing programs that was not paid to the IRSSA.

Take a Look Inside: What did we learn from a prison riot fifty years ago?

On April 15, 1971, rioting prisoners in Canada’s oldest prison invited reporters to take a look inside. They wanted the entire world to come to the infamous Kingston Penitentiary to see how the forgotten were treated and how they lived. Fifty years later and after five decades of government policy shifts and bureaucratic fumbling on penal reform, we are still waiting to take a look inside.

Finding History on Wilberforce Street

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In March 2020, education in Ontario was delivered “virtually.” In an effort to learn more about local story and places of significance the author and his daughter decided to learn more about a story related (to the author) in the late 1970s. This paper jointly authored, explores the legacy of “oral” story whether it be passed on through generation or the “physical” story, that of what is left of built heritage and what it can tell us. Interwoven and brought to the forefront, within the two different types of story is the Wilberforce street settlement (Oro Township), a very important part of African Canadian history with contributions to local, provincial and national heritage.

Historia Nostra: How fake history is harmful at the Tunnels of Moose Jaw

By Erin Isaac The Tunnels of Moose Jaw are one of Saskatchewan’s most popular tourist destinations and occupy a special place in local history and lore. Growing up as kid in Saskatchewan, I visited the Tunnels on multiple school trips and even had to do a 7th-grade book report on Mary Harelkin Bishop’s novel The Tunnels of Time (a fiction… Read more »

Expanding Historical Communication Through Guided Experimentation

This post is Part 3 of Donica Belisle’s three-part series, “Taking the ‘discipline’ out of History: moving beyond the limits of scholarly writing through a research creation assignment.” See part one and part two.  Issues of Evaluation One of the most commonly received questions from faculty concerning the Research Creation assignment that I assigned to a second-year History course at… Read more »

Beyond the Essay: A Research Creation Assignment

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This post is part two of Donica Belisle’s three-part series, “Taking the ‘discipline’ out of History: moving beyond the limits of scholarly writing through a research creation assignment.” Part one was published last week. In Winter 2019 I devised an assignment in a second-year Canadian survey course (Canada From Confederation to World War II) that enabled students to choose their… Read more »

Taking the ‘discipline’ out of history: moving beyond the limits of scholarly writing through a research creation assignment

In this three-part series, Dr. Donica Belisle of the University of Regina suggests that by expanding the ways students’ work is assessed, it is possible to expand the practice of History itself. By way of example, she explores the results of a recent experiment in which she assigned undergraduate students a “research creation” option. She concludes that despite the difficulties… Read more »

This Isn’t Who We Are? Cold War Rhetoric and the Trump Riots

By Andrew Sopko America’s political history has been leading to the events at Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021 for a quite some time. The Cold War’s stifling impact on American politics directly shaped today’s troubling reality by slowly pushing progressive left voices from mainstream discourse. As a result, far-right critiques of the American nation-state which simultaneously avoid criticizing the… Read more »

Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

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By Amy Bell On a hot night in June, 1966, 18-year-old Matthew Charles Lamb woke up from a beer-fueled evening nap at his uncle’s house in East Windsor, Ontario. Released from the Kingston Penitentiary only seventeen days earlier, Lamb was resentful about the conditions of his parole, and depressed about his future. He got up, grabbed his uncle’s gun and… Read more »