Christo Aivalis This is the third and final post in the Canada Post and Canadian Culture series. Canada Post and its employees have had an undeniable impact on the culture of this country, both via the artistry and symbolism on stamps, and also as an essential facilitator of communication across a vast and diverse nation. From my perspective as a… Read more »
Daniel R. Meister Recent stories in the CBC revisit the controversy surrounding the appointment of Mary Simon, the first Indigenous person to be appointed Governor General of Canada. Simon, an Inuit woman, was bilingual, fluent in English and Inuktitut, and committed to becoming more proficient French while in office. Despite her efforts, and the fact that the Governor General is not subject… Read more »
Shannon Stunden Bower This is the sixth post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. In The Great Acceleration, J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke proposed four paired concepts as avenues into the global transformations they see as defining the period from the end of World… Read more »
Alicia Carefoote This is the fifth post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. When environmental historians describe the “Great Acceleration,” they usually point to dramatic post-Second World War transformations in human activity.1 Carbon emissions surged. Industrial production expanded. Highways, suburbs, pipelines, and hydroelectric megaprojects reshaped… Read more »
Daniel Sims This post is part of the Indian Act 150 series In May 2024, I attended a meeting of Parks Canada’s Indigenous Cultural Heritage Advisory Council in Sydney, British Columbia. One of our agenda items was the federal government’s commemoration of upcoming historical events, including the passage of the Indian Act in 1876. The hope was that we would tell the… Read more »
Josh Sandlos This is the fourth post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. Each year in my “Canadian History Since Confederation” survey class, I take my students on a deep dive into something that has high potential to be boring: Statistics Canada tables on historical… Read more »
John W. Bessai This is the third post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. Lake Diefenbaker concentrates the Great Acceleration within one prairie watershed. It shows how postwar Canada joined environmental transformation, settler state authority, hydraulic control, agricultural expansion, and the reordering of Indigenous… Read more »
For the second feature in Active History’s series on Canada Post, we sat down with Evert Hoogers, a retired postal worker, long-time union activist, representative, and organizer with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Throughout our interview Evert shared his recollections, memories, and insider knowledge from a long career in postal work and as a labour activist. This interview was conducted… Read more »
By Sean Graham This week, I’m joined by Jamie Jelinski, author of Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tatooing in Canada. We talk about Jamie’s interest in the history of tattoos, the connection to art history, and the beginnings of tattoos as an industry in Canada. We then discuss questions over regulation and the criminalization of tattooing before chatting about… Read more »
Daniel Macfarlane This is the second post in a series exploring the potential of the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance of Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. If the Great Acceleration – the dramatic increase in human activity and the resulting impact on the Earth’s natural systems since the mid-20th century – is a… Read more »
