By Thomas Peace Let’s begin with a question: without help from the internet, can you name the person who founded the city of Chicago? I suspect that for many of our readers, the answer is ‘no’. “Founders” are not terribly in vogue these days, anyways. It was, however, the man who founded Chicago that helped me make a profound shift… Read more »
Carly Ciufo When I decided to pursue a PhD in history, I did not intend to remain in academia. Although now I sometimes daydream of being on the tenure-track, it’s hard to realistically envision a future where I will be able to make a stable living as an academic. Before returning to university in 2016, I was happily working in… Read more »
Daniel Ross Since we founded Active History in 2009, it has grown into a big, exciting, and often eclectic project. The theme of our 2015 conference in London, Ontario was “New Directions in Active History”; that title captured something essential to what were were doing, in that the website and the networks of people it brings together continue to evolve… Read more »
Sanchia deSouza, Joel Dickau, Edward Dunsworth, William Fysh, Benjamin Lukas, Kari North, Maris Rowe-Mcculloch, Lindsay C. Sidders, Hana Suckstorff, Nathaniel Thomas, Erica Toffoli, and Spirit-Rose Waite As movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp direct renewed and broadened attention to sexual violence and harassment, many sectors of society (especially workplaces) are being forced to reckon with and critically assess these forms of… Read more »
Mary-Ann Shantz A recent episode of CBC radio’s Sunday Edition highlighted the exodus of PhD graduates from academia and enumerated some of the many reasons for this phenomenon. The story prompted a flood of responses from other former graduate students and junior academics (“Life After Academia: Your Stories”). Recent blogposts such as, “Why So Many Academics Quit and Tell,” are… Read more »
By Erin Millions On Friday, February 9th, a jury in Battleford, Saskatchewan found farmer Gerald Stanley not guilty in the shooting death of a twenty-two year old Cree man, Colten Boushie. Canadians across the country have expressed their outrage at the verdict and organized protests, while Colten Boushie’s family mourns the lack of justice for their loved one. The verdict… Read more »
By Frank Cogliano On a recent trip to Sweden I encountered an elderly gentleman out walking his dog. We engaged in a brief conversation. Hearing my accent, he detected that I was an Anglophone and asked me if I’m English. “No,” I replied, “American.” He broke into a smile, laughed, and made a Nazi salute and said, “Trump!” We continued… Read more »
By Colleen Burgess and Thomas Peace In 1898, T. Watson Smith delivered a detailed lecture on the history of slavery in Canada to the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society. In it he lamented: Our historians have almost wholly ignored the existence of slavery in Canada. A few references to it are all that can be found in Kingsford’s ten volumes;… Read more »
Adam Coombs Polemics by disgruntled academic outsiders have recently become a remarkably popular genre of writing. In the United States The Atlantic has published pieces discussing the “problems” of safe space and political correctness on campus, while in Canada we have Ron Srigley in The Walrus and Ted Rhodes in the Calgary Herald disparaging Canadian universities for their supposed embrace of… Read more »
By Elise Chenier There are few moments in life as self-defining as being awarded a PhD. I got mine in 2001 from Queen’s University, one of Canada’s “top” schools. The ceremony required me to kneel before the Chancellor who tapped me once on each shoulder with his mortarboard. It did its magic. When I stood up and crossed that stage,… Read more »
