Category Archives: Book Review

Two Dead White Men – A Review

      No Comments on Two Dead White Men – A Review

By Robin Benger So many worlds to explore. So little time to do it. James Cullingham may have bitten off more than its possible to chew with Two Dead White Men, the eye-catching but somewhat misleading title of his ambitious and fascinating book. Nevertheless, it is a great read, an adventurous journey and a brave exploration of two of the… Read more »

Two Dead White Men…

      No Comments on Two Dead White Men…

By James Cullingham As a veteran educator, documentary filmmaker and journalist it’s been a welcome challenge to take on something new. Two Dead White Men – DC Scott, Jacques Soustelle and the Failure of Indigenous Policy (Seneca Press) is my first book. Two Dead White Men… explores the careers and legacies of Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle.  Scott (1862-1947)… Read more »

Historia Nostra Bookclub: Why I Don’t Like Guns, Germs, and Steel

By Erin Isaac 2021 has been a long year. It’s only June, but I’m calling it—2021 has been a year to endure or make the most of rather than one rife with opportunities. At least, that’s been my experience. My YouTube project, Historia Nostra, has pushed through it and, I hope, given viewers a chance to “visit” places they couldn’t physically… Read more »

Life with Marcel Proust

      1 Comment on Life with Marcel Proust

By James Cullingham I began reading Proust as I launched into writing my dissertation in about 2006. I was on a beach in Cuba when I first opened Du côté de chez Swann the first of a seven-volume novel totaling some 3,000 pages. I finished the novel en français earlier this year. That’s correct, it took me 15 years to… Read more »

Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

      1 Comment on Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

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 »

Yuval Harari: A commentary on the world’s bestselling historian

Alvin Finkel Yuval Noah Harari’s book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind is a publishing miracle. Published initially in Hebrew in 2011, it was translated into English in 2014 and has since been translated into about 50 other languages. By the end of 2018, it reportedly had sold over 11.5 million copies and today in Amazon Canada’s listing for all… Read more »

The Ninth Floor: Finding Black Power in Montreal

By Camille Robert Translated by Thomas Peace This review originally appeared in French on Artichaut magazine and HistoireEngagee.ca In many way, the image of Montreal in the 1960s is defined by the 1967 World’s Fair. Often celebrated as one of the key moments in the Quiet Revolution, official imagery of the city situated it as a centre-point in a modernized and… Read more »

Being Part of Something Larger: A Review of Imprinting Britain

As part of our partnership with the new early Canadian history blog Borealia, we’ll be posting highlights from that website here every Saturday in November. By Keith Grant Michael Eamon, Imprinting Britain: Newspapers, Sociability, and the Shaping of British North America (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015). “Were I to name the most striking peculiarity of our neighbours in the… Read more »

A Review of Dan Malleck’s When Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada’s Drug Laws (UBC Press 2015)

by Joel D. Rudewicz Restrictions against the general public procuring powerful and often dangerous poisons, drugs, and remedies are a fairly recent development in history. A time once existed when children could smoke cigarettes, arsenic was supplied by your friendly neighbourhood pharmacist, and medication and healing were a mish-mash of druggists recommendations, physician’s advice, and longstanding home- cures. This system… Read more »

Devolutionary Empire: A Review of James Kennedy’s Liberal Nationalisms: Empire, State, and Civil Society in Scotland and Quebec

By Gordon E. Bannerman In the twenty-first century, the notion of colonial empires has a distinctly antiquarian feel. Yet the British Empire, one of the most successful, exists to this day albeit in a composite rump-like form. At its height, the global reach of the British Empire was equalled by the wide range of political culture within it, and this… Read more »