By Eve Dutton There’s a certain image that the term “voyageur” conjures up in the Canadian consciousness: bearded, burly, and boastful rascals who prized their independence above all else, accomplished feats of superhuman strength and endurance, and braved the uncharted wilds with a song in their heart. This portrait of the voyageur has a long pedigree — it comes to… Read more »
Reviewed by Joanne Epp When University of Saskatchewan professor Erika Dyck began investigating the use of lysergic acid diethylamide (commonly known as LSD) in psychiatric research, she was surprised at what she found. LSD has a bad reputation, to say the least. It’s widely seen as a dangerous drug that leaves its victims permanently damaged and prone to debilitating flashbacks. LSD has… Read more »
Reviewed by M. Wayne Cunningham On 27 March 1917, a cold wind blew, and showers of sleet rained down on the small village of Mont St. Eloi, located in northern France. On this bleak day, a young Canadian soldier, twenty-one year-old Arthur Lemay, stood before a field general court martial, the army’s highest wartime court. He had been there before…. Read more »
By Kevin Plummer “Those Reserve Indians are in a deplorable state of destitution, they receive from the Indian Department just enough food to keep soul and body together, they are all but naked, many of them barefooted,” Lawrence Clarke wrote in 1880 of near-starvation Cree around Fort Carlton. “Should sickness break out among them in their present weakly state,” the… Read more »
Enjoy reading about the experiences of people who lived in the past? Love learning about the history of places that mean something to you? ActiveHistory.ca is looking for people outside of the academic history community to review history books for us. Are you not an academic and a regular visitor to our site? Great! Consider writing a book review for us. You… Read more »
By Kaitlin Wainwright Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s Stuart Henderson University of Toronto Press, 2011 394 pages, Paperback and ebook $29.95, Cloth $70.00 Stuart Henderson’s Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s is an adventure back in time to Yorkville at what many would consider the pinnacle of its cultural history. Fifty… Read more »
By Kayla Jonas Galvin Company Towns: Corporate Order and Community Neil White University of Toronto Press, 2012 Cloth $55.00, ebook $54.95 I chose to review Neil White’s Company Towns: Corporate Order and Community because of my recent involvement in an interesting project within a company town, Kapuskasing, Ontario. For those unfamiliar with the term, a company town is one that… Read more »
Review by Emily Beliveau The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873–1904 Charles Wilkins Stanton Atkins & Dosil Publishers Soft cover $24.95, Hardcover $45.00 The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873–1904 is an engaging and handsomely illustrated book directed at general readers. Author Charles Wilkins is a writer whose previous books… Read more »
By Pete Anderson Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environment, and the Everyday, 1953-2003 Joy Parr University of British Columbia Press Paperback, 304 pages, $32.95 Just as all politics can be viewed as local, so, too, can history. Joy Parr’s Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953–2003 (UBC Press, 2010) explores local reactions to a series of “megaprojects,” with a focus on… Read more »
By Ruthann LaBlance Winnipeg Beach: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900–1967 Dale Barbour University of Manitoba Press Paperback, 264 pages, $24.95 Dale Barbour’s Winnipeg Beach: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900–1967 chronicles the rise and fall of a Manitoba resort community. Not only does Barbour craft a history of Winnipeg Beach, he explores how ideas of… Read more »
