By Mark McLaughlin [Originally published on the Historians of the Environment of the Atlantic Region blog] Maritime Union, or one united Maritime province, is an idea that predates Canada. The original rationale for the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, which eventually led to Canadian Confederation (1867), was a meeting of Maritime leaders to discuss some form of union between their respective colonies. The idea… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Bernard.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadOn Thursday February 7 Professor Wanda Thomas Bernard delivered this lunchtime lecture to the Lifelong Learners program at Acadia University. Bernard’s lecture builds on her work with Judith Fingard on Black Nova Scotian domestic workers in the mid-twentieth century. In this lecture Bernard discusses the hardships these women faced and the complex worlds in… Read more »
Recently, there have been some good cases for the utility of history as a discipline in explaining Idle No More. Here I want to add to, and shift, the terms of this discussion. Historians who study Canada, and the societies that preceded it, and who are committed to social change need to become active allies of #IdleNoMore.
By Christine McLaughlin When I ask my students who identifies as a feminist, usually only a few hesitantly raise their hands. I appreciate their reluctance to label themselves. As Ruth Rosen aptly illustrates in a recent article, feminism has been forcefully infused with negative connotations. Students of women’s history learn how cartoons and other forms of humour have been a key… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Del-Barber-Final-Edit.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadLast Saturday night in Ottawa, a young musician took the stage at the National Arts Centre and sang about a dream he had had. The dream was interesting because all his favourite historical figures – from Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie – had shown up for a party… Read more »
By Jim Clifford Is Stephen Harper, as Terry Glavin argues, right to “not trust the history establishment“? Posts on this website and elsewhere do suggest that a broad spectrum of Canadian historians disagree with Harper’s use of history. Does this vocal minority represent the establishment? If not, who makes up the establishment? The Canadian Historical Association’s executive members? Leading historians at the large… Read more »
In his Histoire du Canada (1846), François Garneau promulgated the myth that slavery never existed in New France. He congratulated King Louis XIV and the French colonial clergy for having saved Canada from this “grand and terrible plague.” Following suit, Canadians have accepted this claim despite the historical evidence of at least 4,000 slaves in New France alone, two-thirds of… Read more »
The 2013 History Matters lecture series kicked off on January 31st, when migration historian William Jenkins (York University) gave a talk to a crowded room at the Parliament branch of the Toronto Public Library. His presentation examined immigration patterns and political allegiances of Toronto’s Irish between 1870 and World War I, and how struggles at home and abroad had an… Read more »
By Sean Kheraj “Canada’s history is worth emphasizing,” according to a recent pathetically inoffensive editorial headline in the Globe and Mail. Such an argument is so bland and broad as to be almost entirely pointless. What drove the editorial team at the Globe to boldly stick its neck out with such a feeble statement? The temerity of the Leader of… Read more »
By Ian Milligan If you do recent history, you run into problems pretty quickly with archives. Chronic underfunding means that many recent acquisitions sit, awaiting cataloguing. Donor restrictions are often still in place, and – probably most importantly – much of this material is still not archived as it isn’t always thought of as history yet! If you aren’t part… Read more »
