Last week the Globe and Mail published an editorial about the video game Assassins Creed III . According to the Globe’s editors, the video game distorts the history of the American War of Independence by suggesting that native people (the protagonist, Ratonhnhaké:ton, is Mohawk) fought alongside the rebelling colonies. Both gamers and historians quickly and resoundingly condemned the Globe‘s opinion… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/PM-Fantasy-Draft.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham When I was an MA student in Regina, I was talking to somebody about how great it would be if there could be a historical figures fantasy league. With the success of fantasy football and fantasy hockey, I figured that some sort of fantasy league could really boost the interest in… Read more »
By Sean Kheraj This is the second in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012. The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project. In 2009, many historians criticized the federal government for its… Read more »
By Jay Bailey Early in my career as a French teacher in Manitoba, I took students to the Festival du Voyageur in St. Boniface, Winnipeg. There I was fascinated by the life and times, the strength, stamina and joie-de-vivre of the voyageurs. In addition, I was intrigued by the fact that the fur trade was dependent on the vagaries of… Read more »
By Benjamin Bryce Canadians frequently draw comparisons to the United States, but they rarely extend their gaze further south. Nevertheless, in a number of areas, Canadian history has been connected to that of several other countries in the Americas. For example, the Canadian government’s policies toward aboriginal people find many analogies in other parts of the Western Hemisphere. In areas… Read more »
By Donald W. McLeod Next year will be the fortieth anniversary of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA), which began as a single filing cabinet in the Toronto office of the newsmagazine Body Politic, and has grown into a dynamic organization. We presently have a volunteer board of nine members, a paid general manager, seventy volunteers (forty of whom… Read more »
By Tim O’Grady In 1993 Verne Harris, a records management archivist at the South Africa State Archives Service, discovered some junior officials in the transitional Apartheid government had been told by the state’s security secretariat to destroy certain classified records in contravention of the nation’s Archives Act. After official efforts proved fruitless, Verne told a journalist, as well as the… Read more »
By Jim Clifford It is very strange to celebrate the start of a war. Nonetheless, this is exactly what we have done here in Canada over the past year. The War of 1812 spanned from June of 1812 through to February of 1815, but this did not stop our government from starting their celebrations of the “Fight for Canada” during… Read more »
The development of service clubs in Canada and the current decline of membership in these once vibrant community organizations.
By Steven Maynard This is the first in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012. The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project. In Canada, “we let our gay people swim.” So quipped… Read more »
