Category Archives: Canadian history

Theme Week on the 1919 Strike Wave

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ActiveHistory.ca is launching a special Theme Week (17–21 June) that examines the 1919 strike wave in what is today known as Canada. The series is edited by Sean Carleton and Julia Smith. At a time of growing unrest, with calls for climate strikes and recent threats of general strikes in the United States and in Ontario, revisiting the 1919 strike… Read more »

Canada’s non-conversation about genocide

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By David Webster “Words have meaning,” CBC commentator Michael Enright declared in an editorial broadcast over the national radio network. He objected to the way one word, “genocide,” was used by the national commission of inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. In this, Enright is far from alone – top media figures and publications fell over one another to… Read more »

Remembering the Bombardment: Juno Beach 75 Years Later

The scope of French civilian casualties on the invasion beaches, as a result of the air and sea bombardment, is not something most interested in the D-Day invasion have considered. As we commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the attack, we should pause to consider the ineffectiveness of the preliminary bombardment, the price paid by the infantry in capturing positions that the air force should have neutralized, and the approximately 100 French men and women killed by these misplaced bombs.

Historians and Indigenous Genocide in Saskatchewan

By Robert Alexander Innes [This essay was first published last June on Shekon Neechie. It asks questions about the approach of Canadian historians to genocide that are again relevant after the response of much of the media to the MMIWG- Final Report.] As a result of the Calls to Action released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) the notion… Read more »

Thinking about Genocide and Mass Murder: How Could it Have Happened in Nice Canada?

By Alvin Finkel The decision of the Commission on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women to use the word “genocide” to describe past Canadian state policies regarding Indigenous women has occasioned heated debate about whether that word is appropriate for anything short of a conscious state plan to rapidly physically eliminate all members of a defined group or to thoroughly destroy… Read more »

Remembering a Military Chaplain: Major R.M. Hickey, MC

This is the third of several posts marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the end of the Second World War as part of a partnership between Active History and the Juno Beach Centre. If you would like to contribute, contact series coordinator Alex Fitzgerald-Black at alex@junobeach.org. By Harold Skaarup New Brunswick’s history is often our family history, and it… Read more »

‘”I’m scared too”: Margie MacNaughton, her father Archie, and the cost of D-Day

This is the second in a series of posts marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the end of the Second World War as part of a partnership between Active History and the Juno Beach Centre. If you would like to contribute, contact series coordinator Alex Fitzgerald-Black at alex@junobeach.org. Editor’s note: On May 30th, 2019 Historica Canada released a new… Read more »

(Re)Thinking Late 20th Century Canada

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This is the third post in a series featuring themes and panels that will be presented at the Canadian Historical Association’s 2019 annual meeting at the University of British Columbia, June 3-5. Historians, who for many years ignored the historiographic no man’s land between the charismatic upheavals of the 1960s and the world historical events of the [late] 1980s, have… Read more »

Looking back to ’72: From one Trudeau re-election bid to another

By David Blocker The 1972 federal election was one of the closest in Canadian political history.  The exact results of the election remained in doubt for several days after the polls closed on October 30, 1972.  After recounts indicated the Liberals had tied with the Progressive Conservatives at 109 seats Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau decided to remain in government with… Read more »

Harry Hardy and Recovering the Ghosts of the Tiffy Boys

This is the first of several posts marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the end of the Second World War as part of a partnership between Active History and the Juno Beach Centre. If you would like to contribute, contact series coordinator Alex Fitzgerald-Black at alex@junobeach.org. By Anne Gafiuk Flight Lieutenant Harry Hardy, 440 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force,… Read more »