A monument for the Maroons
Halifax lacks a proper memorial for the people of African descent who helped build it.
Category Archives: Canadian history
This is Not the First Time Family Reunification has Relied on a Lottery
By Jennine Hurl-Eamon The Liberal Government recently decided to scrap the much-maligned lottery system to decide whether or not Canadians could sponsor parents and grandparents to immigrate to Canada. This is not the first time that government policy on family reunification has relied on a lottery. The practice has deep roots that go back more than two hundred years to Britain’s… Read more »
Remembering the Prague Spring Refugees
By Jan Raska The year 1968 is synonymous with protest and social change. This August, the world marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the Prague Spring. As a result of this sudden crisis, Canada resettled close to 12,000 refugees from Czechoslovakia between September 1968 and January 1969. This movement of individuals… Read more »
Memory, History, Monuments, and Mennonites: Or, what Winkler, Manitoba might teach us about dealing with historical and moral complexity in public commemoration
By Matthew Neufeld I am against removing statues of controversial figures from our history. I think removals are misguided because they amplify rather than diminish the moral charge of public commemoration. Instead of removing monuments that might provoke emotional pain among some members of historically marginalized groups or foster moral unease in the consciences of Canadians with European ancestry, I… Read more »
What’s In a Monument? Part II: The Edward Cornwallis Monument and Reconciliation
“What’s in a Monument?” is based on a public lecture delivered on March 11 in the History Matters Series organized by the University of Calgary History Department and the Calgary Public Library. We recommend that you read yesterday’s post by Jewel Spangler about the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville before Part II because it provides the theoretical framework for… Read more »
Remember/Resist/Redraw #16: Radical Bookshops in 1930s Montréal
In the spring, the Graphic History Collective re-launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as an ongoing series. Earlier this week, we released RRR poster #16 by Adèle Clapperton-Richard and Andrée Lévesque, a bilingual poster that looks at radical bookshops in 1930s Montréal as important spaces of activist education and organizing. We also created a list… Read more »
Fire in the Belly: A Short Reflection on the Late Stan Rogers
By Ann Walton Recently, I’ve started to view Stan Rogers through a different prism. Listen to the late folk singer’s music and you’ll discover not only a stunning songwriter, but a passionate historian whose work was inseparable from the history of his country. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s two young brothers from Hamilton toured Canada and the United States,… Read more »
Newfoundland’s 1948 Referendum: A People’s Victory?
Raymond B. Blake Referendums are blunt instrument to measure public sentiments. They take complex issues and reduce them to simple yes or no answers. They allow charismatic politicians to seize the public stage and rally voters for or against a particular public policy option through the greater use of fear, distorted realities, and appeals to emotion than is generally normal… Read more »
Colonialism, Maple Syrup, and Ways of Knowing
Krista McCracken [1] Visit any Canadian tourist shop and you will likely find shelves filled with maple syrup, often branded with red maple leaves in an attempt to invoke feelings of national pride. Canada makes over 71% of the world’s maple syrup and there are more than 8,600 producers of maple syrup across the country. Given these stats it is hardly… Read more »
Historian, Meet Archivist: Researching the History of Complex Organizations
Today’s post is cross-posted in partnership with Aidhistory.ca Jill Campbell-Miller, PhD and Ryan Kirkby, PhD, MLIS In general, historiography and historical methods courses do a good job in teaching students to be skeptical of their sources. As undergraduate and graduate students, we learn to scrutinize what we read, hear, or see. Yet while historians may be familiar with how to critique… Read more »