By Thomas Peace Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of Jack Granatstein’s provocative polemic Who Killed Canadian History, a book that laments the perceived steep decline in Canadians’ knowledge of our past. It is rare for any book to have such staying power. Earlier this month, for example, the book was drawn upon extensively in an op-ed column for my local… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/History-Chats-Episode-01.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadOn April 22, 2017, Professor Elsbeth Heaman of McGill University delivered the annual Donald Creighton Lecture at the University of Toronto. Entitled ‘The Civilization of the Canadas in the 1860s,” the lecture was part of ‘The Other 60s: A Decade that Shaped Canada and the World,” a symposium hosted by the Department of History… Read more »
By Claire L. Halstead At first glance, these first three photos seem unrelated. The first shows a woman standing with newly-arrived immigrants at Pier 21 in Halifax in 1935. The second captures two women collecting water by chopping ice in Sinnett, rural Saskatchewan in 1942. The third, from Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland in 1979, shows a woman and two children in… Read more »
Daniel Ross In this post, I’d like to provide a short overview of a recent experience integrating digital history into my teaching. This fall, I taught the course HIS4567, Histoire de l’immigration et des communautés ethnoculturelles au Québec, for the first time at the Université du Québec à Montréal. HIS4567 is a second-year undergraduate history course with a group small… Read more »
By James Cullingham It is clearly a difficult moment in Indigenous-settler relations in Canada. Cases in criminal courts lead to perplexing outcomes. First Nations, various governments and major natural resource companies are pitted against one another over pipeline construction. As I write, an inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women continues its work. In the cultural sphere, we are experiencing… Read more »
Funke Aladejebi At the 69th Annual Emmy awards held on September 17, 2017, Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s widely popular television show “Insecure,” responded to a red-carpet question by proclaiming she was “rooting for everybody Black!” Rae’s comments, which went viral, articulated a sense of collective excitement about the growing recognition and achievements of African American Emmy nominees… Read more »
Matthew A. Sears It is not uncommon to see the Ancient Greek phrase “molon labe” emblazoned on shirts, posters, and placards in today’s North America. Meaning roughly “come and get them,” the phrase was a Spartan king’s response to the Persians’ request for the Greeks to lay down their arms at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. Now the phrase is used,… Read more »
By V.J. Korinek Saskatchewan lost an important community historian when William Neil Richards passed away on January 12, 2018. Neil Richards was born in Ontario and raised there, but in 1972 he came west to Saskatoon, and the University of Saskatchewan, where he accepted a position in the University’s Murray Library. He formally retired from the University’s Archives and Special… Read more »
Peter A. Stevens In Canadian popular culture, few symbols are as iconic as the family cottage. The summer home appears regularly in Canadian novels and films, and it has long been used by governments and private corporations to signify what the good life looks like in this country. Cottaging thus represents escape from the cares of the world, and immersion… Read more »
By R. Blake Brown A jury’s decision to acquit farmer Gerald Stanley for second-degree murder in the death Colten Boushie, a Cree man, has brought jury selection issues to public attention in Canada. Press reports note that the jury lacked any Indigenous members, a composition achieved at least in part by the defendant’s use of ‘peremptory’ challenges. The Criminal Code… Read more »
