Category Archives: Canadian history

Marijuana, Capitalism, and the Canadian Strategy

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By Stefano Tijerina A commercial-scale medical licensing system involving a Canadian company with ties to Colombia is set to turn the image of widespread illicit pot growing in the Colombian countryside on its head. Canadians are well informed about the internal debates surrounding marijuana but they tend to be not as aware of the nation’s foreign policy and global strategy. The… Read more »

Rounding Up the Confederation Debates

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By Daniel Heidt In July 2016, when Canadians were beginning to think about Canada 150, I posted a brief article on ActiveHistory.ca about an emerging and largely crowdsourced project – The Confederation Debates – an initiative to digitize and popularize over 9,000 pages of Canada’s founding historical records. I am pleased to say that Canadians were eager to contribute to this important… Read more »

We Regret To Inform You: The Emotional Labour of Academic Job Applications

Andrea Eidinger I would like to acknowledge and thank the many academics who have reached out to me on this subject over the past few months. Once again, I am profoundly grateful and honoured by their strength and generosity. Special thanks to Ian Mosby for permission to include his story in this piece. Everything in academia has its season: SSHRC… Read more »

History Slam 110: Blood, Sweat, and Fear

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https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/History-Slam-110.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham As far as I can remember, I’ve only been punched in the face once. It was in elementary school on the playground in the midst of an argument over something that I did. I was in the wrong in the situation, but that was the only time that I feel as… Read more »

Living History Installation in Vancouver: MAD CITY, Legacies of MPA

By Megan J. Davies MAD CITY: Legacies of MPA, a historical exhibit at Vancouver’s Gallery Gachet, is based on a radical idea: that people with a psychiatric diagnosis should create and run the support services they need. Using the lens of the past, MAD CITY invites visitors to imagine a mental health system conceived and directed by “experiential experts”: people… Read more »

Culpability and Canada’s Anthropocene: A Response

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NiCHE ran a series on “Canada’s Anthropocene,” with posts and a roundtable by Pamela Banting, Ashlee Cunsolo, Alan MacEachern, and Joshua MacFadyen. Last week Sean Kheraj’s responded to the series, and specifically MacEachern’s post “The Alanthropocene.” We are reposting Kheraj’s response and MacEachern’s response to the response. We hope this will lead ActiveHistory.ca readers to discover the original series on the NiCHE website. Alan MacEachern is not… Read more »

Precedents for Today’s ‘Big Tent’ Liberalism: British Columbia’s First Woman MLA, Mary Ellen Spear Smith (1863-1933)

By Veronica Strong-Boag In the age of their first avowedly feminist prime minister, Canadians confront another adventure in ‘big tent liberalism.’ His father tried it, for a time, with labour and social democrats,[1] but its history dates to the 19th century with Liberal-Laborism and Liberal-Feminism, or Lib-Lab and Lib-Fem apostles of inclusion. Such experiments have been especially likely when traditional… Read more »

Piecing Together a Pandemic: Unearthing Elusive, Eclectic & Authentic Stories of the Flu

This is the fourth in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Ellen Scheinberg As I was working on a family archival project for a client this month, I learned about the passing of his great uncle, Alfred Benjamin Geldzaeler, from influenza in late October 2018. Alfred, or “Alfie”… Read more »

Commemorating the Forgotten Plague through the Classroom

This is the third in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Mike Clare The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19 had a profound impact on Canadian culture and public policy. But is it worth acknowledging? As an approach to teaching the Canadian experience, the Spanish Flu Pandemic could be… Read more »

What is Forgotten? Influenza’s Reverberations in Post-War Canada

This is the second in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Esyllt Jones For all the times scholars of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic have referred to its “forgotten” aspect, in homage to Alfred Crosby’s 1989 title for the influential book that a decade earlier had been published as… Read more »