Category Archives: Canadian history

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 »

Going Viral: Spreading the 100th Anniversary of the Spanish Flu Pandemic one story at a time

This is the first in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Neil Orford Over the past few years, anniversaries seem a dime a dozen. In 2017 alone, we’ve marked #Canada150, the centenary of the taking of Vimy Ridge, and the 35th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and… Read more »

Thirty Years since Morgentaler: A New Frontier?

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Shannon Stettner and Katrina Ackerman January 28, 2018 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Morgentaler decision that declared Canada’s 1969 abortion law unconstitutional. For thirty years, the country has been without a federal law governing abortion. In place of a federal law, provincial regulations and the individual provincial colleges of physicians and surgeons have governed access to abortion. Such regulations… Read more »

The Police Records of a Bath Raid Found-In: Excluded from Bill C-66

Tom Hooper For more than 25 years, Ron Rosenes* has been an activist on issues related to HIV/AIDS. In 2007, he was given the Canadian AIDS Society Leadership Award. In 2012, Carleton University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He is a member of the Order of Canada. Despite this impressive resume of advocacy, the Toronto Police Service has a file… Read more »

The Endurance of Settler Colonialism: Senator Lynn Beyak and her “Letters of Support”

By Samuel Derksen and Eric Story Senator Lynn Beyak is embroiled in yet another scandal. Her controversial stance on the legacy of Indian Residential Schools has returned to the public’s attention after Indigenous journalist Robert Jago published a short piece in The Walrus about the over one hundred “Letters of Support” the senator received following her March 2017 speech in… Read more »

Reconsidering Stephen Harper’s Historiography

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By Andrew Nurse Few Prime Ministers have been as interested in history as Stephen Harper. A wag might now say, few Prime Ministers have known so little about it. What is clear, as panels at the CHA, a special Labour/Le Travail forum, and a spate of other critical articles have demonstrated, historians had little time for Harper’s — or, more… Read more »

The religious roots of Quebec secularism

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Laurent Carbonneau Quebec and secularism are tightly bound together in the Canadian political imagination. From the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation to the Parti Québécois’ abortive 2014 Charter of Values and last year’s Bill 62 (passed into law by a Liberal government), the implementation of a secular vision of Quebec society has been an important political debate over the last… Read more »