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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
By Christo Aivalis On January 1st of this year, the Ontario government instituted a minimum wage increase to fourteen dollars an hour, with a pledge to increase it to fifteen dollars by January 2019. While 60% of Ontarians support the increase, numerous businesses have retaliated against their workers by retracting things like benefits and paid breaks. Many examples have come… Read more »
As part of our History curriculum series, and as a complement to December’s post on collaborative curricula, Cynthia Wallace-Casey discusses New Brunswick’s unique diverse, regional, and bilingual approach to History and Social Studies curricula. As the only officially bilingual province in Canada, New Brunswick holds a unique position regarding history education and collaborative curriculum development. In this province, it is as… Read more »
By Colleen Burgess and Thomas Peace In 1898, T. Watson Smith delivered a detailed lecture on the history of slavery in Canada to the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society. In it he lamented: Our historians have almost wholly ignored the existence of slavery in Canada. A few references to it are all that can be found in Kingsford’s ten volumes;… Read more »
During the holidays, the food we eat is often as loaded with meaning as it is butter and sugar, which is good news for those of us looking to eat as many cookies and candies as possible in the coming weeks: it’s not over consumption, you see. It’s research. Holiday cooking is part of a web of meaning, tradition, and… Read more »
