By Emma Stelter For generations, settler governments have been trying to break and remake Indigenous families in what is now known today as Canada.[1] We must acknowledge historic wrongdoing. Regardless of whether our ancestors were immigrants during pioneer times or immigrants today, many Canadians benefit from the state’s division of land and resources. There is a lot of work to… Read more »
By Shirley Tillotson This essays is being published jointly on ActiveHistory.ca and Borealia and appeared in an earlier version as a Letter to the Editor in the National Post (Oct. 26, 2017) Fundraisers love anniversaries. They’re like birthdays, right? Presents can’t be far behind. But when it’s the anniversary of a death, it’s not so much fun. For me, as an… Read more »
In the most populous part of Canada, there exists only a rudimentary understanding of the legal foundations upon which Ontario developed.
By Neil Orford and Blake Heathcote In January 1920, Stan McVittie was a fit and robust electrical engineer working at a hydro-electric generating plant on the Wahnapitae River in Northern Ontario. Just six years out of university, he loved his work and the outdoor life he’d known all his life. The future was brilliant. While his young wife and daughter… Read more »
By Claire L. Halstead Canada’s sesquicentennial has been contentious. Both historians and the broader public have discussed and debated the commemoration and celebration of the “birth of the nation”. Although less feted and expectantly less controversial, this year also marks the centenary of the Halifax Explosion. With our senses heightened from tuning into (or out of) Canada’s sesquicentennial, the 100th… Read more »
By Samantha Cutrara As a contributing editor for Active History, this year I will be exploring the Canadian history curriculum across the country. Conceptualized as a series, each post will build and develop off the findings of the others, so that we may conclude in June with some critical ideas about how Canadian history is designed to be taught and… Read more »
Nunda ezhibiigaadegin d’goh biigaadehknown ezhi debaahdedek nungwa manda neebing Mnidoo Mnising Neebing gah Bizh’ezhiwaybuck zhaazhi gonda behbaandih kenjih’gehjik. This post is part of a monthly series of reflections from the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute coordinated by the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation and Carolyn Podruchny in the Department of History at York University. By C. Elizabeth Best Over the past five years,… Read more »
In January, the Graphic History Collective (GHC) launched Remember | Resist | Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as a year-long artistic intervention in the Canada 150 conversation. Earlier this week we released Poster #11 by David Lester, which focuses on the life of anarchist Emma Goldman. In particular, Lester discusses Goldman’s activism in Toronto towards the end of her… Read more »
By Andrew Nurse By all accounts the 2014-5 Alex Colville retrospective — staged first by the AGO — was a monumental success. From its beginning, the exhibition appears to have been conceived as a “blockbuster”: a large-scale exhibition that attracts a viewing public far beyond that which normally visits art galleries. Such exhibitions are reserved for the “superstars” of the… Read more »
By Christoph Laugs On July 1st 2017, the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) opened the doors of its new permanent exhibit – the Canadian History Hall – to the public. When the museum’s name was changed from Canadian Museum of Civilization to CMH and a remodelling of the Canada Hall was announced in 2013, concerns grew among historians and museum… Read more »
