By Daniel Ross and Jay Young The Toronto Civic Museum, Humanitas, the Global City Museum: over the last forty years Toronto has seen a number of bold proposals for a city museum, but up until now there has been a distinct lack of shovels in the ground (or exhibits in the halls, as the case may be). That may change… Read more »
By Veronica Strong-Boag First of all three disclaimers: I like many Americans; I love digital records; and I value the efforts of independent on-line initiatives to serve the public good. Why then my reservations when I read the website http://parkscanadahistory.com? Two generous residents of the lower forty-eight, with significant expertise in the US National Park Service,[1] have provided free access… Read more »
By Merle Massie The University of Saskatchewan has been front and center in national and international news this past spring, owing to the public fallout of an ugly internal battle regarding the university’s past and future directions. And historians have been active generals and foot soldiers on all sides of the battle. Because when you’re talking about shaping past and… Read more »
By Bret Edwards Transport Canada recently announced a plan to change the number of flight attendants Canadian airlines are required to staff on specific commercial flights. The current national standard, developed in 1968, is one flight attendant for every forty passengers. If the regulation is changed, this ratio will drop to one in fifty. Airlines have led the push for… Read more »
By Nathan Smith In a recent post here Jonathan Weier compared official plans in the UK and Australia to commemorate the First World War centennial with the Canadian government’s disengagement with the one-hundredth anniversary of the First World War. Given the interest the federal Conservatives have shown in warrior nationalism and war commemoration, this is surprising. From the government’s memorialization… Read more »
By Tom Peace This morning, as you read this post, historians from across the country have gathered at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario for the Canadian Historical Association’s annual meeting (click here to read the program). The CHA’s annual meeting is one of the most important forums to hear about new and emerging research on Canada’s past or by… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Iacobelli-Ottawa-Historical-Association-lecture.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadThe Ottawa Historical Association welcomed historian Teresa Iacobelli on March 5, 2014. ActiveHistory is happy to feature her talk “Death or Deliverance: Canadian Courts Martial in the Great War”. Iacobelli is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University. Her talk is based on her book of the same title: Death or Deliverance: Canadian Courts… Read more »
By Daniel Macfarlane Invasive species in the Great Lakes have been a big problem for decades. From the alewife, which first appeared in the Great Lakes in the 1800s, to the zebra mussels in recent decades, the composition of the Great Lakes biomass has been constantly in flux. And the problem is about to get bigger – literally, as Asian… Read more »
Reviewed by Anne Marie Goodfellow Hands up if you’ve heard of the Canadian Rangers. Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of them either before reading this book. The Canadian Rangers are a component of the Canadian Forces (CF) who operate at a local level with community volunteers in Canada’s sparsely populated northern and coastal areas. As an anthropologist with a good… Read more »
By Sean Kheraj This week, I am taking advantage of some of the historical research materials available at the National Energy Board library in Calgary, Alberta. As we discussed on a recent episode of Nature’s Past: Canadian Environmental History Podcast, federal department libraries are incredible resources for environmental history. With the closure and consolidation of so many of these libraries… Read more »
