By Jocelyn Létourneau Translated by Thomas Peace On peut lire la version française ici Who was the first Premier of Quebec? In what year did the asbestos strike take place? What was the pivotal moment in the Quiet Revolution? Very few young people in Quebec can answer these three questions correctly. In trying to address this problem, scholars and pundits have… Read more »
By Del Muise, Marg Conrad and Gerald Friesen, Canadians and their Pasts was a SSHRC-funded Community-University Research Alliance project, involving seven co-investigators from six different universities and a dozen community partners. At its core was a systematic survey of 3,419 Canadians on their engagement with and attitudes toward the past. Its key findings are discussed in a recently released book… Read more »
By Elisabeth Tower Museums today acknowledge that their visitors are learner communities and that those learner communities bring with them knowledge and authority about the past. This may take the form of personal memory, family heritage, past learning or experiences. Further, learner communities may have their own evidence about the past and may bring different lenses to the interpretation of… Read more »
By Ruth Sandwell Collectively, historians’ work consists of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing a vast edifice of knowledge about which generalizations and synthesis will vary according to the purposes of the historians and the audiences to whom they are directing any particular manifestation of their work. Historians tend to identify their work exclusively with their purposes and audiences as specialist scholars…. Read more »
By Carla Peck Curriculum reform is an enormous and expensive undertaking. Educational jurisdictions across Canada regularly engage in curriculum renewal, investing time, energy and a great deal of money into redesigning curricula to reflect current research, trends and societal priorities in teaching and learning. In Canada, history (and social studies) curricula are no exception, and currently much work is being… Read more »
By Stanley Hallman-Chong The history curriculum in Ontario is part of a larger set of curricula that embrace several other subjects and disciplines, including Social Studies, Civics, Geography, Law, Politics, and Economics. Hence when the Ontario Ministry of Education proceeded to review its history curriculum, it sought to create a common structure and an element of unity that would encompass… Read more »
By Lindsay Gibson What has changed and what has remained the same about historical thinking in secondary schools since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister in 2006 (also happens to be the same year the Historical Thinking Project began)? It is difficult to make generalizations about historical thinking in secondary school classrooms across Canada because there are differences in curricula, teachers,… Read more »
By Heather E. McGregor Recently Peter Seixas announced that the Historical Thinking Project (the Project) was denied ongoing funding by the Department of Canadian Heritage. This change was said to be because the purposes of the Project do not coincide with, as quoted from The Canada History Fund, “projects that celebrate key milestones and people who have helped shape our… Read more »
By Thomas Peace “Our historians have almost wholly ignored the existence of slavery in Canada.” Two weeks ago these words echoed through Fountain Commons here at Acadia University. Historians, educators and activists had gathered for Opening the Academy: New Strategies for Exploring and Sharing African Nova Scotian Histories. The message those of us in the audience heard was that African-Canadian… Read more »
By Greg Kennedy I recently had the opportunity to participate in a roundtable discussion held by the Department of Political Science here at the University of Moncton. The topic was “Current Foreign Policy and Defence Challenges in Canada” and the roundtable included Jocelyn Coulon, an expert on Canada’s involvement with United Nations peacekeeping operations as well as Jean-François Caron, a… Read more »
