By Andrew Sopko and Sarah Dougherty On January 31st 2014, the Right Honorable Joe Clark came to Carleton University to discuss his new book, How We Lead: Canada in a Century of Change (Random House, 2013), with students in Professor Norman Hillmer’s seminar on nationalism, internationalism, and political culture. This book, by the former prime minister and foreign minister is,… Read more »
By Jenny Prior Meet Shannon Coles, a conservator at the Archives of Ontario. Shannon’s been stabilizing archival records and preparing them for digitization and reproduction for our on-site World War I exhibit, Dear Sadie, launching this summer. Q: Shannon, what led you to your unique and interesting occupation? A: Going to museums as a kid always frustrated me because I wanted… Read more »
By Jonathan Scotland On 20 January 1919 Charles Campbell killed himself. The resident of Brockville, Ontario was the first of many veterans of the First World War to commit suicide that year. Others included Ross Puttilo, Alexander Fowler, William Bailey, and William Dowier. There would be more. Their deaths remind us that recent suicides in the Canadian military are part… Read more »
By Peter Seixas After all is said and done, and The Historical Thinking Project has been laid to rest, the biggest question in history education is still up for grabs. What is history education for? Leaving aside whether it is well taught or poorly taught, what are we aiming for? Here is a smattering of possibilities, as they surface from… Read more »
By Jill Colyer When I first started teaching I didn’t feel very successful in my history classroom. (Of course, it is hard to feel successful at all when you first start teaching because the entire experience is overwhelming and incredibly difficult.) After a few years, my feeling that something was missing in my history classes hadn’t gone away. I didn’t… Read more »
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 »
