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 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 »
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, it set off a chain of events that became one of the deadliest combats in human history, known as the First World War. To mark the centennial of the start of this war, York University’s Department of History has produced a documentary series,… Read more »
By Ian Mosby When I first heard Alvin Dixon’s voice I was driving along Dupont Avenue in Toronto with my partner, Laural, and our three-month-old son, Oscar. Dixon was talking to Rick MacInnes-Rae, who was filling in as the co-host of the CBC Radio show As It Happens. The interview was about Dixon’s experience at the Alberni Indian residential school (AIRS)… Read more »
By Jonathan McQuarrie Lately, Bitcoins have received considerable attention from the media. The recent failure of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox exchange, where users could exchange their Bitcoins for national currencies, sparked particular concern. The website managed to lose some 850,000 Bitcoins, which at the time were valued at approximately $400 million. For the last month, proponents of Bitcoins, such as… Read more »
By Laura Larsen Few Canadians missed the news stories of grain piling up on the prairies and denunciations of the system’s failures. The Federal government’s recent announcement of financial penalties for the railways is the latest act in a long running problem facing western Canadian grain farmers: how to economically get their grain to market when long stretches of prairie and… Read more »
By Andrew Nurse One of the great innovations of the now aging “New Social History” (NSH) was its commitment to uncovering a past about which people knew little. The NSH focused on what we might, in a non-pejorative way, call the broad mass of people: workers, slaves, peasants, First Nations, women, among others whose names appeared at best briefly in… Read more »
By Jonathan Weier Those who regularly read the British press have been exposed, over the past three months, to a vitriolic war of words over the legacy and meaning of the First World War in Britain. This controversy has become increasingly acrimonious as representatives of the Conservative government and their sympathizers have sought to paint a number of British historians… Read more »
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 »
A public lecture by Luis Fondebrider, recorded at the University of Saskatchewan on February 10, 2014 Luis Fondebrider teaches in the Department of Legal Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. He is President of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and has been involved in international tribunals on political violence and human rights, focusing on the use of forensic anthropology in… Read more »
