Category Archives: Does History Matter?

Oblivion stalks Postal Station K

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by Tom Cohen “Postal Station K!” Poetic resonance: none! Just one more slightly surplus postal station – in this age of electronic mail, a property easily unloaded, after all. A splendid spot on Yonge Street, in booming North Toronto, just perfect for a big condominium, with a shopping podium at sidewalk level. So sell it, right! Now wait a minute…. Read more »

Historical Fiction as a Gateway Drug

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By Jeffers Lennox I can trace my interest in the past to a single book: Jack Whyte’s The Skystone, a story set in the time of the legendary King Arthur.  First published in 1992, when I was 12, The Skystone had just about everything necessary to hook a young kid: historical imagination, magic, war, heroism, and enough “adult” subject matter… Read more »

2012 London Olympic Park Through Time

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By Jim Clifford View Larger Map The 2012 Summer Olympic park is located in the Lower Lea River Valley in the east of London. The games were sold to the British public from the beginning as an opportunity to transform one of London’s most economically disadvantaged regions. Early promotional material on the London 2012 website in 2006 put the goal… Read more »

Wearing Our Work on Our Sleeves: Transmitting History Through Clothing

by Mike Commito This past May I attended the annual general meeting of the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) at the University of Waterloo and the EH+ 2.0 Graduate Writing Workshop at McMaster. At the CHA I attended a roundtable titled “Macro-Theories of Canadian History: A Round Table on the Staples, Metropolitan and Laurentian Theses.” The discussion during the panel largely… Read more »

The Warrior Nation on Canada Day: A View from East York

By Nathan Smith Here in East York Canada Day celebrations began in the morning with a parade. I pulled my daughter in her wagon to the starting point a few blocks from our house.  As we hurried to meet neighbours I reflected on the nature of the event organizing itself just beyond a set of traffic lights ahead. Historians of… Read more »

Podcast: “Whose War Was It, Anyway?” A Roundtable Discussion on the War of 1812

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/The-War-of-1812-Whose-War-Was-It-Anyway-Roundtable-May-30-2012.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Jay Young Not only are interpretations of war up for debate; the reasons behind how and why we remember it are too.  On May 30th 2012 a packed Waterloo Public Library hosted a roundtable titled “Whose War Was It, Anyway?”  Organized by the Active History Canadian Historical Association (CHA) Committee and supported by… Read more »

Remembering an Extraordinary Struggle for Sexual Equality in Ontario

By Christine McLaughlin Sometimes ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I had the pleasure of witnessing an example of this recently when I attended a tribute luncheon in honour of the 23rd annual Agnes Macphail Award winner, Beverly McCloskey. Agnes Macphail was the first woman in Canada elected to the House of Commons and first woman sworn into the Legislative… Read more »

What’s Wrong With Celebrating the War of 1812?

This is the third in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th. By Ian McKay and Jamie Swift Warmonger politicians customarily indulge in high rhetoric, attempting to rally the citizenry round the flag and boost the bloodletting. Or… Read more »