By Dr. John Maker I was recently involved in a major project for the Department of National Defence (DND), that epitomized some of the challenges and excitement of doing public history. It included important questions of public policy, public safety, and environmental contamination. The findings were put to use in practical and immediate ways to address areas of emergent need…. Read more »
By: Luke Stewart The conference Looking Back, Moving Forward: War Resisters in North America took place at Steelworkers Hall in Toronto, Ontario, on Friday September 23 and Saturday September 24, 2011. The gathering addressed the plight of American war resisters who fled to Canada from 2004 to the present by providing a historical context for the roots of war resistance… Read more »
Jamie Oliver has made a name for himself as a celebrity chef who has sought to improve the way we eat. Whether it be his instructional cooking or his fight to reform school cafeterias, Oliver has spent over a decade teaching us how to make food, and urging us to think more about it. Some of his series have explored… Read more »
ActiveHistory.ca is happy to announce its first paper of 2012: “A Polyphony of Synthesizers: Why Every Historian of Canada Should Write a History of Canada,” by Alan MacEachern. Here is Alan’s introductory blurb: The following was my contribution to a 2010 Canadian Historical Association roundtable, “So What IS the Story? Exploring Fragmentation and Synthesis in Current Canadian Historiography.” In it,… Read more »
“Sam McLaughlin’s name continues to loom large over the city of Oshawa. But the stories of working people offer alternate versions of history. Spaces in the city ought to be made for commemorating and remembering these stories,” historian Christine McLaughlin (no relation to Sam) recently argued during her talk at a local library in Toronto. McLaughlin’s presentation, “Producing History in… Read more »
The failed campaign to “Save the Memorial Library” (STML) at Mount Allison University is a fascinating study of the importance – or, lack thereof – of history in contemporary Canadian culture.
by Ian Mosby This month’s publication of a colourfully illustrated, revised edition of Michael Pollan’s 2009 bestseller, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, once again has me thinking about the role of historians in contemporary debates about the health and environmental impacts of our current industrial food system. As a historian of food and nutrition, I often find myself getting a… Read more »
http://www.archive.org/download/Ehtv-Episode06ATownCalledAsbestos/EhtvEpisode06.m4vPodcast: Play in new window | DownloadOver the next few Fridays, ActiveHistory.ca is re-posting a five part series of YouTube videos created for the Network in Canadian Environment & History’s EHTV. This week EHTV presents the first part of a fascinating history of Quebec asbestos by Dr. Jessica Van Horssen. For more than one hundred years, Quebecers have mined this… Read more »
Trees are a common symbol for genealogy. Like lines of ancestry, trees contain many branches that are united through a common trunk but grow in their own direction. And like family history, we often only see the complexity of their roots when we start digging. In a previous post, I outlined strategies on conducting the research of one’s home, and offered… Read more »
Despite being declared over by many historians, the debates of the History Wars – where social and cultural history was pitted against political and economic history – have returned to public discourse in Canada.
