Category Archives: History and Everyday Life

Wikipedia and Warriors: Quickly Exploring Canada’s Wikipedia Past, 2003-Present

By Ian Milligan The 2009 Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, laid out – in the eyes of a diverse group of Canadian academics – a new vision for Canada (too many links to list, but some are here). A redefinition of Canada based upon war and conflict, with the military assuming a prominent role and the First… Read more »

The Burdens of McHistory

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By Ian Mosby Walking out of the subway into Yonge Station in Toronto recently, I was confronted with poster after poster bearing some strange, slightly off-putting questions about McDonald’s. These included, in big bold letters, messages like: “Is the meat fake?” “Are there eyeballs put in your meat?” Or, “Are McNuggets made from processed pink sludge?” In the end, it… Read more »

Citizenship: Nothing Yet Everything

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By Pam Sugiman This is the third in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012.  The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project. Personal memory and history As a contributor to this series… Read more »

Environment and Citizenship in Canadian History

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By Sean Kheraj This is the second in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012.  The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project. In 2009, many historians criticized the federal government for its… Read more »

An Historic Voyageur in Modern Times

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By Jay Bailey Early in my career as a French teacher in Manitoba, I took students to the Festival du Voyageur in St. Boniface, Winnipeg. There I was fascinated by the life and times, the strength, stamina and joie-de-vivre of the voyageurs. In addition, I was intrigued by the fact that the fur trade was dependent on the vagaries of… Read more »

Towards a History of the Americas: Thoughts and a Podcast

By Benjamin Bryce Canadians frequently draw comparisons to the United States, but they rarely extend their gaze further south. Nevertheless, in a number of areas, Canadian history has been connected to that of several other countries in the Americas. For example, the Canadian government’s policies toward aboriginal people find many analogies in other parts of the Western Hemisphere. In areas… Read more »

Swimming Against the Current: Sexual Citizenship After Harper and Homonationalism

By Steven Maynard This is the first in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012.  The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project. In Canada, “we let our gay people swim.” So quipped… Read more »

Chop Suey on the Prairies

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This is the first in a series of posts for the upcoming temporary exhibit about Chinese restaurants in Alberta opening at the Royal Alberta Museum in April 2013.  Over the final months of planning and mounting the exhibit this series will give a glimpse into what goes into creating a museum exhibit as well as share some of the stories… Read more »