Category Archives: History and Everyday Life

Gin and Tonic: A Short History of a Stiff Drink

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By Jay Young The Gin and Tonic – what better a drink during the dog days of summer?  Put some ice in a glass, pour one part gin, add another part tonic water, finish with a slice of lime, and you have a refreshing drink to counter the heat.  But it is also steeped in the history of medicine, global… Read more »

Capitalist Theology on the CBC

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By Dr. Joseph Tohill There’s nothing like a bit of neoconservative propaganda gussied up as a hip, edgy CBC radio program to get your blood boiling on a hot summer’s day. The Invisible Hand, a mid-week staple of Radio One’s summer schedule hosted by Vancouver broadcaster Matthew Lazin-Ryder, bills itself as “a defiantly non-dismal take on the ‘dismal science’ of… Read more »

Fresh, Local, and Financially Sound: Community Supported Agriculture in Canada

By Krista McCracken In recent years Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operations in Canada have increased dramatically in number and their popularity continues to grow.  The state of CSAs in my area speaks to the rising success of the CSA movement; all of the established CSAs in my area are no longer taking members or have a waiting list.  Across the… Read more »

Sex, Crime and Power: A Testimonial

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By Christine McLaughlin My background in the history of women and gender has led me to be critical of treating history as a linear march towards progress. In spite of this, I have very much taken for granted what I thought was a much safer and open space for women in my contemporary time and place. I realized how deeply… Read more »

‘Not a Matter of Statistics:’ The HPV Vaccine Controversy, Promiscuity, and the History of Women, Children and Youth

By Angela Rooke For several years now, school boards across the country have been providing the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to girls and young women. But it seems the debate is just getting fired up, especially in Calgary, where the top Catholic Bishop successfully urged many Catholic schools to refuse to administer the vaccine on the grounds that it leads… 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 »

Travelling by Story

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by Merle Massie A few weeks ago, I was privileged to visit with Solomon and Renée Carriere at their home: Big Eddy Camp, northern Saskatchewan. If that seems like a vague description, it is. Few people would be able to find Big Eddy on any map, unless you are a canoe racer, dogsled racer, or know the Saskatchewan River Delta…. Read more »

The Canadian Auto Workers, Social Unionism and the Abortion Debate

By Mathieu Brûlé While there have been a number of labour-related subjects in the news recently, from the Elliot Lake tragedy  to the Ontario Progressive Conservatives’ White Paper on unions, one article in particular caught my interest. It was about the recent efforts of the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) to organize a number of demonstrations in support of continued access to safe,… Read more »