Category Archives: History and Policy

Thinking Historically about Sexuality, Gender, and the Implications of “Safety”

The title page of Woman and Her Secret Passions (MC 4516 James Waddell family fonds); photo taken at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB).

Gemma Marr “The luxurious habits of civilized life lead to many excesses. Those of gluttony and hard drinking have been sufficiently commented upon. Tracts and newspapers showing the fatal results of intoxication, surround us on all hands. But an evil more destructive than any of these has received, comparatively, but little attention. It is time that the warning was given,… Read more »

75 Years of Human Rights: How to Mark This Year?

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This is the first of a two-part series to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The second post will appear on this site tomorrow. Jennifer Tunnicliffe This year marks an important anniversary for the United Nations. Seventy-five years ago, on December 10, 1948, member states of the newly formed organization adopted the Universal Declaration of… Read more »

Nova Scotia and the Paradox of the Royal Proclamation

That unceded Mi’kmaw Land was occupied by a chief framer of the 1763 Royal Proclamation must give us pause. Although the Proclamation established a set of principles for good relationships with North American nations, on-the-ground military strategies and the use of Indigenous Land as reward for imperial service made it easy to ignore these principles, even by the framers themselves.

Nazis in Canada?!

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Katelyn Arac Over the last two weeks, we have seen a lot of news coverage about the scandal in the House of Commons. The Speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, invited 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian, Yaroslav Hunka, to sit as a guest in the parliamentary gallery. Rota stated that Hunka was “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero. And we thank him for… Read more »

“Out of the Frying Pan”: The Economist on peasants and climate change”

Jim Handy As summer winds down I have been slowly catching up on reading avoided while happily engaged elsewhere. This includes back copies of The Economist. As always reading The Economist prompts an appreciation for their insightful reporting on some issues and their tone-deaf, ahistorical and simply wrong accounts on others. The July 1st, 2023 edition had a briefing entitled… Read more »

Should non-Indigenous scholars learn Indigenous languages? What it’s been like learning Kanyen’kéha as a settler historian

Photo of a blonde woman in a green sweater holding three books. The book at the front of the stack is titled "Kanyen'keha Tewatati (Let's Speak Mohawk)."

Elizabeth McKenzie A few weeks back, I was presenting at a conference in Niagara Falls on some of my research that looks at the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s longstanding, continual sovereignty, and the failure of the League of Nations in 1924 to uphold the rights of the traditional governing council in the wake of a Canadian military coup at Six Nations of… Read more »

Making Private Property in Rural Britain and Canada

Robin Ganev Recently the government of Saskatchewan strengthened existing trespassing law to the benefit of farmers and to the detriment of Indigenous people. The new laws took effect on Jan. 1, 2022. Under previous legislation, land owners had an obligation to put up posting if they wanted to limit access to their land. Now it is the responsibility of “trespassers”… Read more »

Visiting and Recognizing the Past: Toronto’s 1919-1920 Smallpox Outbreak

Alt text: A crowd dressed in hats and coats fills a city street. There are banners with the following text: “Stop the slaughter of the innocents! Protest against compulsory vaccination” and “Compulsory vaccination German born – down with compulsion!!”

Sara Wilmshurst A few years ago, on this very site, I published an article about combatting vaccine resistance with historical education. Surely, I thought, if people understood how devastating preventable diseases could be, everyone would be eager to roll up a sleeve and be jabbed. Such is the pain of living through historic times. At least I learned something. Like… Read more »

Abandoning the Enterprise? Alberta’s 1936 and 2021 Social Studies Curricula Compared

Kirk Niergarth Author’s Note:  Alberta’s new draft K-6 curriculum, released in the spring of 2021, has unleashed a flurry of criticism. The Jason Kenney-led United Conservative government has followed through on their 2019 election promise to scrap an ambitious curriculum re-development project initiated by a Progressive Conservative government in 2008 and continued by the NDP government after 2015.  The new… Read more »

Unions, Care Home Cartels and the Covid-19 Pandemic in Ontario

This post by Justin Panos is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series here. From their office on Bay Street, the 2021 LTC Commission has released the latest report that condemns corporate nursing home operations and elected officials for their inaction and lack of leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. At its… Read more »