Category Archives: History and Policy

Ripple Effects: Great Lakes Water Levels

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By Daniel Macfarlane Lake Huron and Lake Michigan recently reached record lows. The other Great Lakes are also below average levels. Headlines such as “Two Great Lakes hit lowest water levels in history” or “Low water levels in Great Lakes cause concern” have been splashed across browsers and newspapers. Docks barely reach water, boats can’t get out of marinas, and… Read more »

New Paper: Veronica Strong-Boag and Tiffany Johnstone: Taking History to the People: Women Suffrage and Beyond

ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to announce the publication of Veronica Strong-Boag and Tiffany Johnstone’s “Taking History to the People: Women Suffrage and Beyond” History as both “facts” and “meaning” has regularly generated debate and disagreement among citizens, policymakers, and scholars. The nature and prospects of democracy and justice supply a special source of contention. Today’s ubiquitous “history wars,” sometimes termed “culture… Read more »

Podcast: After the Cuts: The Future of History in Canada

On April 19, the Canadian Historical Association organized a panel as part of the Annual Meeting of the National Council on Public History in Ottawa entitled “After the Cuts: The Future of History in Canada.” The panel was designed to analyze the changes to historical work in Canada stemming from recent federal budget cuts, revised mandates, and institutional reorganizations. Chaired… Read more »

Historicizing the Lobster Fishery Tie-up

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By Suzanne Morton “Cape Breton Lobster Fishers on Strike” ran the headline.  On 8 May the lobster fishermen of Gabarus, Cape Breton struck demanding a price of  $3.25 per hundred lobsters instead of the $2.35 offered by the buyers.  The processors said there were too many lobsters being caught and they were losing money. The Gabarus men were joined by… Read more »

Backward as Forward: Reflections on Canada’s “Modern” Political Scene

By Christine McLaughlin While it is too soon for the historian to comment on the long-term effects of recent changes on the Canadian political landscape, the larger rightward shift is perhaps best evidenced by the federal New Democratic Party’s decision to “modernize” its constitution at its recent convention by “toning down” references to socialism. Pointing to “pragmatic” economic policies that… Read more »

The New History Wars?: Avoiding the Fights of the Past

The new history wars are not battles over the meaning of Canadian history. They are battles over public financing of historical research and historical preservation.

The Need for Speedy History in the Post-War Canadian North

By Ken Coates and Bill Morrison Things change – but rarely as fast and comprehensively as in the Canadian North. As late as the 1950s, most Indigenous people in the territorial and provincial North lived off the land, traveling seasonally to fish, hunt, trap and gather.  The hand of Ottawa had just begun to be felt, gently in the case… Read more »

“Leveraging the Synergies” or a return to the past?: The decision to do away with CIDA

By Jill Campbell-Miller On March 21st, the Canadian government released the 2013 federal budget and in a paragraph did away with the 45-year-old Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).  The budget announced that CIDA would be amalgamated with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) to become the newly-renamed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.  The budget justified… Read more »

Canada and the Right to Food

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By David Webster “More lies from Amnesty International!” screamed a headline in a Kenyan newspaper, back in the 1990s. When assailed for their human rights records, the unimaginative response of many governments has been to attack the messenger. If Amnesty International criticizes a repressive regime, the regime tends to shout back that Amnesty is being unfair, dishonest, and even imperialist…. Read more »

History Wars: Terms of debate

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By Thomas Peace Last month, Terry Glavin wrote a syndicated op-ed piece that appeared in The Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver’s The Province, delivering a strongly worded dismissal of the historical profession in Canada. Historians and others have responded elsewhere to his indictment of the profession (see here, here and here). Today, I want to respond to the broader ideas that… Read more »