Category Archives: History in the News

“Government Mail Free of Postage”: Scholars’ letters to Parliament Hill

Erin Corber In the introduction to his 1993 Reith lectures, Edward Said reflects on the role and representations of the intellectual. Taking Gramsci’s inclusive vision of a broad and expansive intellectual class populated increasingly not only by producers but also by distributors of knowledge, Said argues that the intellectual’s role in society “cannot be reduced simply to being a faceless… Read more »

The Meaning of DoFo – how Doug Ford took Ontario

James Cullingham Ontario – wake up and sniff the kitty litter. Doug Ford aka DoFo, is premier-elect of Canada’s most populous province. That will make DoFo arguably the second most powerful politician in the country after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There can be no denying the political accomplishment and screaming yelp for CHANGE this proclaims. Doug Ford, elder brother of… Read more »

History on Appeal: Originalism and Evidence in the Comeau Case

This essay is being jointly posted today with Acadiensis and Borealia. By Bradley Miller The Supreme Court declined this month to radically change the way that Canada works. In R v Comeau, lawyers for a New Brunswick man ticketed for bringing too many bottles of beer into the province from Quebec urged the justices to use the history of the… Read more »

Dystopia? It’s a World Without History

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Patrick Lacroix “I’ve got to catch up with the remembrance of the past!” – Montag, Fahrenheit 451 (1966) In the last two years, the rise of “fake news” and “alternative facts” as categories of public discourse has prompted fears of a drift towards authoritarianism in the United States and beyond. A casual disregard for truth and campaigns to discredit rigorous… Read more »

Populism Isn’t a Four Letter Word: Reasserting a Progressive Populism in 2018

by Christo Aivalis In the era of Donald Trump and Doug Ford, populism’s reputation has taken quite the tumble, associated now more than at any time in the recent past with the alt-right movement, predicated in large part on xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and a reflexive aversion to anything that may be connected, however tenuously, to the ‘Social Justice Warrior’ caricature…. Read more »

Can Prison Farms Be Saved?

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Cameron Willis On February 27, 2018, the federal Liberal government announced the gradual reopening of two prison farms in Kingston, Ontario, at the Joyceville and Collins Bay institutions. This announcement marked the successful culmination of a local grassroots campaign which began soon after the initial closure was announced in 2009, and aimed first to save, then later restore, the farms. … Read more »

Brexit Ambiguities

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By Stephen Brooke On Friday, 23 June 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union, with 51.89% in favour of leaving and 48.11% in favour of remaining.  And thus Britain embarked on what was certainly the most important political decision of the past forty years (going back to the 1975 referendum which approved membership in what was then called the… Read more »

“Rooting for Everybody Black” and the Subversive Politics of Black History Month in Canada

Funke Aladejebi  At the 69th Annual Emmy awards held on September 17, 2017, Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s widely popular television show “Insecure,” responded to a red-carpet question by proclaiming she was “rooting for everybody Black!”  Rae’s comments, which went viral, articulated a sense of collective excitement about the growing recognition and achievements of African American Emmy nominees… Read more »

The Seven (Trump)ets of the Apocalypse: Hawaii’s Nuclear Blunder and the Continuity of the Cold War

By Andrew Sopko On the 13th of January residents of Hawaii were provided with a shocking and terrible reminder of the nuclear anxieties that dominated much of the world throughout the Cold War. By error, the State Government sent a push notification that warned of an incoming ballistic missile strike. Responses varied wildly. One reddit user said that they rapidly… Read more »

The Police Records of a Bath Raid Found-In: Excluded from Bill C-66

Tom Hooper For more than 25 years, Ron Rosenes* has been an activist on issues related to HIV/AIDS. In 2007, he was given the Canadian AIDS Society Leadership Award. In 2012, Carleton University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He is a member of the Order of Canada. Despite this impressive resume of advocacy, the Toronto Police Service has a file… Read more »