Christo Aivalis This is the third and final post in the Canada Post and Canadian Culture series. Canada Post and its employees have had an undeniable impact on the culture of this country, both via the artistry and symbolism on stamps, and also as an essential facilitator of communication across a vast and diverse nation. From my perspective as a… Read more »
Daniel R. Meister Recent stories in the CBC revisit the controversy surrounding the appointment of Mary Simon, the first Indigenous person to be appointed Governor General of Canada. Simon, an Inuit woman, was bilingual, fluent in English and Inuktitut, and committed to becoming more proficient French while in office. Despite her efforts, and the fact that the Governor General is not subject… Read more »
Daniel Sims This post is part of the Indian Act 150 series In May 2024, I attended a meeting of Parks Canada’s Indigenous Cultural Heritage Advisory Council in Sydney, British Columbia. One of our agenda items was the federal government’s commemoration of upcoming historical events, including the passage of the Indian Act in 1876. The hope was that we would tell the… Read more »
For the second feature in Active History’s series on Canada Post, we sat down with Evert Hoogers, a retired postal worker, long-time union activist, representative, and organizer with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Throughout our interview Evert shared his recollections, memories, and insider knowledge from a long career in postal work and as a labour activist. This interview was conducted… Read more »
By Andrew Nurse This post is part of the Indian Act 150 series. On March 11, 2026, Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench Justice D.E. Labach issued a summary judgement against Darryl Leroux.1 The issue was whether Leroux, a well-known authority on “self-indigenization,” had defamed Michelle Coupal, a Canada Research Chair at the University of Regina, because he suggested Coupal used a fake… Read more »
2022 Banner drop by tenants organised with le Syndicat des locataires autonomes de Montréal, Montreal Autonomous Tenants’ Union, (SLAM) This series looks at the different housing crises tenants have experienced across Canada from the 1900s until the present and details how they responded, successfully and unsuccessfully, through tactics of community and/or class-based direct action and structures based in grassroots direct democracy…. Read more »
By Jessica van Horssen Historians aren’t really made to be on film. Or at least not beyond a 15-second “talking head” clip in a documentary, and even then, we can be woefully thrown off-course. As a fan of Diane Morgan’s Philomena Cunk, I’m well-versed in the risks of historians on the screen. This is why I was both excited and… Read more »
By Sarah Kittilsen In the summer of 2025, I was rifling through a box of uncatalogued materials at the Farm Equipment Museum in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, when I happened upon an old record book. Tattered and yellowed with age, it had been used by fourteen-year-old Frank Daniels in the early 1930s to document what he expended and earned while… Read more »
By Jenni Makahnouk This post is part of the Indian Act 150 series The Indian Act is commonly treated as a governance structure: an object to be interpreted, amended, or dismantled through policy reform. This framing assumes neutrality where there is appetite. This article argues that the Indian Act functions less as a static legal instrument and more as a… Read more »
Inspired by recent 2025 labour disputes and renewed public conversation about Canada Post, the intention here is to examine the cultural impact and historical legacy of a controversial yet essential Canadian Crown Corporation. A national institution and the nation’s leading postal operator, Canada Post in its earliest iteration proceeded Canadian Confederation itself. Series editors Annabelle Penney and Raffaella Cerenzia Canada… Read more »
