Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thinking Historically About a Generation of Canadian Offshore Schools

Ian Alexander This is the fourth entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here. In the 1990s a confluence of social, economic, and political conditions created a market for international education to expand in a multitude of ways around the globe. For those in communities across Canada, the internationalization of education has been most visible in… Read more »

What is Good Citizenship? Perspectives from Former Air Cadets of Diverse Identities

This is the fourth entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here. Rebecca Evans  Our conceptions about good citizenship vary. Context, particularly space and time, matter. In citizenship education, young people participate and deepen their understanding of how to make change in their communities. They do so across various domains, inclusive of formal politics, political advocacy, civic… Read more »

Thinking Historically About Disability at the Ontario School for the Blind, 1903-1917

This is the third entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here. Harrison Dressler “ALL THE EVIDENCE DEMANDED,” read an article published in the Toronto Globe on February 2, 1917. Written by two former students—R.F. Henderson and Byron G. Derbyshire—the article alerted the Canadian public about an investigation into the Ontario School for the Blind (OSB),… Read more »

‘Rather Absurd’: Christian Nationalism and the Dominion of Canada

Daniel R. Meister In July 2023, former adherents of a religious movement went public with concerns that Christian conservatives in New Brunswick were “more radical than they seem.” The specific context was a political controversy surrounding Policy 713 on LGBTQ+ students in public schools. In its coverage of Policy 713 and the conservative Christian reaction to it, the CBC reported… Read more »

Collecting – and Curating – Eclectic Canadiana

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Close-up photograph of a brown piece of wood. There is a brass plate affixed with these words embossed on it: “From the teak of H.M.S. Ganges, the last sailing ship to serve as a seagoing flagship.”

Forrest Pass Collecting made me a historian. A few months ago, in the course of my work as a curator at Library and Archives Canada, I came across a letter from Francis Parkman to Dominion Archivist Douglas Brymner and it made me smile, because my first “acquisition” as a child philatelist had been a stamp commemorating “Francis Parkman – American… Read more »

Reforming the History Dissertation

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By John C. Walsh The report of the CHA Task Force on the Future of the History PhD in Canada is now available (in English and in French). This is the sixth in a series of posts by Task Force members, offering their perspectives on selected themes from the report. Activehistory.ca encourages readers to join in the conversation, either in the comments… Read more »

The Academic Job Market: Tenure-Track Assistant Professors in History in Canada

By Will Langford The report of the CHA Task Force on the Future of the History PhD in Canada is now available (in English and in French). This is the third in a series of posts by Task Force members, offering their perspectives on selected themes from the report. Activehistory.ca encourages readers to join in the conversation, either in the comments or… Read more »

Sketching the Passage of Time

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Laura Madokoro For the past few weeks, I have been deep into records relating to the 1980s sanctuary movement in the United States. This movement, which has been recalled in recent years as a result of renewed efforts to protect refugees and present-day undocumented migrants, consisted of a loose coalition of churches that offered refuge to arriving migrants from Central… Read more »

From a history degree to working at Shopify

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Four small brown boxes, one of which has a miniature shopping cart on top. There is a credit card in the shopping cart.

Andrew Webb “A history degree? What are you going to do with that?” Work my way into the best tech company in the country. That’s what. Not right out of college, of course. It’s entirely possible to work at your dream company with a history degree, though—-as long as you’re willing to work hard at learning new skills. How, though?

A Precautionary History?

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This is the tenth post in the series Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology, and Climate History Network. By Thomas Wien The next Ice Age is behind schedule. Now for the bad news: the infernal and, for many in the northern hemisphere, eye-opening summer of 2021 has shown that global warming’s effects… Read more »