Category Archives: Uncategorized

I Think It’s Time For Us to Give Up Hope

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The comments here were first shared during the Canadian Historical Association’s second of three panels responding to the “Precarious Historical Instructors’ Manifesto” entitled, “Precarious Historians, Trade Unions, and the Neoliberal University.” Along with Godefroy Desrosiers-Lauzon, Peter McInnis, Christine Gauthier, Catherine Larochelle, and Janis Thiessen, Jeremy Milloy discussed his insights on precarious academic work and working-class organizing. What follows is an… Read more »

Public Health, Rights, and Protest in the Age of COVID-19

Jennifer Tunnicliffe COVID-19 and the steps taken to inhibit its spread have inspired significant opposition across Canada over the past ten months. Protestors have rallied against measures implemented by provincial governments, and movements such as The Line Canada and March to Unmask have used public demonstrations and social media platforms to denounce mandatory mask-wearing, quarantine procedures, travel restrictions, and lockdown… Read more »

A Structural Pandemic: On Statues, Colonial Violence, and the Importance of History (Part III)

Kristine Alexander and Mary Jane Logan McCallum While – as shown in our previous post – Guiding and Scouting were inextricably linked to British imperialism and settler colonialism, some Indigenous students in Canadian Indian residential schools also found that these organizations provided a refuge in an alien environment and a short break from labour and strict routine. It was an… Read more »

A Structural Pandemic: On Statues, Colonial Violence, and the Importance of History (Part II)

Kristine Alexander and Mary Jane Logan McCallum As we documented in our previous post, looking more closely at the history of Scouting and Guiding reveals that the divide between colonialist violence, fascist discipline, and peaceful pedagogy was not quite as stark as Baden-Powell and his supporters would have us believe. Instead of insisting on the ideological opposition between Scouting and… Read more »

135 Years Since the Last Spike: Colonialism and Resistance on Canada’s Railways

By Thomas Blampied For those following the Canadian railway industry, 2020 was supposed to be a year of celebration. Canadian National Railway (CN), was continuing with its CN100 celebrations to commemorate the 100th anniversary of being bailed out and nationalized by the Canadian government in 1919 (it wasn’t privatized until 1995). The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was to mark the… Read more »

Spooky Sources to Teach, and Challenge, Canadian history

By Samantha Cutrara I like a good theme, and what better theme is there than Halloween? With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, I wanted to use it to have  “spooky” conversations for my Source Saturday video series on YouTube (also available as a podcast). Source Saturday is a new video & podcast series where I talk with historians,… Read more »

History Slam Episode 167: Halloween Costumes Through the 20th Century

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/History-Slam-167.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham This year, Halloween will look very different in communities across the country. Even though Trick or Treating may not be possible, there are still going to be opportunities to dress up in creative and fun costumes. For as much as getting candy made Halloween an exciting event when I was a… Read more »

History Slam Episode 164: Words Have a Past

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https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/History-Slam-164.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Jane Griffith about the book Words Have a Past: The English Language, Colonialism, and the Newspapers of Indian Boarding Schools. We talk about why schools published newspapers, who the intended audiences were, and the information they did not include. We also discuss… Read more »

History Slam Episode 158: White Appropriations of Black Masculinities in the Civil Rights Era

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/History-Slam-158.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham The years following the Second World War saw major changes to American society, from the rise of suburbs to powerful social movements to shifting international priorities. Within that change, popular culture took on a new significance in American life as television spread across the country and radio stations increasingly shifted to… Read more »

Pity and Destiny: An Indigenous Student at the Manitoba School for the Deaf, 1904-1916

Sandy Barron Historians of deaf communities and disability can no longer take for granted that our field cuts across those of race, class, and gender in consistent ways. Although in recent years scholarship and activism have begun to redraw and trouble these distinctions, deaf and disability histories in Canada have only begun to wrestle with the nation’s colonial past and… Read more »