Tag Archives: 20th century

“We are in danger of becoming a stage without actors:” Contextualizing Contemporary Overtourism in Venice, Italy

Michael Dawson Today’s visitors to Venice are hard-pressed to ignore the locals’ frustration with their presence. In 2025, CNN lamented the impact of overtourism on this popular destination “hollowed out by vacation rentals.”[1] In 2024, the BBC noted that the city had introduced a daily entry fee, a ban on loudspeakers, and a limit on tour group size – all… Read more »

Health care workers and the ‘third wave’ of occupational health

Peter L. Twohig On 16 April 2026, five thousand long-term care (LTC) workers in 56 facilities throughout Nova Scotia began a strike. A tentative agreement ended the labour action after eight weeks, another example of a lengthy labour dispute in a nursing home. Indeed, some of the longest strikes in recent Canadian history have been in LTC.[i] Striking long-term care… Read more »

The Great Acceleration of the Laurentian Dairy Transition

Black and white archival photograph of a wood-shingled barn or farmhouse with a metal roof, two chimneys, and a weathervane, seen from the roadside. A wooden fence and overgrown brush line a dirt road in front of the building, with tall trees to the right. The image is labeled 'T.S. 9131' in the bottom corner.

Stéphane Castonguay and Colin Coates This is the ninth post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posed with NiCHE The relationship between agriculture and the Anthropocene unfolds across a temporal and conceptual spectrum punctuated by the various proposals for a “Golden Spike.”1 At one end… Read more »

Fighting Fires: Quebec Separatism in Canada – Chile Relations, 1968

Thomas Stroyan In February 1968, the Quebec government agreed to loan Chile two Canadair CL-215s (also known as the CANSO). The CL-215 was an amphibious flying boat built for the purpose of performing firefighting tasks such as waterbombing. The loan came at a moment of need for Chile, in 1967 it had experienced a record drought the likes the country… Read more »

Canada’s Christine Jorgenson?

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A black-and-white newspaper photograph showing Frances Marie Jefferson, a young woman with short curly dark hair, seen from behind on the left side of the frame as she looks into a mirror. Her reflection is visible in the mirror, showing her smiling face and wearing a light-coloured top with a ruffled or lacy collar.

Walter T. Cassidy The Windsor Star reported an incident on May 28th, 1954—as did papers all over North America—about a Port Colborne, Ontario woman being arrested in Buffalo, New York, for trying to enter the United States “illegally” after being in an accident in the neighbouring American town. It was her second time trying to cross the border, the first… Read more »

Finding Private Amat: A Research Method for Recovering Overlooked Soldiers of the CEF

Daniyal Elahi and Harris Elahi In December 2025, ActiveHistory.ca published our first piece on Private Hasan Amat, a soldier of the 1st Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, killed at the Battle of Hill 70 on August 20, 1917. To our knowledge, he is the first identified Muslim soldier killed in action serving with the CEF. He is also one of twenty-two… Read more »

Concrete Afterlives: Carceral Landscapes in Canada’s Great Acceleration

The Prison des Patriotes (Au Pied-du-Courant) in Montreal in winter, with deep snow in the foreground, a stone monument dedicated to the Patriotes in the left foreground, and a blue sky overhead.

Alicia Carefoote This is the fifth post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. When environmental historians describe the “Great Acceleration,” they usually point to dramatic post-Second World War transformations in human activity.1 Carbon emissions surged. Industrial production expanded. Highways, suburbs, pipelines, and hydroelectric megaprojects reshaped… Read more »

Mining Data and Canada’s Great Acceleration

Josh Sandlos This is the fourth post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. Each year in my “Canadian History Since Confederation” survey class, I take my students on a deep dive into something that has high potential to be boring: Statistics Canada tables on historical… Read more »

Reservoir Modernity: Lake Diefenbaker and the Great Acceleration on the Prairies

John W. Bessai This is the third post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. Lake Diefenbaker concentrates the Great Acceleration within one prairie watershed. It shows how postwar Canada joined environmental transformation, settler state authority, hydraulic control, agricultural expansion, and the reordering of Indigenous… Read more »

Hydro Power, Energy Transitions, and the Onset of Canada’s Great Acceleration

Aerial black-and-white photograph of the Queenston-Chippawa hydroelectric generating station, showing the large powerhouse building at the base of a cliff with penstocks (water conduits) visible along the slope, surrounded by rural farmland and roads, likely taken in the early 1920s during or shortly after construction.

Daniel Macfarlane This is the second post in a series exploring the potential of the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance of Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with NiCHE. If the Great Acceleration – the dramatic increase in human activity and the resulting impact on the Earth’s natural systems since the mid-20th century – is a… Read more »