Dani K. Inkpen “History should make you feel weird.” So proclaims a widely touted slogan of history nerds. While there is much in the world foisting weirdness upon us today, too rarely do we intentionally seek the off-beat. History students should. “Weird,” though it has come to mean uncanny or bizarre, has its roots in the idea of the turning… Read more »
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 »
We, at Active History, were saddened to learn about the passing of Danielle Terbenche. Her academic work and community involvement leaves a lasting impact. Danielle Terbenche completed her PhD at the University of Waterloo. During her time there, Danielle co-founded the Tri-University Graduate Students’ Association, published two peer-reviewed papers, and won the tri-university history programme’s award for “Best Paper or… Read more »
Kristen C. Howard In today’s increasingly online world, historians, researchers, and students want and expect online access to historical documents offered by galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. This includes not only journal articles and ebooks, but also primary sources and archival documents, which researchers increasingly expect to find online in searchable, digital formats. In turn, cultural heritage institutions have responded… Read more »
Meredith J. Batt I have made an error. These are not words that come easily to a historian, when evidence is the backbone of our work. However, as Tim Lacy notes in his Society for U.S. Intellectual History blog post On the Failures of Historians, “There is no question that historians in their role as content experts experience failure. All humans are… Read more »
To date what has become painfully clear is that the responsibility and burden of truth telling has fallen largely on Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations. Survivors have been forced to continue to fight the church and state in court to have their records released and their experiences validated. We only have to consider the infamous St. Anne’s Residential School, where Survivors are in a legal battle for their records. According to Veldon Coburn, the continued failure of Indigenous and Northern Affairs[3] to release these illustrates,
There is no difference between the suppression of the truth and denial of the truth. Both tactics – whether deployed to advance reconciliation or resist it – subordinate Indigenous Peoples and their truth of Residential Schools and the integral part this system of cultural genocide played in colonialism.
June Chow This post is a sequel to The right to remember the past: Opening Chinese immigration records in Canada’s national archives published on March 27, 2025. It is adapted from a presentation made on June 11, 2025 at the Association of Canadian Archivists conference held at Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) to an audience that included Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Leslie… Read more »
Laura Ishiguro, Nicole Yakashiro and Ayaka Yoshimizu What can one racialized migrant woman’s life teach us about resistance and community-building in today’s context of rising conservatism, nationalism, and securitization? The open educational resource (OER) we’ve created centres on the life of Kiyo Tanaka-Goto, a Japanese woman who lived much of her adult life in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), especially during the interwar… Read more »
by Jess Wilton Threads of gender dysphoria unite the yellowing pages of adolescent diaries with the smudged print of typewritten letters in the Erica Rutherford fonds at the Prince Edward Island Public Archives. A trans artist who settled on Prince Edward Island (PEI), Rutherford passed away in 2008. She left behind numerous artworks that have been on display at the Venice Biennale as… Read more »
by Meredith J. Batt Atlantic Canadian port cities have some of the most colourful and vibrant queer spaces and stories. Saint John, New Brunswick is no exception. In 2020, the first summer of the pandemic, I celebrated my 25th birthday in Saint John by attending a drag show hosted by Justin TooDeep (portrayed by Alex Saunders) and Saint John’s jewel of… Read more »
