Tag Archives: business history

History Slam 208: The Story of Yonge St, a City’s Transformation, & The Heart of Toronto

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/History-Slam-208.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham If you’ve visited Toronto for any length of time, you’ve probably found yourself on Yonge St. Starting on the shores of Lake Ontario, the street includes theatres, the Eaton Centre, the Air Canada Centre, and one of the city’s subway lines. Every day, thousands of people head to the street to… Read more »

A Lost Chapter in the History of Black Baseball in New Brunswick

by Roger P Nason The early history of baseball in New Brunswick’s Black communities has yet to be written. A glimpse into the chapter of that heritage before the First World War is, however, found in the Saint John Daily Telegraph headline of 10 May 1889: “The Colored Club of Fredericton.” In a short column, the newspaper announced that: Mr…. Read more »

Georgina Whetsel: Black Entrepreneur and Innovator

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Roger P. Nason It is just over a century since the death of one of New Brunswick’s pioneering Black women entrepreneurs. For a woman who garnered a reputation for her business savvy in Saint John, across New Brunswick, and in the United States, Georgina (née Mingo) Whetsel Moore’s death in 1919 in Bedford, Nova Scotia (NS) went largely unnoticed.[1] Her… Read more »

Fourth Annual(?) Year in Review (100 Years Later)

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By Aaron Boyes and Sean Graham Over the past month I have had, and overheard, many conversations with friends, family members, and coworkers about the year 2016, and the overwhelming consensus is that this has been an unusually bad year. Numerous events occurred that shocked the public, such as the outbreak of the Zika virus; the Brexit vote and its… Read more »

The Morality of Mergers

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By Jonathan McQuarrie Recently, Monsanto received a $66 billion purchase offer from the even mightier German pharmaceutical company Bayer. It would be hard to find a more disliked firm than Monsanto, and the fact that a major pharmaceutical company is the potential buyer has created even more alarm. But should we disentangle our moral concerns from our economic understanding? The… Read more »

History Slam Episode Eighty-Seven: Enron

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https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Gavin-Benke.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham A couple of years ago, the National Arts Centre produced Enron, a show that documented one of the most infamous corporate bankruptcies in recent memory. While I don’t remember much of the plot, I do remember that it was about 45 minutes too long and that there was some really weird… Read more »

Investment for Development: The Plodding History of Canadian Development Finance

(Active History is pleased to present today’s post in partnership with aidhistory.ca) Jill Campbell-Miller In the area of development finance Canada has lagged behind its international partners in the G7, only promising to establish a development finance institution (DFI) in the 2015 budget, some 67 years after the UK established the first DFI. This might come as surprise, since blending… Read more »

Engaging Corporate Heritage: Struggling to Cultivate Institutional Memory

Almost everyone has at least one memory of working with a ‘lifer’ or ‘old-timer.’  In some cases these employees have been at the organization since its inception, in other cases they have worked there for their entire career or as long as anyone can remember. The phrase “can remember” is often at the heart of discussions about institutional memory. The… Read more »