Kristen Jeanveau Collection of materials from the file of Harry George Dickson R/18077. Courtesy of the Ley and Lois Smith War Memory, and Culture Research Collection, Western University. For the last two years, I have been a Graduate Teaching Assistant for History 1810: Wars that Changed the World at Western University. For many students, the world wars are a remote… Read more »
By Patricia Roussel and David Dean This post is part of the Canada Post and Canadian Culture series. This is the first post in a limited series dedicated to studying the history of Canada Post. Inspired by recent 2025 labour disputes and renewed public conversation about Canada Post, the intention here is to examine the cultural impact and historical legacy of… Read more »
By Sean Graham This week, I talk with Angela Tozer, author of The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820-73. We discuss how governments take on debt, the purpose of debt, and how colonialism fuelled land speculation. We also chat about how resource extraction was critical to servicing debt, the changes brought on… Read more »
Warrant Officer Daniyal Elahi, 337 Queen’s York Rangers Royal Canadian Army Cadets Growing up, I often felt as though Muslim Canadians were a recent part of this country — as if our connection began only in 1965, when my grandfather immigrated from Pakistan. In school, the Canadian soldiers we learned about seemed to share the same background and the same… Read more »
By Sean Graham This week I talk with Katherine Rollwagen, author of The Scramble for the Teenage Dollar: Creating the Youth Market in Mid-Century Canada. We discuss the creation of the ‘classic’ teenager, how marketing shifted to attract young people, and how much family considerations shaped advertisements. We also chat about Eaton’s, how it attracted teenagers to the store, and… Read more »
Author Carol F. Lee explores the writings of her mother Mary Quan Lee, with a focus on her experiences in the 1930s and her sense of dual Canadian and Chinese identity in the 1940s. Lee notes that her mother’s identity was shaped in large part by openings and closings in opportunities and the structural realities of exclusion in Canada.
By Sean Graham This week I talk with Peggy Nash, one of the co-authors of Women United: Stories of Women’s Struggles for Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Union. We discuss women’s contributions to the union in its early years, how negotiating priorities were shaped, and the Second World War’s influence on the labour movement. We also chat about the… Read more »
By Sean Graham This week I talk with Lynne Gouliquer and Carmen Poulin ahead of their Shannon lecture on Monday November 24 entitled “Purging the Canadian Military of ‘Sexual Deviants’: The War on 2SLGBTQIA+ Members and Their Partners from the 1960s to Present.’ We talk about the administrative order that established the policy of purging homosexuals from the military and… Read more »
Donald Wright When I learned that Jim Miller had died, I reached out to his partner, Lesley Biggs, to express my condolences. A few weeks later, she invited me to share a few words about him that would be read at his celebration of life. “It would be my honour,” I replied. And I meant it. Jim was something of… Read more »
During the 1920s, Jell-O advertising in North America focused on both the product’s convenience (the fact that it could be consumed almost anywhere) and its connection with idealized domestic settings. Both themes were central to a 1922 “at home everywhere” advertising campaign in the United States and Canada. Booklets distributed in both countries featured images of people serving or consuming Jell-O in a series of disparate settings: camping in the woods, on a farm in the “wheat belt,” and in a snow-bound cabin. Indeed, both the American and Canadian versions of the booklet featured a bear and a cabin on the cover. But the Canadian and American booklets differed on one key point. The American booklet included a plantation in its compilation of idealized Jell-O consuming locations and featured an illustration of an African-American boy serving the dessert to a white woman at the “Big House.” The Canadian version did not. When it came to promoting their product in Canada, Jell-O’s advertisers recognized that while some cultural allusions were transferable, others were not. Jell-O could be both Canada’s and America’s “most famous” dessert but the reference points used to justify such claims required selectivity and political awareness.
