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.
By Hailey Baldock With a black coffin strapped to the top of their van and a fiery determination to scrap Canada’s abortion laws, the women of the 1970 Abortion Caravan knew they had to make a scene. And they did. Over the course of two weeks, the Caravan moved across the country from Vancouver to Ottawa, rallying supporters and drawing… Read more »
By Sean Graham This week, I talk with Matthew S. Wiseman, historian of science and medicine in modern Canada. We discuss why militaries engage in scientific research, the civilian benefits of that research, and how scientists navigated their research during the Cold War. We also chat about research consent within a military environment, the challenges of researching the Cold War… Read more »
This case study of Jean de Brébeuf emphasizes the intricacies of colonial tensions and complicates colonial narratives and ideas of civilization hierarchies. Indigenous cannibalism was used as a means of ‘othering’ conducted by Catholic missionaries in the writings of the Jesuit Relations that recount the story of the cannibalization and martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalement. The prescription of Brébeuf’s relics by a Catholic nun in 17th century Quebec complicates the simplicity of this process by contrasting it with the long standing European medical tradition of human consumption: corpse medicine.
By Sean Graham As part of our series with the 2025 Shannon Lecture Series, I talk with Sarah Hogenbirk, who will deliver the opening lecture on Monday entitled ‘Fighting for Their Place and Recognition: Canadian Servicewomen and Women Veterans in Post-Second World War Canada. The lecture will serve as a launch for Cold War Workers: Labour, Family, and Community in… Read more »
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 »
Daze Jefferies and Rhea Rollmann Editor’s note: the following work by Daze Jefferies and Rhea Rollmann is a piece of creative history. Transfeminine histories are often especially difficult to recount through traditional historical writing. By engaging with archival fragments, as well as oral histories completed by Rhea for her exceptional book A Queer History of Newfoundland, this article uses the… Read more »
By Sean Graham We’re back from our summer hiatus with a new season and we’re kicking it off by talking with Craig Baird, the host of Canada History Ehx about his new book Canada’s Main Street: The Epic Story of the Trans-Canada Highway. We talk about his motivation to write about the highway, why the highway doesn’t have the same… Read more »
