Rather than accept John Norton’s self-fashioning at face value, I explore the incongruities, counterclaims, and complexities that make it appear much more likely that Norton was an early-modern trans-Atlantic shapeshifter, stretching the truth at best, and completely fabricating his own reality at worst.
The problem I have with these claims is that they often ignore the good work of historians who have taken a different perspective.
By Eric Story, Brittany Dunn and Alexander Maavara Anniversaries invite reflection. Regardless of historians’ tendency to hastily dismiss commemorations or celebrations of the past as pesky purveyors of myth, these events nonetheless generate discussion––sometimes informed, other times less so––about history. The centenary of the First World War was no different. Between 2014 and 2018, people around the world engaged in… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/History-Slam-Episode-102-Andrea-Eidinger-of-Unwritten-Histories.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham It’s not exactly a hot take to say that the digital landscape has significantly altered the way in which we consume content. From text to video to audio, we can get (pretty much) everything on-demand. The benefit of this is that it’s possible to find whatever strikes your fancy, but the… Read more »
By Thomas Peace Last month, Terry Glavin wrote a syndicated op-ed piece that appeared in The Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver’s The Province, delivering a strongly worded dismissal of the historical profession in Canada. Historians and others have responded elsewhere to his indictment of the profession (see here, here and here). Today, I want to respond to the broader ideas that… Read more »
The editors of ActiveHistory.ca are proud to present a round table on the current state of Canadian History writing and teaching by Ruth Sandwell, Lyle Dick, Peter Baskerville and Adele Perry. The round table includes an introduction by Sandwell and Dick and four short papers from the authors. Prologue The idea for this forum arose from a discussion between Ruth… Read more »
