https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/History-Slam-165.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In 1967, the federal government placed a moratorium on the death penalty in Canada. Nine years later, Bill C-64 officially abolished capital punishment. Over the previous century, 710 people were executed in Canada, but the public reaction to each of these varied. Some generated plenty of media attention, while others fell… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/History-Slam-163.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Between 1928 and 1971, around 1 million immigrants arrived in Canada at Halifax’s Pier 21. In the years since its closure as a reception centre for immigration, the site has taken on a symbolic role in representing mid-century Canadian immigration, embodying the policies, procedures, and attitudes of the immigration system. The… Read more »
Donald Wright Archive stories are stories about, well, archives, the things that we find in them, and the things that we know we will never find. They are also invitations to reflect on how and why archival evidence – from a routinely-generated source to a single photograph – was created and what it can and can’t tell us about the… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/History-Slam-157.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Full disclosure: I love the Prairies. I used to live in Regina and always found the Prairies an extremely powerful space. As Saskatchewan license plates say, it is the “Land of the Living Skies” and, for as much as people love the vistas offered by mountains, I’ll take a day on… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/History-Slam-151.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In the spring of 1893, a murder in Sumas Prairie, British Columbia rocked the community and kicked off a lengthy debate about who committed the crime, multiple trials, and unanswered questions about the legal process in the rural community. The victim, John Marshall, was a Portuguese immigrant who had settled on… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/History-Slam-149.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham June 4 is Tom Longboat Day, which recognizes the life and career of one of the best distance runners to ever represent Canada. Winner of the 1907 Boston Marathon, Longboat is remembered for both his athletic achievements and innovative training methods. From the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve near… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/History-Slam-146.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In the midst of the First World War, the Canadian federal government established a program for the internment of Ukrainian Canadians. Since many Ukrainian immigrants arrived in Canada on passports of what were now enemy countries, some government officials believed that confining these people was a necessary precaution. One of the… Read more »
With the fight for safe and affordable housing becoming a central struggle of our times, the Graphic History Collective has released RRR #21 that looks at the lessons of the 2018 Hamilton Rent Strike. The poster, by Simon Orpana, Rob Kristofferson, and Bjarke Skærlund Risager, situates the 2018 strike in the longer history of housing struggles in Hamilton, Ontario and… Read more »
By Thomas Hodd Mary Melville, The Psychic (1900) is an extraordinary Canadian cultural artifact. Written by first-wave feminist, psychical researcher, and suffrage leader Flora MacDonald (Merrill) Denison (1867-1921), this significant yet hitherto-undervalued text bears witness to a transformative and vibrant period in Canada’s social, literary and religious history. Based on the life of Denison’s older sister, Mary Merrill, Mary Melville is… Read more »
By Sarah Glassford and Nathan Smith The “Canada’s First World War” series launched on ActiveHistory.ca with a Call for Blog Posts, published on 4 August 2014. It concluded in the Fall of 2019, with a total of 78 posts, including this post. The series editors during this five-year run were: Mary Chaktsiris, Sarah Glassford, Christopher Schulz, Nathan Smith, and Jonathan… Read more »
