This is the final post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s. Raffaella Cerenzia 1930s McGill was a small, tight-knit place. Only 3,000 or so students roamed the university’s campus. They were taught by a short roster of professors; the Department of Economics and Political Science numbered just six in the early thirties. In this intimate… Read more »
This is the second post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s. Raffaella Cerenzia As the 1930s unfolded, the soaring unemployment and general miseries of the Great Depression breathed new life into the Canadian left. Socialism began to take root in federal politics, a process exemplified by the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in… Read more »
This is the first post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s. Raffaella Cerenzia Tick tock, tick tock. “Time to wake up!” In January 1933, deep in the midst of the Great Depression, a new student publication announced its arrival on McGill University’s campus. The paper was the production of McGill’s Labour Club, to which all… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/History-Slam-190.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to lead immersive educational programs of Canada’s First World War history through Belgium and France. One of the best parts of these programs is visiting Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries where students have selected a soldier killed during the war to… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/History-Slam-171.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In 1937, following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Mackenzie King government passed the Foreign Enlistment Act. Like other western democratic countries, Canada had decided to stay out the war, which saw the democratically-elected Republican government fight against the Francisco Franco-led Nationalists. Despite the law, over 1,600 Canadians went… Read more »
By: Sonya Roy and Steve Hewitt In recent years, non-experts, with the Harper government leading the way, have advocated and pushed for a conservative rewriting of Canadian history in an effort to find “heroes”[1]. This “great man” rewriting of Canadian history focuses on White, middle-class politicians and businessmen, militarism, and monarchism and leaves out the experiences of ordinary people and… Read more »
By Ian Mosby History has a distinct taste. Actually, it also has a distinct smell, feel, sound, and look to it but – as a historian of food and nutrition – I always find myself coming back to the taste of history. No, I’m not talking about the musty, acrid taste of dust and mildew as you open up a… Read more »
Discussing money is generally afforded the same privacy as the balance of one’s bank account. Inviting an open conversation about the subject in public, from basic finance to complex economics, is thought to be rude and even poorer politics. It is perhaps the most polarizing field of contemporary journalism because it has absolutely no means of circumventing readers’ class ties… Read more »
A review of the documentary Inside Job, along with some relections on the lack of popular outrage in North America over current economic events.
