No One Killed Canadian History. It is time to move on
The problem I have with these claims is that they often ignore the good work of historians who have taken a different perspective.
Tag Archives: History Wars
The Importance of the Past – What’s Old is News
By Sean GrahamThe Importance of the Past | RSS.com For as long as people have been doing history, there have been debates over how to best share the stories of the past. In recent years, this has revolved around discussions over teaching history and ways to better engage people with the history that shapes our daily lives. In this episode,… Read more »
It is Time to End the History Wars
By Ian Milligan and Thomas Peace We’ve been fighting about the same things for a quarter century. It’s time to call it quits. Earlier this week, The Dorchester Review published an open letter under an inflammatory (and arguably misleading, as it did not appear on the version signatories signed) headline of “Historians Rally v. ‘Genocide Myth;” it also apparently appeared… Read more »
The Never-ending History Wars
Allan Greer How can we understand the past and what lessons does it hold for the present? This is an issue that has always been contested with different approaches coming to the fore. From Plutarch in ancient times to Machiavelli in the Renaissance, the predominant idea was that stories of great men from earlier times would guide and inspire elite… Read more »
Reconsidering Stephen Harper’s Historiography
By Andrew Nurse Few Prime Ministers have been as interested in history as Stephen Harper. A wag might now say, few Prime Ministers have known so little about it. What is clear, as panels at the CHA, a special Labour/Le Travail forum, and a spate of other critical articles have demonstrated, historians had little time for Harper’s — or, more… Read more »
In Defence of (Canadian Academic) History
Adam Coombs Polemics by disgruntled academic outsiders have recently become a remarkably popular genre of writing. In the United States The Atlantic has published pieces discussing the “problems” of safe space and political correctness on campus, while in Canada we have Ron Srigley in The Walrus and Ted Rhodes in the Calgary Herald disparaging Canadian universities for their supposed embrace of… Read more »
Fake News, Global History Wars, and the Importance of Historical Thinking
By Thomas Peace In the last week we’ve seen a strong desire to put an end to “Fake News”. With the rise of social media and increasingly savvy revenue generating fake news sites, this is an important intervention (the dangers of which Alan MacEachern addressed here last week). It is, however, misleading to assign blame for Donald Trump’s rise to… Read more »
Reclaiming the People’s Memory
This essay originally appeared in the Fall 2015 edition of Canada Watch: The Politics of Evidence. By Karen Murray Knowing our democratic selves, our democratic possibilities, and most crucially our democratic failings steers us toward greater freedom and justice in Canada and beyond. With these thoughts in mind, I offer a personal reflection on the erosion of the people’s memory… Read more »
Ignorance of History as a Site of Memory
By Raphaël Gani The discourse about Canadians ignoring their collective past, or not knowing their national history, is neither new (Osborne, 2003) nor limited to Canada (Wineburg, 2001). Such a view tends to be legitimized according to surveys in which people fail to identify famous events and politicians. This failure is also linked with angst about the perils of the… Read more »
What does Canadian History Look Like? Impressions from the Periodical Room
By Tom Peace This morning, as you read this post, historians from across the country have gathered at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario for the Canadian Historical Association’s annual meeting (click here to read the program). The CHA’s annual meeting is one of the most important forums to hear about new and emerging research on Canada’s past or by… Read more »
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