By Laurie Bertram This piece was first published in the University of Toronto Magazine. On May 23, 1889, a packed courtroom in Edmonton watched as “Big Nelly” Webb, the most famous woman in town, answered to the charge of shooting a member of the North West Mounted Police. Several months earlier, Constable Thomas Cairney had been found seriously wounded on… Read more »
By Zachary Abram Canadian cultural memory of the First World War is conspicuously asexual considering Canadians had among the highest rates for venereal disease in the British Expeditionary Force, with an infection rate that reached as high as 28.7%. [1] Anyone with a passing interest in the First World War is familiar with Trench Foot and its symptoms are synonymous… Read more »
In his Histoire du Canada (1846), François Garneau promulgated the myth that slavery never existed in New France. He congratulated King Louis XIV and the French colonial clergy for having saved Canada from this “grand and terrible plague.” Following suit, Canadians have accepted this claim despite the historical evidence of at least 4,000 slaves in New France alone, two-thirds of… Read more »
