Active History is celebrating its tenth anniversary! As part of our anniversary celebrations we are sharing glimpses of how Active History developed and showcasing our favourite and most popular posts from the past ten years. In 2014 our longest running series, “Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca”, a multi-year series of regular posts about the history and… Read more »
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 »
By Calyssa Erb On 23 October 1916, two years into the Great War, Prime Minister Robert Borden spoke to Canadians with the goal of inspiring more citizens to get involved in the war effort. Nearly a century later on 22 October 2014, following the shooting at Canada’s National War Memorial in Ottawa and fears of another attack on Canadian soil,… Read more »
By Gilberto Fernandes Who killed spawned Canadian citizenship? Like Gillian Frank and Jamie Duong, who challenged the Elections Act rule limiting the external voting rights of Canadian expats to five years living abroad, I too am an emigrant. I moved to Canada from Portugal over ten years ago through spousal sponsorship. I became a Canadian citizen as soon as I… Read more »
By Gilberto Fernandes Since coming into power in 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken various steps to redefine Canadian citizenship and reassert its “value” under a territorial, militaristic, loyalist, conformist and Anglocentric interpretation. As numerous commentators have noted, these reforms have unfolded within Harper’s broader campaign to (re)define the meaning of being Canadian along conservative ideals and British traditions…. 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 »
By Jim Clifford Is Stephen Harper, as Terry Glavin argues, right to “not trust the history establishment“? Posts on this website and elsewhere do suggest that a broad spectrum of Canadian historians disagree with Harper’s use of history. Does this vocal minority represent the establishment? If not, who makes up the establishment? The Canadian Historical Association’s executive members? Leading historians at the large… Read more »
NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair made a good suggestion last week. After the Prime Minister publicly outlined the marching orders for his ministers – which did not address recent tensions with First Nations but did emphasize the allocation of funds and resources towards a handful of historical celebrations – Mulcair took him to task. Picking up perhaps on the contradiction of… Read more »
By Andrew Watson and Thomas Peace After reading comment after uninformed comment, both online and in the media, ActiveHistory.ca decided to compile a short list of books written by historians that address the issues being discussed by the Idle No More movement. Click on a link below to read a brief summary of the book. Peggy Blair, Lament for a… Read more »
We failed Kimberly Rivera because we left the arguments against letting war resisters stay in Canada unchallenged as the Government of Canada and their supporters’ misused history to persecute soldiers of conscience.
