Active History

June Chow

The right to know through Canada’s Access to Information Act and the right to personal privacy under the Privacy Act hang in perpetual balance at our national archives. In 2021, an ATIP request submitted to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) sought to open a set of historical government records that remained Restricted within its Chinese Immigration records series, namely, C.I. 44 forms and index cards. The 100th anniversary of the passing of the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act (formally, the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923) was fast approaching; members of the Chinese Canadian community were all too aware of how many memories of this past had already been lost through the generations. This post offers a detailed, firsthand account of how a community worked with its national archives to open racist government records needed to understand and confront this history. It shows how a community’s agency, self-determination, and right to remember its past can move an institution to action.

Gilbert Gagné

This is the third post in a series on tariffs based on a roundtable organized at Bishop’s University in February 2025. Read the introduction by David Webster here and the first post by Heather McKeen-Edwards here. The second post by Gordon S. Baker appears here.

Everything seems to be about tariffs now; how exposed to potential US tariffs Canada is, and some of the implications and essential issues surrounding this. In terms of history, as Gordon Barker points out in the first post in this series, it used to be the norm that most industrial countries industrialized behind tariffs, and they were more sympathetic to trade liberalization once they felt they were ready to face outside competition. And as Heather McKeen-Edwards has very clearly pointed out, especially following the crash of 1929, increasing tariffs made the crisis even worse. There are calls to immediately renegotiate the free trade agreement with the United States. Yet, with a US administration disregarding the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) with threats of tariffs, this would make no sense.

Gordon S. Barker

This is the second post in a series on tariffs based on a roundtable organized at Bishop’s University in February 2025. Read the introduction by David Webster here and the first post by Heather McKeen-Edwards here.

Donald Trump’s transactional use of tariffs does not break new ground. In fact, tariffs have played an instrumental role in American nation building for some two hundred and fifty years.  Tariffs were a hotly debated issue during the “Critical Period” under the Articles of Confederation as the New Republic sought to establish itself in the community of nations and build its own national market.  After the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and the adoption of the American Constitution, tariffs lay at the heart of the controversies between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, which divided George Washington’s first administration.  Hamilton saw a tariff as an essential nation-building tool and set out his vision in the Report on Manufactures submitted to Congress in 1793.  Washington’s secretary of the treasury believed tariff protection, a national bank, and a program of internal improvements were key pillars for economic growth and positioning the New Nation in the global community.  In contrast, Jefferson rejected tariffs.  The Sage of Monticello embraced a vision of an agrarian republic that had access to low-cost manufacturing imports to provide the infrastructure needed to expand agricultural production and sustain commodity exports to international markets.