We’re back from our summer hiatus with a new season and we’re kicking it off by talking with Craig Baird, the host of Canada History Ehx about his new book Canada’s Main Street: The Epic Story of the Trans-Canada Highway. We talk about his motivation to write about the highway, why the highway doesn’t have the same romanticized history as the railroad, and the contested circumstances of its origins. We also chat about the highway’s route, how it shaped different regions, and its legacy in Canadian history.
When Canadians tuned into their first radio broadcasts in the 1920s, much of what they listened to wasn’t Canadian. American stations with stronger signals and flashier programming initially dominated the airwaves. The radio audience developed over time as the medium entered the domestic space, but Canadian listeners were part of a transnational media environment from the very start.
Politicians and cultural advocates quickly worried that Canada’s nascent national identity would be drowned out by its louder neighbour. One solution was bold: create a publicly funded, nationally regulated broadcasting system to tell Canadian stories and protect Canadian culture.
A century later, the debate isn’t dead. It’s just moved online. Canada’s 2023 Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) brought platforms such as Netflix under the same regulatory apparatus once built for radio. The controversy it sparked on social media shows how deeply broadcasting policy remains tethered to cultural identity—and how difficult it is to future-proof a system designed for a radically different era.
Hand towel, Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre Kiyo Goto Collection, 2003.7.37, photo by Tadafumi Tamura.
Laura Ishiguro, Nicole Yakashiro and Ayaka Yoshimizu
What can one racialized migrant woman’s life teach us about resistance and community-building in today’s context of rising conservatism, nationalism, and securitization? The open educational resource (OER) we’ve created centres on the life of Kiyo Tanaka-Goto, a Japanese woman who lived much of her adult life in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), especially during the interwar and postwar years. Kiyo’s story speaks to our current moment, offering a powerful reminder that marginalized women have long resisted systemic violence and built community in the face of exclusion—and it invites us to rethink whose lives matter in our collective memory and in shaping our present and future. The OER includes a teaching and learning module that invites users to engage with archival materials related to Kiyo’s life, including her interviews and photographs of her belongings.
I like reading old newspapers and I know that is not out of place for an historian.
In one way or another, media are history’s life blood, even if we don’t all make use of them in the same way. The range of media at which historians look is broad. It includes posters and recordings, maps and letters, films and oral traditions, and all matter of other things. We are trained to account for source biases, find ways to respect authors and audiences, set works and words in context, and think about how communications are part of systems of social relationships.
All of this is important, but that is not why I like reading old newspapers, or at least not all of it.
I like them because they surprise me. They show me things about the past I had not expected and, on a human level, they let me see into lives of the people on which they report. This might not work the same way for large-scale media, but community newspapers are often tightly focused on the suburbs and small towns that are their centre and market.
Recently, I’ve been reading The Spryfield News, a long defunct community newspaper that ran for just a bit more than a year in 1976 and 1977.
Lester Pearson chairs the meeting on Palestine at Committee 1, United Nations Special Session of the General Assembly, May 6, 1947. Credit: UN Photo, UN7520510.
John Price
This is the second post in a two-part series based on a recently published article in the International Journal, “Resisting Palestine’s Partition: Elizabeth MacCallum, the Arab World and UN Resolution 181(II).”Part One is available here.
The balance of evidence does suggest that Canada contributed more than any other country, including the USA, to the establishment of Israel. As such, Canada has considerable responsibility for the several million Palestinian Arabs who were forcibly displaced to make way for the new state of Israel, or incorporated into it as second class citizens.”
Global Affairs Canada official Peyton Lyon (Behind the Headlines, 1998)
Lester Pearson led the drive for the United Nations to partition Palestine, a feat seemingly accomplished with the passage of UN Resolution 181(II) on November 29, 1947, recommending the creation of a Jewish state, a Palestinian state, and international control over Jerusalem. Pearson would forever defend his actions as the “best of all solutions.” and “the only solution that might bring peace and order to Palestine.”
As shall become evident, Pearson’s predictions proved widely off the mark, but a liberal narrative about Pearson (winner of the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize, foreign affairs minister, and then prime minister of Canada) as an honest broker persists. This, and Zionism’s continuing influence has tethered Canadian foreign policy to support for Israel.
Within Canada’s foreign affairs department, however, dissent has existed as the quote from Peyton Lyon cited above illustrates. And recent studies such as Ardi Imseis’s The United Nations and the Question of Palestine have helped unearth a different appreciation of what happened at the UN in 1947. Building on these insights, a close reading of the archive reveals an anti-racist story of resistance that generated real alternatives to partition – alternatives that demand careful attention in light of the current atrocities taking place in Palestine.
Elizabeth MacCallum. Source: Queen’s Alumni Review Vol. 27, November 1952, p. 215, photo by Van’s Studio Ottawa.
John Price
This is the first post in a two-part series based on a recently published article in the International Journal, “Resisting Palestine’s Partition: Elizabeth MacCallum, the Arab World and UN Resolution 181(II).” The second post in the series is available here.
“I am a Zionist,” declared Justin Trudeau just before stepping down as prime minister.
“No one in Canada,” he stated, “should ever be afraid to call themselves a Zionist.”
Trudeau’s remarks came during a National Forum on Combatting Anti-Semitism. In response, the Israeli embassy in Ottawa welcomed his remarks, while UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Francesco Albanese, asserted that fighting antisemitism is a duty but that Zionism infringes on Palestinian’s right to self-determination.
These contrary responses reflect sharp divisions in Canada about Israel-Palestine and also about the definition of antisemitism. For supporters of Zionism, the focus is on Hamas and its October 7 attack that killed approximately 1200 people including civilians. Supporters of Palestine point out that the Israeli response has been disproportionate and indiscriminate with over 50,000 in Gaza killed, mainly women and children.
Both sides assert the necessity of countering antisemitism but differ on what constitutes antisemitism.
Rather than helping to clarify these complex issues, Trudeau’s declaratory performance simply aligned himself with one side in what has arguably been a long and complicated history of anti-Jewish, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab racism in Canada.
The Nazi genocide and its aftermath marked a watershed moment in this history, one that Elizabeth MacCallum had to navigate as a newcomer to Canada’s Department of External Affairs.
In June 1968, a young woman petitioned the Nova Scotia Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes for a dissolution of marriage on the grounds of legal cruelty. She had lived with her husband in both Halifax and Western Shore in Lunenburg County for five years before briefly separating in 1965 and then again, this time for good, in 1967. They had one son, and the wife described the first years of their marriage as “normal.” Over time, however, their relationship suffered and he “refused sexual intercourse and said that he did not love her and, finally, he told her that he loved another man. He said ‘I’m queer.’” Revealing of the climate at the time, the term “normal” was used repetitively in the judge’s summary of the wife’s petition and was always inherently heterosexual. In contrast, in similar family law cases, queer sex was often described as “unnatural,” “unusual,” or “abnormal.” This post queers Nova Scotian family law by delving into Countway v. Countway:the earliest reported Canadian divorce case in which a spouse’s queer sexuality was interpreted as legal cruelty.
According to the wife’s account in Countway v. Countway,the couple continued to live together after her husband’s declaration, but their relationship became increasingly strained. According to the wife, he had introduced his lover to their son and would invite his lover and friends over in the evenings while she was at work. Private house parties of this sort were popular queer social spaces in many Canadian cities prior to the development of a gay bar scene. Mrs. Countway convinced her husband to see a psychiatrist, which he did once before refusing to continue the sessions. Crucially, Mr. Countway’s refusal to return can be understood within a longer history of psychiatric pathologization. In 1968, homosexuality was still listed as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It was not until 1973 that queer activists were successful in their fight to have “homosexuality” removed from the DSM (gender diversity, in contrast, continued to be pathologized under a new term).
Comments Off on Taking Care of the Truth: A Call for Collaborative, Community-Engaged Residential School Research
By Sean Carleton and Adina Williams, members of the Squamish Nation’s Yúusneẇas Project
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released the executive summary of its final report 10 years ago, in June 2015. In the decade since, many Indigenous Nations have carried on the TRC’s work of putting truth before reconciliation and learning more about the residential school system and its ongoing legacy.
Following the Tkemlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s 2021 announcement about the location of potential unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, many Nations have specifically taken up the TRC’s Calls to Action 71-76 about locating and honouring missing children and unmarked burials at former residential schools.
This work, which includes the use of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) among other research practices and technologies, is not about proving anything to Canada or Canadians. Church and state records have already confirmed more than 4,000 Indigenous children died at residential schools across the country, and this part of the history is outlined in Volume 4 of the TRC’s final report. Instead, Nations are undertaking new work to continue the truth-finding and truth-telling processes needed to facilitate internal healing and justice for Survivors and communities.
“Multiculturalism finally no longer applies to Quebec! […] It’s a model that has always been harmful to Quebec,” claimed Minister of the French Language Jean-François Roberge in the salon rouge of the Quebec legislature on 28 May 2025. On that day, Quebec’s National Assembly passed Bill 84: An Act Respecting National Integration, a controversial law introduced by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government. Spearheaded by Roberge, the bill establishes a new integration framework aimed at preserving Quebec’s French language and cultural identity by shifting further away from Canada’s multicultural immigration model. Two parties that, at one time or another, have claimed to be on the left voted on the bill that Wednesday morning. They landed on opposite sides of the ledger. The Parti Québecois (PQ), arguably a social democratic party for a significant part of its existence, voted with the CAQ, while the younger and more unambiguously leftist Québec solidaire (QS) voted against the bill.[1] As we will come to recognize, these opposing responses underscore a deep ideological split within Quebec’s nationalist Left—one increasingly defined by the immigration question. In this particular case, Bill 84 can be used as a lens to reveal how two progressive parties—the PQ and QS—have grown apart (with the PQ making a sharp departure from leftist politics), especially when considering the hot topic of immigration in Quebec. By retracing their respective historical progressions, we are able to understand how nationalism in Quebec can be used both as a tool for exclusion or a foundation for solidarity and inclusion along cultural lines.
Founded in 1968, the Parti Québécois emerged out of the Quiet Revolution and the growing support for Quebec sovereignty. It was initially a party of the left, combining social democracy with cultural nationalism. André Bernard outlines how “during the time of its first mandate, from 1976 to 1981, the PQ government followed typical practices that other social-democratic maintained during that same era.” Furthermore, Bernard notes, “most PQ members during the seventies called themselves social-democrats. René Lévesque, their leader, often defined himself as such and supported social-democratic resolutions.” [2] The PQ’s first electoral victory in 1976 marked the beginning of a government that emphasized francophone empowerment but also advocated progressive measures such as the integration of newcomers. As Martin Pâquet explains, PQ policies in the 1970s were grounded in the theory of “Autant de façons d’être Québécois” (Many ways to be Quebecois) — a pluralist ideology that recognized diverse cultural contributions within a common national identity.[3] Immigration rapidly diversified under the PQ: by 1980, immigrants from the Maghreb, Latin America, and Southeast Asia made up 53% of Quebec’s immigration intake, compared to 27% in 1973.[4] This increased acceptance of allophone immigrants reflected a deliberate policy of openness in early PQ policy. Under the PQ in the 70’s there was a much more even playing field for all potential immigrants, francophones and allophones alike. Gérald Godin, former PQ Minister of Immigration (and, interestingly, October Crisis detainee), embodied this inclusive vision. He hoped Quebec would become “ a global model, a homeland where a brotherhood between diverse peoples will have been achieved.”[5] Godin’s efforts to regularize the status of 10,000 undocumented Haitians in 1981 (despite pressures from the federal government) further confirmed this progressive stance.[6]
Gérald Godin, 1969. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
This button is from Nancy’s political button “archive.” She first wore it in the 1990s when groups attempted to ban books from libraries, including Lesléa Newman’s classic children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies.
On July 10, the Alberta government introduced new standards for school libraries “to ensure school library materials are age-appropriate.” The ministerial order responds to a group of parents who raised concerns about sexual acts, drug and alcohol use, derogatory language, and self-harm in coming-of-age-books available in school libraries in May. The government launched a survey that asked who should be responsible for determining whether books containing sexually explicit material are age appropriate; the options included librarians, teachers, school officials, students, and parents.
On social media, the premier defended the May announcement that the government would present new rules stating that “parents are right to be upset.” She is again invoking parental rights to defend government policies that target 2SLGBTQ+ youth, restrict access sex ed, and community resources for queer youth. Active History is reposting our May 2024 article on community education and sex ed in Alberta that responded to anti-trans legislation that also included a requirement that parents opt-in to lessons on sexually education, sexual orientation, and sexual health. We encourage readers to reflect on the themes of parental control over youth’s access to education on bodies, relationships, and sex in the original article in light of these recent events in Alberta.
