I’m is joined by Sarah E.K. Smith, author of Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America. We talk about Sarah’s interest in cultural diplomacy, what constitutes art in the context of free trade, and how cultural policies shaped artistic and curatorial expression at the end of the 20th century. We then discuss art as a form of resistance, the benefits and challenges of touring exhibitions across countries, and how contemporary questions on trade have influenced the book.
In August 2024, I had the privilege of being able to attend a two-day workshop on the place of blogs like Active History in the current media landscape. Against the humid backdrop of UWO’s Huron College, we spent hours discussing just how disheartening it feels to be blogging history these days. People access most of their information through minute-long videos, and trust in more conventional outlets is at an all-time low. It would be easy, listening to our conversations, to think that maybe history blogging is a thing of the past.
In the months that followed this workshop, I spent a long time reflecting on that thought. It made me disheartened. How are we meant to spread history to a disengaged and uninterested public? Do we need to reduce complex analyses to soundbites simply to remain relevant? Amidst all this confusion, what’s the place of writers like myself, who value nuance and integrity? I wondered if I should simply stop writing. After all, who would read it? Would they care for the hours I had spent researching, crafting, honing a complex argument into something readable?
Interestingly enough, the answers to this personal crisis came to me during the period of incredible instability in which we currently find ourselves. Because while it’s true that more misinformation is flooding our algorithms with every passing day, it’s much more difficult for that misinformation to wind its way into complex, well-researched work. Amidst all the falsity that pollutes our social channels, perhaps blogging, for historians, can become a form of resistance against that tide.
SW: Which challenges does your project face today?
TP (AH): Relevance. Active History has not done enough to engage the public. We remain a bit of a niche forum. It would be great to see the site become something that non-historians make reference to in their day-to-day conversations.
SD (HE): L’enjeu des privilèges des membres est au cœur de nos préoccupations en raison des positions variées occupées par les membres d’Histoire Engagée (professeur.e.s, étudiant.e.s, fonctionnaires, etc.).
“It is exceptionally difficult to grasp the present as history.”[1] Thus begins David McNally’s book on the 2008-09 financial crisis. In everyday usage, the present means now, this instant. History is what happened in the past, and the future is time yet to come. The real relationship of past, present, and future, however, is far more fluid and interdependent. In fact, the present is the result of a process of active making over time, and the future is the product of our actions in this context. What that means, in McNally’s words, is that “the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition, and may not do so – as the road to the future is always contested.” Grasping the present as history means understanding the present as a becoming.
Students Nora Arden, left, Dog Rib Indian, and Margaret Gordon, from Aklavik, cut out dress in Home Economics class at Sir John Franklin School, 1959. Credit: G. Lunney / Library and Archives Canada / PA-166313
On Wednesday December 11, 2024, YWCA Canada issued an apology, circulated to its members via email, for the organization’s role in supporting the Residential Schools and Indian Hospital systems in Canada. It was released under the headline “Reflecting on Our Past, Committing to Reconciliation: YWCA Canada’s Apology to Indigenous Communities | Les excuses de YWCA Canada envers les communautés autochtones.” YWCA Canada released the apology in response to a report we wrote for them in 2022 as contracted researchers. The apology included a link to their website with a content warning and another link to a 4-page summary report entitled “The Role of YWCA Canada in Canada’s Residential Schools and the ‘Indian Hospital’ System.” We did not write the summary report that reduced our detailed 85-page research report to little more than a single page of findings. However, YWCA Canada will make the full report available upon request (reconciliation@ywcacanada.ca). We encourage readers to request a copy, bringing it into the public domain.
This week, I talk with Barbara Messamore, author of Times of Transformation: The 1921 Canadian General Election about one of Canada’s turning point elections. We discuss the post-war economy’s, including tariffs, role in the campaign, how suffrage influenced the election, and the emergence of William Lyon Mackenzie King on the national stage. We also chat about whether the lauded ‘ballot question’ truly exists, how historians and political scientists can differ in their approach to elections, and the legacy of the 1921 campaign.
Sarah Worthman is executive director of the NL Queer Research Initiative (NLQRI), a social science research collective based out of Newfoundland and Labrador. In February 2025, she sat down to talk with series editor Jess Wilton about her work on queer history in the province.
Jess Wilton: What type of work do you do at the NLQRI? Sarah Worthman: The bulk of our research has focused on creating a digital queer archive for Newfoundland and Labrador—the first ever. We also do a lot of different outreach events, including a recent Black History Month event where we are prioritizing Black Queer voices.
Another baseball season upon us so it seems like a good time to revisit some of the best baseball books ever written.
No sport is as connected to — or immersed in — history as baseball and no sport can boast as powerful a lineup of literary figures. From Ring Lardner, Roger Angell, and Donald Hall to Jane Leavy, David Halberstram, and Michael Lewis, baseball has always featured an All-Star lineup of writers from various backgrounds.
One of the first baseball games in London, ON, 1877 Tecumseh (now Labatt) Park (Library and Archives Canada)
At its best, baseball history has never been just about the game. It has connected sport history to wider themes of social and cultural formation central to understanding the historical trajectories of communities large and small across Canada, the US, and the world.
Why read baseball history? Because, we think, it has important and interesting things to say.
Baseball is also fundamentally argumentative. As the season begins, we thought we’d put out a list of our favourite baseball books, but you might think differently.
Feel free to contribute. Do you have a favourite? Or, more than one? History is often a search for missing pieces and untold stories. It is also about taking old stories and looking at them in new ways. Here, we offer a solid lineup but potentially with holes. Feel free to fill in the gaps and let us know why. Play ball!
By Sean Carleton, Crystal Gail Fraser, Jackson Pind
As the 2025 federal election campaign intensifies, some pundits are denigrating Robert Carney, father of Prime Minister Mark Carney, for his role in colonial education for Indigenous Peoples and his past comments defending residential schools.
Robert Carney died in 2009, but some writers—who have previously celebrated him for defending the Catholic Church and residential schooling—are now criticizing his prior comments in hopes they can damage Mark Carney’s political campaign.
Outlets involved in the residential school denialist movement—e.g. Western Standard, Rebel News, Woke Watch Canada etc.—have published articles trying to link Mark Carney, by association, to his father’s residential school denialism. Ironically, many of these pundits claim that residential school denialism does not exist. Yet, in the same breath, some are going so far as to speculate whether the Prime Minister himself might be a residential school denialist because he has said little about his father specifically or truth and reconciliation generally.
Many of the articles present facts about Robert Carney’s connections to schooling systems for Indigenous Peoples; however, they do so in misleading and dishonest ways that twists the complex truth about colonialism and schooling in Canada.
Even broken clocks are right twice a day; that’s also a fact, but we don’t set our watches to them to tell the time, lest we be misled.
As historians (two Indigenous, one settler) of schooling and colonialism, we have a responsibility to respond to this issue to guide public dialogue in productive ways.
