This section is dedicated to supporting Active History projects both online and in the material world. These projects can include web series (such as ‘The Home Archivist’) or theme weeks (such as ‘Indigenous Histories’) as well as broader partnerships and support. ActiveHistory.ca is flexible project and platform shaped by our broader community of readers and supporters.
On this page you will find some of our most recent projects, as well as more permanent links to resources we’ve published that have direct applicability in the classroom. Please contact us if you are interested in coordinating a series, submitting a Forum Essay or providing classroom resources on the site.
Blog Series
Classroom Resources
Forum Essays
Exhibits
Book Reviews
Browse all series and essays by Theme
Recent Blog Series
- Essays on the Future of Knowledge Mobilization and Public History Online
- The Late 1980s Crisis in Toronto Public Housing
- Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future
- Engaging with ChatGPT
- The Future of the History PhD
- Historians and their Collections
- Remember / Resist / Redraw
- Historians Confront the Climate Emergency
- (In)security in the Time of COVID-19
- Beyond The Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History
- Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca
- “Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War”
- Material Culture Theme Week
- Museum Theme Week
- Can Nuclear Power Solve Climate Change?
- 1919 Strike Wave
- History Curriculum
- Lost Stories
- The Spanish Flu
- Income Tax Centenary
- Archives and Archival Labour
- Deconstructing Children’s Books
- Learning and Unlearning History in South Africa’s Public Spaces
- Women’s Social and Political Activism in the Canadian West
- The Revenant
- Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana’s Past and Future in Canada
- Indigenous Histories
- Technoscience in Canada
- Refugees in Historical Perspective
- Forty-Five Years after the Abortion Caravan
- Commemorating 35 years of the Marathon of Hope
- Infectious Disease, Contagion and the History of Vaccines
Classroom Resources
Recognizing the Historical Thinking Project
- In December 2013 we learned that the Department of Canadian Heritage’s funding for the Historical Thinking Project would end on 31 March 2014. To mark this important project’s conclusion, ActiveHistory.ca put together a collection of 12 short essays recognizing the work the project had accomplished and setting out possible directions for the future. The collection of essays covers Historical Thinking practices in the classroom, museum and among the general public written by students, professors, curriculum developers and public historians.
The Royal Proclamation in Historical Perspective
- In 2013 ActiveHistory.ca and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies partnered to compile a collection of essays commemorating the 1763 Royal Proclamation. This collection of fourteen essays explores the implications of the Proclamation that faced Indigenous peoples and Settler communities across North America, exploring both what the proclamation meant when it was issued in the mid-eighteenth century and what it continues to mean in North American society today.
Commemoration, Monuments, and Renaming
- Since 2010 ActiveHistory.ca has featured numerous posts focused on the politics and history of commemoration, monuments, and place names. This collection of posts provides an entry point to the complex realities behind commemoration decisions.
Recent Forum Essays
In addition to our group blog and series, ActiveHistory.ca also publishes longer forum essays that link a historians work to pressing contemporary issues.
- Michelle Hutchinson Grondin, A Century Long Debate over Sexual Education in Ontario (Feb 2016)
- Evan Habkirk and Janice Forsyth, Truth, Reconciliation, and the Politics of the Body in Indian Residential School History (Jan 2016)
- Leon Crane Bear, The Contemporary relevance of the Historical Treaties to Treaty Indian peoples (Dec 2015)
- Jasmine Chorley, Disappearing into White Space: Indigenous Toronto, 1900-1914 (Aug 2015)
- Kenneth C. Dewar, The Social Democracy Question (June 2015)
- Myra Rutherdale, Bodies of Water, Not Bodies of Women: Canadian Media Images of the Idle No More Movement (May 2015)
- Crystal Fraser and Ian Mosby, Setting Canadian History Right?: A Response to Ken Coates’ ‘Second Thoughts about Residential Schools’ (April 2015)
- Gregor Kranjc, Memory Politics: Ottawa’s Monument to the Victims of Communism, (Mar 2015)
Exhibits
- Active History on Display (2024)
- Envisioning Technologies: Virtual Histories of Disability and Assistive Devices (2016)
Book Reviews (Listed Alphabetically by Author)
B
- Dale Barbour, Winnipeg Beach: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900–1967, reviewed by Ruthann LaBlance.
- Ian McKay and Robin Bates, In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia, reviewed by Paul Bennett
- R. Blake Brown, Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada, reviewed by Paul W. Bennett.
- Ken Leyton-Brown, The Practice of Execution in Canada, reviewed by Gord Barnes
C
D
- James Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, reviewed by Kevin Plummer.
- Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls, reviewed by Mitch Primeau
- Erika Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies, reviewed by Joanne Epp.
E
- Ryan Edwardson, Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music, reviewed by Carrie Schmidt
- John English, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1968-2000, reviewed by Kurt Heinrich
H
- Stuart Henderson, Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, reviewed by Kaitlin Wainwright.
- Craig Heron, Booze: A Distilled History, reviewed by John Horn.
I
J
K
- James Kennedy, Liberal Nationalisms: Empire, State, and Civil Society in Scotland and Quebec, reviewed by Gordon E. Bannerman
- Sean Kheraj, Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History, reviewed by Lani Russwurm.
L
- P. Whitney Lackenbauer, The Canadian Rangers: A Living History, reviewed by Anne Marie Goodfellow.
- D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy E. Smith and Warren Smith, Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work, reviewed by Simon Enoch.
M
- Dan Malleck, When Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada’s Drug Laws by Joel D. Rudewicz
- Lynda Mannik, Photography, Memory, and Refugee Identity: The Voyage of the SS Walnut, 1948, reviewed by Phil Gold.
- Daniel Macfarlane, Negotiating a River: Canada, the U.S. and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, reviewed by Natalie Zacharewski
- Ian McKay and Robin Bates, In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia, reviewed by Paul Bennett
- Robert M. Mennel, Testimonies and Secrets: The Story of a Nova Scotia Family 1844-1977, reviewed by Christine Moreland.
- Joseph Auguste Merasty with David Carpenter, The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir, reviewed by Kevin Plummer.
P
- Joy Parr, Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environment, and the Everyday, 1953-2003, reviewed by Peter Anderson.
- Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade, reviewed by Eve Dutton.
- Esyllt Jones and Adele Perry, eds. People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada, reviewed by E.L. Payseur.
- Vivienne Poy, Passage to Promise Land: Voices of Chinese Immigrant Women to Canada, reviewed by Cristina Pietropaolo.
R
S
- D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy E. Smith and Warren Smith, Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work, reviewed by Simon Enoch.
- Kevin A. Spooner. Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960-64, reviewed by Kenneth W. Reynolds.
W
- Neil White, Company Towns: Corporate Order and Community, reviewed by Kayla Jonas Galvin.
- Chalres Wilkins, The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873–1904, reviewed by Emily Beliveau.
- Lana Wylie, Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective, reviewed by Mary Stanik.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Blog posts published before October 28, 2018 are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.