https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/History-Slam-204.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Each year, fall fairs fill schedules in communities across the country. While in recent years, plenty of attention has been given to the increasingly absurd food items that are sold, the fairs have retained some of their agricultural roots. Held in the fall to celebrate the harvest, fairs in the late… Read more »
Chris Chang-Yen Phillips and Dylan Hall are MA Students in the Department of History, Classics, & Religion at the University of Alberta. They interviewed Dr. Andrew Woolford as a part of the department’s annual Western Canadian History Lecture. Crystal Gail Fraser and Shannon Stunden Bower edited the transcribed interview for length and clarity. Andrew Woolford is a Professor of Sociology… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/History-Slam-190.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to lead immersive educational programs of Canada’s First World War history through Belgium and France. One of the best parts of these programs is visiting Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries where students have selected a soldier killed during the war to… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/History-Slam-181.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham I’m one who believes that, at its core, history is about storytelling. Historians tell the stories of those who came before – and the best historians do so in a way that is both engaging and meaningful to the audience. For some, that has included telling their own stories and using… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/History-Slam-179.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Every May, the City of Ottawa hosts the annual Tulip Festival to celebrate the relationships built between Canada and the Netherlands during the Second World War. Following the war, the Dutch Royal Family gifted tulips to Canada as a symbol of friendship, in part to commemorates the birth of Princess Margriet… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/History-Slam-120-Repost.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Last month in Montreal, protesters toppled a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald. In response, Quebec Premier François Legault said that “We must fight racism, but destroying parts of our history is not the solution.” This refrain that removing statues is an effort to erase history is common from those who… Read more »
By Adrienne Coffey and Danielle Manning Jackie MacDonald is an athlete who gives Canadians good reason to be proud of their sports heritage. She has competed in a multitude of sports, first attracting attention as the star player on a Toronto city league basketball team that won two Junior National Championships. She has also participated in competitive swimming and diving,… Read more »
Previous Active History posts (see here, here, and here) have examined the use of comics in telling – and interpreting – stories about the past. In this post, Ryan O’Connor (RO) interviews Steph Hill (SH), the writer-artist behind A Brief, Accurate Graphic History of the Environmental Movement (Mostly in Canada). RO: This is a really interesting project. What is it that… Read more »
Ma’s grinning. “We can do anything now.” “Why?” “Because we’re free.” – Emma Donoghue, Room (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2010). Free of “Room” – a locked garden shed with a single skylight, the primary setting of Emma Donoghue’s award-winning fiction novel, Room. In Room, Donoghue brings readers into Jack’s world, an eleven by eleven ‘cell,’ that he shares with Ma and a… Read more »
