• L’histoire et l’urgence climatique, Ou la tradition à la rescousse du progrès

    Olivier Guimond L’assistance à quelques panels portant sur l’histoire et le patrimoine dans les dernières semaines m’a donné à réfléchir sur la pertinence de la discipline historique dans un contexte d’urgence climatique. C’est ce sur quoi porte le présent billet, qui s’appuyera, donc, sur certains propos tenus lors de deux événements à première vue bien… Continue Reading

  • No, Confederation Wasn’t About ‘Freedom’

    Shirley Tillotson Editors’ note: This essay is jointly posted with our partners at ActiveHistory.ca, and appeared in an earlier version as a Letter to the Editor in the National Post (Oct. 26, 2017). Fundraisers love anniversaries. They’re like birthdays, right? Presents can’t be far behind. But when it’s the anniversary of a death, it’s not so… Continue Reading

  • Confederation and Political Reason

    This essay is the second in a three-part series on Confederation that provides critical historical context for Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary. The first essay was posted on 26 June. The third essay will be posted on 30 June. E.A. Heaman July 1 marks 150 years since Canadian Confederation. So what? Confederation is political history, a field… Continue Reading

  • Indigenous Policy and Silence at Confederation

    This essay is the first in a three-part series on Confederation that provides critical historical context for Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary. The other essays will appear on the 28th and 30th of June. Brian Gettler Infamously, the British North America Act only mentions, “Indians and lands reserved for the Indians” in a single sub-clause, assigning responsibility… Continue Reading

  • The American Gaze: Adam Gopnik’s Canada

    Jerry Bannister Adam Gopnik’s recent article, “We could all have been Canadians,” published in the May 15th issue of the New Yorker, has attracted considerable attention on social media among Canadian historians.[1] I’ve already chimed in with a short comment on Christopher Moore’s blog.[2]   With the sun shining hopefully on my back deck this morning,… Continue Reading

  • Refugees Fit for Rescue: Loyalists, Maroons, and Mi’kmaq

    Ruma Chopra How does Canada’s more open, even welcoming policy towards Syrian refugees fit with other refugees, black loyalists and Maroons who entered the Maritimes over 200 years ago when the colonies were peripheral regions within a larger British Empire? Part of the difference between earlier exiles and those of our own time is sheer… Continue Reading