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
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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
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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
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Maxime Dagenais Since I last posted with Borealia – a post titled “The ‘Canadian Revolution,’ the Early American Republic, and … Slavery?” – my SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies ended and I took up a new position as the research coordinator for the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at… Continue Reading
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Jerry Bannister [Ed. This essay is cross-posted with our partners at the Acadiensis blog.] Nations matter. National cultures matter. And national histories matter. As we try to understand what has happened in the United States, we should keep those three things in mind. There will be endless discussion of all the proximate causes of Donald Trump’s victory… Continue Reading
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Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy This fall, when nationalism is marking an unwelcome return in European and American politics, it behooves Early Canadianists to reflect on the relevance of borders–disciplinary and national–in studying and publishing about Early Canada. The paradox of academic life in the global village in an age of instant connectivity and seemingly endless access to… Continue Reading
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Patrick Lacroix “The President also desires me to assure Lord Durham, ‘in the strongest manner’, of his sincere desire to do all in his power to keep up a good understanding between the two Countries.”[1] So wrote British emissary Sir Charles Grey (the son of a British prime minister and father of a Canadian governor… Continue Reading
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Kathryn Magee Labelle I always try to incorporate the life stories of lesser-known and often-overlooked historical actors when I teach the Pre-Confederation history survey (see a few examples from my course outline at the end of this blog). The content for these biographical sketches are usually drawn from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB). Easily… Continue Reading
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Sean Kheraj and Denis McKim Welcome to a series on early Canadian environmental history, jointly hosted by Borealia and The Otter ~ La Loutre, the blog of The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). This joint series provides environmental historians of Canada the opportunity to reflect upon the state of so-called “pre-Confederation” history in the field. As was evident… Continue Reading
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Robert Englebert Robert Michael Morrissey, Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). I recently had an opportunity to discuss Robert Michael Morrissey’s new book Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country with my senior level seminar on French-Indigenous relations in colonial… Continue Reading
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