• New Brunswick Lighthouses and Colonial Spaces, 1784-1867

    Zachary A. Tingley Lighthouses, once a lifesaving beacon of hope for mariners facing the elements, are themselves now in need of rescue. In communities up and down the Atlantic coast, local communities have organized to preserve lighthouses that, while being in need of a great deal of repair because of federal neglect, remain iconic in… Continue Reading

  • Yule and Misrule in Early Newfoundland and Labrador: Why fires and firearms roared every year

    Stephen Hay When we think of Christmas in Newfoundland and Labrador, mumming comes to mind, the famous tradition of visiting in disguise.[1] Yet, this is just one of many Christmas customs that Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans enjoyed. Newfoundland and Labrador holiday customs during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century included burning the Yule log and… Continue Reading

  • How to Start Your Thesis

    Jerry Bannister Starting a graduate thesis is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, delusional, or one of those bizarre people who find it easy. December in Canada brings awful holiday specials on TV, complaints about freezing rain and, for those of us in universities, worries over what’s left undone from the Fall term.… 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

  • Britishness and Whiteness in Early Canadian Culture

    Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy In the September 28, 2017 issue of the New York Review of Books, Fintan O’Toole explained Brexit as the consequence of a rebirth of English nationalism: “Brexit is a peaceful revolution but it is unmistakably a nationalist revolt. It is England’s insurrection against … the belief that contemporary nationality must be fluid, open,… Continue Reading

  • New France and Indigenous Agency in the Hudson Bay Watershed

    Scott Berthelette Throughout the 1730s and 1740s, the French established a series of forts northwest of Lake Superior in present-day Northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Minnesota, and North Dakota. French colonial officials hoped that these postes de l’Ouest, or Western Posts, would secure New France’s pick of prime northern furs, which would undermine the English dominance… Continue Reading