David Wilson This article originated as a paper given at the Canadian Association for Irish Studies annual conference at Quebec in June 2018. Think of this as an essay on the three sins of recycling history, reading history backwards, and misusing evidence. It concerns Jim McDermott, a Fenian firebrand from New York who enters Canadian… Continue Reading
Latest in: Canadian History
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Stephanie Pettigrew [This essay first appeared at UnwrittenHistories on September 25, 2018, and is re-posted here through collaboration with editors Andrea Eidinger and Stephanie Pettigrew.] The summer before I started my PhD, there was a massive reunion of my grandmother’s side of the family in my hometown of Cheticamp. It’s the type of thing that… Continue Reading
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Stephanie Pettigrew [This essay first appeared at UnwrittenHistories on August 21, 2018, and is re-posted here through collaboration with editors Andrea Eidinger and Stephanie Pettigrew.] French Canadian history has always been locked in a struggle to define its history and separate it from its nationalism. Even when discussing the origins of French settlers in New… Continue Reading
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Daniel Samson In my introductory colonial Canadian survey course, students sometimes complain that I spend “all” of my time on Nova Scotia. That’s not actually true, but I understand their point. It may be true that I talk about Nova Scotia more than others might, but for the most part I follow the broad conventions… Continue Reading
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Peter H. Russell’s Canada’s Odyssey is a sweeping reconsideration of the foundations of Canada’s constitutional order that has garnered considerable attention and praise. This essay is the first in a three-part series assessing the book’s significance. Elizabeth Mancke Upon first inspection of Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests, I recoiled. The main title… Continue Reading
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George Colpitts Note: This is the third in a series on environmental history and early modern history cross-posted with NiCHE, the Network in Canadian History & Environment. Peter Fidler was going where few Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) traders had gone in the summer of 1800: the South Branch territories of present-day southern Saskatchewan and Alberta. He was to… Continue Reading
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Bradley Miller The Supreme Court declined this month to radically change the way that Canada works. In R v Comeau, lawyers for a New Brunswick man ticketed for bringing too many bottles of beer into the province from Quebec urged the justices to use the history of the Canadian federation to improve its future, at… Continue Reading
