Leah Grandy Future historians are facing a crisis in a skill set that has not been a significant issue in the past. As the teaching of cursive writing has been eliminated or greatly diminished from North American elementary school curriculums, we are seeing the arrival of university students to arts programmes unable to read written… Continue Reading
Latest in: Early Canadian History
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Keith Grant Welcome to Part 2 of Borealia’s 2016 roundup of forthcoming books on early Canadian history. (You can find Part 1 here.) The list is drawn from publishers’ catalogues and websites, including books scheduled for release in 2016. I have included a few recently-released titles that escaped my attention in January. What kinds of books made… Continue Reading
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Aaron Willis The relationship between Britain and supranational structures has consistently raised questions of authority and sovereignty. While the E.U. has provided the most recent theatre for debates over these political concepts, in the eighteenth century it was the expanding empire that generated political crises and the attendant debates. The concept of sovereignty, often in… Continue Reading
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Loren Michael Mortimer In September of 1759, great armies were on the move through the upper St. Lawrence Valley. Not the military forces under the command of Montcalm and Wolfe en-route to their climactic showdown on the Plains of Abraham, but an army of black bears migrating en-masse southward from Canada into Britain’s Atlantic colonies.… Continue Reading
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Adam Nadeau Michael A. McDonnell, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015) Michael A. McDonnell’s Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America is a wonderfully researched microhistory of the Michilimackinac area from the mid-17th to the early 19th century. Situated around the Mackinaw… Continue Reading
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dann j. Broyld & Matthew Warshauer Note: This essay, with its cross-border themes, is being jointly posted by Borealia and The Republic, the new blog of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). Borealia is grateful for The Republic’s support and cooperation! The net has been abuzz with news of United States… 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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Stephanie Pettigrew The 42nd annual French Colonial Historical Society conference was held in Ottawa from May 19 to 21, 2016. I was first introduced to this society the summer just before starting my PhD studies, when the conference was at the Fortress of Louisbourg. There I learned that the FCHS is, first and foremost, a… Continue Reading
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Keith Grant At this year’s Canadian Historical Association, we’re going to have a face-to-face conversation about history blogging in Canada. If you’ll be in Calgary for Congress 2016, you’re invited to join us on Monday morning, 8:30 – 10:00, for CHA session 9 in Science B-142. Sharing their thoughts will be the editors of five… Continue Reading
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Editor’s note: This is the final post in a joint series of posts on early Canadian environmental history by The Otter~La loutre and Borealia. The entire series is available here. After providing posts for the early Canadian environmental history series, the three participants – Colin Coates, Jason Hall, and Anya Zilberstein – sat down at… Continue Reading
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