Christopher C. Jones Harvey Amani Whitfield, North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016). The lone Canadian student enrolled in my course on “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa and the Atlantic World” this semester expressed some surprise last week when I mentioned that the class would cover the history… Continue Reading
Latest in: Nova Scotia
-
-
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
-
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy On Nov 8 2016 reality-show star and billionaire Donald Trump won by a landslide the presidency of the US. Despite the still-ongoing collective head-scratching over the exact causes of the victory, nobody contests that the unlikely candidate rode an unprecedented wave of populism and nationalism whose long-term consequences remain to be seen. Trump’s… Continue Reading
-
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
-
Anya Zilberstein Not long after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau handed winter coats to Syrian refugees arriving in Toronto this past December, reports about the immigrants’ problems began appearing in the press. Rent gouging by dishonest landlords. Frustration at delays in receiving permanent housing and full access to medical care. And, of course, that obligatory storyline:… Continue Reading
-
Stephanie Pettigrew In 1909, a scholar at Université Laval, M. J. E. Prince, conducted a public lecture in Québec to a captive audience on the subject of a recently published book on Acadia. The book, written by Edouard Richard, was reported as “cloué au pilori”—nailing to the pillory—both Charles Lawrence, the villainous British Governor of Nova Scotia… Continue Reading
-
Alexandra L. Montgomery When Samuel Doty put in to Mirligueche Bay in Nova Scotia for water on 25 August 1726, everything still seemed to be going according to plan.[1] Doty, the master of the sloop Tryal, had likely been cautious and concerned when he sailed from Massachusetts on a fishing voyage earlier that month. After… Continue Reading
-
Bonnie Huskins William Booth, an 18th-century British military engineer, was a citizen of the Atlantic World.[1] He was posted to various locations throughout the British Empire, beginning in Gibraltar in 1774, where he was eventually promoted to Director of the Mines. He was sent home during the Great Siege (1779-83) due to shell shock, but… Continue Reading
-
Keith Mercer The Royal Canadian Navy recently named October 21 “Niobe Day,” in honour of HMCS Niobe, one of Canada’s first two warships. It was bought from the British in 1910, shortly after the Naval Service of Canada was established that spring, and served in the First World War before being seriously damaged in the… Continue Reading
