Nathan Ince At 10 PM on the evening of July 11, 1835, a group of Mohawk launched a raft onto the waters of the Bay of Quinte. They had good reason to begin their journey under cover of dusk. The two hundred logs that made up their raft had been illegally cut down the previous… Continue Reading
Latest in: Ontario History
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Jonathan Szo On 7 December 1837, a force of 1,200 troops marched down Yonge Street in the city of Toronto under the command of Sir Francis Bond Head, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada. Their destination was a wayside inn known as Montgomery’s Tavern, the meeting place for hundreds of rebels who were angered by government… Continue Reading
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Scott McLaren “The greater part of an author’s time is spent in reading,” Samuel Johnson is widely reported to have said. “He must turn over half a library to write one book.” What Johnson didn’t say is that in the process of turning over half a library, one inevitably comes across tantalizing narratives – and… Continue Reading
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Todd Webb Scott McLaren, Pulpit, Press, and Politics: Methodists and the Market for Books in Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019) By the early 1860s, Methodism had become the largest Protestant denomination in the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, in terms of membership. It was also a dominant cultural presence, with its… Continue Reading
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Robert W. Passfield What has been termed ‘Whig History’ is a Liberal historiography that views history teleologically in terms of the progress of humanity towards enlightenment, rationalism, scientism, secularism, and the freedom of the individual. As attested by Herbert Butterfield (The Whig Interpretation of History, 1931) Whig history is characterized by presentism, a distinct historical… Continue Reading
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Wendy Cameron In the 1850s and 1860s parties of assisted British emigrants arrived in Canada to work as servant girls. These young women paved the way for British child migrants now known as Home Children. Taken from situations of dire poverty by child savers in Britain, up to 100,000 Home Children were placed with Canadian… Continue Reading
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Laura J. Smith Buried within the papers of a World War One Chaplain is a remarkable record of the religious and financial engagement of Irish Catholic canal workers with the Roman Catholic Church in Upper Canada.[1] Meticulous notes penned by the Rev. John MacDonald, parish priest at St. John the Baptist in Perth, Upper Canada… Continue Reading
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Michael Borsk When the Irish merchant Richard Popham found that his fortunes in New York had turned sour during the fall of 1826, he penned a letter to his acquaintance living in Upper Canada, John Large. “My mind is in a dreadful state of agitation,” Popham wrote. He confessed: “I have nearly made it up… Continue Reading
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Editor’s note: This is the second of two essays on working with online databases to research loyalist history in Upper Canada. They originally appeared in the Autumn of 2016 in a slightly different form as part of a longer series at the group history blog, Isles Abroad. You can find all their posts about loyalists… Continue Reading
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Paula Dumas Editor’s note: This is the first of two essays on working with online databases to research Loyalist history in Upper Canada. They originally appeared in the Autumn of 2016 in a slightly different form as part of a longer series at the group history blog, Isles Abroad. You can find all their posts… Continue Reading
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