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
Latest in: Religion
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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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Ann Little’s The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright (Yale University Press, 2016; paper, 2018) traces the remarkable story of a woman from her New England childhood to Wabanaki captivity and adoption to adulthood as an Ursuline nun in eighteenth-century Quebec. The book’s innovative use of sources and narrative provokes conversation about what a biography could be.… Continue Reading
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Aaron Willis The sovereignty of British political institutions and English laws in governing Quebec eroded for a variety of reasons. One source of this erosion was the ability to work outside the strictures of the Common Law granted to officials by the use of European Natural law theory. A second critical cause is the rise… Continue Reading
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Patrick Lacroix It is encouraging to see that Atlantic history, alongside environmental history, has emerged as a leading line of enquiry. The Atlantic perspective has already done wonders for our collective understanding of the slave trade and the Age of Revolution. Here I hope to recommend a continental perspective as a profitable avenue for assessing Early Canadian and Early… Continue Reading
