

Canadians are sometimes guilty of selling themselves short when it comes to the more colourful aspects of their country’s history. The national predilection for “peace, order, and good government” fosters the impression of a comfortably ... Read More »

For the past century, politicians, soldiers, authors, and journalists have argued that that country of Canada was not truly born at Confederation in 1867, but during the First World War, at Vimy Ridge. That April ... Read More »
April 3, 2017 | Filed under: History

There is no dearth of books about Sir John Franklin and the 1845 tragedy that befell him and the 129 crew with whom he sailed on the ships HMS Erebus and Terror in pursuit of ... Read More »
March 27, 2017 | Filed under: History

In 1915, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, seized on an idea to attack the Ottoman Empire by getting a fleet through the straits of the Dardanelles. His hope was that success would ... Read More »
March 6, 2017 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

Montreal-based author Mary Soderstrom has set herself a giant task in Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move – one that begins with the first anatomically modern humans leaving Africa 50,000 to ... Read More »
February 8, 2017 | Filed under: History, Science, Technology & Environment

In The Return of History, the 2016 edition of the CBC Massey Lectures, Jennifer Welsh takes umbrage with Francis Fukuyama. In 1992, Fukuyama declared that the end of the Cold War marked the inevitable cessation ... Read More »
October 26, 2016 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

Any impression of the smart set’s antics between the 20th century’s two cataclysmic wars instantly conjures the cabarets of Weimar Berlin or the nightclubs and brasseries of 1930s Paris. A more distant but no less ... Read More »
July 25, 2016 | Filed under: History

For most people, the announcement in 2014 by then prime minister Stephen Harper that a Parks Canada–led expedition to the Canadian Arctic had discovered the wreck of the HMS Erebus, one of the two ships ... Read More »
July 12, 2016 | Filed under: History

Reviewing John Boyko’s 2013 volume, Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation, I was struck by how deftly the author explained Canada’s involvement in the U.S. conflict, and ... Read More »
February 16, 2016 | Filed under: History

If Canadian history were a rug, it would be marred by large lumps from the many less-than-wholesome subjects that have been swept underneath. Unafraid to peer under the rug at those unmentionable topics is Dominique ... Read More »
February 1, 2016 | Filed under: History