This month at Canada's History

At Canada's History, the current issue's lead story is Bill Zuk's account of how pioneer American flyer (or as they said then, "aviatrix") was formed as a flier and adventurer by the years she spent in Toronto during the First World War, where she did medical work, survived the 'flu pandemic, and discovered aircraft. "I can attribute the beginning of my aviation career to what I experienced here in Toronto," she said later.

Wierdly, the Nazi bureaucrat Joachim von Ribbentrop also launched his career in Canada, spending the years 1910-14 as a well-connected, seemingly harmless young businessman and social climber from Montreal, Ottawa, and upcountry British Columbia. Cec Jennings reports how Ribbentrop fled home to Germany at the outbreak of the First World War. He never returned and was hanged for war crimes in 1946.

My own contribution this month looks at the census of New France, taken by Jean Talon in 1666 and remade by historian Marcel Trudel three hundred years later. The 2021 census of Canada takes place in May.

Plus Nancy Payne on BC's Sointula settlement, indigenous artists reclaiming the Rockies, a bunch of reviews, and much more. 

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