Wednesday, July 02, 2025

Honours Watch: Historians at the Order of Canada

A few historically relevant careers honoured in the Canada Day appointments to the Order of Canada yesterday:  

Robert Janes, eminent museologist active in return of Indigenous heritage materials,

David Pelly, Arctic ethnologist and writer, 

and (my personal favourite) Stephen White, the great Acadian genealogist. White was a New England Acadian (no doubt with some Leblancs in his own family tree) and was practising law when the Centre d'Etudes Acadiennes in Moncton recruited him to run its Acadian genealogy project in the 1970s, leading to the publication in 1999 of the essential reference on the subject, the Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes.  (How many genealogists have received an Order of Canada?  Probably some.)

Among writers and litterateurs generally, not a long list this time: novelist Miriam Toews, poet Sky Dancer Louise Halfe, and francophone children's writer Marianne Dubuc.

 
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