This quarter at Canada's History: Olympics, Charter, drag balls, lost Manitoba and more

Canada's History magazine, six issues a year since beyond living memory, recently switched to a quarterly format.  I might have hoped it would go monthly instead.  But the quarterly format has its advantages, I admit. More space, a greater diversity of stories for starters. 

Fall 2026 looks good.  I'm happy to say one of the feature stories is mine.  The Charter's Course started as a report on how the Hudson's Bay Company's 1670 Charter, a unique piece of 17th century calligraphy, was saved from the commercial auction-market hammer and finally found its proper place in the collection of a great Canadian public museum.  

With the presence of pungent comments from Grand Chief Phil Fontaine and former GG Edward Schreyer, it grew into something more: themes of tyranny and resistance, and the fundamental question of who owns Canada and who should. You can read it right here: The HBC Charter Comes Home - Canada's History

The issue also has a substantial section for the fiftieth anniversary of the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, and it's not just anniversary commemoration: there's good tough pieces on "the worst case of artistic censorship in the country's history" by Taylor Noakes, and and interview with Richard Pound, not only an Olympics competitor but also Canada's most influential Olympic Committee player.

Drag balls in 1950s Toronto -- a new field for Canada's History, I think, and well tendedby Christine Sismondo.

And, as they say, much more.  If you subscribed like you should you would already have it.

CH Cover art: Ken Danby.