This month at Canada's History: Aug Sept 2025

Lead article at Canada's History this month is a long reported piece on all the indigenous art pieces that were collected for a 1925 exhibition at the Vatican to celebrate the Catholic Church's global reach  -- and have stayed there ever since, though it seems many were acquired as temporary donations, or else more-or-less plundered.  

Kate Jaimet, until recently senior editor at the magazine, interviewed Indigenous artists and curators from West Coast First Nations, and her article is a deep dive into the ways Catholic evangelization went hand in hand with Canada's war on the potlatch and Indigenous culture in general.  "The masks represent not only art and history but a tangible connection to our ancestors and the ongoing efforts of our community to reclaim and protect its cultural legacy," she quotes Irwin Prince of the Quatsino First Nation."  

Also:  Dianne Dodds looks at the 1918 sinking of the Llandovery Castle by submarine action in 1918 -- the worst Canadian maritime disaster of the First World War, made more tragic by the deaths of 14 Canadian nursing sisters and many of their patients.  The Llandovery Castle is in the news these days, with the recent publication of Nate Hendley's well-received book Atrocity on the Atlantic.  

Elsewhere in the issue: a nice photo essay on the legacy of the one-room school across Canada, and Christopher Guly on Canada's movie history. The Canadian roots of a strange art theft.  And news, reviews and more.

Plus -- in the reviews -- my review of Patrice Dutil's recent account of Canada's first federal election, Ballots and Brawls, from UBC Press.  I'll be in the next issue too, with a feature timed to Remembrance Day.  

Also of interest:  the magazine's regular acknowledgement of all its donors and supporters. The list and the amounts donated are, well, immense -- great to see how strongly Canada's History is supported. Special callout to all my friends and colleagues whose names I spot on the lists! (Good to see Kate Jaimet got some funding from those donors to cover the costs of her extensive reporting on the potlatch masks story.)

Canada's History holiday gift guide.

 ... maple leaf socks and much more for the historian in your life in Canada's History's annual gift giving guide.

This month at Canada's History

Nearly a year after the sudden disappearance of longtime editor Mark Reid -- and never a word to readers or members about what transpired there -- Canada's History's October-November issue introduces new Editor Jacqueline Kovacs (hired last June, also without comment at the time), and still no comment or explanation.  Magazines shouldn't be in the secret-keeping business, should they?

Still, a lively mix of stories in the issue, for sure. Canada's first chess grandmaster Abe Yanovsky of Winnipeg.  The sinking of a Canadian troopship off Singapore.  The profound and lasting significance of the Treaty of Niagara 1764.  Surveying the Canada-US border, with copious maps.  And a cover story on the prairie tipi.  A note on a new play in Halifax about Rocky Jones, Afro-Canadian activist and historian.  Letters about lighthouses.  Nothing from me  in this issue, but looking for great things from Jackie Kovacs and her team. Stay tuned.  And subscribe, like ya oughta.

This month at Canada's History: Parks Canada on Canada's History

 

Features

THE UNSETTLED PAST

In a stature-toppling era, Parks Canada adapts its retelling of this country’s complex history. by Christopher Moore

This month, the August-September Canada's History leads with my article "The Unsettled Past," investigating how Parks Canada is seeking to shape a new narrative for Canadian history at its sites and plaques all over Canada.

Update, June 23: The full story is now available at the Canada's History website.

Parks Canada's historic sites agency, like other Canadian museums and historical institutions, was put under tough scrutiny by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC's 2025 report shone a painful spotlight on the pervasive neglect of Indigenous history and historical perspectives at Parks Canada's hundreds of sites and thousands of historic plaques, and it called for a fundamental reassessment. 

 And of course there was backlash.

Nearly a decade into that reassessment, I talked to Parks Canada historians and planners, to administrators, to Indigenous consultants, and also to the critics hotly opposed to what is happening to Canadian history at Parks Canada's sites. I think it's an important story, and a hopeful one too. Subscribe, and it should be in your mailbox already. (The online version will come along a little later.) It's a beautiful issue too: Parks Canada's sites photograph well, let us say.

Also in the issue: David Frank on child labour and neglect in New Brunswick; Sophie McGee on our tangled history with orcas; Nancy Payne's spectacular text-and-picture spread on historic lighthouses; and Enid Mallory exploring historic Yukon roads. The lead in the review section features Gerald Friesen's new and important The Honorable John Norquay, about the remarkable career of the 19th century Indigenous premier of Manitoba.  

And more. 

 

This Month at Canada's History: air power

Strong issue of Canada's History just out for April-May. This year is the hundredth anniversary of the formation of the Canadian Air Force.  Created in full peacetime, oddly enough: Royal Canadian Air Force, est. 1924.

The magazine seizes the moment with a bunch of spectacular full colour art of Lancaster bombers and Sopwith Camel fighters and all the rest.  

Two well told Second World War stories, both improved by blending in the interest of descendants's pursuit of knowledge about the exploits of their family members.  

 So the air force's grim Battle of Berlin experiences is focussed on one Joe Halloran, a Lancaster bomb-aimer but otherwise nobody distinguished or famous.  But there is detail of his experience, thanks to his daughter Patsy's search for it, and it brings the story home very well.

Something similar in the story of Flight Sergeant Robert Spence, whose bomber was shot down over the Libyan desert -- and who proceeded to walk several hundred kilometers across the desert back to Egypt.  Here too the story includes his penpal back home and the info she received about his exploits.  She didn't even marry him in the end, but it's make a good article. 

Also Timothy Andrews Sayle on NATO's seventy-fifty anniversary.v  Book reviews, historic places, much more.

And, be still my heart, TWO letters responding to "Fuelling Anger" my essay on east-west tensions in Canada from the December-January issue.  I do try to write possibly provocative stories from time to time:  the monarchy, the senate, "worst Canadians."  Usual response: crickets. 

This month at Canada's History: Where's the Editor?

The big news at this month's Canada's History is the news that is not there.

This issue is the first in many years that does not have Mark Reid's name topping the masthead as Editor-in-Chief and Director of Content and Communications. No successor is named. There is nothing in the magazine from the magazine about Mark Reid's departure or about plans to name another editor.

His departure leaves the magazine's readers and writers wondering about changes inside the magazine's Winnipeg headquarters and what they might mean for the magazine's future. To my knowledge Canadian media have so far not noticed a story here.

As the editor of Canada's History since 2007, Reid led its transformation from "The Beaver," drove its very successful entry into online communication, produced several successful spin-off bestsellers, upgraded design layout and use of colour, and generally made the magazine more professional and more successful than ever. During his tenure the magazine earned a substantial number of National Magazine awards and nominations (a few of them for contribution of mine, I'm happy to say).  

In the Truth and Reconciliation era, Reid also oversaw a remarkable flowering of contributions by indigenous and minority writers and a great diversification of the range of topics the magazine has taken up. 

Otherwise, inside the magazine this month there is a long article, very much spearheaded by Mark but written by me, reflecting on East-West tensions in Canada and whether historical perspectives can help us understand them.  It draws on lengthy interviews with writer Mary Janigan, economist Trevor Tombe, politician Michael Chong, and others. It's meaty fare for Canada's History, but Mark Reid and I thought it was important.  From the opening lines:

EASTERN ENVIRONMENTALISTS CHANT, “END FOSSIL FUELS!” and provide the votes for carbon taxes. Albertans, aware of what fuels their prosperity — and the East’s industries, too — respond with: “Build that pipeline!” 

Ottawa leads a national response to a global pandemic — and a convoy organized by leaders from the West invades Ottawa as if it were the capital of a foreign enemy. 

Housing, health care, inflation, the environment, reconciliation — each issue seems to have Ottawa and the premiers caught up in wedge issues and mutual accusations. Politicians face hate slogans and threats every time they speak in public. National mandates, provincial sovereignty, firewalls: In Canada these days, division seems to make good politics. Is the country falling apart? Can’t anyone do anything without a fight? 

As a student of Canadian history and a writer for Canada’s History, I have devoted a couple of books, a lot of writing, and a citizen’s concern to the political and constitutional history of Canada and its regions. Can constitutional and political history contribute anything helpful in these unsettled times? To say simply that times like these have been experienced before — well, isn’t that all one expects from a historian? But it is true: Canada has a long history of falling apart.

            .... 

Also: 

• Mohawk writer Kelly Boutsalis on the founding of the Haudenosaunee confederacy;
•  journalist Christopher Guly on the purging of gays from the Canadian armed forces;
•  and a lively words and images exploration of Canadian monsters and legends by Amir Aziz and illustrator Axana Zasorina;
• reviews, commentary, letters, etc;
•  and the Holiday Book and Gift Feature

Also the annual, indispensable Holiday Book and Gift Guide

This month at Canada's History

 

In recent years, Canada's History has been providing an impressive amount of indigenous-created content -- as well it should, but still notable.

This month, essays on the kayak by Noah Nochasak and on the Numbered Treaties of the West (and northern Ontario) by Wabi Benais Misratim Equay (Cynthia Bird).  Plus fur-trading women of New France by Sienna Vittoria Lefebvre, World War I photographs by Carla-Jean Stokes, and Nobellest Ernest Rutherford of McGill University by John Hardy.  

Charlotte Gray reviews Hugh Brody. Victor Ravinovitch on the Winnipeg General Strike, and many more reviews of the new books.

Subscribe .  No, nothing from me this month.  Mais j'arrive, j'arrive.    

This month at Canada's History: now with podcasts!

I noted the cover of the June-July Canada's History last month. But now I have my subscription copy, hope you got yours, I have to mention that not only is there my big beautiful article on how striking tenants and railroad promoters and an endless succession of short-term premiers saw Prince Edward Island into Confederation a hundred and fifty years ago, just six years late. There is also a companion piece, a new entry to Canada's History's new podcast series on the Canada's History website. 

This one features Senior Editor Kate Jaimet and I talking with Mi'kmaw scholar and law professor Cheryl Simon about stolen lands, the treaty obligation, and confederation in Prince Edward Island and the Maritimes. Find it right here -- it runs about forty minutes.

This Month at Canada's History: Explorers, Confederation, Mi'kmaw Rights, Immigrant History

 

This month at Canada's History you can choose your cover image.  They have done a split run.

The newsstand cover -- if you can find a newsstand -- relateds to Ken McGooghan's article "Ships of Misfortune" on Jens Munk, one of a long unhappy history of navigators trying to find a Northwest Passage. Social media friends of Ken are already noticing that the image of Munk on the cover looks very much like Ken himself. Canada's History's new podcast supplement has Ken in conversation with senior editor Kate Jaimet.

My own feature story "Confederation or Bust" is inspired by Prince Edward Island's observance of its 150th anniversary of joining confederation in 1873. It's a story less of constitutional negotiations than of land wars, railroad crises, and the remarkable and ultimately tragic career of Island reformer George Coles.  

Maybe for the first time in non-indigenous media, I also took up the question of what the Mi'kmaq Nation of Atlantic Canada (and by extension other First Nations) thought and did about Confederation. That's in the article as well as in the podcast supplement (about to be posted) in which Kate Jaimet talks with Mi'kmaw scholar and law professor Cheryl Simon and me. From the article, Mi'kmaw concerns about Confederation's potential impact on indigenous rights:

The Mi'kmaq Grand Council -- a centuries-old governing body -- raised funds to send a delegate, Peter Cope, to meet with British Colonial Office officials in London. In 1926 Mi'kmaw elder Joe Cope recalled how Peter Cope was assured that as long as any Indigenous person "remained a True Ward of the English Government, so long his treaty rights would be respected and adhered to.  No bye-law can ever alter or change his Treaty Rights and Privileges."

The "subscription cover" this month features a memoir by the Canadian artist JJ Lee -- seen here with a photo of her grandfather, about four generations of her immigrant ancestors' experiences and the art she is creating about them.

And reviews, letters, notes, a visit to Baie St-Paul, and more.  If you subscribed like you oughta, it would be on its way to you.

Hard Histories at the History Forum

In Ottawa next week?  You might take in Hard Histories at the 15th Annual History Forum sponsored by the Canada's History Society on Friday March 2.

Museums, educators, researchers, and heritage organizations are increasingly seeking ways to address difficult and sensitive historical topics in a respectful and inclusive manner. Topics such as colonialism, genocide, and other forms of injustice and violence can be contested or traumatic and it can be challenging to know how to approach this content appropriately.

How can we initiate respectful and productive conversations about hard histories? How can we acknowledge past injustices against traditionally marginalized communities, while also recognizing the agency and dignity of all individuals involved? How can we empower audiences to confront the ongoing legacies that have resulted from these histories?

The Canada’s History Forum features presentations from experts in a range of fields that explore best practices for dealing with difficult history in museum exhibitions, public programming, teaching, and research.

Speakers include Afua Cooper and David  A Robertson.  Admission is free but registration is required.  Details right here.

 

New at the Literary Review and Canada's History

This month's Literary Review of Canada includes my review of the winner and short-listed books of the 2022 Cundill Prize in history. From contemporary Russia to Cuba across five hundred years to the American South in slavery time, much big history to ponder. Plus Tim Cook on Acadians at war, Newfoundland shipwrecks, an appreciation of Moshie Safdie,, some political memoirs, big trees in BC and much else

Nice to see my closing lines on the state of nonfiction narrative getting some traction on Twitter too.

“Remember, too, that non-fiction writers have been exploring techniques of narration since before the novel was invented. Effective narration continues to be one of the hallmarks of literary non-fiction.” Excellent piece by @CmedMoore on writing compelling works of history. https://t.co/J0LaWlOuji

— Marsha Faubert (@FaubertMarsha) February 14, 2023

Nothing from me in this month's Canada's History, which arrived while I was away.  But much good stuff on the end of capital punishment, commandos at war, the history of crokinole (!) and more. Cover story on the evolution of Caribbean-Canadian fashion.  I'll be back soon

 

Join the Editor's Circle

Tomorrow Thursday Carolyn Harris, "the royal historian," and I (not so royalist, shall we say), are doing a webinar with Mark Reid, editor of Canada's History. We will be discussing our articles from the current issue of the magazine, hers reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II's history with Canada, mine, "Royal Dissent," talking about the challenges -- and opportunities -- we will face in abolishing the monarchy in Canada. I think we will have fun.

Carolyn Harris

Sorry, you are not invited. This podcast webinar series is for members of "The Editor's Circle"  -- that is, people who give generously to support the magazine and its works.  

Of course, you could join the Editor's Circle with a few clicks -- and get this premium content.

A lot of previously presented Canada's History material is available in podcast form.  Just not this one, not yet.

This month at Canada's History

This month at Canada's History, Carolyn Harris and I have the lead articles. In "Queen of Canada," she surveys Elizabeth II's visits to and relationship with Canada. In "Royal Dissent," I explore the complications that will be required in establishing a Canadian head of state, even though we all want one.

There's also an essay by André Pelchat on the history of religion in Quebec as a backdrop to Québec's controversial Bill 21, which bans hijabs, turbans, and other items of religious faith from being worn by public employees in the province.  He reflects on:

the ambiguous attitude of many French-speaking Quebeckers toward their Catholic past: they no longer practise the Catholic religion and would not want to go back to the old times, but they still see their Catholic heritage as part of their national identity.  This makes it hard for people who practise different religions to be considered truly Québécois.

David Wesley of Fort Albany Cree First Nation

Don't miss "We Were the Lucky Ones" -- online here. Former players for the Sioux Lookout Black Hawks, a residential school hockey team, reflect on their much-publicized 1951 tour of Toronto and Ottawa, and how it was used by Canadian officials to justify and sanitize the residential school program. It's a story with much to say on that point, but it also brings home real personal experiences of some kids from across northern Ontario who asserted themselves despite the assimilative pressures (and other hardships!) they lived under. 

Today the co-authors, former players now in their eighties, include a leader of Indigenous health programs, a founder of the North American Indigenous Games, and a coordinator of Indigenous employment programs, in association with sports historian Professor Janice Forsyth of UBC (and the Fisher River First Nation) and a team of other researchers.    

Prize Watch: The Pierre Berton to Thomas King

Canada's History Society and the Governor General of Canada announce the 2022 winners of the Governor General's History Awards.

The Pierre Berton Award for History in Popular Media for 2022 is awarded to Thomas King -- a well deserved award:

A trailblazer, King moves seamlessly through genres, educating and entertaining audiences through literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as through radio, film, and television. His distinguished writing and teaching careers have inspired new generations of Indigenous authors, storytellers, and educators.

Through his writing, teaching, and advocacy, King has broken down stereotypes and centred Indigenous voices and experiences. His work is an invaluable contribution towards a deeper conversation about reconciliation and a more just and equitable future for Indigenous people in Canada.

King is the author of The Inconvenient Indian among many other works.  He is also the author of A Short History of Indians in Canada, but that is a volume of short stories. 

The other History Awards recognizes teachers and educators and also the winner of the Canadian Historical Society Award for Scholarly History, previously awarded to Benjamin Hoy.

The one Santa needs: Canada's History annual book and gift guide

This year's Book and Gift Guide from Canada's History has a few titles we've taken notice of here, but vastly more I had never even heard of -- some of which I'll now be planning to get to. It's got astonishing range -- worth a look just to know what Canadian historians are putting out there even if you are not in the gift-buying mood. 

And if you subscribed like you oughta, you would have it in hardcopy with your new copy of Canada's History.

This Month at Canada's History

Tim Cook, the military historian, has a new book on first aid and medicine in the First World War, and he complements it with a cover story in October's Canada's History that considers Dr John McCrae not so much as the author of "In Flanders Fields" as part of an innovative field hospital in France, the "McGill hospital," that Cook makes into a case study for how Canadian medicine went to war.

By war's end about half of all Canadian doctors and a third of all nurses had served in uniform, and the Canadian Army Medical Corps had expanded from twenty officers in 1914 to over twenty thousand members.

Cook argues that in trauma medicine -- and also in preventive care and what became public health -- skills and practices the field hospitals developed came back to Canada with the doctors and nurses who served there

One quibble: I wish the military historians would not always start their First World War stories with, as Cook puts it: "As a dominion in the British Empire, Canada was at war when Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914. There was a great rush of men to the colours." By now we really ought to recognize and underline the intermediate step between the first and second sentences: namely, the Canadian parliament met to decide just how and to what extent Canada would participate in the war now declared. Only after the Canadian decisions -- the real commitment to the war effort -- could the rush to the colours be accommodated.

Also this month, archaeologists and preservationists from Montreal's Pointe-à-Callières museum present a remarkable digital recreation of the Canadian parliament building that was torched in 1849 in downtown Montreal.

Lately, Canada's History the magazine (there's also the substantial web presence) has recreated a section called The Beaver, to cover "traditional" topics the old magazine emphasized when it was a fur trade, HBC, and northern-history mag. But how the traditions have changed! The contents of this Beaver section are mostly by indigenous authors privileging indigenous points-of-view on the fur trade ("Founding Fort Severn" by Jean-Luc Pilon and Chris Koostachin), on treaty relations ("All Treaty People" by Karine Duhamel), and on residential schools ("National Crime" by Miles Morriseau). And Bill Waiser on a shipwreck in Wager Bay that's not part of the Franklin story. 

Also -- be still my west coast heart -- a look at the fiftieth anniversary of "The Beachcombers." If you subscribed, you'd already have it all.

History of the Monarchy: It's okay to talk about it again UPDATED

The mourning period is over, and my essay on Canadians and the monarchy after Elizabeth II is now up at Canada's History's website

The reign of Elizabeth as Queen of Canada has been transformed instantly into the reign of Charles, the new king of Canada.

Yet Canadians can have a say, though not at this moment, when one monarch succeeds another. We form a sovereign nation. We have run our own affairs for a long time. We are also a democratic nation. In Treaty partnership with First Nations, our governments are accountable to the people of Canada. Canada has remained a monarchy because Canada has chosen to have it so. If Canadians wish to review that, or prefer to keep things as they are, the choice lies with us. If Canadians wish to have a Canadian head of state, we need only say so.

Update, September 23:  Trying to follow trends in the post-Elizabethan discussion of monarchy's future, I was struck by an op-ed by one Andrew Phillips in the Toronto Star.

It starts with bluster -- abolition is "an idea that is at once wrong-headed, historically ill-informed and constitutionally impossible" [not, not, and not -- see above] But then it gives us a sense of monarchists reading the room and thinking of cutting monarchy's losses in an attempt to preserve what they can. First, he wants to take the king off the money. And:

Second, let’s rewrite the oath that new Canadians must swear to qualify for citizenship. Right now, they must pledge to “be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles the Third, King of Canada, His Heirs and Successors …” and so on. It’s like something out of “Game of Thrones.”

To allow new citizens to pledge their loyalty first and foremost to Canada itself, Parliament can change the oath any time it wants — without altering anything essential about the role of the monarchy in this country.

We should look to the example of Australia, another of King Charles’s realms [!], which in 1994 dropped the oath to the queen and replaced it with an eloquent “Pledge of Commitment”....

Sure. Indeed, by continuing the processes by which the monarchy has lost any real presence in Canadian life and government, could be a useful babystep! 

Update, September 25:  Is this deal-cutting on the monarchy becoming a trend? I see Conrad Black in the National Post is suggesting Canada can have a "president" -- but also preserve the monarchy too. I like the hint of desperation about these offers. (Fortunately, most of the story is paywalled, so I don't have to read the whole thing.) 

What's new in Canada's History

This month in Canada's History:  

• Nancy Payne on Harriet Tubman's war on slavery and her home in St Catharine's, Canada West.  
• Zbigniew Stashniak explores the computer tech that emerged from Canada's Second World War sub-hunting campaigns.  
• Kevin Plummer recounts the 1920s travails of a would-be blockbuster film about the Canadians at Ypres in 1915 (and you can watch the rediscovered film here).
• Travel notes on the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia.
• And Mairi Cowan presents an odd story about the only Scottish nun in New France.

Plus reviews, news, columns, Babe Ruth in B.C., and an excerpt from Brittany Luby's Dammed.  Subscribe like you oughta.

This month at Canada's History: renaming British Columbia

Ry Moran thinks it's time to change the name of British Columbia to ... well, something else.  That's just one of the powerhouse articles in this month's Canada's History, now reaching subscribers and newsstands.

B. C. is beautiful., without a doubt. But it's not British. In maintaining that myth we continue in the erasure, not only of the erasure of the complex histories of multiple Indigenous nations but also of the lives and histories of the countless migrants from around the world who have played an instrumental role in the foundation of this place. 

Also, Charlotte Gray honours Chief Isaac of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, and how his people faced the massive invasion of "Klondike" (read: "Tr'ondëk") by the gold rush miners of 1898. Her story is also about how she failed to give that story sufficient attention in 2005, when she wrote Gold Diggers. 

Environmental historian Alan MacEachern explores the Canadian exploits of American rain maker Charles Hatfield in the 1920s  -- and how irrigation, rather than success, gradually made the rainmaking craze obsolete.

There's an excerpt from the diaries of railroad builder Dukesang Wong. And much more, including lots of reviews and notices, including gay history notes, criticism of me in the letters column, and a tribute to the late historian of Quebec, my old colleague Jacques Lacoursiere.

Update, July 26:  Regarding a new name for British Columbia, Stephen Collis was advocating for this in The Walrus a year ago.

If it happened would proposing "Fire and Rain" for the new name be a little too on the nose right now?

History on the Newsstand

You almost never see a magazine rack these days, let alone one with a Canadian magazine featured. So when you get a photo of a drugstore newsstand showing a magazine you contribute to regularly, and it's an issue you actually have a story in, hey, you feel like a real working writer or something. (Apparently the newsstand cover is different from the subscription cover -- my December issue cover features Canadian artist Molly Lamb Bobak)

Canada's History -- print or digital, makes a great gift.