New podcast at the CIHE

 

The Toronto organization called the Canadian Institute for Historical Education has drawn my attention to its new podcast History Matters, interviewing historians and commentators about the subjects that interest the institute. Indeed, it invited me to appear.  But for the moment I have declined.

The CIHE is a well-funded little organization founded a few years ago at a meeting at a private Toronto club. Who would not be in favour of historical education? But its concept of education concern me, frankly. 

It has been vociferous in opposing any suggestion that John A Macdonald bears any responsibility for the disasters that befell indigenous people, particularly on the plains, during his time. It strongly opposed changing the name of the former Ryerson University or renaming a Toronto public square to commemorate Afro-Canadian contributions to Canada rather than the British statesman Lord Dundas. It invited David Frum from the United States to minimize the horrors of the residential schools and Nigel Biggar, author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, from Scotland to explain that colonized people all over the world should be more grateful to the British, who are moral pretty much by definition. 

I believe it has never had an Indigenous scholar to speak about treaties or residential schools or reconciliation. No minority speaker has made the case to them for the name changes or for the importance of recognizing and honouring diversity and inclusion in Canada and in Canadian history. As far as I can tell, in fact, the CIHE has never featured a person of colour speaking on any historical subject. 

I'm not in the habit in turning down invitations to talk about Canadian history. Anyone who sets up a podcast series can invite whom they choose.  But until the CIHE is more welcoming to a diversity of viewpoints in historical education and to many fine writers, speakers, and historians who represent that diversity, I will remain reluctant to be part of its programming.  

  

Summer listening: with me

Quite by accident I have discovered that on Friday the CanHist podcast "Witness to Yesterday" reposted my half-hour conversation with Patrice Dutil from 2018 entitled "How George Washington Killed 10 French Canadians and started a World War."

Reheard after seven years, it's quite a delight  -- you oughta listen.

"Witness To Yesterday" has evolved since 2018.  It's now pretty exclusively a CanHist book review podcast, with a new crew of host interviewers.  But there was a time when "How George Washington" was its top-ranked #1 listened-to episode.

Patrice and I have evolved too. He has become perhaps John A. Macdonald's most vigorous advocate as I have continued to express doubts about "the man who made us." And I was dropping a few criticisms of his recent book Ballots and Brawls into my review of it in the current Canada's History mag.  

So it was a particular pleasure to hear us together in full sync over obscure details of 18th century New France. Thanks, Patrice!

 

History of the business of history -- and podcast notes UPDATED

Bloomberg News is not one of my regular reads, and current news is mostly paywalled there, but its recent story "The Business of History" is now generally available. It's about the popularity and profitability of history podcasts. It also makes note of the rising sales of books about history. Bloomberg speculates it may all be related to the decline of history studies in universities.

I happened to be gifted a copy of Henry V, the new book by the very popular British historian/media personality Dan Jones (not to be confused with the other very popular British historian/media personality Dan Snow). It's a good example of the thriving state of popular historical writing in Britain right now: very skillfully done, solidly researched and highly readable. I went rocketing through its several hundred pages.

I could not help noting one (not-much-noted) aspect of Jones's work that is also evident in "The Rest is History," the British podcast from historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, upon which the Bloomberg story is focussed. In books and broadcasts and podcasts, the new popular British history tends to take for granted a complacent little-England historical chauvinism in which British is always best and other breeds are mostly subjects of fun.  

I first noticed this when I listened to a "Rest is History" series of podcasts about the Cathar heresy in medieval France. The Cathars are central to the historical work I may admire most of all in the world, Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. so I was already interested.  But I discovered that every single historical expert on the Cathars featured or quoted on "The Rest is History" was English. Since all the leading historians of Catharism are French (if they are not Italian), it did seem an odd omission. 

And gradually I realized The Rest of History applies the same cheery Brit-boy disdain to all historical subjects who are not English.  Listen, for example, for the root-for-England style of "Rest is History"'s series on Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. Classical types from before England existed get some respect, but I can't find their series on, say, the victories of Napoleon. 

Dan Jones has grasped that the audience of a biography of Henry V is probably not there to put up with criticism of Henry the lad-king hero.  

When Jones's Henry V finds the defenders of a besieged town called Montereau too slow to surrender to him, he threatens to execute ten of his French prisoners of war. The defenders do not yield to this blackmail, and Henry has all ten hanged. It's a clear violation of the rules of chivalry, the laws of war, and Christian ethics -- but Snow places the blame "squarely on the obstinate Guillaume de Chaumont" for surrendering too slowly.  When a French commander commits similar acts in another siege, Jones berates him as "a callous bastard" (well, he is apparently of illegitimate birth) and "singularly vicious." Anyway, he is eventually forced to surrender, and Henry hangs him too, along with a trumpeter who played some mocking tunes during the siege. 

Is the double standard a deliberate flag-waving -- or just instinctive in this generation of writers?

One popular British historian who takes a different approach -- and goes unnoted by Bloomberg News -- is David Olusoga, the history professor, author, and television presenter who focusses on black Britain and Britain's relations with Africa and Africans. Olusoga sometimes needs bodyguards and police protection when he speaks in public nowadays.

A muscular defence by public figures of a traditional English history of the glories of empire and all the great English heroes has inspired actual threats to historians who practice the history of empire and slaveholding from a different perspective. 

Maybe also worth mentioning here: the recent book The Truth about the British Empire, edited by Alan Lester, which includes a Canadian chapter by Adele Perry, Sean Carleton, and Omeasoo Wahpasiw. From the British publisher's description:

Colonial history is now a battlefield in the culture war. The public's understanding of past events is continually distorted by willful caricatures. Communities that long struggled to get their voices heard have, in their fight to highlight the hidden horrors of colonialism, alienated many who prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has generated a new, concerted denial of imperial racism and violence in Britain's past--a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.

Update, January 28.  My wise and well-informed daughter points out to me that when "The Rest is History" covered Cromwell's invasion of Ireland, they described his conduct there as "robust."  Rather than, say, "genocidal." She recommends Hardcore History by Dan Carlin as evidence that little-England chauvinism does not entirely rule the podcasting universe.

The Globe and Mail noted the power of history podcasts in a recent story. But again, it's just a business story. Not much attempt at doing criticism, as they might with a theatre or movie or book review.

 

 

Donald Smith In Hindsight -- a historian's podcast

In the process of adding some podcasts to the list (at right) of sites worth following , I discovered that Donald Smith, longtime professor at the University of Calgary and noted historian of indigenous histories long before they were fashionable ... has a podcast.  

I have not listened to it yet, but it seems to be an original mix of historian's memoir and historian's historical reflections. There are 21 episodes to date, "relaxed, with an abundance of anecdotes," and most run less than 30 minutes. It's called "In Hindsight" and it's on the Ontario Historical Society website.

The OHS's other podcast is about the glories of the Canadian crown... but I'll let you find that one for yourself.

Summer podcasts, summer reading

I'm sometimes a sucker for the podcasts led by lively, funny, engaging talkers, even when they don't have much to say and take an hour to say it. But when I want a little more meat on the bone, I often log on to what Tides of History, a podcast by an American named Patrick Wyman (Ph.D in history, former sports journalist!), is offering.

When we were planning a trip to Italy, I went to the series Tides had done on the history of Venice, particularly his long interview with Dennis Romero, history prof at Syracuse University and recently the author of Venice: the Remarkable History of the Lagoon City. Wyman likes to rely on -- and often to interview -- serious scholars inclined to go deep into the weeds of their topic, often something in medieval or classical fields or historical archaeology.

After we got back from Italy, I requested Romero's Venice from the library, and -- God bless the Toronto Public Library system -- they ordered a copy and told me I might have to wait for a while. It came through this week, and indeed it's a very good book (pristine copy, too!). Romero has spent a long time in Venice and its archives, seems to know everything about the city, and tells his story pretty well, from prehistory to the "global Venice" of cruise ship bans and depopulation.  

It's eight hundred pages of pretty small print, and I probably won't read every word, but everywhere I dip in, I'm impressed and enlightened. Romero's a dab hand at starting or ending a chapter with a vivid vignette or two: a liberated slave who became a shipowner and enabled his descendants to join the Venetian nobility, or a num writing a furious tract about the cruelty of fathers who imprison their extra and ill-favoured daughters in convents. (Wyman uses a similar technique in his podcasts, always starting with a brief and vivid imagined scene before turning to the solid history; Romero's, however, are all straight from the archives.)

On the strength of that find, let me recommend Wyman's recent "summer readings" episode: in which he proposes seven substantial histories worth reading, mostly recent, only one or two of which I had ever heard of, and skewing to the serious and academic, while also including a couple of more general-market types.  Not all American either!

What's the lively, funny podcast, you ask?  I'm thinking of The Rest is History, a very popular British podcast featuring Tom Holland and Domenic Sandbrook, two hyperarticulate polymath Brits who are pretty entertaining while also being startlingly little-England. (Their series on the Cathars, in which every single scholar they cited was an Englishman writing in English!) Also Empire, with William Dalrymple and jounalist Anita Anand.

Suggestions for history podcasts worth a look out there? 

History of digital publishing: from podcasts to audiobooks?

The current Walrus has a profile of the indigenous Canadian broadcaster Connie Walker, who broke out with the very successful CBC podcast "Missing and Murdered," from 2016 and then moved to Spotify for a series called "Stolen," that earned both a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Broadcasting Award in 2023. Spotify subsequently told her she was being cancelled. As the story says, "Walker, whose success represented a beacon of hope for despairing journalists, was now a symbol of the profession’s alarming, inescapable collapse."

There has been a spate of stories about the cancellation of podcasts, particularly the complicated, deeply researched ones in which Walker made her reputation. The pennies that digital advertising brings in don't often cover the overheads of that kind of work, it seems, not when there are a million people trying to break into podcasting, some with off-the-top-of-the-head chatty content that makes Top-40 Radio seem like Shakespeare.  Maybe a great retrenchment in podcasting is on the horizon, at least for those that aren't subsidized or feature a celebrity.

Meanwhile, I've been listening to "Miracle and Wonder: Conversations With Paul Simon" by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, produced by Gladwell's podcasting enterprise Pushkin Industries. It's a podcast except that it isn't. It's presented as and offered for sale as an audiobook instead. I can't help thinking that this may be Malcolm Gladwell observing the dismal economics of podcasting and seeing if audiobook publishing enables a different pricing regime more aligned with the real costs of production. Though since it seems that Spotify and Amazon already have some kind of monopoly control of audiobooks now (and everyone I know gets audiobooks free from the library app Libby), I'm not sure how that's going to work out. But "Miracle and Wonder" may be a sign or symptom of change working out in digital 'casting.

What started me on this post, however, was not thoughts on the evolving history of digital audio marketing. (That's just to justify putting this in a history blog, perhaps). It was how much I'm enjoying "Miracle and Wonder." 

Gladwell's team recorded thirty hours for a five hour audiobook, Paul Simon is fully engaged, and it all becomes a wonderful exploration of one musician and his music. There is a lovely balance of music  -- old Simon recordings, new Simon live demonstrations, clips of music that inspired him, whatever --  all fitted into a structured conversation about the shape and meaning of Simon's career. It would be a waste of paper, almost, to print this audiobook -- the music is absolutely central to it. Gladwell gladwellizes elaborate theories from sociology texts and musicological theorists to interpret how Paul Simon got to be Paul Simon,  and these deep-think dives actually work pretty well. But Simon hardly engages with those parts -- he's just talking and thinking and riffing on all the music in his head.

If you are a bit jaded with what you are finding in podcasts, or you have any interest at all in Paul Simon, take a listen. Malcolm Gladwell probably hopes you will purchase it here for US$14.99.  You have your own sources for audiobooks/podcasts.

These are the days of miracle and wonder.  Don't cry, baby, don't cry.

History Podcasts UPDATED

The buzziest history podcast around recently -- judging by the media I see or follow -- must be "Empire," a British project of the historian of South Asia William Dalrymple (pronounced more like "Drymple" judging by how he introduces himself) and Anita Anand (the British TV presenter, not the Canadian politician). Recently their empire of choice was the Russian one, and their guest was starry historian Simon Sebag Montifiore (who uses "Sebag," not "Simon," as his given name, who knew?). Now they are onto the Raj, but still with a focus on Russia and "the great game" (as only the British would name a long cycle of imperial conquests). In the reigning podcast fashion it's chatty, funny, a bit show-offy, full of laughter and fairly superficial as history, but undoubtedly listenable.  

For a more intense, sit up and listen history podcast, I go to Patrick Wyman's "Tides of History." Wyman starts each episode with an intense little imagined scene, and then plunges directly into deep and very academic-research-driven discussions of ... well, whatever takes his interest.  He's followed the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific, Medieval Europe, the Bronze Age collapse of circa c1200 B,C., and the Paleolithic, among many other periods, with excursions into interviews of archaeologists, linguists, and whomever ever catches his interest.

CanHist podcasting? Though I'm a longtime member, occasional beneficiary, and constant admirer of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, I've just learned they too are doing a podcast, "Time Immemorial," presented by two young lawyer-scholars, Preston Lim and Gregory Ringkamp. I have not listened yet, but they look to be deep-divey examinations of various Canadian and Canadian moments, generally with some legal-history aspect.  

The Champlain Society's "Witness to Yesterday," led by Patrice Dutil and Greg Marchildon, is the granddaddy of in-depth history podcasting in Canada, as far as I know. These days, they seem to interview everybody who publishes a worthwhile history in Canada (me included. Thanks, guys.)

It's a growing field and still largely uncategorized, podcasting. What history podcasts are in your earbuds? 

Update, September 19:  Meant to include:  For a real deep dive into niche podcastery by an obsessive Englishman named Andrew Hickey, try "A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs." (New Yorker: "his project is so vast that it can only be compared to, say, the construction of the Oxford English Dictionary.")

History on pod: Parks Canada ReCollections

Slight hiatus there, what with some work things, the Writers' Union AGM online on May 24, and departure the next day for the Creative Nonfiction Collective in-person (and hybrid) conference in Halifax.  How good to be actually going somewhere -- and the conference rocked.

And then last Sunday on the flight home I began to feel unwell, and when I got home my Covid test was positive. The rest of the week has been a bit of a blur, and blogging fell sharply down the priority list (sleep, Paxlovid, sleep), but I can confirm that Covid has not gone away.  Blogging should resume herewith.

In other business, Angela Duffett of Parks Canada got in touch to draw my attention to Parks Canada's new blog ReCollections, a history and archaeology podcast exploring aspects of historic sites research and interpretation from around the country.  It launched in April, and now offers segments from half a dozen sites.

I'd say ReCollections is still finding its feet.  One might expect a natural audience would be among those already with some interest in Canadian history and archaeology, but ReCollections scripts seem to assume no one knows anything (""What you may not know is that one group of Norse explorers were the first Europeans to set foot in North America,") while simultaneouslly plunging pretty deep in the details.  And the big-voice AM radio type announcer/narrator sounds a little at odds with its material.  

But people want podcasts, and ReCollections has lots of scope to find its voice or voices.  Episodes tend to run 30 to 45 minutes, and they are tight -- avoiding that fifteen minutes of material in an hour and twenty minutes of chatter that sometimes the podcast norm.  Take a listen.  

The secret dreams of historians UPDATED

There's a podcast called Tides of History, hosted by an American, Patrick Wyman, that I hear sometimes. It follows the host's interests, but tends to come back to the ancient past, mixing historical and archaeological evidence. Multi-hour examinations of the Polynesian Expansion or of the Bronze Age Collapse, for instance. Its shows tend to be pretty deep dives, featuring longish interviews with scholars you have never heard of.

The other day I was surprised to see an announcement of a freestanding episode in the series with the teaser line:

Every historian I know has a secret dream of writing historical fiction, but few ever do it. Dan Jones, a longtime friend of Tides of History and an outstanding historian, has actually done it: Essex Dogs, his fantastic debut novel about a group of soldiers during the Hundred Years' War, is out now. I talk to Dan about writing historical fiction and what it can...

They do? (Have that secret dream, I mean.) Can't say I do. And if I were to write a novel (I won't), I imagine it would be contemporary and not historical. 

 (Have not listened to the podcast or read the novel mentioned. May do yet.)

Update, March 2:  Helen Webberley responds from Australia:

I would like to offer the opposite position. I was writing a historical blog post (on Canada as it happens), drawing on primary sources as is appropriate for proper historians. But the events were so improbable, I actually thought I had written historical fiction.

Update, March 9:  Russ Chamberlayne:

Your March 1 (sorry, March 01) post on historians writing historical novels seemed to doubt that many do. Could there be more of them that write creative non-fiction instead?

Creative non-fiction has been a literary genre for so long that many practitioners will be aware of the grant money. But for those who aren't, here's the web site of the $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, from the New-York-based Whiting Foundation. It's for those already in possession of a contract (or will be by the April 25 grant application deadline) with a Canadian, U.K. or U.S. publisher. Other grant possibilities (contract or no) are listed at the bottom of the page.

"Creative non-fiction refers to all non-fiction and mixed genre writing shaped by literary sensibilities, devices, and strategies."  -- Betsy Warland, Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing. I'd be okay with historians doing more of that, sure.  

CanHist podcasts

I continue to be impressed by the industry of Patrice Dutil and Greg Marchildon, the podcasters of the Champlain Society, whose "Witness to Yesterday" program pours out a remarkable number of long and well prepared conversations with the authors of recent works of Canadian history.  

From that flood, I recently heard Marchildon talking to geologist-author Nicholas Eyles about his biography of the remarkable geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson, the man who made the earth's crustal plates move. I actually met Professor Wilson once -- some academic function at U of T's Mississauga campus, where he held some title -- and now it feels like l encountered Darwin.  

Speaking of podcasts, props also to Chris Dummitt, who recently completed Season Two of his "1867 and All That ..." up to, well, up to 1867, (and a nice little reference to me took me by surprise in the last episode.).  As he says, there is more of all that:  Season Three will continue up to 1885.

I've been pondering end-of-year best books thoughts, and it occurs to me that Witness to Yesterday might be the best place to find a long list.  But I'd gladly accept nominations of any recent CanHist title that has impressed you.  (See email link at right) 

Update, same day:  Daniel Francis has some ideas:

I want to mention a pair of BC books that should be on anyone’s best of CanHist 2022 list. First is Robin Fisher’s biography, Wilson Duff: Coming Back, a Life, from Harbour Publishing. Among other things Duff, who died in 1976, was curator of anthropology at the provincial museum in the 1950s and 1960s where he played a key role in encouraging the resurgence of totem pole carving and the reclamation of poles from Haida Gwaii. Lots of other interesting stuff as well, and Fisher tells the story well. 

Second is Jean Barman’s new history of BC’s colonial origins, British Columbia in the Balance: 1846-1871, also from Harbour. Like every Barman project, this one is filled with reassessments and revisions of what we thought was a familiar subject.

Is it my imagination or is all the best history being published by smaller regional publishers, not the Toronto-based behemoths?

Podcasting confederation

Have to say I continue to be impressed and intrigued by Christopher Dummitt's blog, 1867 and All That, now in its second season and getting right to the confederation negotiations of 1864. 

I'm biased, no doubt, by the nice things he says about my own work, as here, and by the sense I get that at least some of my takes on confederation have become mainstream. But Chris D definitely has his own approach to the topic, and delves into many stories and situations beyond my coverage.

New at the Champlain Society

It's startling to me, how often now I look at the Champlain Society website and see that either Patrice Dutil or Greg Marchildon has put up a podcast interview with the author of some recent and substantial book about Canadian history that I had not heard of, let along blogged about.  

The latest is Marchildon's interview with political scientist and policy consultant David R. Cameron about The Daily Plebiscite, a collection of his published and unpublished writings on the politics of federalism, nationalism, separatism, and constitution-making over the last forty years or so. It's edited by his colleague Robert Vipond and was published last November.

Also recently, Dutil with Michele Johnson and Funké Aladejebi on Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History (okay, I'd heard of that one)  and with Xavier Gelinas on Lost Liberties: The War Measures Act, and... well, more.  They call it a podcast, but it's a pipeline.

Chris Dummitt notwithstanding

Christopher Dummitt, who we noted here the other day for the new series in his podcast on mid-19th century Canadian politics, also takes an interest in contemporary constitutional issues. Tuesday, March 15, he's the featured speaker for a Zoom-based talk from Toronto's Yorkminster Park speaking series, with co-sponsorship by the Churchill Society. His topic is "What's So Evil about the Notwithstanding Clause?"

1867 podcast returns

"1867 and All That," the podcast deep-dive into mid-nineteenth-century Canadian politics by Trent U historian Christopher Dummitt, returns with a second season starting today. The first season covered political events from the late 1830s to the early 1850s. This one looks to proceed into the confederation period.

Dummitt calls it "a narrative audio history of Canada from the 1830s to 1885." Apart from being earbud-feed for insomniac historians, it looks like both material for Prof. Dummitt's online courses, and eventually much of the draft for a big new book about the period. Smart.

Since it is just him creating it and not one of the major online course creation factories, he is happy to accept support for his historical podcasting here 

Podcast notes: Dummitt on political history

Time on your hands? Historical interests? Interested, I mean, not in mere gossip and trivia, but serious sustained history: Not just Canadian history, not just nineteenth century history, but 19th century Canadian political history?  

Got a podcast for you.

Since mid-January, as if he knew social isolation was coming, almost, Christopher Dummitt who teaches at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., has been producing, once every week, a new episode of his podcast on the political-military history of Canada from the late 1830s though the 1860s: "1867 and All That." Twenty-one episodes so far. 40 minutes or so per episode -- a lot of work, a lot listening.

There is some music, but mostly, it's Dummitt talking to you, and it's no idle-chat podcast. I've been listening to his episodes on the 1840s, and they are a deep dive into names like Sydenham, Bagot, Metcalfe, and other worthies of the struggle for and against responsible government -- people in whom I thought no Canadianist history professor has taken an interest for most of a century. I'm in.

And if you start at the beginning, in the 1830s, there is armed revolutionary violence and all that. Confederation? Yet to come.

History of history in danger

The Champlain Society's Witness to Yesterday podcast continues to produce a flood of long-form conversations about Canadian history with many leading practitioners, and one guesses its listener figures continue to grow.  It's an admirable project.

But I confess I cast a jaundiced ear upon the most recent addition, a conversation between Patrice Dutil and military historian Tim Cook  on "How Canada nearly forgot the Second World War."

Well, no, it did not, I said even before clicking on it. Listening did not convince me otherwise. Cook, a fine and productive scholar and author of many well-received books about Canada's twentieth-century wars, has a new book, The Fight for History, which seems to posit a great consensus to dismiss the Second World War and to disrespect those who fought it. But his discussion with Dutil relies on that tired old trope about how we contemptible Canadians forget and dismiss their history, while other nations -- the Americans and British always prominently cited -- cherish and promote and salute their own histories. 

In fact, any cursory search in American discourse finds many Americans believe their fellow Americans to be uniquely present-minded and oblivious to all but the crudest myths of the American past. The current leaders of Britain's Brexit made their names for their crusade to reverse and overcome Britons' supposed ignorance and disdain for British history. And in France neglect of the glories of French history is always a crise nationale for some politicians and commentators.

I recall reading in the memoirs of Charles Stacey, the official historian of Canada's Second World War army, how he was told he'd better get that work out fast, because after about 1948 no one would care and more. And how he spent the rest of his long life watching in amazement the endless flood of books and memoirs and documentaries on his subject.  Surely military history has always been one of our less forgotten subjects

There is no field in Canadian history, I suppose, of which one cannot say "Too little is known." There is always more to know, and we are, after all, a relatively small country with relatively limited means to produce, market, and distribute our culture, including our historical culture. But I've been a freelance writer about Canadian history most of my life, with precious little support or encouragement from either the academic or the public history establishment. If Canadians did not support their own history, I among others would have had to have found a different line of work a long time ago.

Cook and Dutil's podcast seem to have its own conspiracy going, to neglect the vast libraries of Canadian trade-market and local-history accounts of World War II (and other wars) that have been flowing from presses since about 1946. Surely military history has been one of the most generously supported branches of Canadian history pretty much forever. Every time my friend Patrice says on the podcast, "I've never heard of that," I found myself thinking it was hardly history's fault if he has not read it. Concerning the example given in the podcast of one subject alleged to have been criminally neglected study -- S.S. commander Kurt Meyer's war crimes against Canadian soldiers --  -- here's one notable book on the subject, solid scholarship by a non-academic author, as it happens.)

Tim Cook has made valuable contributions to the immense library of Canada's military history, but he does not convince me that special pleading by veterans' organizations for more attention ever constituted "a fight for history."

Blogger speaks: Real Talk Roundtable

Last summer I met two young men in Toronto, Ajay and Prakash, who were developing a podcast called Real Talk Roundtable: long form conversations on whatever they judged interesting and worthwhile: public policy, culture, finance, journalism.  

And ... Canadian history. I'm pleased to say Real Talk Roundtable is up and launched. I'm one of the interviewees on their first season, and the podcast is up now right here.   

Update, (having listened): That guy Moore, not so clueless as I sometimes think he is, or as tongue-tied either. Credit to Ajay and Prakash for eliciting the good stuff and editing out the not-so. I hope you listen to them.

New history podcast

Eugene Forsey

Christopher Dummitt, historian at Trent University in Peterborough, announces he's launching a podcast.  It's going to be "1867 and All That," an audio-history of Canada 1837 to 1885, produced wit the support of Trent. Chris says:

The goal is to do some pretty fun storytelling about some of the most important parts of our political history. And it’s aimed at people who like history but aren’t professional historians (though my guess is that some historians who like political history will find it fun too).

The program doesn't actually launch until January 2020, but there's a teaser up. (That's the Apple App Store)

Chris also has an article in the current Canadian Historical Review on Eugene Forsey and the fall of the term "Dominion" from Canadian usage.  In it, he returns to Carl Berger's 1970 book The Sense of Power and endorses its argument that in 19th century Canada, "Imperialism was a form of nationalism."  Funny, I went back to that book some time ago and concluded (again) that it is a good, important book but no, imperialism really was a form of colonialism.

History of Suffrage

The Champlain Society continues to pour out episodes in what most be the most productive and most substantial Canadian history podcast, Witness to Yesterday.*  I've just been listening to Patrice Dutil's lively and interesting conversation with Tarah Brookfield about the suffrage movement in Ontario, drawing on her recent book Our Voices Must be Heard, part of the seven-volume UBC Press series "Women's Suffrage and the Struggle for Democracy" on suffrage across Canada edited by Veronica Strong-Boag.

The episode elides one odd and neglected twist in the campaign for the vote. Who could vote in federal elections was made a provincial responsibility in the British North America Act, 1867: whatever electoral rules prevailed in a province applied automatically to federal elections too. The federal government had the authority to secure control over the terms of the federal franchise and did so in by the Franchise Act of 1885. But in 1898 the Laurier government returned that control to the provinces. 

As a result, adult women acquired the federal vote, along with the provincial vote, in provinces that legislated female suffrage in 1916 and 1917. These women -- estimates ran as high as a million --  had their right to vote removed when the federal government regained control of the federal franchise by its gerrymandering legislation of 1917, which permitted only women in the forces or with relatives serving in the forces to vote. This point was extensively discussed in parliamentary debate on the 1917 federal Elections Act. 

*Okay, I've been on the podcast (and Patrice is always after me to promote the Champlain Society, of which I'm a member) but it's true and I'd say it anyway. Witness to Yesterday is also supported by the Hudson's Bay History Foundation and the Wilson Institute of McMaster University.

In Which I Briefly Return to the History of New France

Jumonville Glen in autumn

The Champlain Society runs both an online document publishing forum, Findings/Trouvailles, and a podcast, Witness to Yesterday, and and today I have a little corner of the history of New France in both of them. The document here is the casualty list of the 1754 skirmish at Jumonville, the first skirmish of the Seven Years War, and the podcast here is my discussion with Patrice Dutil of why it is of interest.