★ Beardmore: The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History

In 1936, Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum purchased 10th-century Norse relics from Eddy Dodd, a prospector who said he’d uncovered them on his mining plot in Beardmore, Ontario. The relics were displayed in the museum as ... Read More »

September 13, 2018 | Filed under: History

Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany

By Ted Barris

On May 16–17, 1943, the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron flew on a mission to destroy dams in Germany’s Ruhr River Valley. Twenty-nine of those 133 men, nicknamed “dam busters,” were Canadian. While the raid ... Read More »

August 9, 2018 | Filed under: History

Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction

By Travis Lupick

Vancouver’s Downtown eastside might qualify as ground zero for drug addiction in Canada – the locus for everything from heroin and crack cocaine to crystal meth, Oxycontin, and fentanyl. Travis Lupick, a journalist with experience ... Read More »

January 12, 2018 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

★ Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic

By Kenn Harper

On March 15, 1920, Robert Janes was shot and killed on Baffin Island. The man who killed him was Nuqallaq, an Inuk. Neither Nuqallaq nor the witnesses to the killing ever denied these basic facts. ... Read More »

November 15, 2017 | Filed under: History, Native Peoples

Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

By Ken McGoogan

The Arctic adventures of explorers like Sir John Franklin are familiar to the many Canadians who harbour a seemingly insatiable interest in the discovery of the Northwest Passage. But for every white man obsessed with ... Read More »

October 2, 2017 | Filed under: History

The Sea Was in Their Blood: The Disappearance of the Miss Ally’s Five-Man Crew

By Quentin Casey

On February 17, 2013, five men set out from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia, aboard a 12-metre fishing boat called the Miss Ally. Despite a non-functional spotlight and warnings that a massive winter storm was approaching, ... Read More »

July 4, 2017 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography

★ The Ghost Orchard: The Hidden History of the Apple in North America

By Helen Humphreys

Clad in wool and plaid, pumpkin spice latte in hand, we might find our yearly autumnal excursion to the apple orchard not quite the same after reading Helen Humphreys’s latest book, a fascinating glimpse into ... Read More »

June 22, 2017 | Filed under: Food & Drink, History

Arrival: The Story of CanLit

By Nick Mount

The vicissitudes of time and gentrification notwithstanding, it can be difficult to comprehend Toronto through its writers. The bust of poet Gwendolyn MacEwen, who dropped out of school in 1959 at age 18 to teach ... Read More »

June 22, 2017 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture, History

From the Klondike to Berlin: The Yukon in World War I

By Michael Gates

A historian’s goal should always be to find a story that has not been told, or to find an old story and tell it a new way. Two new books, both about people in the ... Read More »

May 18, 2017 | Filed under: History, Reviews

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