History

Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

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

★ From the Tundra to the Trenches

By Eddy Weetaltuk; Thibault Martin (ed.)

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

The Whisky King: The Remarkable True Story of Canada’s Most Infamous Bootlegger and the Undercover Mountie on His Trail

By Trevor Cole

Canadians are sometimes guilty of selling themselves short when it comes to the more colourful aspects of their country’s history. The national predilection for “peace, order, and good government” fosters the impression of a comfortably ... Read More »

April 17, 2017 | Filed under: History, Reviews

Vimy: The Battle and the Legend

By Tim Cook

For the past century, politicians, soldiers, authors, and journalists have argued that that country of Canada was not truly born at Confederation in 1867, but during the First World War, at Vimy Ridge. That April ... Read More »

April 3, 2017 | Filed under: History

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition

By Paul Watson

There is no dearth of books about Sir John Franklin and the 1845 tragedy that befell him and the 129 crew with whom he sailed on the ships HMS Erebus and Terror in pursuit of ... Read More »

March 27, 2017 | Filed under: History

★ Churchill and the Dardanelles: Myth, Memory, and Reputation

By Christopher M. Bell

In 1915, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, seized on an idea to attack the Ottoman Empire by getting a fleet through the straits of the Dardanelles. His hope was that success would ... Read More »

March 6, 2017 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move

By Mary Soderstrom

Montreal-based author Mary Soderstrom has set herself a giant task in Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move – one that begins with the first anatomically modern humans leaving Africa 50,000 to ... Read More »

February 8, 2017 | Filed under: History, Science, Technology & Environment

★ The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century

By Jennifer Welsh

In The Return of History, the 2016 edition of the CBC Massey Lectures, Jennifer Welsh takes umbrage with Francis Fukuyama. In 1992, Fukuyama declared that the end of the Cold War marked the inevitable cessation ... Read More »

October 26, 2016 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love and International Intrigue on the Eve of the Second World War

By Taras Grescoe

Any impression of the smart set’s antics between the 20th century’s two cataclysmic wars instantly conjures the cabarets of Weimar Berlin or the nightclubs and brasseries of 1930s Paris. A more distant but no less ... Read More »

July 25, 2016 | Filed under: History

Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search

By Russell A. Potter

For most people, the announcement in 2014 by then prime minister Stephen Harper that a Parks Canada–led expedition to the Canadian Arctic had discovered the wreck of the HMS Erebus, one of the two ships ... Read More »

July 12, 2016 | Filed under: History

Cold Fire: Kennedy’s Northern Front

By John Boyko

Reviewing John Boyko’s 2013 volume, Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation, I was struck by how deftly the author explained Canada’s involvement in the U.S. conflict, and ... Read More »

February 16, 2016 | Filed under: History

Human Rights in Canada: A History

By Dominique Clément

If Canadian history were a rug, it would be marred by large lumps from the many less-than-wholesome subjects that have been swept underneath. Unafraid to peer under the rug at those unmentionable topics is Dominique ... Read More »

February 1, 2016 | Filed under: History

The Literary Storefront: The Glory Years, Vancouver’s Literary Centre, 1978–1985

By Trevor Carolan

“When i think of Storefront I think of Gastown and the smell of patchouli and dope,” writes Sharon Thesen, “ … and a great caring for poetry. It was where I did my first reading.” ... Read More »

December 16, 2015 | Filed under: History

Franklin’s Lost Ship: The Historic Discovery of HMS Erebus

By Alanna Mitchell; John Geiger

In 1845, legendary British naval officer and explorer Sir John Franklin led two ships on an expedition from England in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. The ships and their crew of 129 people were ... Read More »

December 14, 2015 | Filed under: History

★ History’s People: Personalities and the Past

By Margaret MacMillan

History and biography are often treated as two distinct subjects. The former is considered an academic discipline, focused on serious events that are soberly analyzed using statistics and archival sources. By contrast, the latter is ... Read More »

October 19, 2015 | Filed under: History

Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations

By Eli Rubenstein; March of the Living

In 2014, the United Nations sponsored a touring exhibit titled “When You Listen to a Witness, You Become a Witness.” The photographs and accompanying text comprised profiles and accounts of Holocaust survivors intended to educate ... Read More »

September 17, 2015 | Filed under: History

Empire of Deception: From Chicago to Nova Scotia – The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation

By Dean Jobb

Leo Koretz was the Bernie Madoff of the 1920s. The son of immigrants from Central Europe, Koretz was a Chicago lawyer turned financier who amassed a considerable fortune by convincing insufficiently diligent investors to bankroll ... Read More »

May 19, 2015 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography

Tell it to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo

By Eliott Behar

In today’s historical culture, it’s easy to forget that the criminal actions of groups, like ISIS, dominating our 24/7 television and internet driven news cycle are not unique. Indeed, the human capacity to produce atrocities ... Read More »

March 9, 2015 | Filed under: History

Montcalm & Wolfe: Two Men Who Forever Changed the Course of Canadian History

By Roch Carrier; Donald Winkler (trans.)

There have been many books written on the 1759 conquest of Quebec, some focusing on the defeated Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, others on the victorious James Wolfe. Early in Montcalm & Wolfe, Canadian literary lion Roch ... Read More »

February 5, 2015 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography

Innocence on Trial: The Framing of Ivan Henry

By Joan McEwen

On November 28, 2014, an Ontario Superior Court withdrew a murder charge against Leighton Hay, who had spent the previous 12 years behind bars for a crime that, it turns out, he didn’t commit. According ... Read More »