An Historian Passes

I just dis­covered at the HNN that George Mac­don­ald Fraser, author of the acclaimed Flash­man series of his­tor­ical fic­tion novel, passed away yes­ter­day. His rib­ald con­tri­bu­tions to a true appre­ci­ation of the nuances of Vic­torian mil­it­ary and social his­tory will be missed. I have always looked for­ward to the next install­ment of the Flash­man papers. …

Thompson on the Asymetry of American-Canadian Relations

The Wilson Centre for Cana­dian His­tory was priv­ileged to have John H Thompson speak today on “Man­aging in the Bush Leagues: The Canada-US Rela­tion­ship since 2001.” Thompson’s lively talk was marked by his per­sonal reflec­tions on what it’s like to be an advising Cana­dian, one who has moved per­man­ently to the US and on his …

Glance a Little Further Back to See the Future

Per­haps there is an inner his­tor­ian within me. The latest spate of reviews fea­tur­ing the iPhone versus this chal­lenger and that has me think­ing that at the pace that we move today we don’t take enough time to reach a little fur­ther back to con­sider our for­ward pro­gress. This case in point, every­one eval­u­at­ing the …

How Golden Was Her Age?

I was finally was able to see Eliza­beth: The Golden Age today and was not dis­ap­poin­ted. This a movie worth see­ing at the theatre. The set­tings are sump­tu­ous, superbly shot and Cate Blanchett seems to be able to do no wrong. She is Eliza­beth. I am stay­ing away from his­tor­ical com­ment­ary here. This is a …

Graham and Pauly on the Complexity of Global Relations

The 2007–2008 Wilson series of lec­tures in Cana­dian His­tory kicked off at McMas­ter Uni­ver­sity today. John Weaver, the act­ing Wilson Chair in Cana­dian His­tory, has attrac­ted an excit­ing list of speak­ers for the com­ing year. Lou Pauly spoke on ’Glob­al­iz­a­tion, Polit­ical Author­ity and the Pre­ven­tion of Sys­temic Fin­an­cial Crises.’ He fol­lowed Angela Gra­ham who, less …

Fedunkiw on Diaries as a Historical Source

I atten­ded a lively and effer­ves­cent talk by Mari­anne P. Fed­unkiw at the His­tory of health and Medi­cine Unit. Dr. Fed­unkiw presen­ted her work with the diary/scrapbook of Dr. Dorothea Maude, a rather atyp­ical Eng­lish med­ical doc­tor dur­ing the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury. Dr. Maude was act­ive in the Balkan Wars of 1912–14 and then during …

What Did Parliamentarians Do? The Prequel

In an earlier post, I pondered the occu­pa­tional com­pos­i­tion of the House of Com­mons and its implic­a­tions on policy mak­ing. This posts casts an his­tor­ical gaze on the occu­pa­tions of MPs at Con­fed­er­a­tion com­par­ing the struc­ture with the cur­rent and hypo­thes­iz­ing about the evol­u­tion over the past 160 years. As I men­tioned earlier, I had …

What Do Parliamentarians Do?

A col­league and I were dis­cuss­ing an anec­dotal per­cep­tion that there has been a shift from rely­ing on law­yers to craft policy and laws in Canada towards reli­ance on busi­ness. This post pon­ders how our elec­ted rep­res­ent­at­ives self-identify them­selves and what effect their prior occu­pa­tion might have on their policy mak­ing. This tree chart shows …

Famine Rememberances

Last week­end Toronto ded­ic­ated a starkly breath­tak­ing park/memorial to the Irish Fam­ine immig­rants of 1847. Ire­land Park was opened by Mary McAleese, Pres­id­ent of Ire­land and fea­tures a rather strik­ing memorial wall made up of glass bricks com­mem­or­at­ing those who died dur­ing the exodus and also those who died try­ing to help them. The aim …

Medieval Crime and the Modern Database

I atten­ded a great talk by Steven Bed­narski of St. Jerome’s Uni­ver­sity today. His CV lists UQAM, York, Toronto as places of exper­i­ence. His fram­ing ques­tion today: How does a social his­tor­ian make use of a research data­base? Bed­narski explains that he was trained in the French school and con­siders him­self a storyteller by practise. …