Daniel Francis

Reading the National Narrative

March 2019

March 27, 2019

Today's New York Times has an article about the Nanaimo Bar, that custardy treat that according to the Times all of us up here north of the border just can't get enough of. (Does that make me less of a Canadian? I have never liked them, too sweet.) There is even a recipe.

The origin of the bars has always been hard to pin down. The Times puts it in the 1950s and suggests that they were...

March 22, 2019

The new issue of Canada's History, just out, contains a small contribution from myself, a review of Rick James's book about rum-running on the BC coast. But the main feature in the mag is an article by James Naylor assessing the significance of the Winnipeg General Strike.

This year is the centenary of the strike, which took place in the spring of 1919. It came at the end of a...