While waiting for my next book, Becoming Vancouver: A New History, to be published this fall -- delayed by the COVID situation -- I thought I'd introduce the project by telling some "tales of the city."

The death of James Cross last month took me back to October 1970. Not to Quebec, where the main events took place, but to Vancouver, where tragedy turned to...

Why not give the gift of history for Christmas?

While waiting for my next book, Becoming Vancouver: A New History, to be published -- delayed by the COVID situation -- I thought I'd introduce the project by telling some "tales of the city."

You'll recall the mega explosion that destroyed much of downtown Beirut back in August, killing more than 200 people and leaving 300,000 homeless. The cause was the careless...

Back in the day I worked for a while as an oral historian. For three summers I drove the length of the Trent-Severn Waterway in south-central Ontario, interviewing people who had lived and/or worked along the waterway. It was so long ago that I was actually using an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. One summer I got cheap digs in an old house with a group of university students. The house had...