"It was not the destruction that excited me but the sense of something utterly new coming into being, some fresh, immense possibility of political life, a new community of hope, and above all the strangely inspired note -- like a new language -- that sounded in the voices of those who were witnessing it. It was a glimpse of 'the dream come true', the golden age, the promised land."

While waiting for the polls to close yesterday I was reading Richard Holmes, the British biographer, and...

Several years ago, in Geist magazine, I wrote a column about a pair of books on Acadian history, one of them by the Montreal historian Ronald Rudin. Just recently I've become aware of another project directed by Rudin, a website called Lost Stories. The project seeks out little-known stories from Canadian history and then commemorates them with "...

There is a very disturbing and depressing article about the federal election on The Guardian website today. Is this really the way we want the world to see us, as a country consumed by intolerance and paranoia?

Historians like to draw parallels. I see a lot of similarities between our present political discourse and the Red Scare of 1919 (about which, of course...

There seems to be a bit of a bun fight going on about whether or not to raise a statue on Parliament Hill of Canada's 11th prime minister, the odious R.B. Bennett (I might as well lay my cards on the table). 

Apparently the statue is already in storage, waiting to be installed. Voices have been raised...

There has been a bit of a discussion lately in academic circles about whether Canadian historians have been ignoring early, or pre-Confederation, history.

True or not, a group of Canadianists have set out to prove that "early Canadian history is vibrant" by starting a blog devoted to the subject (which is admittedly very broad). It is called Borealia and can be found here.

"The goal of Borealia is to provide an energetic,...