Witness to Yesterday (The Champlain Society Podcast on Canadian History)

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Daniel J. Robinson,. He is the author of Cigarette Natio: Business, Health, and Canadian Smokers, 1930–1975 published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2021. Robinson’s account illustrates how smoking became a habit for over half of Canadians, both men and women, by the early postwar period. This book is part of a new McGill-Queen’s “Intoxica...

Patrice Dutil talks with Michael McGregor about the controversial electoral campaign that took place in Toronto in 2014 when the Mayor, Rob Ford, suddenly resigned. The battle between Olivia Chow, Doug Ford and John Tory attracted unprecedented levels of attention and interest. The particularities of that race, as well as the condition of democracy at the municipal level across Canada is discussed...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Diana Nemiroff. A former curator of contemporary and modern art at the National Gallery of Art and former director of the Carleton University Art Gallery and an adjunct professor of art history at both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, she is well placed to write this definitive history of the transformation of the National Galler...

Patrice Dutil talks with Joy Porter of the University of Hull (UK) about her latest book, an exploration of the poet Frank Prewett, Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett. It is published by Bloomsbury Press. Prewett, a product of rural Ontario and the University of Toronto, suffers terrible shell shock in April 1917. From that point, he will experience many diffe...

Patrice Dutil talks discusses the experience of military officer training on campus during the twentieth century with Eric McGeer. McGeer’s book is Varsity’s Soldiers: The University of Toronto Contingent of the Canadian Officers’ Training Corps, published by the University of Toronto Press. Among the topics discussed are the experience during the Fenian raids in 1866, the expedition to the North-...

Patrice Dutil considers the evolution of the Governor General’s literary awards with Andrew David Irvine the author of Canada’s Storytellers: The GG Literary Award Laureates (University of Ottawa Press). The origins of the award in the 1930s under the auspices of John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir) are discussed as are the many winners over the past eighty years. Andrew David Irvine talks about the vari...

Patrice Dutil talks with Michael Boudreau and Bonnie Huskins about what they discovered about working class culture in Saint John, New Brunswick in the post 1945 era. They discuss Ida Martin’s 50-year diary and what it reveals about her society. Ida Martin ideas about family, work, marriage, social solidarity, and politics are explored. Her diary demonstrates an active mind concerned with daily wo...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Brittany Luby, an associate professor of history at the University of Guelph. Her new book Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory was published by the University of Manitoba Press in 2020. Dammed is a history of natural resource development in the lands of the Anishinaabe in northwestern Ontario. Dr. Luby is the many-g...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Dr. Nadia Jones-Gailani on her book Transnational Identity and Memory Making in the Lives of Iraqi Women in Diaspora. Published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020, this book focuses on the individual life histories of Iraqi women refugees who have ended up in Canada and the United States. Dr. Jones-Gailani explores the shaping of identity...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Laurie K. Bertram on her book The Viking Immigrants: Icelandic North America published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020. In her book, Dr. Bertram takes everyday forms such as clothing, baking, coffee-drinking, ghost stories, and the symbolic objects used in public festivals to explore the history and evolution of Icelandic popular cultu...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Eric Sager on his new book Inequality in Canada: The History and Politics of an Idea published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in December 2020. An history of how inequality has been understood and interpreted by Canadians from the 1830s until the end of the 20th century, Sager has written an ambitious book covering almost two centuries of int...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Robert Boschman on his new book White Coal City: A Memoir of Place & Family published by the University of Regina Press in 2021. Part memoir and part history, his book is a unique reflection on the continuing impact of past trauma, both familial and societal. Place is central in his account. Although Prince Albert (PA) is the focal point, the boo...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Indigenous rights litigator Jean Teillet on her book The Northwest is our Mother: The story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation published by Harper Collins in 2019. Covering the evolution of the Métis as a people and nation since the 1790s, Teillet presents us with an highly crafted epic narrative. The great-grandniece of Louis Riel, the aut...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Ian McKay on his co-authored book Radical Ambition: The New Left in Toronto published by Between the Lines Press in 2019. Co-authored with Peter Graham, Radical Ambition won the Floyd S. Chalmers Award in Ontario History, an award that is administered by the Champlain Society. Influenced by protests against the Vietnam War in the United States an...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Steve Schwinghamer, the co-author along with Jan Raska of Pier 21: A History published by the University of Ottawa Press as part of its Mercury series in 2020. Between 1928 and 1971, Pier 21 was the main gateway for immigrants arriving in Canada and was transformed as the site for the Canadian Museum of Immigration. Th author is an historian in t...

Patrice Dutil talks with Heidi Bohaker, Professor History at the University of Toronto, about the symbols various Anishinaabe communities used to identify themselves in their vast territory during the 17th and 18th centuries. Bohaker makes the point that these doodems were symbolic of various constitutional arrangements as well as social and legal codes. She also discusses how they evolved with ti...

In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Sarah Carter on her book Ours by Every Law of Right and Justice: Women and the Vote in the Prairie Provinces published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2020. She examines the reasons why Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were the first provinces to extend the vote to women in 1916 and why this same franchise was not extended to First Natio...

In this podcast, Greg Marchildon interviews Cole Harris, the author of A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2020. This books brings together some of the major chapters and articles written by Harris in his long career as one of Canada’s most prominent historical geographers. These essays cover Indigenous pre-con...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews James Daschuk, the author of Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Indigenous Life, a new edition of which was published by the University of Regina Press in 2019. Daschuk’s book focuses on the pre- and post-contact history of Indigenous peoples in the Great Plains of North America, focusing on the Canadian portion...

Greg Marchildon interviews Patrizia Gentile on her book Queen of the Maple Leaf: Beauty Contests and Settler Femininity published by UBC Press in 2020. An associate professor of human rights, social justice and gender studies at Carleton University, Gentile has written a cultural history of beauty contests in Canada that pays attention to the evolving perceptions of femininity among contest organi...

Patrice Dutil talks with about the visit to Canada of John Lennon and Yoko Ono with Greg Marquis, Professor in the Department of History and Politics at University of New Brunswick at Saint John and the author of John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada was Cool, published by Lorimer. Among the topics discussed are John Lennon’s politics in 1969 as well as his relationship with Yoko Ono and the B...

In this podcast, Greg Marchildon interviews Philip Girard, the co-author, along with Jim Phillips and Blake Brown, of A History of Law in Canada, Volume 1: Beginnings to 1866 published by the University of Toronto Press in 2018. Girard explains the ways in which Canadian legal culture historically draws upon Indigenous, French and British legal traditions. He also discusses the historical pathways...

Patrice Dutil welcomes Stephen Davidson to discuss the origins and experiences of black loyalists in New Brunswick in the late eighteenth century. Davidson is the author of Black Loyalists in New Brunswick: The lives of Eight African Americans in Colonial New Brunswick, published by Formac. Among the topics discussed are the general phenomenon of Loyalism in Canada and the state of historical stud...

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews legal scholar Martin L. Friedland on his biography of one of Canada’s most prominent legal and constitutional scholars of the 20th century. His book - Searching for W.P.M. Kennedy: The Biography of an Enigma was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020. Friedland came into possession of Kennedy’s correspondence and other documents aft...

In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Allyson Stevenson on her book Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Decolonization of Indigenous Kinship published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020. She explores the reasons that the Saskatchewan government – and other provincial governments in Canada – established policies that results in the adoption of thousands of Ind...