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

Patrice Dutil examines the reach and impact of the Ku Klux Klan in Canada from its beginnings to today with Allan Bartley, author of The Ku Klux Klan in Canada: A Century of Promoting Racism and Hate in the Peaceable Kingdom, published by Formac. The topics include its beginnings in the 1920s as it was led by a combination of Americans and Torontonians and its particularly significant impact in Sa...

In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews former Parks Canada historian Robert Coutts. After his retirements, Coutts did his PhD in history on the meaning and reinterpretation of historic sites. He then turned his dissertation into the book Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada that was published by the University of Manitoba Press in 2021. In the book, Coutts e...

Patrice Dutil explores the 1870 Garnet Wolseley expedition to root out the first Riel rebellion in Manitoba with Ted Glenn, Professor of Public Administration at Humber College and the author of Embedded: Two Journalists, a Burlesque Star and the Expedition to Oust Louis Riel, published by Dundurn Press. Together, they discuss the reportage of Toronto-based newsmen Robert Cunningham and Molyneux S...

In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews historian and ethnographer Jennifer Brown on her two most recent books. The first, Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River: A Irving Hallowell and Adam Bigmouth in Conversation, published by University of Nebraska Press in 2018, concerns the interactions of American anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell and his interactions with the Berens River band on...

Patrice Dutil discusses the impact of Richard Haldane (Viscount Haldane) on the Canadian constitution with John Campbell, the author of Haldane: The Forgotten Statesman who Shaped Britain and Canada (McGill-Queens Univ. Press). They examine Haldane’s life and career as well as his guiding philosophy of keeping government “close to the people” and how it led him to favour provinces in the various j...

Greg Marchildon interviews Elsbeth Heaman on her book Tax, Order and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917 published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2017 as well as her co-edited book Who Pays for Canada: Taxes and Fairness in Canada published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020. A professor of history at McGill History, Heaman’s Tax, Order and Good Government...

Patrice Dutil discusses the slow evolution of Canadian awareness to Indigenous realities with Donald B. Smith, professor emeritus at the University of Calgary, and the author of evolution of Seen but Not Seen: Influential Canadians and the First Nations from the 1840s to Today, published by The University of Toronto Press. The conversation touches on key members of the cultural and governmental el...

Greg Marchildon interviews Nelson Wiseman about his new book Partisan Odysseys: Canada’s Political Parties, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020. Wiseman is professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a scholar with deep historical interests. Professor Wiseman explains why the Conservative and Liberal parties became and remain Canada’s establishment parties at t...

Greg Marchildon interviews Jordan Stanger-Ross about his new book Landscapes of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese-Canadians published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020. Stanger-Ross is an associate professor of history at the University of Victoria and has led a multi-year and multi-collaborative project called Landscapes of Injustice. He and the...

In her book The Art of Sharing: The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces since Confederation, Mary Janigan explores the history of equalization – one of Canada’s most important yet least understood social programs. Based on a simple idea of the federal government redistributing a portion of the tax revenues it receives to lower-income provinces so that they can provide roughly comparable public serv...

Patrice Dutil s'entretient avec Jean-François Godbout, professeur de science politique à l'Université de Montréal et auteur de Lost on Division: Party Unity in the Canadian Parliament (University of Toronto Press). Il n'y a jamais eu de pénurie de gens pour dénoncer l'état de la démocratie canadienne, et l'une des principales accusations est que la discipline de parti étrangle le Parlement. Les dé...

Patrice Dutil talks to Jean-François Godbout, professor of Political Science at the Université de Montréal and the author of Lost on Division: Party Unity in the Canadian Parliament (University of Toronto Press). There has never been a shortage of people decrying the state of Canadian democracy, and one of the chief accusations has been that party discipline is strangling Parliament. There just is...

Greg Marchildon interviews Raymond Blake on his co-authored book Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland’s Rocky Road towards Confederation published by the University of Regina Press in 2019. Although the self-governing colony of Newfoundland sent two delegates to the Quebec Conference in 1864, Newfoundlanders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to join the rest of Canada in 1869. In the decades that...

Patrice Dutil discusses the evolution of the small but influential Portuguese-Canadian community since the 1950s with Gilberto Fernandes, the author of This Pilgrim Nation: The Making of the Portuguese Diaspora in Postwar North America (University of Toronto Press). Though the first root of Portuguese presence goes back to the early days of New France, the modern presence dates back to the 1953 wh...

Greg Marchildon interviews Sasha Mullally on the book she co-wrote with David Wright entitled Foreign Practices: Immigrant Doctors and the History of Canadian Medicare published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020. Professor Mullally’s book is the culmination of many years of research on the history of medicine in Canada. This books reveals Canada’s dependence on immigrant doctors in establ...

Patrice Dutil observes the 50th anniversary of Canada’s policy of Multiculturalism with Donald Forbes, professor emeritus in Political Science at the University of Toronto and the author of Multiculturalism in Canada: Constructing a Model Multiculture with Multicultural Values (Palgrave MacMillan). He discusses the inception of the policy under the government of Pierre Trudeau in 1971 and its evol...

Patrice Dutil meets with Greg Marchildon to talk about how Louis St-Laurent influenced the evolution of Canada during the 1950s. This is to discuss Dutil’s new edited book The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canadas (UBC Press). Louis St-Laurent (1882-1973) was prime minister from 1948 to 1957, a time of economic expansion, but one also marked by social protests, st...

Patrice Dutil meets with Ken Cuthbertson of Kingston, Ontario to talk about how Canada emerged from the Second World War. Cuthbertson is the author of 1945: The Year that Made Modern Canada (HarperCollins). Canada in 1945 is victorious over Nazi Germany and the King government launched an election campaign that will again carry it to power. The victory unleashes passions of all sorts, ranging from...

Patrice Dutil talks with C. Nathan Hatton of Lakehead University about the evolution of wrestling in Winnipeg and Manitoba from the 1880s to the 1930s. Hatton is the author of Thrashing Seasons Sporting Culture in Manitoba and the Genesis of Prairie Wrestling (University of Manitoba Press). The conversation covers the evolution of the sport from its indigenous origins and how it reflected the tens...

Patrice Dutil commémore les campagnes politiques entourant les référendums sur l'indépendance du Québec en 1980 et 1995 avec Xavier Gélinas, conservateur d'histoire politique au Musée canadien de l'histoire. La discussion porte sur les joueurs tels que Pierre E. Trudeau, René Levesque, Claude Ryan, Lucien Bouchard, Pierre-Marc Johnson, Jean Chrétien et Jacques Parizeau. Les problèmes clés et les t...

Patrice Dutil commemorates the political campaigns surrounding the referenda on Quebec independence in 1980 and 1995 with Xavier Gélinas, Curator of Political History at the Canadian Museum of History. The discussion examines the players such as Pierre E. Trudeau, René Levesque, Claude Ryan, Lucien Bouchard, Pierre-Marc Johnson, Jean Chrétien and Jacques Parizeau. The key issues and turning points...

Greg Marchildon interviews Donald Wright on his history of Canada, the only book on Canada included in Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series which boasts 650 books. Wright describes the reasoning behind his thematic organization of his book into six short and highly thematic chapters. The six themes – beginnings, dispossessions, nationalisms, rights, borders and norths – reflect...

Patrice Dutil discusses the evolution of Hockey in Canada with Andrew Holman of Bridgewater University, the author of A Hotly Contested Affair: Hockey in Canada (The Champlain Society volume for 2020). Holman discusses his approach to the book and examines the evolution of violence in hockey, the association of the game with commerce, the cultural importance of the sport and the expansion of women...

Greg Marchildon interviews Pierre Anctil, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa, about his book “A Reluctant Welcome for Jewish People: Voices in Le Devoir’s Editorials, 1910-1947” (University of Ottawa Press). They discuss the hundreds of editorials published in Le Devoir between 1910 and 1947 on the subject of Judaism or Jews. The most respected newspaper in French-Canada, Le Devoir...

Patrice Dutil examines the politics of war in Canada with the noted historian Jack the author of Canada at War: Conscription, Diplomacy and Politics (University of Toronto Press). Granatstein reflects on his long career as a political historian. He discusses his changes of heart on conscription and his focus on William Lyon Mackenzie King. He also reveals his thoughts on the writing of Canadian hi...