In which we unleash our anti-capitalist sides (again) to discuss how Marxism/communism was brought over into Canada, what it did and how it failed, as well as some lefty writers that sometimes are great and sometimes aren't.

Read some commie poems here! --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); recommended reading (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) --- Contact: [email protected]; Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory). --- Sources/Further Reading

• Doyle, James. Progressive Heritage: The Evolution of a Politically Radical Literary Tradition in Canada, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002.
• Livesay, Dorothy. Day and Night, The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1944.
• McKay, Ian. Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920, Between the Lines, 2008.
• Naylor, James. The Fate of Labour Socialism: The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Dream of a Working-Class Future, University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Patrick sits down with playwright Meg Braem to discuss her play Flight Risk, "an empathetic exploration of grief, friendship, and hope, [which] asks what we lose when we ignore the knowledge of our elderly, challenges the way that we think about aging and death, and inspires a brighter, more compassionate future."   Meg Braem is an Alberta-based playwright and dramaturg. Her plays have been nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award and have won the Alberta Literary Award for Drama, and the Alberta Playwriting Competition.   Find the book here or at your local bookstore. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); the recommended reading page (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) --- Contact: [email protected] & Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory)

In which we discuss the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike in relation to Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion (1987). We get unhinged as we discuss strike tactics, modernism/postmodernism, and Christmas. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); recommended reading (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) ---Contact: [email protected]; Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory). --- Sources/Further Reading:

• 1919: 100 Years Later. CBC, 2019.
• Masters, Donald C. The Winnipeg General Strike, University of Toronto Press, 1950.
• Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion, Vintage, 1987.
• Spinks, Lee. “In the Skin of a Lion.” Michael Ondaatje, Manchester University Press, 2009, pp. 137–70.

In which Patrick talks to Governor General's Award winner katherena vermette to discuss how she brought Métis history to life through her comic series A Girl Called Echo. 

Find the omnibus at your local bookstore or here. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); the recommended reading page (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) --- Contact: [email protected] & Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory)

In which we bring back Covid-19 pandemic memories by discussing the Spanish Flu in Canada with the help of Kevin Kerr's excellent 2002 play Unity (1918).   Sorry for having posted so little in November - it was pure and simple a scheduling mistake. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); recommended reading (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) ---Contact: [email protected]; Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory). --- Further Reading:

• Budgell, Anne. We All Expected to Die: Spanish Influenza in Labrador, 1918-1919, ISER, 2018.
• Darroch, Heidi Tiedemann. “The War at Home: Writing Influenza in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away” and Kevin Kerr’s Unity (1918),” Canadian Literature 245, 2021, pp. 90-104.
• Humphries, Mark Osborne. “Paths of Infection: The First World War and the Origins of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” War in History, vol. 21, no. 1, 2014, pp. 55–81.
• Kerr, Kevin. Unity 1918, Talonbooks, 2002.

In which two tired & sick boys try to talk coherently about Timothy Findley's major literary achievement: a reckoning with the reality of World War One in his seminal 1977 work The Wars. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); recommended reading (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) ---Contact: [email protected]; Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory). --- Further Reading

• Brydon, Diana. “‘It could not be told’: making meaning in Timothy Findley’s The Wars,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, 1986.
• Findley, Timothy. The Wars, Penguin Modern Classics, 1977.
• McKay, Ian, and Jamie Swift. The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War, 2016.
• Novak, Dagmar. Dubious Glory: The Two World Wars and the Canadian Novel, New York: P. Lang, 2000.

There were some audio issues on Phil's end, but I think it's still listenable! Apologies. Patrick sits down with Phil Lind and Robert Brehl to discuss their new book Tales of an Unsung Sourdough: The Extraordinary Klondike Adventures of Johnny Lind. 

Phil Lind is a recipient of the Order of Canada, and the vice-chair of Rogers Communications Inc. His co-author, Robert Brehl is an award-winning journalist and author of a previous collaboration with Lind, Right Hand Man.

Find the book here or at your local bookstore. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); the recommended reading page (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) --- Contact: [email protected] & Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory)

In which we discuss Hugh McLennan's pivotal 1941 book Barometer Rising and how it informs our understanding of World War 1 as it was experienced in Canada.--- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); recommended reading (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) ---Contact: [email protected]; Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory). ---Sources/Further Reading:

• Mac Donald, Laura M. Curse of The Narrows: The Halifax Disaster of 1917, Walker & Company, 2005.
• MacLennan, Hugh. Barometer Rising. McClelland and Stewart, 1989.
• Morton, Desmond. “First World War.” The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Woodcock, George. Introducing Hugh Maclennan's Barometer Rising: A Reader's Guide. ECW Press, 1989.

In which we discuss and rank Canada's first wartime PM, Sir Robert Laird Borden!

Find our ranking so far here.  --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); recommended reading (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) ---Contact: [email protected]; Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory). ---Sources/Further Reading:

• Bliss, Michael. Right Honourable Men: The Descent of Canadian Politics from Macdonald to Mulroney, Toronto: HarperCollins, 1994.
• Bowering, George. Egotists and Autocrats: The Prime Minister of Canada. Penguin, 1999.
• Cook, Tim. Warlords : Borden, Mackenzie King, and Canada’s World Wars, Toronto: Allen Lane, 2012.

Mack is away this week, so enjoy another interview! Patrick sits down with Winnipeg documentarian and writer, Robert Lower (After the Big One: Nuclear War on the Prairies; Shameless Propaganda) to discuss his new book Unsettled: Lord Selkirk’s Scottish Colonists.

Find the book here or at your local bookstore. --- Support: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/historiacanadiana); Paypal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/historiacanadiana); the recommended reading page (https://historiacanadiana.wordpress.com/books/) --- Contact: [email protected] & Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CanLitHistory)