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

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If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to John Ibbitson about his book, The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada published by Signal in October 2023.

One of Canada’s foremost authors and journalists, Ibbitson offers a gripping account of the contest between John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson, two prime ministers who fought each other relentlessly, but who between them created today’s Canada.

The Duel is a tale of two men, children of Victoria, who led Canada into the atomic age: each the product of his past, each more like the other than either would ever admit, fighting each other relentlessly while together forging the Canada we live in today. To understand our times, we must first understand theirs.

John Ibbitson is Writer at Large for the Globe and Mail, having also served as chief political writer, political affairs columnist and bureau chief in Washington and Ottawa. A winner of the Governor General's Award, Ibbitson has been shortlisted for the Donner Prize, the National Newspaper Award, the Trillium Award, and the City of Toronto Book Award.

Image Credit: Signal

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Larry Ostola talks to David MacKenzie about his book, King and Chaos: The 1935 Canadian General Election, published by UBC Press in June 2023.

In 1935, Canadians went to the polls against a backdrop of the Great Depression and deteriorating international conditions. This election was like no other, as five major parties competed for voters who were used to a traditional slate of Liberals versus Conservatives. King and Chaos examines the issues, personalities, and significance of this turning point in Canadian political history.

More than anything else, the election was a referendum on Conservative prime minister R.B. Bennett, whose name had become synonymous with hard times. As his government and his party splintered under the weight of outdated Tory policies, the opposition Liberals watched the destruction. Meanwhile, the newly minted Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, Social Credit Party, and Reconstruction Party broadened the electoral base, bringing working-class Canadians – and working-class issues – more directly into the political process.

King and Chaos demonstrates that the advent of third parties permanently changed the political landscape. And while other countries turned to dictators and demagogues, King delivered a less radical, but equally important, change: an effective electoral machine and a national coalition comprising the two major linguistic groups that dominated Canadian politics for the next generation.

David MacKenzie is a professor with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of History. His main areas of academic interest are in Canadian history and international relations and the study of international organizations.

Image Credit: UBC Press

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to James Naylor, Rhonda L. Hinther, and Jim Mochoruk about their book, For a Better World: The Winnipeg General Strike and the Workers' Revolt, published by UMP in September 2022.

Canada’s largest and most famous example of class conflict, the Winnipeg General Strike, redefined local, national, and international conversations around class, politics, region, ethnicity, and gender. The Strike’s centenary occasioned a re-examination of this critical moment in working-class history, when 300 social justice activists, organizers, scholars, trade unionists, artists, and labour rights advocates gathered in Winnipeg in 2019.

Editors Naylor, Hinther, and Mochoruk depict key events of 1919, detailing the dynamic and complex historiography of the Strike and the larger Workers’ Revolt that reverberated around the world and shaped the century following the war.

For a Better World interrogates types of commemoration and remembrance, current legacies of the Strike, and its ongoing influence. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the Winnipeg General Strike continues to mobilize—revealing our radical past and helping us to think imaginatively about collective action in the future.

James Naylor is the author of The Fate of Labour Socialism: The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Dream of a Working-Class Future (2016). He is a professor of history at Brandon University.

Rhonda L. Hinther is a professor in the Department of History at Brandon University, and an active public historian. Prior to joining BU, she served as Director of Research and Curation at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and, before that, as Curator of Western Canadian History at the Canadian Museum of History. She is the co-editor of Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies.

Jim Mochoruk has taught at the University of North Dakota since 1993. His books include Formidable Heritage: Manitoba’s North and the Cost of Development, 1870 to 1930.

Image Credit: UMP

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Richard Menkis and Pierre Anctil about their book, the 2023 volume of the Champlain Society, In a ‘Land of Hope’: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923, published by University of Toronto Press in 2023.

The first of two volumes, In a Land of Hope presents a uniquely complete overview of Canadian Jewish history up to 1923, from primary perspectives and over 150 significant historical sources. This collection includes documentation from diverse archives in many languages, accounting for the evolution of Canadian Jewry over three centuries, from the arrival of the first Jewish migrants to New France in the early 17th century to the period shortly after World War I. Featuring politicians and members of the working class, the volume prioritizes diverse voices and expresses the multiple realities of the Canadian Jewish experience over time. The history of the Jewish diaspora in Canada is an integral part of the broader progression of Canadian society and its multicultural identity.

Richard Menkis is an associate professor of Medieval and Modern Jewish History at the University of British Columbia, where he specializes in the history of Jewish experiences in Canada.

Pierre Anctil is a full professor at the University of Ottawa, where he teaches contemporary Canadian history with a particular interest in the history of immigration in Québec and in Canada, and Jewish culture in Montreal.

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Larry Ostola talks to Patrice Dutil about his book, Statesmen, Strategists & Diplomats: Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy, published by UBC Press in June 2023.

Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats explores how prime ministers from Sir John A. Macdonald to Justin Trudeau have shaped foreign policy by manipulating government structures, adopting and rejecting options, and imprinting their personalities on the process. Contributors provide fresh, sometimes surprising perspectives on a wide range of policy decisions – increasing or decreasing department budgets, forming or ending alliances, pursuing trade relationships, and the management of the prime minister’s personal diplomacy – particularly as these choices affected the bureaucracies that deliver foreign policy diplomatically and militarily.

No other book has been devoted to a systematic analysis of the central role of Canadian prime ministers in fashioning foreign policy. This innovative focus is destined to trigger a new appreciation for the formidable personal attention and acuity involved in a successful approach to external affairs.

This original work will appeal to those interested in the work of Canadian prime ministers and the making of foreign policy; to scholars and students of Canadian foreign policy and its history; and broadly to Canadian historians, political scientists, and scholars of public administration.

Patrice Dutil is a professor of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden and Devil’s Advocate: Godfroy Langlois and the Politics of Liberal Progressivism in Laurier’s Quebec. Among his many edited books are The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada and Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies (with Roger Hall). He was the founding editor of the Literary Review of Canada (1991–96) and president of the Champlain Society (2010–17).

Image Credit: UBC Press

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Greg Marchildon talks to John M. Dirks about his book, A Co-operative Disagreement: Canada-United States Relations and Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-93, published by UBC Press in August 2022.

John Dirks investigates efforts at the senior and working levels of Canada-US diplomacy and bureaucracy to find mutually advantageous ways of cooperating, despite their respective approaches to revolutionary Cuba. When Washington sought the downfall of the communist regime through political isolation and economic strangulation, Canada had deep commercial ties with Cuba and chose engagement instead. These differences in policy created the potential for significant friction, but the burden fell on Canada, as the smaller power, to initiate mitigation strategies. Ultimately, these two North American powers continued to adhere to the hard policy boundaries set by their own governments while establishing a mutually beneficial relationship on issues of intelligence, travel, and other areas of engagement with Cuba.

Drawing on archival documents from both sides of the border, many newly declassified, this comprehensive study reveals how officials in Ottawa and Washington managed to preserve bilateral harmony despite ongoing policy divergence.

Based on deft and thorough archival research, this work will appeal not only to scholars of Canadian foreign policy, diplomatic history, and political history but also to diplomats and others working in the foreign policy field.

John M. Dirks is a historian and professional archivist. Now with the City of Toronto, he taught for several years in the International Relations Program at Trinity College, University of Toronto.

Image Credit: UBC Press

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Jonathan Swainger about his book “The Notorious Georges: Crime and Community in British Columbia’s Northern Interior, 1909-25”, published by UBC Press in 2023.

In The Notorious Georges, Jonathan Swainger explores how the local pursuit of respectability collided with caricatures of a riotously ill-mannered settlement frontier of Prince George, British Columbia, in its early years. Anxious that the Georges were being overlooked by the provincial government and venture capitalists, municipal leaders blamed Indigenous and mixed-heritage people, non-preferred immigrants, and transient laborers for local crime. Swainger combs through police and legal records, government publications, and media commentary to demonstrate that the reputation was not only exaggerated, but also unfair as “respectable” white residents were responsible for the lion’s share of the disorder.

This lively account ultimately tells us about more than a particular community’s identity. It also sheds light on small-town disaffection and unease with a diminished place in modern Canada.

Readers interested in the history of the Canadian West, and in particular crime, social reform, and community history, will find this a fascinating and accessible exploration of the northern BC interior.

Jonathan Swainger has been a professor of history at the University of Northern British Columbia since 1992. After eight years teaching in the Peace River region, he relocated to the main campus in Prince George where he has worked since 2001. His research interests are Canadian legal and crime history, and he is particularly interested in crime in the Peace River region from that took place between 1910 to 1960.

Image Credit: UBC Press

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Jonathan Swainger about his book “The Notorious Georges: Crime and Community in British Columbia’s Northern Interior, 1909-25”, published by UBC Press in 2023.

In The Notorious Georges, Jonathan Swainger explores how the local pursuit of respectability collided with caricatures of a riotously ill-mannered settlement frontier of Prince George, British Columbia, in its early years. Anxious that the Georges were being overlooked by the provincial government and venture capitalists, municipal leaders blamed Indigenous and mixed-heritage people, non-preferred immigrants, and transient laborers for local crime. Swainger combs through police and legal records, government publications, and media commentary to demonstrate that the reputation was not only exaggerated, but also unfair as “respectable” white residents were responsible for the lion’s share of the disorder.

This lively account ultimately tells us about more than a particular community’s identity. It also sheds light on small-town disaffection and unease with a diminished place in modern Canada.

Readers interested in the history of the Canadian West, and in particular crime, social reform, and community history, will find this a fascinating and accessible exploration of the northern BC interior.

Jonathan Swainger has been a professor of history at the University of Northern British Columbia since 1992. After eight years teaching in the Peace River region, he relocated to the main campus in Prince George where he has worked since 2001. His research interests are Canadian legal and crime history, and he is particularly interested in crime in the Peace River region from that took place between 1910 to 1960.

Image Credit: UBC Press

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Tim Cook about his book, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers: Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War, published by Penguin Canada in 2023.

Based on deep archival research and unpublished letters of soldiers and medical personnel, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is a powerful narrative that reveals how medical services supported the soldiers at the front during World War I and, in turn, shaped Canadian public health. Cook offers a definitive medical history of the Great War, bringing to light shocking revelations of the brutality of combat and the necessity of agonizing battlefield decisions, which led to unimaginable strain for the heroic men and women who fought to save the lives of soldiers.

After the war, the hard lessons learned by doctors and nurses weren’t the only things they brought back to Canada: Cook exposes the disturbing story of medical doctors harvesting body parts in medical units behind the lines, in the name of medical innovation and education. This uncovered history has never been told before and is part of the hidden legacy of the war.

Tim Cook is Chief Historian and Director of Research at the Canadian War Museum. His bestselling books have won multiple awards, including three Ottawa Book prizes for Literary Non-Fiction and two C.P. Stacey Awards for the best book in Canadian military history. Cook is a frequent commentator in the media, a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the Order of Canada.

Image Credit: Penguin Canada

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.