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

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Pierre Anctil and Richard Mekis, the authors/editors of In a ‘Land of Hope’: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923, Volume I, published by the Champlain Society.

In a ‘Land of Hope’ gives a complete overview of Canadian Jewish history up to 1923, for the first time from the point of references to its most salient and significant historical sources. This collection includes documentation from very diverse archives and in many languages, which account for the evolution of Canadian Jewry over three centuries and through a wide array of contexts and circumstances. It prioritizes numerous and diverse Jewish voices (from politicians to workmen and women from across the country) that expressed at different points in time the multiple realities of the Canadian Jewish experience. Organized chronologically, from the arrival of the first Jewish migrants to New France to Jewish-Canadian experiences during and shortly after World War I, this first of two volumes includes sources never before published and highlights the activities, concerns and experiences of individuals that have not until now been heard. The history of Jewish life in Canada, despite its unique character, is an integral part of the broader movement of Canadian society and deserves to be considered on its own merit as one of the many components that forged the unique identity of 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.

In this podcast episode, Simon Nantais talks to Myra Tawfik about her book, For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of the Canadian Copyright Law, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2023.

For the Encouragement of Learning addresses the contested history of copyright law in Canada, where the economic and reputational interests of authors and the commercial interests of publishers often conflict with the public interest in access to knowledge. It chronicles Canada’s earliest copyright law to explain how pre-Confederation policy-makers understood copyright’s normative purpose.

Using government and private archives and copyright registration records, Myra Tawfik demonstrates that the nineteenth-century originators of copyright law intended to promote the advancement of learning in schools by encouraging the mass production of educational material. The book reveals that copyright laws were integral features of British North American education policy and highlights the important roles played by teachers, education reformers, and politicians in the emergence and development of the laws.

It also explains how policy-makers began to consider the relationship between copyright and cultural identity formation once British interference into domestic copyright affairs increased, and as Canadian Confederation neared.

Myra Tawfik is an expert in intellectual property law, especially copyright law, copyright history and capacity-building in IP literacy for start-ups and entrepreneurs. She is the Don Rodzik Family Chair in Law and Entrepreneurship and a Distinguished University Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor.

Image Credit: University Toronto 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 Ken McGoogan about his book, Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2023.

Arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective. Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures, yet, many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discover the Northwest Passage.

This book challenges that vision as it interweaves two main narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy’s Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected lost eleven of his twenty-one men to exhaustion, starvation, and murder. The second discovers a startling new answer to that greatest of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin’s last expedition in 1845?

Drawing on his own research and Inuit oral accounts, McGoogan teases out intriguing aspects of Franklin’s expeditions, including the explorer’s lethal hubris in ignoring the expert advice of the Dene leader Akaitcho. McGoogan will captivate readers with his first-hand account of travelling to relevant locations, visiting the graves of dead sailors and experiencing the Arctic—one of the most dramatic and challenging landscapes on the planet.

Ken McGoogan is a globe-trotting, history-hunting storyteller who has published fifteen books – mostly nonfiction narratives, but also novels and memoirs. His best-selling titles include Dead Reckoning, Celtic Lightning, Fatal Passage, 50 Canadians Who Changed the World, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Flight of the Highlanders.

Image Credit: Douglas & McIntyre

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 Kent Roach about his book, Wrongfully Convicted: Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes, and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2023.

In Wrongfully Convicted, Kent Roach raises awareness about wrongful convictions in Canada at a time when DNA exonerations are less frequent, and the memories of most famous cases are fading. Roach exposes lesser-known cases where defendants feel they have no option but to plead guilty, and where people have been convicted of crimes imagined by experts or police that never, in fact, happened. Roach makes a compelling case for better legislative regulation of police and forensic experts and the creation of a permanent and independent federal commission both to investigate wrongful convictions and their multiple causes. Though the issue affects all Canadians, Roach’s work reveals that the burden of wrongful convictions falls disproportionately on the disadvantaged, including Indigenous and racialized people, those with cognitive issues, single mothers, and the poor.

Kent Roach is a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is also cofounder of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions, and an award-winning author, who has spent his career documenting flaws in the Canadian justice system. Roach served as volume lead for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report on the Legacy of Residential Schools and, in 2015, was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.

Image Credit: Canada. Department of Manpower and Immigration. Library and Archives Canada, e010996348 /

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, Simon Nantais talks to Russell Field about his book, A Night at the Gardens: Class, Gender, and Respectability in 1930s Toronto, published by University of Toronto Press in 2023.

In A Night at the Gardens, Russell Field delves into the history of Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens and the social mores and norms that influenced both its architecture and operation. Drawing on archival records, the book explores the neighbourhood in which Maple Leaf Gardens was situated, the design of the arena’s interior spaces, and the ways in which the venue was operated in order to appeal to respectable spectators at a particular intersection of class and gender. Oral history interviews with former spectators at Maple Leaf Gardens detail the experience of watching the spectacle that unfolded on the ice during each hockey game.

Russell Field is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management at the University of Manitoba, where his focus the socio-cultural study of sport and physical activity. His work includes examinations of global sporting events as sites of resistance and protest, and serves to broaden our understanding of the lived experience of sport within societal contexts.

Image Credit: Canada. Department of Manpower and Immigration. Library and Archives Canada, e010996348 /

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 Keith Mercer about his book, Rough Justice: Policing, Crime, and the Origins of the Newfoundland Constabulary, 1729–1871, published by Flanker Press in 2021.

In Rough Justice, Keith Mercer examines the history of policing and crime in early Newfoundland. It focuses on the period between the appointment of the first constables on the island in 1729 to the establishment of the Newfoundland Constabulary in 1871, now known as the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. This makes the Constabulary the oldest continuous police service in Canada. These early policemen, mostly untrained amateurs, were officers of the court, but they also played important roles in some of the most notable historical events and social crises of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The establishment of the Constabulary in 1871 built upon that strong foundation of community service. Rough Justice weaves that narrative into the larger history of Newfoundland.

Keith Mercer was born in Gander and holds graduate degrees in history from Memorial and Dalhousie Universities. He works for Parks Canada as the Cultural Resource Manager in Mainland Nova Scotia. He lives in Bedford, Nova Scotia, with his wife, Amy, and children, Abby and Sam.

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 Gary J. Smith about his book, Ice War Diplomat: Hockey Meets Cold War Politics, published by Douglas and McIntyre in 2022.

In Ice War Diplomat, Canadian diplomat Gary J. Smith gives his behind-the-scenes insight into the 1972 Summit Series at the height of tension during the Cold War. Caught between capitalism and communism, Canada and the Soviet Union, Smith shares stories from his first overseas assignment in Moscow where he opts for sports diplomacy, throwing off his embassy black tie and donning the blue-and-white sweater of the Moscow Maple Leafs. With unparalleled access to officials, coaches and players on both teams, Smith witnesses this unique and epic hockey series that has come to transcend time, becoming a symbol of the unity and clarity that sports can offer. Fifty years on, the 1972 Canadian-Soviet Hockey Series has gone down in history as a pivotal political event, changing the course of two nations and the world of hockey—the fascinating story in these pages will appeal to history and sports fans alike.

As a young Canadian diplomat to the Soviet Union, and a life-long hockey enthusiast, Gary J. Smith played an integral role in organizing (and sometimes rescuing) the historical 1972 Summit Series. Following this career highlight, Smith’s career spanned 30 years, taking from Israel to Lebanon, West Germany, Indonesia, and beyond. Now retired, Smith continues to consult and feature on documentaries, films and books about this iconic moment in global sports history.

Image Credit: Canada. Department of Manpower and Immigration. Library and Archives Canada, e010996348 /

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 Edward Dunsworth about his book, Harvesting Labour: Tobacco and the Global Making of Canada's Agricultural Workforce, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2022.

In Harvesting Labour Edward Dunsworth examines the history of farm work in one of Canada’s underrecognized but most important crop sectors—Ontario tobacco. Dunsworth takes aim at the idea that temporary foreign worker programs emerged in response to labour shortages or the unwillingness of Canadians to work in agriculture. To the contrary, Ontario’s tobacco sector was extremely popular with workers for much of the twentieth century, with high wages attracting a diverse workforce and enabling thousands to establish themselves as small farm owners. By the end of the century, however, the sector had become something entirely different: a handful of mega-farms relying on foreign guest workers to produce their crops.

Edward Dunsworth is assistant professor in the Department of History at McGill University. His research takes a particular interest in global migration and labour in Canada. Dunsworth completed his PhD in history at the University of Toronto in 2019 and was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at York University in 2019-2020. An active public historian, he is a member of the editorial collective at Activehistory.ca, a founding member of the Toronto Workers’ History Project, and a frequent author of articles for broader audiences.

Image Credit: Canada. Department of Manpower and Immigration. Library and Archives Canada, e010996348 /

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.

Welcome to Witness to Yesterday. This summer, we will be reissuing our top 10 episodes. We hope you enjoy revisiting these with us. The Witness to Yesterday team is working hard, and we're excited to bring you the next new season in September, 2023. Thank you for listening.

Original Episode Description: 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 Saskatchewan in the 1920s. The KKK is revealed as particularly anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and anti-French as well as anti-Black. Though the KKK assumed a much lower profile after the Second World War, it has experienced a bit of a revival with the rise of the Internet. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Welcome to Witness to Yesterday. My name is Greg Marchildon. This summer, we will be reissuing our top 10 episodes of 2022. We hope you enjoy revisiting these with us. The Witness to Yesterday team is working hard, and we're excited to bring you the next new season in September, 2023. Thank you for listening.

Original Episode Description: 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 Indigenous children by non-Indigenous families. She also discusses government-initiated child apprehension policies and programs that separated children from their Indigenous parents and siblings. Allyson Steven holds the Gabriel Dumont Institute Chair in Métis Studies at the University of Saskatchewan where she completed her Ph.D. in Canadian History in 2015. Her own family migrated out of Red River in the 1870s to Saskatchewan.