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

By The Champlain SocietyHistory

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

August 31, 2023 The History of Canadian Spying (2023 Reissue)
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: Greg Marchildon talks with Greg Kealey (professor of history emeritus, University of New Brunswick) on the history of Canadian Spying (RCMP) before CSIS and his book Spying on Canadians: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and the Origins of the Long Cold War (University of Toronto Press, 2017). This podcast was produced by Hugh Bakhurst and Pernia Jamshed in the Allan Slaight Radio Institute at Ryerson University.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
27 min
August 24, 2023 The Origins of the Security State (2023 Reissue)
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: Greg Marchildon talks with Dennis Mollinaro about his book An Exceptional Law: Section 98 and the Emergency State, 1919-1936 (University of Toronto Press, 2017). This podcast was produced by Sumeet Dhami and Pernia Jamshed in the Allan Slaight Radio Institute at Ryerson University.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
23 min
August 17, 2023 Reconsidering the Legacy of Vimy (2023 Reissue)
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: Greg Marchildon talks with Ian McKay (Wilson Institute for Canadian History) about his book (with Jamie Swift) The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War (Between the Lines, 2016). This podcast was produced by Hugh Bakhurst and Pernia Jamshed in the Allan Slaight Radio Institute at Ryerson University.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
16 min
August 10, 2023 The War Measures Act in Canada (2023 Reissue)
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 discusses the uses of the War Measures Act in twentieth century Canada with Xavier Gelinas, the curator of political history at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau and the co-author of Lost Liberties: The War Measures Act, published by the Canadian Museum of History. The discussion examines the origins of this legislation and its application during the First World War, the Second World War and during the October Crisis of 1970. The motivations of the various governments are examined as are the chief victims of the WMA: relatively new immigrants, Japanese Canadians during 1942-45 and dissidents. The WMA is also considered for what it reveals about Canadian political culture. Finally, the difficulties in rendering judgment are explored. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
44 min
August 03, 2023 Mi'kmaq Life before the Europeans(2023 Reissue)
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: Greg Marchildon interviews Matthew Betts, the editor and principal author of Place-Making in the Pretty Harbour: The Archaeology of Port Joli, Nova Scotia published by the University of Ottawa Press. Over the past decade, Matthew and his fellow archaeologists have been digging up artifacts at one of the richest Mi’kmaq sites in Canada. From this evidence, they have been reconstructing the pre-European contact history of the Mi’kmaq in Canada. In his research, Betts relied on the history on the region and people previously published by the Champlain Society. He explores the connection between archaeology and documentary history. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
24 min
July 27, 2023 The Pre-History of Multiculturalism in Canada(2023 Reissue)
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: In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Daniel Meister, the author of The Racial Mosaic: A Pre-History of Canadian Multiculturalism published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2021. This book recounts the history of the concept of multiculturalism in the decades before the establishment of multiculturalism as an official policy of the Government of Canada in 1971. Meister examines this intellectual history through the thinking of three influential individuals: Watson Kirkconnell, Robert England, and John Murray Gibbon. In the process, they explore concepts such as scientific racism, citizenship and folk culture. A recent PhD graduate of the history department at Queen’s University, Daniel Meister is currently an independent historian based in Halifax.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
32 min
July 20, 2023 The Canada-US border: a history of a fluid and unstable boundary (2023 Reissue)
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: In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Benjamin Hoy, the author of A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands. Published by Oxford University Press in 2021, Hoy’s book is a history of the infrastructure, policies, and personnel that were put in place over the past three centuries to create a boundary between the United States and British North America and, subsequently, Canada after 1867. Hoy also examines the impact of this boundary on Indigenous peoples who lived on either side of this border, or on both sides simultaneously. A transnational historian and a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States, Benjamin Hoy is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
37 min
July 14, 2023 The Intrepid James Wolfe (2023 Reissue)
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 discusses the life and military career of James Wolfe, the commander of British troops that conquered Quebec in 1759, with Larry Ostola. Ostola is the editor of the 2021 Volume of the Champlain Society entitled “Your Most Obedient and Affectionate Son”: James Wolfe’s Letters to His Parents, 1740-1759. Dutil and Ostola explore the quality and content of Wolfe’s letters to his parents as he details his rapid climb in the military, the people he meets and the places he visits. Ostola also offers a perspective on the development of Wolfe’s personality and on the task of editing these letters. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://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.
46 min
July 06, 2023 Lasting Legacy: The history of the warships of Point Frederick
In this podcast episode, Larry Ostola talks to Robert D. Banks about his book, Warriors and Warships: Conflict on the Great Lakes and the Legacy of Point Frederick, published by Dundurn Press in 2023.
In his book, Banks provides a detailed history of the shipbuilding at Point Frederick on Lake Ontario and its lasting legacy. Warriors and Warships illustrates this history by including colour archival maps, aerial views, photographs, and 3D reconstructions. Banks highlights this part of Canada’s military history by describing the warships, and the people who built them in Point Frederick, from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. He further recounts the conflicts on Lake Ontario where these vessels played a role, including the War of 1812. Banks also draws attention to the influential figures of Upper Canada of the period, in addition to recounting the everyday lives of the warriors behind the warships.
Robert Banks is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and the University of Toronto. A former pilot, he served as a flight surgeon with the Snowbirds and specialized in aerospace medicine, a field where he's known for his research and his role as an investigator of the space Shuttle Columbia crash. A prolific author, he's published over 30 scientific papers and book chapters and has a long-standing interest in the history of Ontario and Canada.
Image Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1936-39-1
34 min
June 29, 2023 The Life and Times of Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company
In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Arthur J. Ray about his book, From the Frozen Sea to Buffalo Country: The Life and Times of Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1667–1724, published by the Champlain Society in 2022.
Henry Kelsey is remembered for being the first European to travel from Hudson Bay to the territories of the Plains Assiniboine and Cree as a young Hudson’s Bay Company servant in 1690-91. He remained with the Company for another thirty-one years, rising through the ranks to become Governor of Hudson Bay five years before retiring under a cloud in 1722.
Taking advantage of the opening of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Archives in the late 1960s and the voluminous new research in the fields of Indigenous and fur trade history, From the Frozen Sea to Buffalo Country: The Life and Times of Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1667–1724, offers a new look at Kelsey’s papers and includes his previously unpublished Swampy Cree-English dictionary.
Arthur J. Ray is the author of numerous award-winning books and articles on the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He also has been actively involved in offering historical evidence before Canadian courts in aboriginal and treaty rights litigation. Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, Ray’s Life and Death By The Frozen Sea: The York Fort Journals of Hudson’s Bay Company Governor James Knight, 1714-1717 (Champlain Society, 2018) has received wide acclaim for its sensitive appreciation of life at an HBC post in the early years of the 18th century.
This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt.
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.
37 min

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

From the publisher's feed

Immerse yourself in Canada’s history! Witness to Yesterday episodes take listeners on a journey to document a time in Canada’s past and explore the people behind it, its significance, and its…