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

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Kent Roach about his book, Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2019.

In August 2016, Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In a trial that bitterly divided Canadians, Stanley was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter by a jury in Battleford with no visible Indigenous representation. In Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice, Kent Roach critically reconstructs the Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie case to examine how it may be a miscarriage of justice. Roach provides historical, legal, political, and sociological background to the case including misunderstandings over crime when Treaty 6 was negotiated.

Kent Roach is a professor of law at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. A thoughtful and prolific author, he has worked on over 13 collections of essays, over a dozen books, and approximately 300 articles on a wide range of topics including criminal law, policing, terrorism, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. Kent has won numerous research and teaching prizes and has been appointed a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Beinecke Library, https://www.flickr.com/photos/23948320@N05/5036265062

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 Asa McKercher and Michael D. Stevenson about their co-edited book North of America: Canadians and the American Century, 1945-60, which will be published by UBC Press in October 2023.

North of America: Canadians and the American Century, 1945-60, is an edited volume that looks at postwar Canada and Canadian-American relations of the 1940s and 1950s. From constitutional reform to transit policy, from national security to the arrival of television, Canadians were ever mindful of the American experience. The volume explores the opinions and perceptions of a broad range of Canadians – from consumers to diplomats, jazz musicians to urban planners, and a diverse cross-section in between. Asa McKercher and Michael D. Stevenson discuss the topics covered in the volume such as international relations in a nuclear armed early Cold War era, domestic politics, and national identity.

Asa McKercher is an assistant professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada. His publications include Canada and the World Since 1867 and Canada and Camelot: Canadian-American Relations in the Kennedy Era.

Michael D. Stevenson is a professor of history at Lakehead University. He is the author of Canada’s Greatest Wartime Muddle: National Selective Service and the Mobilization of Human Resources in Canada during World War II and editor of the 1957–58 volumes of Documents on Canadian External Relations.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Office National du Film du Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives 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, Larry Ostola talks to Norman Poser about his book From the Battlefield to the Stage: The Many Lives of General John Burgoyne, published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2022.

In From the Battlefield to the Stage, Norman Poser provides a rounded biography, covering not only the Saratoga campaign of 1777, but also elements of Burgoyne’s eventful life that have never been adequately explored. Burgoyne was a socialite, welcome in London’s fashionable drawing rooms, a high-stakes gambler in its elite clubs, and a playwright whose social comedies were successfully performed on the London stage. Poser paints a vivid portrait of General John Burgoyne, remembering him not only for his role in one of Britain’s worst military disasters but also as a brave, talented, humane man.

Norman Poser is a retired law professor who enjoyed a distinguished career at the Brooklyn Law School in New York. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Secretary of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. He's the author of several books on eighteenth-century history, including, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2015, and The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick, published by Routledge in 2018.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Empire Spring, Saratoga, Boston Public Library

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 Julian Walker about his book Wires Crossed: Memoir of a Citizen and Reporter in the Irving Press published by Friesen Press in 2021.

Wires Crossed is first and foremost a love letter to the free press. In Julian Walker’s personal memoir as a citizen and reporter, he calls for a healthier New Brunswick free press—one that is more diverse, competitive, independent, and feisty. Through its traditional emulation of KC Irving and his family’s empire, New Brunswick has grown used to one-owner control of two key sectors, the media and large industry. The danger to the New Brunswick free press stems mainly from the wires-crossed relationship between the Irving Press and Irving industry. Walker argues that a strong and independent free press, whether digital or on newsprint, is vital for assuring good government in North America and the survival of liberal democracy itself.

Julian holds degrees in politics from Trent University and the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a journalism degree from Carleton University. Along with his extensive experience as a journalist and newspaper editor, Julian has also worked in government, serving as a deputy minister for 10 years in the departments of the Environment, Municipalities, Culture and Housing, and Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs. He remains dedicated to restoring a freer press in New Brunswick and Canada.

This podcast was 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.

In this podcast episode, Simon Nantais talks to Mary-Ann Shantz about her book What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada published by The University of British Columbia Press in 2022.

As nudism took root after World War II, its Canadian adherents advanced the idea that going nude and looking at other’s bodies satisfied natural curiosity, loosened social taboos, and encouraged mental health. By the 1970s, nudists switched focus to promoting the pleasurable aspects of their practice. Mary-Ann Shantz contends that throughout the postwar decades, nudists sought social approval as they engaged with contemporary concerns about childrearing, pornography, and public nudity. What Nudism Exposes explains the movement’s perspectives while questioning its assumptions, arguing that what nudism ultimately exposes is how the body sits at the intersection of nature and culture, the individual and the social, the private and the public.

Mary-Ann completed her PhD in History from Carleton University and taught at McEwen University in Edmonton before becoming a researcher and a project coordinator with Covenant Health in Edmonton. She has contributed to the edited volume Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History published by the University of Toronto Press. She has also published in Histoire Sociale/Social History and the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Freikörperkultur - Freisonnland Nudist camp, Motzenmuhle Berlin 1930s postcard, Flickr – Posted by Sludge G

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 Thomas Telfer and Virginia Torrie about their co-authored book Debt and Federalism: Landmark Cases in Canadian Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law, 1894–1937 published as part of the Landmark Cases and Canadian Law Series by the University of British Columbia Press in 2021.

Despite having been enshrined in the constitution since confederation, Canadian bankruptcy law eludes straightforward interpretation. Debt and Federalism traces the shifting meanings of the bankruptcy power through four landmark cases in Canadian legal history: the Voluntary Assignments (1894), Royal Bank of Canada vs. Larue (1928), the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act Reference (1934), and the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act Reference (1937). Drawing on archival and legal sources, Thomas Telfer and Virginia Torrie demonstrate how the legal changes introduced by these decisions formed the foundation of modern insolvency law in Canada.

Virginia Torrie is the Editor-in-Chief of the Banking and Finance Law Review. She is a former associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba where she taught bankruptcy and insolvency, and Canadian legal history. She is the author of Reinventing Bankruptcy Law: A History of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. Dr. Torrie holds JD and LLM degrees from Osgood Hall Law School, and a PhD from the University of Kent.

Thomas Telfer is a professor of law at Western University. His teaching and research interests include bankruptcy law, commercial law, and legal history. He is the author of Ruin and Redemption: The Struggle for a Canadian Bankruptcy Law, 1867-1919 and was the co-editor-in-chief of the Canadian Business Law Journal from 2018 to 2022. He was a teaching fellow at the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Western, where he developed a course called Mindfulness and the Legal Profession, as well as developing other mental wellness initiatives for law students and lawyers.

This podcast was 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.

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Malcolm Lavoie about his book Trade and Commerce: Canada's Economic Constitution published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2023.

In recent decades, the economic framework of Canada’s Constitution has been a subject largely neglected by judges, scholars, and commentators. With Trade and Commerce, Malcolm Lavoie fills this gap by bringing to light a lost understanding of how the Constitution structures economic relations. The Constitution includes foundational commitments to property rights, local government autonomy, and the principle of subsidiarity. At the same time, it creates a platform for integrated national markets with secure channels for interprovincial trade. This economic vision remains a vital part of Canada’s constitutional order and is relevant to a purposive interpretation of the Constitution. But contemporary legal discourse has begun to lose touch with this vision, with regrettable consequences in several policy areas. Lavoie explores the implications of the economic Constitution in the context of contemporary issues - including disputes over interprovincial trade and jurisdictional tensions between federal, provincial, and Indigenous governments with respect to the environment and the economy - and with Trade and Commerce, Lavoie restores economic ideas to the forefront of constitutional thinking in Canada.

Malcolm Lavoie is associate professor in the Faculty of Law and a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre of Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta. He is also a practicing member of the Alberta Bar, where he consults on civil, constitutional, and regulatory issues. He received his doctorate in law from Harvard University.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Martin Lopatka, Flickr, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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 Ted Barris about his book The Battle of the Atlantic: Gauntlet of Victory published by HarperCollins in 2022.

In Battle of the Atlantic, Ted Barris provides a well-researched account of Canada’s longest continuous military engagement during the Second World War. The years 2019 to 2025 mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic - the war’s most critical and dramatic battle of attrition. For five and a half years, German surface warships and submarines attempted to destroy Allied trans-Atlantic convoys, most of which were escorted by Royal Canadian destroyers and corvettes, as well as aircraft of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Throwing deadly U-boat “wolf packs” in the paths of the convoys, the German Kriegsmarine almost succeeded in cutting off this vital lifeline to a beleaguered Great Britain. During the desperate days and nights of the Battle of the Atlantic, the Royal Canadian Navy grew to 400 fighting ships and over 100,000 men and women in uniform; by V-E Day in 1945, it had become the fourth largest navy in the world. While Canadians think of the Great War battle of Vimy Ridge as the country’s coming of age, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that proved Canada’s gauntlet to victory and a nation-building milestone.

Ted Barris is an award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. His writing has regularly appeared in the national press as well as a wide variety of magazines. He's also worked as a host and contributor for CBC Radio, PBS, and TV Ontario. Barris is the author of 20 best-selling nonfiction books and is a member of the Order of Canada.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Dave Wright / Library and Archives 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, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Joan Sangster about her book Demanding Equality: One Hundred Years of Canadian Feminism published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2021.

In Demanding Equality, Joan Sangster weaves together various moments of women’s activism over a 100 year period to explore what feminism is in Canada. Sangster delves into the riches of Canadian feminism, beginning with nineteenth-century tracts and continuing beyond the recent intersectional turn. Challenging the popular “wave” theory of feminist history, she argues for the movement’s surprising continuity amid decades of social transformation. This comprehensive study revitalizes a wider public conversation about the diverse movement of Canadian feminism past, present, and future.

Joan Sangster is Vanier Professor Emeritus at Trent University, and past president of the Canadian Historical Association. She has written countless articles about working women in the labour movement, the history of the left, feminist theory and historiography, the criminalization of women and girls, and Indigenous women and the law. She's the author of several influential books, including One Hundred Years of Struggle: The History of Women and the Vote in Canada, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada and The Iconic North: Cultural Constructions of Aboriginal Life in Postwar Canada. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she's held a Killam Fellowship as well as visiting professorships at Duke, Princeton, and McGill Universities.

This podcast was 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.

In this podcast episode, Larry Ostola talks to Steve Paikin about his book John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada's 17th Prime Minister published by Sutherland House in 2022.

In this biography, acclaimed journalist Steve Paikin illustrates the life and times of Canada’s 17th prime minister, John Turner (1929-2020). One of Canada’s most glamorous and successful politicians, John Turner was born in England but raised in British Columbia, Canada. He was a champion sprinter and a Rhodes scholar who captured national imagination as escort for Princess Margaret on her 1959 Canadian tour. Elected to Parliament in 1962, he served in Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s cabinet and as Pierre Trudeau’s attorney general, minister of justice, and finance minister. In 1984, he won a hotly contested Liberal leadership contest and served a brief four months as Canada’s 17th prime minister before falling to Brian Mulroney in a Progressive Conservative landslide. In this surprisingly candid and personal book, Steve Paikin draws on unprecedented access to Turner’s personal and public papers to show how he struggled to meet the towering expectations that came with his abundant gifts and keep his faith in Canadian democracy despite the challenges of his own career.

Steve Paikin is a journalist, author, and documentary film producer. Over the course of his career, he's worked for a variety of media outlets; for the past 30 years he has been a journalist with Ontario’s provincial broadcaster, TVO. He's been the anchor of TVO’s flagship current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin since 2006.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Photo: Picture of John Turner

© Library and Archives Canada. Reproduced with the permission of Library and Archives Canada.

Source: Library and Archives Canada/Duncan Cameron fonds/a046363

Credit: Duncan Cameron

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.