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

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Ravi Malhotra about his books Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley published by University of British Columbia Press in 2021 and Class Warrior The Selected Works of E. T. Kingsley published by Athabasca University Press in 2020, both of which he co-authored and edited with Benjamin Isitt.

In October 1890, Eugene T. Kingsley’s life changed irrevocably while working as a brakeman on the Northern Pacific Railway when he was injured in a fall between two rail cars. While recuperating in hospital after the amputation of both legs, he began reading the works of Karl Marx. Joining a popular socialist movement, his activism eventually brought him to Vancouver, B.C. where he founded the Socialist Party of Canada. Able to Lead traces Eugene T. Kingsley’s extraordinary life, and his political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada, highlighting his profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left. Class Warrior is a collection of Kingsley’s writing and speeches that underscores his tremendous impact on Canadian political discourse.

Ravi Malhotra is a professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He has several postsecondary degrees, including an LLM from Harvard and an SJD from the University of Toronto. An interdisciplinary scholar, his main research interests are labour and employment law, human rights, globalization, and disability rights. He has worked as a researcher for the disability rights organization, Reach, where he contributed to reports about the barriers faced by law students with disabilities. Ravi is a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, and he is an adjunct professor of Critical Disability Studies at York University.

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 speaks with P. Whitney Lackenbauer about his book People, Politics, and Purpose: Biography and Canadian Political History published by University of British Columbia Press in 2023 and co-edited by the late Greg Donaghy.

People, Politics and Purpose presents a collection of micro-biographies on key figures—including lumberjacks, prime ministers, and Indigenous leaders—to reflect on Canada’s political history. These rich histories of individual lives have been compiled by the contributors of this collection to address broad historical questions while presenting critical reflections on the dynamics of Canadian politics and society. Further, this illustrative collection provides insights into Canada’s place in the world and stimulates fresh thinking about political history.

P. Whitney Lackenbauer is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Study of the Canadian North and a Professor in the School for the Study of Canada and the Department of History at Trent University. Whitney specializes in Arctic security, sovereignty and governance issues, modern Canadian military and diplomatic history, and Indigenous-state relations.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image Credit: Gar Lunney/Library and Archives Canada/PA-188614

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 speaks with award-winning author Jim R. Miller about his book Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts its History published by University of Toronto Press originally in 2017 and reprinted in paperback in 2022.

In his book, Miller addresses and explains the institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Providing an analysis of archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.

Jim Miller is a professor emeritus of history and a former Canada Research chair and native newcomer. Relations at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of numerous works on issues related to Indigenous peoples including Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens and Shingwauk’s Vision. Miller authored the first ever accounts of Canada's residential school system and shaped public understanding of issues including treaty rights. He is an officer of the Order of Canada, a winner of the SSHRC Gold Medal for Achievement and Research, and winner of the 2014 Killam Prize in the Humanities.

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 speaks with Dan Malleck about his book, Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before Prohibition published by UBC Press in 2022.

The book explores the history of liquor regulation in Ontario in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Malleck discusses how notions of individual freedom, equality, and property rights were debated, challenged, and modified in response to an active prohibitionist movement and equally active liquor industry. This book helps to demonstrate the challenges governments faced when dealing with alcoholic beverages, particularly within the conceptual framework of liberalism.

Dan Malleck is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University and the director of Brock’s Centre for Canadian Studies. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. He is a medical historian specializing in drug and alcohol regulation and policy. His books include Try to Control Yourself: The regulation of public drinking in post-prohibition Ontario and When Good Drugs go Bad: Opium, medicine, and the origins of Canada’s drug laws. He is also the co-editor, with Cheryl Warsh, of Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the history of alcohol and drugs and the editor of the four-volume primary source collection Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction in the Long Nineteenth Century. He contributes to current discussions on cannabis legalization, the opioid crisis, liquor laws, and drinking policy using historically grounded analysis to provide insight into current issues.

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, Nicole O’Byrne speaks with Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson about their book, Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation published by HarperCollins Canada in 2022. Valley of the Birdtail was awarded the OLA Evergreen award in 2023.

The book weaves together the multi-generational stories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous families to depict a larger picture of Canada’s history. Looking to the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve, the authors showcase the different realities of the people living in these communities, particularly the inequality of education and the long-lasting effects of residential schools. Intricately researched, Valley of the Birdtail incorporates legal histories, political analyses, and the personal histories to reflect on the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians and ends with a hopeful look to the future.

Andrew Adobo Sniderman is a writer, lawyer, and Rhodes Scholar from Montreal. He has written for the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s. His profile of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools won the award for best print feature of 2011 from the Canadian Association of Journalists. He has also argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, served as the human rights policy advisor to the Canadian minister of foreign affairs, and worked for a judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) is the Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He has served as a senior policy advisor to Ontario’s attorney general and minister of Indigenous affairs. Sanderson's research areas include Aboriginal and indigenous legal theory, as well as private legal theory. His work uses the lens of material culture and property theory to examine the nature of historic injustice to indigenous peoples and possible avenues for redress. He is Swampy Cree, Beaver clan, of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

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 speaks to David Charters about his book, Canadian Military Intelligence: Operations and Evolution From the October Crisis To the War In Afghanistan published by Georgetown University Press in 2022. In this book, Charters explores recent Canadian military history, focusing on how tactical, operational, and strategic intelligence impacted Canadian military operations. Using interviews and other documents, he discusses events of the October crisis, the Gulf War, peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, and the war in Afghanistan and demonstrates how military intelligence became a central feature of Canada’s military history. This book offers insight and critical implications for future intelligence support.

David Charters is a retired professor of history and is a senior fellow of the Milton F. Gregg Centre at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of a number of publications on the study of intelligence services and activities.

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 speaks with Lois Harder about her book, Canadian Club: Birthright, Citizenship and National Belonging published by the University of Toronto Press in 2022. Harder explores how Canadians confronted situations in which the certainty of birthright citizenship turned out to be less secure and less unassailable than generally presumed. She particularly looks at the years from 1940s to the present and the development of the Citizenship Act of 1947. The book references court cases and media stories, and highlights “Lost Canadians,” people who discovered they had no legal right to claim their birthright. Harder ends the book with alternative approaches to forming political communities and looks towards a more just and democratic alternative to birth-based citizenship.

Professor Lois Harder is a political scientist and the current Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include citizenship law, social policy, and family law.

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, Nicole O’Byrne speaks to Daniel Rück about his award-winning book, The Laws and the Land: The Settler Colonial Invasion of Kahnawà:ke in Nineteenth-Century Canada published by the University of British Columbia Press for the Osgoode Society Canadian Legal History in 2021. Based on his doctoral dissertation, Rück’s work is a history of the relationship between Kahnawà:ke and Canada and the interference of settler law on Indigenous law. By focusing on land use rights, Rück reveals the ways in which the settler nation conflicted with Indigenous laws and governance of Kahnawà:ke. He further details the tactics of the colonizers in expanding the settler state. The book also investigates larger issues such as legal pluralism, historical racism, inequality, and human relations with the environment.

Daniel Rück is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa in Department of History and the Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies. He is a settler scholar living and working on the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation along the Kitchissippi (also known as the Ottawa River).

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image credit: 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 speaks to Keith S. Grant about his book, Enthusiasms and Loyalties: The Public History of Private Feelings in the Enlightenment Atlantic published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2022. Grant examines the emotions of the communities in Atlantic Canada during the Enlightenment as they grappled with the turnout of the War of 1812, the Loyalist settlement in Nova Scotia, the American Revolution, and other turbulent events of the time. He refers to the journals and other public writings of key historical figures to reveal the deep feelings expressed during the time. From angry mobs to homesick immigrants, passionate patriots to disaffected loyalists, Grant explores how these “private” emotions shaped the public events of the era.

Keith S. Grant is an associate professor at Crandall University, a Christian liberal arts university located in Moncton, New Brunswick. He has a PhD from the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick. Keith has won several prestigious research scholarships for his work, and he is a founding co-editor of the website Borealia: Early Canadian History.

Image credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. R9266-393 Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana

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, Nicole O’Byrne speaks to Colin Campbell about his co-authored book with Robert Raizenne, A History of Canadian Income Tax, Volume One, 1917 to 1948 published by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and the Canadian Tax Foundation in 2022. It is the first installment in a three-volume series on the history of Canadian Income Tax and focuses on the periods of World War I and World War II and the relationship between income tax and the war efforts. The book describes the origins of income tax and its development during the interwar period and its place during World War II.

Colin Campbell is an associate professor of law at Western University. He has an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a PhD from the University of Toronto. He earned his law degree at Western University. He practiced as a tax partner at Davies in Toronto. His practice included tax planning, and he has also represented taxpayers before the Tax Court. He has written extensively on both tax planning and tax administration, but he has a particular interest in tax history.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

Image credit: Canada. Dept. of Interior / Library and Archives Canada / PA-043768

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.