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

April 01, 2021 A New Perspective on The 1870 Red River Expedition
Patrice Dutil explores the 1870 Garnet Wolseley expedition to root out the first Riel rebellion in Manitoba with Ted Glenn, Professor of Public Administration at Humber College and the author of Embedded: Two Journalists, a Burlesque Star and the Expedition to Oust Louis Riel, published by Dundurn Press. Together, they discuss the reportage of Toronto-based newsmen Robert Cunningham and Molyneux St. John as well as the role played by Kate Ranoe, an actress and comedienne. All three were “embedded” with the Wolseley expedition and provided particularly distinctive coverage of the historic event. 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.
35 min
March 25, 2021 Jennifer Brown on the history and ethnography of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Northwest
In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews historian and ethnographer Jennifer Brown on her two most recent books. The first, Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River: A Irving Hallowell and Adam Bigmouth in Conversation, published by University of Nebraska Press in 2018, concerns the interactions of American anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell and his interactions with the Berens River band on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. The second book, An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations (published by Athabasca University Press in 2017) is a compilation of Professor Brown’s most influential articles – essays that have reshaped the historiography of Indigenous-settler relations and the role of women. From 1983 until 2008, Jennifer Brown was a professor as well as Director of the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg. Since retirement, she has continued to research and write.
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.
39 min
March 17, 2021 Viscount Haldane: The Unknown Father of Confederation
Patrice Dutil discusses the impact of Richard Haldane (Viscount Haldane) on the Canadian constitution with John Campbell, the author of Haldane: The Forgotten Statesman who Shaped Britain and Canada (McGill-Queens Univ. Press). They examine Haldane’s life and career as well as his guiding philosophy of keeping government “close to the people” and how it led him to favour provinces in the various judgements he rendered on the Canadian constitution while he sat on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
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.
55 min
March 11, 2021 Tax, Order and Good Government: Historical views on tax fairness in Canada
Greg Marchildon interviews Elsbeth Heaman on her book Tax, Order and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917 published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2017 as well as her co-edited book Who Pays for Canada: Taxes and Fairness in Canada published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020. A professor of history at McGill History, Heaman’s Tax, Order and Good Government wom the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize and the Canada Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Both books focus on the perceived fairness and unfairness of government taxation. The National Policy of tariff protection in 1879 and the introduction of the first income tax in 1917 mark major changes in tax policy and posed essential questions of political and legal legitimacy.
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
March 03, 2021 Blindness to Indigenous Realities
Patrice Dutil discusses the slow evolution of Canadian awareness to Indigenous realities with Donald B. Smith, professor emeritus at the University of Calgary, and the author of evolution of Seen but Not Seen: Influential Canadians and the First Nations from the 1840s to Today, published by The University of Toronto Press. The conversation touches on key members of the cultural and governmental elite, including John A. Macdonald, Duncan Campbell Scott, Emily Carr and Jacques Rousseau. 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.
31 min
February 26, 2021 The History of Political Parties in Canada
Greg Marchildon interviews Nelson Wiseman about his new book Partisan Odysseys: Canada’s Political Parties, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2020. Wiseman is professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a scholar with deep historical interests. Professor Wiseman explains why the Conservative and Liberal parties became and remain Canada’s establishment parties at the federal level and in many provinces. He also traces the origins and evolution of parties of protest and regional parties such as the CCF-NDP and the Bloc Québécois – what he calls “disrupter” parties – and how they came to challenge the dominant parties in some parts of the country. He also delves into the history of minority governments and the separation between the federal and provincial wings of political parties.
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.
39 min
February 18, 2021 New Perspectives on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese-Canadians
Greg Marchildon interviews Jordan Stanger-Ross about his new book Landscapes of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese-Canadians published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020. Stanger-Ross is an associate professor of history at the University of Victoria and has led a multi-year and multi-collaborative project called Landscapes of Injustice. He and the project researchers have produced a major work on the historical details of the Japanese internment which began in 1942 as well as the forced sale of their homes and businesses. Professor Stanger-Ross recounts some of the lesser known details of this tragedy, including the way in which the federal Royal Commission on Japanese Claims (1947-51) addressed, and did not address, the claims of Japanese-Canadians in the years following the Second World War.
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
February 11, 2021 The History of Equalization in Canada
In her book The Art of Sharing: The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces since Confederation, Mary Janigan explores the history of equalization – one of Canada’s most important yet least understood social programs. Based on a simple idea of the federal government redistributing a portion of the tax revenues it receives to lower-income provinces so that they can provide roughly comparable public services at roughly comparable provincial rates of taxation to other provinces, this program has been criticized by wealthier provinces from the beginning. In her interview with Greg Marchildon, Dr. Janigan describes the origins of the idea in the Commonwealth Grants Commission in Australia and how Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent’s government set up the first formal program and how this programs has been refined since. Dr. Janigan describes the importance of equalization in keeping Canada more unified over time.
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
February 05, 2021 Comment les partis politiques ont imposé une discipline totale au Canada
Patrice Dutil s'entretient avec Jean-François Godbout, professeur de science politique à l'Université de Montréal et auteur de Lost on Division: Party Unity in the Canadian Parliament (University of Toronto Press). Il n'y a jamais eu de pénurie de gens pour dénoncer l'état de la démocratie canadienne, et l'une des principales accusations est que la discipline de parti étrangle le Parlement. Les députés n’ont tout simplement pas assez d’occasions de parler ouvertement et sans crainte de représailles, que ce soit à la Chambre des communes ou même en dehors du Parlement. Beaucoup soutiennent que la mainmise étouffe l'innovation, le renouvellement du parti et, dans le cas d'un parti majoritaire, soutient les premiers ministres même lorsqu'ils le méritent à peine. Mais comment en est-il arrivé là ? Où sont passés tous les « agents libres » parlementaires ? Y a-t-il jamais eu un âge d'or où les parlementaires canadiens pouvaient rivaliser avec leurs collègues du Congrès, de la Chambre des communes britannique ou de l'Assemblée nationale en France ? Ce podcast a été produit par 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.
37 min
February 05, 2021 How Political Parties Imposed Total Discipline in Canada
Patrice Dutil talks to Jean-François Godbout, professor of Political Science at the Université de Montréal and the author of Lost on Division: Party Unity in the Canadian Parliament (University of Toronto Press). There has never been a shortage of people decrying the state of Canadian democracy, and one of the chief accusations has been that party discipline is strangling Parliament. There just isn’t enough opportunity for MPs to speak openly and without fear of retribution, either in the House of Commons or even outside parliament. Many argue that the stranglehold chokes innovation, party renewal and, in the case of a majority party, bolsters prime ministers even when they hardly deserve it. But how did it come to this? Where have all the parliamentary “loose fish” gone? Was there ever a golden age when Canadian parliamentarians could rival their colleagues in Congress, in the British House of Commons or in the Assemblée nationale in France? 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

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…