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

March 01, 2018 Reconsidering the Legacy of Vimy
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
February 21, 2018 Battling for The Maritimes, 1690-1763
Patrice Dutil talks with Jeffers Lennox (Wesleyan University) on his book Homelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1763 (University of Toronto Press). This podcast was produced by Sumeet Dhami and Hugh Bakhurst 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.
22 min
February 15, 2018 The Unknown Northwest Passage
Greg Marchildon talks with Ken McGoogan on his book Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage (HarperCollins, 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
February 07, 2018 Canada at the Winter Olympics
The Champlain Society goes to the Olympics! In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Bruce Kidd, noted sports historian and former Olympian, to discuss the history of the Winter Olympics and the phenomenal progress in Canada's performance at these events. Bruce Kidd is the Principal of the University of Toronto Scarborough and the author of many books including "The Struggle for Canadian Sport", "Sports and Masculinity", "Tom Longboat" and "The Death of Hockey." This podcast was produced by Sumeet Dhami 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.
24 min
January 26, 2018 The strange birth of the NHL in December 1917
Patrice Dutil talks with hockey historian Andrew Holman (Bridgewater State University) about the bizarre circumstances that gave birth to the NHL in the fall of 1917. This podcast was produced by Sumeet Dhami and Hugh Backhurst 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.
29 min
December 21, 2017 Beaverbrook: A Canadian in the David Lloyd George Cabinet, February 1918
Patrice Dutil discusses the circumstances around Max Aitken's (Lord Beaverbrook) entry in the Wartime British Cabinet with Greg Marchildon, author of "Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance" (University of Toronto Press). 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.
31 min
December 21, 2017 Canada's Khaki Election of December, 1917
Greg Marchildon discusses the significance of this event of a hundred years ago with Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie, authors of "Embattled Nation: Canada's Wartime Election of 1917" (Dundurn Press). 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.
31 min
November 05, 2017 The Hundred Days Campaign in the First World War
What was Canada’s greatest accomplishment on the battle field in the First World War? Greg Marchildon and Kenna Turcotte discuss a contrarian view with historian Jack Granatstein, author of The Greatest Victory: Canada's One Hundred Days, 1918 (Oxford University Press, 2014). The documents referred to in this podcasts are described in this “Finding”. http://www.champlainsociety.ca/fighting-in-the-hundred-days-france-august-1918/
Producers/directors : Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long, Vincent Piette
22 min
November 04, 2017 Henri Bourassa and Confederation
Patrice Dutil discusses with Pierre Anctil, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, the life and work of Henri Bourassa. The founder and editor of Le Devoir was arguably one of the most influential political thinkers in Canada over the past 150. The editorial being discussed was entitled “Canada: Should it be French or English?”. It is drawn from the 2017 Champlain Society volume “Do what you Must”: Selected Editorials from Le Devoir under Henri Bourassa, 1910-1932.
Le Devoir, Editorial, 26 July 1910
My only objective is to make everyone understand, whether they be of English, French or Irish ancestry, that Canada has remained an English territory only due to the steadfast loyalty of the French Canadians. Furthermore this loyalty merits particularly more recognition since it was displayed most forcefully during a period when French Canadians held in their hands the fate of the British crown in Canada, while at the same time the official representatives of Great Britain treated them as pariahs.
Without this doubly deserving loyalty, England would not possess a single inch of territory in America.
Far be it for me to conclude from this that the French Canadians have acquired their right to dictate their will on the Crown or on the naïve Anglo majority of the Canadian people.
No, Canada is not and must not be French.
Nor is it, or must it be, English.
By its political constitution, by its ethnic composition just as by natural law, Canada is an Anglo-French Confederations, the result of a fertile union between the two great and noble races. Under the aegis of the Crown of England, it must remain the asset of a bilingual nation.
Neither of the two races has the right to dominate the other or to impose, either in the internal governing of the country or in regard to the mother country, any policy contrary to the tradition and common interests of the confederation.
Any attempt to dominate or assimilate French Canadians will only weaken the strength of their nationalist sentiment. The day that they no longer feel at home, not only in the province of Quebec, but throughout the Canadian Confederation and that they no longer see in the constitution the laws and the customs of Canada, a symbol of their double origins, they will cease to place the institutional of their country ahead of those of the United States.
Anyone who, in the State or in the Church, makes an effort to assimilate French Canadians through language, intellectual training or customs, is the worst enemy of the peace, greatness, and especially, the unity of the Canadian people.
Producers/directors : Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long, Vincent Piette
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
November 04, 2017 The Conscription Crisis, 1917
The losses during Battle of Vimy triggered in Canada a demand for conscription that ultimately tore the country apart. Patrice Dutil discusses the reaction against conscription with Pierre Anctil, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, focusing in particular on an editorial in Le Devoir by Henri Bourassa. It is drawn from the 2017 Champlain Society volume “Do what you Must”: Selected Editorials from Le Devoir under Henri Bourassa, 1910-1932.
Le Devoir, June 6th, 1917.
The Prime Minister obviously intents to impose conscription by a collation cabinet and by prolonging parliament once again. This plan reveals an incredible thoughtlessness in the circumstances.
The government, the opposition and the entire Parliament have plunged the country into the European tempest, whereas no international commitment and no constitutional or moral obligation impose any other duty on Canada than to look after the defence of its own territory.
The government decreed this participation in the European war in order to help England and its allies “destroy militarism” and “save democracy.” The entire Parliament ratified and acclaimed this “noble” project, Sir Robert Borden and his colleagues and Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his supporters outdid each other in repeating that just as participation was free and voluntary for the nation, it would remain free and voluntary for individuals. It was by promising verbally and in writing not to deviate from the principle of voluntary service that the Prime Minster obtained invaluable support from all sectors of society.
By proposing conscription now, Sir Robert Borden is violating his most solemn promises; in the same manner as Bethmann-Hollweg, he is ripping up the “scraps of paper” that bear his stamp of approval and of entire parliament. With compulsory overseas service, Canada is being subject to a regime of “Prussian militarism.” If the Prime Minster persists in refusing to give the people the right to decide the question, he will be violating the fundamental principles of this “democracy” he want to “save”…I Europe with the blood of five hundred thousand Canadians!
…
It was never clear to me why Canada had a duty to bleed dry to “save democracy” in Europe, and even less so to impose democracy on the Germans, the Austrians or the Bulgarians.
Nevertheless, the democratic regime is the system that has been established in Canada by law, the Constitution and in existence for a century already. If it were clearly demonstrated that “Wilhelm Hohenzollern” wants to overthrow this order of things and that he had any solid chance of implanting “Prussian militarism” in Canada, I would be the first to call to arms…and respond before forcing others to put their neck on the line.
Producers/directors : Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long, Vincent Piette
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.
26 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…