Tuesday, October 06, 2015

This month at Canada's History


Cover this month at Canada's History is Prince Rupert of the Rhine, "Canada's Warrior Prince." I confess he still kinda strikes me as some Eurotrash princeling whose appointment as titular head of the new Hudson's Bay Company was probably just a patronage thing. But Carolyn Harris makes the best of Prince Rupert's grim history, and maybe you are more into royals than I am. Read it and judge for yourself.

There's also Cec Jennings' piece on how (some) women had the vote in early Canada, were deprived of it, and got it back a century ago. Bill Moreau has a story I'd never heard before: the regular locust inundations that were part of Prairie history more or less forever until they suddenly... stopped.  And have never returned because...?

James Careless looks at hauntings.There's an interview (listen from here) with Jean Barman, whose John A. Macdonald Prize from the Canadian Historical Association for French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest we somehow failed to include in our prize watch features. Plus Campobello Island, Nova Scotia lighthouses preserved, flour sack couture, and as they say: much more.

My column this month is about Truth and Reconciliation, inspired mostly by a reading of Edmund Metatawabin's residential schools memoir Up Ghost River. And hey, they have included an excerpt from my Three Weeks in Quebec City about how the confederation makers at Quebec carefully designed the Senate not to challenge the authority of the representative House of Commons.

And a letter noting that my Magna Carta piece from the previous issue failed to note Magna Carta's two visits to Hamilton, Ont, in 1984 and 1990. Quite right, and mea culpa --and the 1990 tour included Calgary as well.  Magna Carta, by the way, is just starting its Toronto run at Fort York Visitor Centre, before moving on to Edmonton. 
 
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