The Incredible Beginning of the First World War: Madame Caillaux on Trial

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One hundred years ago, Europe was on the road to war. By the end of July, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, starting a series of declarations between the Great Powers that ended on August 4 when Britain declared war on Germany for its invasion of neutral Belgium. A month before on June 28 1914, the heir to the Habsburg crown, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by the young Serbian nationalist, Gavrillo Princip. None foresaw that Princip's actions would become one of the most monumental acts of the 20th century, though in July of 1914 few cared to notice. For most Europeans (and Canadians!) they were more interested in the “trial of the century” taking place in Paris. French socialite Madame Henriette Caillaux was found not guilty on July 28, the same day Austria declared war on Serbia.

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Bon Déménagement! Quebec's July 1

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For most of Canada today marks the eve of Canada Day. Tomorrow, millions will attend or watch national celebrations big and small across the country. In Quebec though, June 30 is when most leases end. July 1 is Moving Day, not Canada Day. Quebecois prefer to celebrate their national holiday, St Jean Baptiste Day, on June 24 since not only does it reflect Quebec's unique cultural history, but because so many are busy on Canada (Moving) Day. Some have suggested that placing Moving Day on July 1 is a conspiratorial snub from separatist Quebec to federalists and the “Rest of Canada.” Of course more reasonable voices remind us that it was a Quebec Liberal government that made the change in the 1970s, spearheaded by their Justice Minister, Jérôme Choquette. Let's take it a step further explore the actual debate in the Assemblé Nationale surrounding the change.

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What does it mean to be “Canadian”? A Historical Conception of Nationalism and Identity

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In a May 1972 made-for-TV interview conducted by Vincent Tovell of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canadian historian Ramsay Cook explained his views on nationalism and identity within the context of the then contemporary state of the professional historical community in Canada. Cook’s interview with Tovell came on the heels of a publication that has since become a standard read in graduate-level courses in Canadian history. The Maple Leaf Forever: Essays on Nationalism and Politics in Canada, published by Cook in 1971, challenged the notion that there exists in Canada a singular national identity governed by a singular state. Rather than conform to homogeneity, Cook argued that Canadian’s should learn from the unique circumstances of variation. 

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Who are Canada's Heroes?

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Canadians were asked to list the most inspirational figures from the last 150 years of their history. The list, perhaps to the consternation of the Conservative government, primarily featured non-Conservatives. Much has been written in the media about the notable lack of conservative “heroes,” only our first Prime Minister, Conservative John A. MacDonald, made the top ten. There were other notable absences, such as a lack of women, Indigenous peoples, and many other groups that today are a part of the makeup of Canada. Most of the journalists responding to the news raised the idea of what was a Canadian hero?

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Historical 'Authority' and the Value of the Oral Interview

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History is an ancient and ever varying discipline whose practitioners continually redefine the parameters of what constitutes ‘history proper’. Indeed, the very notion that there exists proper techniques to investigate the past has been ridiculed into complete obscurity by most. Today in Canada and elsewhere, historians reconstruct a past based on their personal reflections with an expansive and diverse body of evidence. Genres and subfields have been developed which allow historians to further delve into the individual and collective human experience, in hopes of finding nuance in the past. But each historian reconstructs a version of the past using methodologies that are unique as well as common. Clio’s Current provides insight into contemporary issues using historical perspective, and to do so we must continually reassess our understanding of historical methodology. In today’s post we further investigate the research kit of the historian, with a focus on the oral history interview.

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The Myth of Ontario's Fickle Liberal/Conservative Voting

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Kathleen Wynne's electoral victory in Ontario last week has given more life to a common piece of historical myth about Ontario politics. When Ontario votes Liberal provincially, they vote Conservative federally, or vice versa. According to its logic, the Conservatives will win the next federal election with Ontario's help in 2015. There's never any worthwhile explanation offered for this phenomenon, other than it “happens every time” and “Ontario voters are fickle.” A coincidence has become a pattern, but how do we distinguish the two historically?

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Lament of 32: The Canadian Government and Information Control

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Over the past few weeks we have begun to explore the world of professional history as currently practiced in Canada. Some of our most recent blog posts have focused on student life, academic publishing, and the traditions and evolution of the specialized historical community. Today we investigate the role of the Canadian government in information control, in an effort to provide further insight into the mind of the historian.

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The Big Picture and Canada's Fenian Raids

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The 2nd of June marked the anniversary of the Battle of Ridgeway, the largest battle of the 1866 Fenian Raids. The Fenian Raids are remembered in Canada on the great list of “Events that led to Confederation.” You probably heard about it high school history. Most probably remember a simple story of the Fenian raids. Canada, threatened by the invasion of Irish-American Fenians, united to form one country at Confederation in 1867 so as to defend itself. Less remembered is the larger series of events which led to the forming of the Fenians and their raids on Canada.

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Popularizing D-Day: 70 Years On

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In his monumental work, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), American literary historian Paul Fussell sought to situate how the men of the First World War gave meaning to their painful and life-changing experiences. But it wasn’t just a meaningful exercise for veterans of the First World War, for the book had been written at an opportune time about 60 years after the outbreak of war in 1914 and just 30 years after the end of Fussell’s war in 1945. Fussell had become interested in previous experiences not unlike his own—he sought to explore these experiences across time and space.

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Canada's Cold War Part V

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Canada’s Cold War is often incorrectly dichotomized in historical scholarship. Examinations into the era often produce work strictly focused on the "front lines" (Europe) or "home front" (North America). Over the past few months we have probed Canada’s Cold War experience using a variety of analyses and perspectives, and have attempted to reconstruct a nuanced narrative to introduce our readers to some of the key events and personalities that shaped socio-cultural, political, technological, and economic change in Canada and abroad between the 1940s and 1970s. Today, in our fifth and perhaps final installment of Cold War history, we seek to determine if Canada was able to act autonomously during the era.

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The Stress and Anxiety of Surviving Creativity

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We've recently been discussing the benefit of the Canadian Historical Association for bringing together historians and ideas. Having attended this year's meeting in St. Catherines, Ontario, it's clear that the CHA remains a fruitful space for scholars to debate new directions and the boundaries of our profession. To close out our discussion of the CHA, it's worthwhile to raise the darker side of conferences and grad student life. It is a topic that is often discussed behind closed doors or at least discreet whispers: anxiety. For graduate students anxiety is a fact of life and most, if not all, of us suffer from it.

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Political vs. Social: A Brief Overview of the ‘History Wars’

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Traditional narrative histories of Canada were highly political and economic in focus. Historians writing in the first-half of the twentieth century were generally preoccupied with exploring the role of white, Anglo-Saxon male elites in a grand nation-building context. Men appeared in national histories as universal and almost genderless subjects, whereas women, children, non-white Europeans, and Indigenous peoples were often marginalized or completely overlooked. In the 1960s, many historians in Canada turned away from political and economic narratives to investigate the past using methods of inquiry that were first developed in Europe. The rise of ‘new social history’ provided scholars the tools to revisit the past in an attempt to return a measure of agency and voice to peoples and groups that had gone ignored, but there were those who preferred to maintain the status quo. In today’s post we examine the emergence of social inquiry to the professional historical scene in Canada, and the so-called ‘History Wars’ that broke out as a result.

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What is the Canadian Historical Association?

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Next week, the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) meeting is being held in St. Catherines, Ontario. For historians, it is an opportunity to gather and discuss Canada's history, but also to see colleagues who may normally work on the other side of the country. For young grad students, it's an opportunity to network and participate in the world of professional history and the changing landscape of academic scholarship. For non-historians, most of whom have probably never heard of it, it might sound like a boring conference. Next week we are going to offer some on-the-ground coverage of the CHA, but today let's introduce the origins of the organization and explore why it's so worthwhile to historians.

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Canada's Cold War Part IV

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Over the course of the past few months we have examined Canada’s role in the Cold War. Our examination thus far has situated Canadian interests generally within a North American context, where the United States has featured predominantly as Canada’s primary Cold War ally. Today we shift our focus away from North America and the Canada-United States bilateral relationship to examine a unique episode of the Cold War when Canada acted autonomously from its closest postwar allies.

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The Problems and Wonders of Family Histories

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Academics and ordinary people often disagree on what history should include or exclude. Academics have trained for years to gain the authority to teach and write about history. Given the sacrifices we have make to achieve that position, it is perhaps understandable that we defend our status as gatekeepers to the past. Once, when history books were few and far between, so we could reasonably control what “history” was. That is no longer the case. Today anyone can explore the past, sometimes without even encountering a historian. It is less an academic exercise and more a personal journey into a past that is relevant to the individual. One of the most popular ways for non-academics to delve into history is genealogical research and family histories. Why is this aspect of history so compelling?  What does it mean for historians?

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Heartbleed in Context: A Brief History of “Hacking”

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The recent Heartbleed attacks that exposed vulnerabilities in some of the most well-known Internet moguls resulted in one of the most severe security incidents in the history of online data transfer. The Heartbleed security bug, technically identified as CVE-2014-0160 and called “TLS heartbeat read overrun,” is found within the open-source OpenSSL cryptographic library, which is used to provide Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption capabilities for data in transit on the Web. For those of us a little less tech-savvy, Heartbleed provides “hackers” access to information stored on commonly used servers. Of the more popular websites, Heartbleed revealed vulnerabilities in sites including Yahoo!, Pinterest and Reddit, all of which hold personal user information that may have been lost to data theft. In this post, we place the recent Heartbleed attacks in historical context with a brief overview of “hacking” history.

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Judicial Supremacy and the Right of the Individual in Canada

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 A series of recent Supreme Court cases have ruled against the Canadian government. The rejection of their chosen appointee to the Court, Marc Nadon, on constitutional grounds has angered the government in Ottawa. Rumours and allegations of interference by the Chief Justice, Beverely McLachlin, have swirled over the last week. Ultimately, the Conservatives do not like that an unelected judiciary can supersede the democratically elected Canadian government. The place of the Supreme Court in Canada gives it constitutional authority and stems directly from the 1982 Constitution Act. Its section 52 gave the Supreme Court power to strike down legislation that did not align with the new Canadian constitution. To better understand the position of today's government, today we briefly examine how judiciary authority became supreme in Canada.

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At the Intersection of Security and Discrimination: Canadian Immigration and the Case of Irene Rebrin

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Within academic circles, terms such as “nation” and “Canada” are highly contested. They are loaded with historical, cultural and linguistic meaning, and thus welcome deep investigation which often produces heated debate. The history of Canadian immigration policy is a particularly interesting and contested subject that challenges scholars to investigate the meaning of citizenship and national identity. This is perhaps most evident during a unique period in the immediate postwar years, when the proverbial gates to Canada became “vulnerable” to Cold War Communism.

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The Easter Rising in 1916 - Ninety Eight Years Ago

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The Easter Rising of Ireland in April 1916 was the second last attempt of the Irish to throw off the yoke of their British masters. Just recently we passed its 98th anniversary and Ireland is preparing for its centenary with the novel idea of inviting historians to advise their government on its commemorations. It's almost like we're especially skilled to discuss history's role in society and government. It's always worthwhile to refresh ourselves about the facts of the Easter Rising, one of the most significant events in Irish history.

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