For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as th …

It's 1854 at the start of Now We Are Brody. The mill is boarded up as the townsfolk attempt to bury a dark shame from their past, but the arrival of a young woman with the deed to the mill threatens to unearth its secret. In The Huron Bride it is 1834 and Hazel Sheehan has braved the perilous journey across the Atlantic to work as a hired hand at h …

Real and imagined encounters among Aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations produced racial anxieties that underwrote crossracial contacts in the salmon canneries, the illicit liquor trade, and the (white) slavery scare in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia. Colonial Proximities …

In this much-anticipated second volume in the Extraordinary Women Anthology series, Diana French follows up on Gumption and Grit with more stories of the women who have contributed, or who are still contributing, to the vibrant mosaic that is the Cariboo Chilcotin. The area has more than its share of remarkable women, from educators to rodeo stars, …

In Keith Billington’s The Last Patrol, he shares one of the most tragic stories of the far north.

It was a quiet December morning in 1910 when Inspector Fitzgerald and his crew left Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, on a dog team patrol to Dawson City, Yukon. Their departure was without fanfare, and after a brief handshake and a salute, the m …

The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the most successful parties in the democratic world. It dominated Canadian politics for a century, practising an inclusive style of “big tent” politics that allowed it to fend off opponents on both the left and right. How did it do this? What kind of party organization did it build over the decades to manag …

Jean Barman was the recipient of the 2014 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.

In French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest, Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of French Canadians attracted by the fur economy, the indigenous women whose presence in their li …

Based on hundreds of interviews with Manitoba farm men and women, Making Ends Meet reconstructs the common history shared by modern farm women as well as by their mothers and grandmothers. It explores women's changing roles on the farm, from the early days of the Red River settlement to the twentieth-century farm community. The women's own stories …

“I am going to tell you how we are treated. I am always hungry.” — Edward B., a student at Onion Lake School (1923)

"[I]f I were appointed by the Dominion Government for the express purpose of spreading tuberculosis, there is nothing finer in existance that the average Indian residential school.” — N. Walker, Indian Affairs Superintendent …

In the 1940s, the Manitoba Royal Commission on Adult Education investigated directions for the modernization of the province in the post-war era of change. It was charged particularly with looking at rural Manitoba’s cultural, educational, and leadership opportunities in the wake of new technologies, dwindling populations, and altered political a …

Historian Royden Loewen has brought together selections from diaries kept by 21 Mennonites in Canada between 1863 and 1929, some translated from German for the first time. By skillfully comparing and contrasting a wide cross-section of lives, Loewen shows how these diaries often turn the hidden contours of household and community "inside out." The …

The area between the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg, bounded on the north by the Hudson Bay lowlands, is sometimes known as the "Petit Nord." Providing a link between the cities of eastern Canada and the western interior, the Petit Nord was a critical communication and transportation hub for the North American fur trade for over 200 years.Although n …

At the beginning of the last century, no city on the continent was growing faster or was more aggressive than Winnipeg. No year in the city’s history epitomized this energy more that 1912, when Winnipeg was on the crest of a period of unprecedented prosperity. In just forty years, it had grown from a village on the banks of the Red River to becom …

For over 1500 years, the Sayisi Dene, 'The Dene from the East,' led an independent life, following the caribou herds and having little contact with white society. In 1956, an arbitrary government decision to relocate them catapulted the Sayisi Dene into the 20th century. It replaced their traditional nomadic life of hunting and fishing with a slum …

At the start of the Second World War, Poland was invaded by both the German and the Soviet armies. The country was unable to withstand the assaults and thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians were shipped to labour camps and prisons, where starvation, disease, and mistreatment were their daily expectations. With the signing of an amnesty between …

In the early hours of October 14, 1942, under cover of darkness, the German submarine U-69 torpedoed and sank the passenger ferry SS Caribou off the southwest coast of Port aux Basques, Newfoundland.

Now, seventy years later, writer and artist Jennifer Morgan recreates that eventful night in full colour. These vivid illustrations, in comic book form …

In 1906, Nello Vernon-Wood (1882–1978) reinvented himself as Tex Wood, Banff hunting guide and writer of “yarns of the wilderness by a competent outdoorsman.” His homespun stories of a vanishing era, in such periodicals as The Sportsman, Hunting and Fishing, and the Canadian Alpine Journal, have much to tell us about the west as envisioned by …

In 1957, Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the United Nations Emergency Force during the Suez crisis. The award launched Canada’s enthusiasm and reputation for peacekeeping. Pearson’s Peacekeepers explores the reality behind the rhetoric by offering a detailed account of the UNEF’s decade-long effort to keep peace along th …

?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> The Social Origins of the Welfare State traces the evolution of the first universal laws for Québec families, passed during the Second World War. In this translation of her award-winning Aux origines sociales de l´État-providence, Dominique Marshall examines the connections between political initiatives and …

Mary Austin was a mayor’s daughter who expected to live an uneventful life in Canada. But when she said “I do” to Jim Endicott she found that she had “married China.”
Thrust into extraordinary circumstances, but undeterred by the political turmoil around her in China, Mary Austin Endicott determined she would achieve the goals she set for he …

“So often a long-awaited book is disappointing. Happily such is not the case with Sutherland’s masterpiece.” Robert M. Stamp, University of Calgary, in The Canadian Historical Review
“Sutherland’s work is destined to be a landmark in Canadian history, both as a first in its particular field and as a standard reference text.” J. Stewar …

Cold War Comforts examines Canadian women’s efforts to protect children’s health and safety between the dropping of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Amid this global insecurity, many women participated in civil defence or joined the disarmament movement as means to protect their families from t …

Terry Copp’s tireless teaching, research, and writing has challenged generations of Canadian veterans, teachers, and students to discover an informed memory of their country’s role in the Second World War. This collection, drawn from the work of Terry’s colleagues and former students, considers Canada and the Second World War from a wealth o …

The Great War: From Memory to History offers a new look at the multiple ways the Great War has been remembered and commemorated through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Drawing on contributions from history, cultural studies, film, and literary studies this collection offers fresh perspectives on the Great War and its legacy at the …

To invest in vice can be a sound financial decision, but despite the lure of healthy profits, individuals and mutual funds have been reluctant to invest in this type of stock. After all, who would take pride in supporting the tobacco industry, knowing it sells a deadly product? And what social responsibilities do investors bear with respect to com …

From its inception in the early 1900s, The United Church of Canada set out to become the national church of Canada. This book recounts and analyzes the history of the church of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination and its engagement with issues of social and private morality, evangelistic campaigns, and its response to the restructuring of r …

The Diplomacy of Impartiality is an analysis of a major decade in Canadian–Israeli relations, dealing with significant events that led to the Six-Day War of 1967 and its aftermath. Using primary documentation from the National Archives of Canada and the Israeli State Archives, Zachariah Kay shows that although Canada was committed to Israel’s …

“Dour Scot” is the wrong description for David Caldow, who leads readers on a romp from the early twentieth century to the present, from an insular Scottish village to modern-day, multicultural British Columbia, from boyhood to old age. Throughout the tour he shares decades of laughter, tears, fears, and growth.
In 1910, the certain path of D …

In this newly revised edition of the widely praised original Lyle Dick revisits the Abernethy district of Saskatchewan and his microhistorical analysis of the development of this prairie community.

Between 1882 and 1920, settlers from Ontario established social and economic structures at Abernethy, Saskatchewan. By virtue of hard work, perseverance …

Ethnic elites, the influential business owners, teachers, and newspaper editors within distinct ethnic communities, play an important role as self-appointed mediators between their communities and “mainstream” societies. In Ethnic Elites and Canadian Identity, Aya Fujiwara examines the roles of Japanese, Ukrainian, and Scottish elites during th …

In an expanding and socially fractious early twentieth-century Winnipeg, Lewis Benjamin Foote (1873-1957) rose to become the city’s pre-eminent commercial photographer. Documenting everything from royal visits to deep poverty, from the building of the landmark Fort Garry Hotel to the turmoil of the 1919 General Strike, Foote’s photographs have …

The prairies are a focal point for momentous events in Canadian history, a place where two visions of Canada have often clashed: Louis Riel, the Manitoba School Question, French language rights, the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, and the dramatic collapse of the Meech Lake Accord when MLA Elijah Harper voted “No.”Gerald Friesen believes that it …

Mennonite Women in Canada traces the complex social history and multiple identities of Canadian Mennonite women over 200 years. Marlene Epp explores women’s roles, as prescribed and as lived, within the contexts of immigration and settlement, household and family, church and organizational life, work and education, and in response to social trend …

Among the most dynamic Aboriginal peoples in western Canada today are the Ojibwa, who have played an especially vital role in the development of an Aboriginal political voice at both levels of government. Yet, they are relative newcomers to the region, occupying the parkland and prairies only since the end of the 18th century. This work traces the …

What did happen to the body of Thomas Scott? The disposal of the body of Canadian history’s most famous political victim is the starting point for historian J.M. Bumsted’s new look at some of the most fascinating events and personalities of Manitoba’s Red River Settlement.To outsiders, 19th-century Red River seemed like a remote community pre …

Despite being one of the largest immigrant groups contributing to the development of modern Canada, the story of the English has been all but untold. In Invisible Immigrants, Barber and Watson document the experiences of English-born immigrants who chose to come to Canada during England’s last major wave of emigration between the 1940s and the 19 …

Imagined Homes: Soviet German Immigrants in Two Cities is a study of the social and cultural integration of two migrations of German speakers from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Winnipeg, Canada in the late 1940s, and Bielefeld, Germany in the 1970s. Employing a cross-national comparative framework, Hans Werner reveals that the imagined tra …

A Thousand Miles of Prairie is a fascinating look at Manitoba’s early boom years (1880–1910) through the eyes and words of some of the most interesting personalities of early Winnipeg. This collection brings together 14 pieces from the first decades of the Manitoba Historical Society, when its lectures were attended by the province’s politica …

For many Canadians, the state of our health care and medical system is at the top of the public agenda. By following the growth and development of modern medicine in one Canadian province, Manitoba Medicine provides an insight into where our present medical system came from and how it developed.

Beginning with a description of some early Aboriginal …

Before the First World War, Winnipeg was Canada's third-largest city and the undisputed metropolis of the West. Rapid growth had given the city material prosperity, but little of its wealth went to culture or the arts. Despite the city's fragile cultural veneer, the enthusiasm and dedication of members of the arts community and a grpup of public-sp …

When dealing with Indigenous women’s history we are conditioned to think about women as private-sphere figures, circumscribed by the home, the reserve, and the community. Moreover, in many ways Indigenous men and women have been cast in static, pre-modern, and one-dimensional identities, and their twentieth century experiences reduced to a singul …

A social and economic history of one of the oldest Ukrainian settlements in Western Canada. Established in 1896, the Stuartburn colony was one of the earliest Ukrainian settlements in western Canada. Based on an analysis of government records, pioneer memoirs, and the Ukrainian and English language press, Community and Frontier is a detailed examin …

Manitoba has always been a province in the middle, geographically, economically, and culturally. Lacking Quebec’s cultural distinctiveness, Ontario’s traditional economic dominance, or Alberta’s combustible mix of prairie populism and oil wealth, Manitoba appears to blend into the background of the Canadian family portrait. But Manitoba has a …

In the decade after the Second World War, 35,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution and their dependants arrived in Canada. This was a watershed moment in Canadian Jewish history. The unprecedented scale of the relief effort required for the survivors, compounded by their unique social, psychological, and emotional needs challenged both the estab …

Saskatchewan is the anchor and epitome of the ‘prairie’ provinces, even though half of the province is covered by boreal forest. The Canadian penchant for dividing this vast country into easily-understood ‘regions’ has reduced the Saskatchewan identity to its southern prairie denominator and has distorted cultural and historical interpretat …

Between 1973 and 1978, six thousand Chileans leftists took refuge in central Canada after the Pinochet coup d’état. Once resettled at the northern extreme of the Americas, these political exiles had to find ways of coping with an abrupt and violent separation from their homeland that had deep material and emotional repercussions. In Young, Well- …

Families, Lovers, and their Letters takes us into the passionate hearts and minds of ordinary people caught in the heartbreak of transatlantic migration. It examines the experiences of Italian migrants to Canada and their loved ones left behind in Italy following the Second World War, when the largest migration of Italians to Canada took place. In …

During the first half of the twentieth century, Winnipeg Beach proudly marketed itself as the Coney Island of the West. Located just north of Manitoba’s bustling capital, it drew 40,000 visitors a day and served as an important intersection between classes, ethnic communities, and perhaps most importantly, between genders. In Winnipeg Beach, Dale …

In the 1870s, approximately 18,000 Mennonites migrated from the southern steppes of Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine) to the North American grasslands. They brought with them an array of cultural and institutional features that indicated they were a “transplanted” people. What is less frequently noted, however, is that they created in their …

With roots going back to the Red River Settlement in the 1850s, Winnipeg’s St. John’s College is the oldest Anglophone educational institution in Western Canada. First founded as a school for the children of the employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company, over the decades the college has re-invented itself many times. When it was established as St …