Sentries stand at the National War Memorial in Ottawa during the Remembrance Day ceremony on Nov. 11, 2021. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang Every Nov. 11, Canadian eyes turn to Ottawa where, at the eleventh hour, the most solemn ceremony of our Remembrance Day takes...
Gerry Bowler
Leaders On The Frontier – The History of Christmas – With Gerry Bowler
Christmas is the holiday that can bring light to the darkness, but have you considered how the holiday has evolved throughout the years? Dive into the rich history of Christmas with David Leis and guest, Canadian historian and author, Gerry Bowler. Together, they...
Christmas: As Canadian as Hockey and Maple Syrup
Well, they’re at it again. A year after a Canadian Human Rights Commission position paper labeled Christmas "discriminatory" and an example of "colonialist religious intolerance", an Alberta public school has cancelled a winter concert because marking Christmas...
Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Valiant Effort to Overthrow Communist Rule
Civilians wave Hungary’s national flag from a captured Soviet tank in Budapest’s main square during the anti-communist uprising of October 1956. AP Photo After World War II ended in the summer of 1945, the Soviet Red Army found itself to be in possession of...
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Canadian Property Rights Index 2023
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
From Batoche to Kandahar: Canada’s Sacrifices for Peace
There is a grave on a riverbank near Batoche, Saskatchewan. It contains the remains of a soldier from Ontario who died in 1885 under General Middleton during the last battle of the Northwest Rebellion. It has been tended for almost 150 years by the Métis...
How the 1327 Coup Against Edward II Contributed to English Constitutional Development
It is always difficult to be the heir of a successful king, particularly when you lack the virtues that your eminent father had possessed. Edward II was not the successful military leader that his father Edward I (a.k.a. “Longshanks” and “Hammer of the Scots”) had...
Of Kings and Taxes: Behind the Arrest of Pope Boniface in 1303
On Sept. 7, 1303, a French military force which had crossed into Italy seized the pope at his summer palace at Anagni, south of Rome. The soldiers dragged him from his throne, beat him, and threw him in a jail cell, intending to take him back to France for trial. What...
How St. John’s Almost Became England’s First North American Colony
View of St. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador from the historic Signal Hill. (Bob Hilscher/Shutterstock) England was a late participant in the European scramble for territory in the New World. Although explorers such as John and Sebastian Cabot and plunderers...
Why the Irish Fenians Tried to ‘Capture Canada’ in 1866
It was 1866 and in the aftermath of the American Civil War, thousands of Irish immigrants who had fought in both the Union and Confederate armies were of a mind to invade Canada. They were followers of the Fenian Brotherhood, a group formed in the United States in...
Political Assassinations: Behind the Killing of British PM Spencer Perceval
One of the greatest difficulties in maintaining a stable democracy is keeping one’s political leaders from being murdered. In the more excitable Latin American and Caribbean nations, presidents and would-be reformers are killed with depressing regularity, the most...
How Canada Was Forced to Build Up Its ‘Tin-Pot’ Navy
As the proud possessor of the world’s longest coastlines and home of the world’s sixth-largest merchant navy, one might have thought that the newly independent Canada would have an interest in developing a strong navy. In fact, as a Dominion of the British Empire, it...
Is the term “Indian” Offensive? The Joy of Ethnonyms
I would like to apologize to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for referring to its members as “colored people”. – Steve Martin, Pure Drivel, 1999
How Canada Achieved Its System of Responsible Government
Throughout human history there have been innumerable forms of government devised to bring order and law to societies. Empires, kingdoms, anarcho-syndicalist communes, soviets, emirates, oligarchies, theocracies, fascist dictatorships, people’s republics, federal...