We’re back to school this week and I’ve started teaching my first classes for the Fall 2010 semester at Mount Royal University. MRU is now the sixth university where I have been an instructor and with each new university comes a new flavour of online course management software. I’ve seen […]
I was disappointed to discover that the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute is gone! In fact, the building was destroyed in the mid-1970s so I was definitely too late to see it when I visited Calgary this past week. The Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, known as the birthplace of the Social […]
I recently published a review of Sharon Kirsch’s book, What Species of Creatures: Animal Relations from the New World on H-Net Reviews. You can download a PDF copy of the review here. In this book, Kirsch explores early European encounters with New World animals in northern North America. She provides […]
Canadian history audiophiles can rejoice now that CJSW, an independent radio station in Calgary, has launched its anticipated “Today in Canadian History” series. Each day, CJSW takes a look back and profiles significant events in Canada’s past. By combining broadcast radio with podcasting, CJSW hopes to reach a national audience […]
Late last month, the federal government surprised statisticians, businesses, economists, academics and many other Canadians by announcing an end to the issuing of a mandatory long census form. With little explanation and unsatisfactory justification, the government has proposed to very significantly diminish the quality of the national census. The outcry […]
From time to time I find myself gushing over a new digital tool that I’ve recently discovered which helps me with some of the day to day activities of a historian. Rather than quietly enjoying the benefits of these technologies alone I thought I would share and review them here […]
This October the NiCHE New Scholars Group will be hosting its own virtual environmental history workshop for graduate students. Using a combination of different online tools, including Skype, Google Groups, and Picasa, they will attempt to bring together a geographically dispersed group of graduate students studying different aspects of environmental […]
Many Canadians were shocked by the images of riot police chasing and beating citizens in the streets of Toronto this past weekend during the G20 summit. The police violence and the limited acts of vandalism were inexcusable, but not at all unprecedented in Toronto’s history. In all of the reporting […]
Digital technologies are changing the way we read history. With the popularization of consumer electronic e-readers like Kindle, Sony Reader, Kobo, and (yes) iPad, many textbook publishers are trying to take advantage of this opportunity to reach digital reading audiences. Unfortunately, the Kindle DX digital textbook pilot program at Princeton […]
Last week the federal government tabled its long anticipated copyright reform legislation for first reading in the House of Commons. The Copyright Modernization Act or Bill C-32 attempts to overhaul many of the out-dated provisions of Canada’s copyright law that have fallen far behind major technological changes of the last […]
You can now listen to Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, on the radio (in Prince George)! The kind folks at CFUR 88.7, the campus radio station at the University of Northern British Columbia will be broadcasting the full series of Nature’s Past this summer. This will be the […]
Episode 15 Forestry Education in Canada: May 26, 2010 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/natures-past15.mp3][43:04] In 1907, the University of Toronto opened Canada’s first forestry school to undergraduate students. This was the beginning of formal forestry education in Canada and great step forward for the profession. However, the history of the Faculty of Forestry […]