Celebrate Canada Day with this Preface to Charlotte Gray’s The Promise of Canada: 150 Years—People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country. “I knew it was time to engage Canadians in our past in a new way. I’ve always been fascinated by the gap between the modesty of my fellow citizens and the extraordinary success of this country. Every issue, every period, every region I explore, I find intriguing characters, painful tensions and surprising triumphs. Yet most of us know so little about the layers of history and ideas that make this country work. We have a unique and lively history, but too often it is told from only one perspective. Sometimes that perspective is political, other times it is regional, but it rarely captures the complexity of our sprawling land and diverse people. A big birthday, like Canada’s 150th, is the perfect time to bring both national heroes and unexpected guests to the table. I want their personal dramas and brilliant visions to bring a sparkle to the sesquicentennial.” —Charlotte Gray on The Promise of Canada, available October 2016 from Simon & Schuster Canada

Trump alone is not to blame... How does it reflect on North American societal values when wealth trumps humanity, selfish individualism trumps compassion, the need to be entertained and to win trumps the truth, and racism and misogyny are rewarded with the most powerful position in the world? The political rise of Donald Trump, from the cutthroat Republican primary process to his move to the White House, has ushered in a new age of politics in the United States. This is a comprehensive analysis of the events surrounding the 2016 presidential election and the unprecedented first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Pamela Hines highlights the growing distortion of American democracy, which threatens political systems around the world. As a Canadian living just across the border, Hines provides a unique perspective on the international impact of the election; explores the roles of religion, racism, nationalism, and gender bias; and critiques the media and its reckless coverage of Trump’s ascension. The Trump presidency is a wake-up call to citizens of the free world. Democracy is at risk, yet power remains in the hands of the people. This assault on democracy can be curtailed only if voters make informed decisions and understand the consequences of their choices—while they still have the right to choose.

Holidays are a key to helping us understand the transformation of national, regional, community and ethnic identities. In Celebrating Canada, Matthew Hayday and Raymond Blake situate Canada in an international context as they examine the history and evolution of our national and provincial holidays and annual celebrations. The contributors to this volume examine such holidays as Dominion Day, Victoria Day, Quebec’s Fête Nationale and Canadian Thanksgiving, among many others. They also examine how Canadians celebrate the national days of other countries (like the Fourth of July) and how Dominion Day was observed in the United Kingdom. Drawing heavily on primary source research, and theories of nationalism, identities and invented traditions, the essays in this collection deepen our understanding of how these holidays have influenced the evolution of Canadian identities.

In Volume 2 of Celebrating Canada, Raymond B. Blake and Matthew Hayday bring together emerging and established scholars to consider key moments in Canadian history when major anniversaries of Canada's political, social, or cultural development were celebrated.

Canada’s recent sesquicentennial celebrations were the latest in a long, steady progression of Canadian cultural memory projects. Unbecoming Nationalism investigates the power of commemorative performances in the production of nationalist narratives. Using “unbecoming” as a theoretical framework to unsettle or decolonize nationalist narratives, Helene Vosters examines an eclectic range of both state-sponsored social memory projects and counter-memorial projects to reveal and unravel the threads connecting reverential military commemoration, celebratory cultural nationalism, and white settler-colonial nationalism. Vosters brings readings of institutional, aesthetic, and activist performances of Canadian military commemoration, settler-colonial nationalism, and redress into conversation with literature that examines the relationship between memory, violence, and nationalism from the disciplinary arenas of performance studies, Canadian studies, critical race and Indigenous studies, memory studies, and queer and gender studies. In addition to using performance as a theoretical framework, Vosters uses performance to enact a philosophy of praxis and embodied theory.

"Report of the Dominion fishery commission on the fisheries of the province of Ontario, 1893", issued as vol. 26, no. 7, supplement.

We are all our history. Yet in Canadian classrooms, students are often left questioning how they can study a past that does not reflect their present. Discourses of nationhood often separate “us” from “them,” and despite curricular revisions, the mainstream narrative that shapes the way we teach students about the Canadian nation can be divisive. Responding to the evolving demographics of an ethnically and culturally diverse population, Transforming the Canadian History Classroom advocates for a radically innovative practice that places students – the stories they carry and the histories they want to be part of – at the centre of history education.