Curious Canadian History

• S10E22 The Birth of the Canadian Flag

  Surprise! We here at CCH decided to drop a special final episode for Season 10. The Canadian flag is iconic. In almost all parts of the globe people recognize the red maple leaf as distinctly ours, or at the very least a symbol of us…Canadians. Yet, the modern flag’s birth is a story of complexity and is utterly fascinating. It comes out of a distinctly unique period where Canada was changing dramatically and today represents a very modern sense of what it means to be Canadian. Happy Canada Day everyone! Forrest Pass is a Curator in the Programs Division at Library and Archives Canada and a vexillologist, or flag historian. His writing on the flags, coats of arms, and other national symbols has appeared in the Canadian Historical Review, the Journal of American Studies, the Canadian Parliamentary Review, the Literary Review of Canada, and British Columbia History and he is a regular commentator on the history and use of flags for national and international media. He is also editorial director of the Flag Research Center. He holds a PhD in Canadian History from the University of Western Ontario, and prior to joining LAC in 2019, he worked as an historian at the Canadian Museum of History, where he curated the museum’s 2015 exhibit marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Canadian flag, and as Saguenay Herald at the Canadian Heraldic Authority, where he designed coats of arms, flags, and badges for Canadian citizens and institutions as part of the national honours system. Don’t forget! You can purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• S10E21 Unpacking the Baggage: The 2025 Federal Election

  The 2025 Federal Election was one of the most dynamic and issue-filled elections to have occurred since the 1980s. Threats to Canadian sovereignty, an unpredictable US president, issues over Canadian defence, a glaringly vulnerable economy, a global order that seems to be more and more unstable coupled with a brand new Prime Minister attempting to prove to the voting public that he is the right man for the job. The outcome of the election identified serious fault lines within Canada. A massive boost of popular support to the Conservatives with an even larger boost of public support for the Liberals at the expense of the near decimation of the NDP which witnessed an incredible political comeback to victory. In this episode we tackle the 2025 Federal Election, what happened, why did it happen, and how did we get to this point. To “unpack” this important event we have brought on Richard Johnston. Richard is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Canada Research Chair Emeritus in Public Opinion, Elections, and Representation at UBC. He has also taught at the University of Toronto, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University (Mackenzie King chair, 1994-5), and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author or co-author of six books, four on Canadian politics and two on US Politics. He has co-edited five other books and has written over one hundred articles and book chapters. Much of his work focuses on party systems, elections and public opinion in Canada, the US, and Germany. In 2017, he was given the Mildred Schwartz prize for lifetime achievement in the study of Canadian politics and is a Fellow of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences.Don’t forget! You can purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• S10E20 The Trans-Canada Highway: A Nation Connected

  The Trans-Canada highway is such a part of the everyday Canadian experience that we often take this lengthy route for granted. Across this country many Canadians drive on it every single day, most without realizing that they are on one the most important infrastructure projects in Canadian history. But this highway is so much more than just a simple strip of asphalt. It represents a period in Canada where the nation was flourishing in the post-war world and where leaders sought to connect Canadians like never before. This form of connection would come to represent some iconic historical moments but more importantly would further unite a country seeking to define itself in the 20th century. For today’s topic we are chatting with historian and fellow podcaster Craig Baird. Craig is the creator and host of Canadian History Ehx, a podcast that delves into Canada's history to tell the story of the good, the bad and the weird. He can also be heard across Canada each weekend talking about Canada's history on the Corus Radio Network. In May, he released his first history book, Canada's Main Street: The Epic Story of the Trans-Canada Highway. If he isn't writing about Canada's history, and sharing our nation's stories online, he is visiting historical locations and traveling to second-hand bookstores to build his research library.Don’t forget! You can purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• S10E19 War Criminals in Canada: A Canadian Cover Up?

  In 2024 Jared McBride, Professor at UCLA, conducted a research methodology class with his students. As Jared is an expert on war crimes they investigated war criminals in North America and through their research shifted focus to Nazi war criminals who were able to settle in Canada in the aftermath of the Second World War. In the process of this project, they uncovered an incredible list. Known as the Deschênes List, it was a two-page list written from 1986 that identified hundreds of suspected Nazi war criminals who were allowed to settle in Canada after the Second World War. This was a massive discovery. For decades this list was considered classified by the Canadian government and thought to be inaccessible to the general public. Yet, it very much was available, and Jared and his team found it after simply digging online. In the aftermath of this finding the continued work by Jared and his colleagues have uncovered a problematic and questionable process where the Canadian government, and in turn Library Archives Canada, has obfuscated efforts to gain access to the rest of the records regarding this issue, thousands of still classified pages. This is particularly stark when compared to the U.S. who, in the late 1990s, ordered all documents, millions of pages, to be opened up to the public. Jared McBride is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at UCLA who specializes in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe in the 20th century with a focus on nationalist movements, mass violence, interethnic conflict, and war crimes prosecution. His research has been supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among others, and he has published in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, Kritika, and Slavic Review . Presently, he is completing a book manuscript concerning interethnic violence and local perpetrators in Nazi-occupied western Ukraine. Don’t forget! You can purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• S10E18 - Canada's Titanic: The Sinking of the Empress of Ireland

  The St. Lawrence River can turn treacherous in a second. What was just a moment ago clear sailing can suddenly into dangerous fog and almost no visibility. In 1914 the Empress of Ireland learnt this firsthand and what ensued is the deadliest maritime tragedy in peace time Canadian history. To help us dive into this subject today we’ve brought on Eve Lazarus. Eve is a reporter, author and the host and producer of the Cold Case Canada true crime podcast. She has written eleven non-fiction books, and her books have been shortlisted for several awards including the Arthur Ellis Award; the City of Vancouver Book Award, and BC Book Prizes. Eve’s latest book is Beneath Dark Waters: The legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck. You can get more information on Eve at her website evelazarus.com .Don’t forget! You can purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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