Kategoria BISAC: History >> Canada - Post-Confederation (1867-)

It is easy to forget that the death penalty was not abolished in Canada until 1976. But from the time of Confederation execution was an entrenched aspect of Canadian culture and criminal justice, one whose meaning was shaped by ritual, symbol, and theatricality.

The Practice of Execution in Canada is not about what led some to the gallows and others to escape it. It is about the taken-for-granted rituals and practices of execution, seen as a social institution. Drawing on hundreds of capital case files, Ken Leyton-Brown shows that each phase of the process - from the trial to...

The lives of lesbians who grew up before 1965 remain cloaked in mystery. Historians have illuminated the worlds of upper-middle-class "romantic friends" and working-class butch and femme women who frequented lesbian bars in the ?50s and ?60s. The majority of lesbians, however, were lower-middle-class women who hid their sexual identity by engaging in discreet social and sexual relationships.

Drawing on correspondence, interviews, journals, and newspaper articles, Awfully Devoted Women offers a nuanced portrait of the lives of middle-class lesbians in the decades before the gay...

Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life. Gold Diggers is the remarkable story of the Klondike Gold Rush told through the lives of six very...

When Newfoundland entered the Canadian Confederation in 1949, it was hoped it would promote greater unity between the Maritime provinces, as Term 29 of the Newfoundland Act explicitly linked the region's economic and political fortunes. On the surface, the union seemed like an unprecedented opportunity to resurrect the regional spirit of the Maritime Rights movement of the 1920s, which advocated a cooperative approach to addressing regional underdevelopment. However, Newfoundland's arrival did little at first to bring about a comprehensive Atlantic Canadian regionalism.

When Newfoundland entered the Canadian Confederation in 1949, it was hoped it would promote greater unity between the Maritime provinces, as Term 29 of the Newfoundland Act explicitly linked the region's economic and political fortunes. On the surface, the union seemed like an unprecedented opportunity to resurrect the regional spirit of the Maritime Rights movement of the 1920s, which advocated a cooperative approach to addressing regional underdevelopment. However, Newfoundland's arrival did little at first to bring about a comprehensive Atlantic Canadian regionalism.

Thomas Osborne delivers a gripping account of 1870s Ontario pioneer life.

The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.

For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and...

The experience of walking down a store aisle - replete with displays, salespeople, and infinite choice - is so common we often forget retail has a short history. Retail Nation traces Canada's transformation into a modern consumer society back to an era - 1890 to 1940 - when department stores such as Eaton's ruled the shopping scene and promised to strengthen the nation. Department stores emerge as agents of modern nationalism, but the nation they helped to define - white, consumerist, middle-class - was more limited, and contested, than nostalgic portraits of the early department...

The post-war period witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of working-class families. Wages rose, working hours were reduced, pension plans and state social security measures offered greater protection against unemployment, illness, and old age, the standard of living improved, and women and members of immigrant communities entered the labour market in growing numbers. Existing studies of the post-war period have focused above all on unions at the national and international levels, on the ?post-war settlement, ? including the impact of Fordism, and on the chiefly economic issues...

Morton, one of Canadas most respected historians has given us a short celebration of Canada with a depth of insight that truly helps us to know one another and all the regions of the country.

Shortlisted for the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize

Contributing Citizens tells the social, cultural, and political history of Community Chests, the forerunners of today's United Way, to provide a unique perspective on the evolution of professional fundraising, private charity, and the development of the welfare state. Blending a national perspective with rich case studies of Halifax, Ottawa, and Vancouver, Shirley Tillotson shows that fundraising work in the mid-twentieth century involved organizing and promoting social responsibility in new ways, sometimes coercively. In the...