During 1980’s Republican convention, backroom negotiations and media speculation over a running mate dominated
In July 1980, U.S. Republicans met in Detroit to formally nominate their ticket for the upcoming presidential election. It wasn’t supposed to be an eventful gathering. Ronald Reagan, the former movie star and California governor, had vanquished an array of opponents during the primary season and was thus assured of the top spot. The only…
A look at the last 50 years shows a great deal of social change – and a great deal we should have misgivings about
I’ve been challenged by the content on social media (and televised news) of late. Several friends and colleagues are recoiling from it as well. It all feels so dramatic, so polarizing, so one-sided. How did we get here? How did we become those people? Did we stop trusting everyone suddenly or did the feeling creep…
Written off as a hopeless case, he brought a ruthless, coiled fury to the ring, taking back the world championship
On June 20, 1960, 25-year-old Floyd Patterson did something that hadn’t been done before. He became the first man to ever regain the world heavyweight boxing championship. Others had tried – including legendary figures like Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis – but none had succeeded. Conventional wisdom speculated that perhaps it couldn’t be done. Although…
Why the COVID-19 pandemic feels familiar to Suzanna Wagner, who wrote her thesis on Canadian nurses in the First World War
Defending her master’s thesis just two days before COVID-19 forced the University of Alberta to close was strange enough. Receiving a call from the Edmonton Journal for her take on the pandemic was downright surreal. “It’s really odd as a historian to suddenly have people in the current media asking, ‘Tell us what happened in the past,’” said…
U of A historian Sarah Carter’s decades of research has led to reconsideration of what it means to be Canadian
When Sarah Carter was a university student in Saskatchewan in the 1970s, she, like others of her generation, wondered why Western Canadian history texts were so often exclusionary, ignoring certain populations – particularly women and Indigenous peoples – while favouring conventional, male-dominated narratives. Summer jobs at Fort Walsh and Fort Battleford in Saskatchewan made her…
They were canny, enduring and keen on expansion. In the end, however, the empire couldn't survive the First World War
Thanks to a voluble professor of European history at University College Dublin, the Habsburgs first piqued my curiosity in the early 1960s. Then the interest lay dormant until a chance 2011 visit to the imperial crypt in Vienna’s Capuchin monastery. In operation since 1632, the crypt contains the tombs of more than 140 Habsburg royalty.…
The Spanish city of Valladolid has an Irish historical connection. It was there that Red Hugh O’Donnell was buried in 1602. Now, thanks to an archaeological dig aimed at finding his long-lost tomb, the connection is back in the news. Known as Red Hugh because of his hair colour, he was the kind of historical…
We need to acknowledge the impact of racist myths. There is no good or bad race of people, there are just people
A video is circulating on social media of a white woman in New York City calling 911 to report being threatened by “an African American man.” The truth is that the woman was allowing her dog to wander in a bird-watching section of Central Park and the man asked her to put her dog on…
D-Day the Sixth of June was based on an award-winning novel by Canadian journalist Lionel Shapiro
Turner Classic Movies marked the American Memorial Day weekend by showing a string of war films, one of which was D-Day the Sixth of June. Released in 1956 and based on a novel published the previous year, I’d seen it at the local cinema in Dublin, Ireland, more than 60 years ago. Back then, I’d…
The Specials helped calm racial tensions and drew broad attention to the unjust imprisonment of Nelson Mandela
It has long been debated whether you can change the world with a song. If it’s not possible, one band came incredibly close. The Specials (or The Special AKA) rose to prominence in England in the late 1970s and achieved international fame in the early 1980s. Their sound fused the music of Jamaican immigrants with…
In July 1980, U.S. Republicans met in Detroit to formally nominate their ticket for the upcoming presidential election. It wasn’t supposed to be an eventful gathering. Ronald Reagan, the former movie star and California governor, had vanquished an array of opponents during the primary season and was thus assured of the top spot. The only…
