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Roderick Benns: Posted on June-12-13 10:05 AM
 I'm liking what I'm hearing so farfrom the Conservative government about their plans to focus $12 million in existing funding at the Department of Canadian Heritage to promote Canada's history. All of this will lead up to the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017. Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore noted the money (in addition to a Canadian history fund) would support new opportunities for travel within Canada for youth, to learn about our shared history and to get involved in history-related programs. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on June-04-13 12:02 PM
 Today, back in 1979, Joe Clark took office as Canada’s youngest Prime Minister at age 39 – one day before his fortieth birthday. This election of Canada’s 16 Prime Minister actually serves as my earliest political memory. I was eight years old and I recall begging my parents to let me stay up to finish watching the election. There was something about the drama of the night that captivated me and sparked my interest in Canadian electoral politics. In his cabinet, Clark included the first black minister (Lincoln Alexander, just recently deceased) and the youngest ever cabinet minister (Perrin Beatty, then 29). |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on May-29-13 10:01 AM
 On this day in history, May 29, two very different kinds of disasters occurred. One was political, the other involved a staggering number of causalities. On this day the Reform Party of Canada was founded (and the disaster part was what happened to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada years later.) Preston Manning, as leader, became the voice for fiscal and social conservatism; Deborah Grey went on to become the party's first MP, winning the 1989 Beaver River Alberta by-election. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on May-22-13 11:38 AM
 According to a press release on CountyLive.ca, John A. Macdonald will soon have a bronze bust unveiled in Picton, Ontario on May 26th -- the 10th known sculpture of Canada's first leader. Ruth Abernethy, one of Canada’s most well-known bronze portrait artists, will unveil the bust of Macdonald. This is the first stage of a commission to create a larger-than-life bronze sculpture of Macdonald for the bicentennial of his birth in two years. The event will be held at Picton’s Regent Theatre Sunday, May 26 at 2 p. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on May-16-13 10:18 AM
It is beyond ludicrous that Canada doesn’t have a single national holiday for a Canadian. As we approach the Victoria Day weekend, few of us will reflect on the long ago monarch who never once put a single toe on Canadian soil. Of all the statutory Canadian holidays, this is the dumbest of them all. (Followed closely, I would say, by the banal-in-name Family Day.) I’m all for a holiday in late May. But maybe we could pick a Prime Minister’s birthday to celebrate? Hmm. The trouble is that May is the ONLY month in which there were no Canadian PMs birthed. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on May-08-13 1:12 PM
So much ado lately about the federal government’s interest in Canada’s history. One would think historians, teachers, and thoughtful Canadians of all stripes would be keen to watch this unfold. Quite frankly, why shouldn’t the federal government investigate how Canadian history is taught in schools?  History is the ‘domain’ of the provinces only in the strictest, deliverable sense. Note that investigating doesn’t have to mean meddling. And what if – gasp – the feds come up with some recommendations or suggestions for the provinces. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on April-29-13 12:54 PM
 There's a lawyer in Saskatchewan by the name of Bill Selnes who maintains an excellent, active Canadian mystery/thriller blog. Bill reviewed 'Showdown at Border Town: An Early Adventure of Paul Martin'here. Then he blogged about how the teenage author, Caroline Woodward (inset), won the contest to write the young Paul Martin book here. (See Woodward and Martin pictured below at book signing.) Finally, he interviews Caroline Woodwardhere about the whole experience. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on April-23-13 10:19 AM
 We know that Arthur Meighen was probably the greatest political debater ever to set foot in Canada’s House of Commons, and one of its finest orators. (For sheer oration alone, Wilfrid Laurier gets the nod. And how incredible it was that these two men’s careers overlapped, as they sat opposite one another in the House for many years.) Not many know, however, that Meighen, the arch Conservative of his century, had a fondness for the arts that reached the very depths of his being. While en route to Australia aboard a ship in 1934 – and without the aid of any books -- Meighen wrote |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on April-16-13 10:05 AM
 Steve Paikin at TVO has put together an outstanding two-part blog on Prime Minister Lester Pearson. It was 50 years ago last week that Pearson became Prime Minister, which was his third try. (Amazing that party leaders were actually given a chance to win at one time, instead of being pressured to leave after one try.) It was a good thing Liberals let him stay on, too. Pearson went on to become one of the greatest and most transformative PMs in our history, in five, short, acrimonious years. The blog also touches on other future Liberal Prime Ministers he encountered along the way, such as John Turner and Jean Chretien. |
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Roderick Benns: Posted on April-11-13 10:18 AM
 Today, in 1872, John A. Macdonald began his fifth parliamentary session with an ambitious agenda. In this session Canada would pass the Dominion Lands Act, which granted 160 acre homesteads in Manitoba for new western immigrants. (What, you thought there was free land now? This IS a history blog...) As well, the Trade Unions Act made unions legal. (Now, in most unionized workplaces, joining the union is not up for debate. Interesting, as 140 years later, Ontario Tory leader Tim Hudak says a government led by him would make joining a union optional, not mandatory, in any Ontario workplace. |
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