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From the archives

Referendum Trudeau

He campaigned in poetry but governed in prose

Rinkside Reading

What does hockey’s literature say about the sport?

Alarm Bells

Fort McMurray and fires hence

David MacKenzie

David MacKenzie is a history professor at Ryerson University. He edited Canada and the First World War and co-wrote, with LRC founding editor Patrice Dutil, Embattled Nation: Canada’s Wartime Election of 1917.

Articles by
David MacKenzie

Sheets Cost Too Much

An account of hooded figures April 2021
In January 1930, a small group of white men drove to the home of a white woman who was allegedly living with a Black man in Oakville, Ontario, and kidnapped them both. This was the Canadian Ku Klux Klan in action: The captured man was not tortured and lynched; he was driven to his parents’ home and told to stay…

The Private Lives of Privates

Trench culture helped our soldiers survive March 2019
Canadian soldiers in the Great War, huddled in mud-­filled trenches along the Western Front, had multiple words or euphemisms for death. A dead comrade may have “gone under,” “copped a packet,” or been “knocked out” or “buzzed.” Others may have been “napooed” or “kicked‑in.” In a macabre super­stitious twist, touching a body part of a dead…