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From the archives

Canada Daze

Barrelling toward a strange kind of death

24 Sussex Dive

On some very late homework

Muslim Pride

A timely LGBTQ memoir

Desmond Morton

Desmond Morton, author of 40 books on Canadian military, political and labour history, was the founding director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

Articles by
Desmond Morton

Dashed Hopes

A careful look at four ex-Soviet states shows little but disillusionment and greed November 2010
Twenty years ago, the Cold War came to a sudden and unpredicted end. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the post-1945 fracture of Europe between Stalinist tyranny and liberal capitalism, dissolved into chunks of masonry, widely sold, although less as souvenirs of brutal oppression and more as proof of capitalism’s triumph over communism. Previous rebellions in Hungary in…

Navigating Imperial Rivers

The hitherto untold story of 60 Mohawk paddlers and the siege of Khartoum January–February 2010
While the Canadian Voyageurs on the Nile in 1884–85 have been explained at length in books by Colonel C.P. Stacey and by Roy MacLaren, in Mohawks on the Nile: Natives among the Canadian Voyageurs in Egypt, 1884–1885, Carl Benn has focused on the approximately 60 Mohawks in the contingent, confirming their value to the British expedition to save General Gordon and enriching our understanding of Canada’s First Nations in the late 19th…

Shadow Dancing with the Americans

The hitherto untold story of 60 Mohawk paddlers and the siege of Khartoum April 2007
A decade later, there are few vestiges of American cruise missile testing in Canada. Only 18 air-launched cruise missiles were ever tested in Canada, plus five advanced cruise missiles. The landing sites were swept and the missiles, intact or in fragments, were painstakingly returned to sender. No human was found underneath. Only the protestors have left their…

An Incendiary Tale

Torture and revenge stalk this dark episode of Canadian history. April 2006

Mel's Crystal Ball

Should we look to the past in the Canada-U.S. military relations instead of trying to predict the future? November 2004