With wildfires having recently raged in the Amazon, California, New South Wales, Siberia, and elsewhere, the appearance of Alan MacEachern’s The Miramichi Fire is a timely reminder of earlier conflagrations that attracted global attention. MacEachern, an accomplished environmental historian at Western University, has spent sixteen years exploring New Brunswick’s experience with forest fires almost two centuries…
Margaret Conrad
Margaret Conrad wrote At the Ocean’s Edge: A History of Nova Scotia to Confederation.
Articles by
Margaret Conrad
Atlantic Canada is often presented as a paradox. A have-not region plagued by failed ventures and out-migration, it nevertheless nurtures world-class entrepreneurs such as K.C. Irving, Frank Sobey, Harry Steele and Harrison McCain, who remained rooted in their communities. Harrison McCain: Single-Minded Purpose and Failures and Fiascos: Atlantic Canada’s Biggest Boondoggles explore both sides of this paradox…
On February 13, 1805, Amos Babcock, in a fit of religious frenzy, scalped and disembowelled his sister Mercy Hall, while his wife, their nine children and neighbours looked on in horror. Babcock was hanged for this outrage, becoming only the third convicted murderer in New Brunswick’s history. A subject of passing interest among historians and crime…
When the LRC’s editor approached me about writing an essay for this special eastern issue, she suggested that I might like to address the question: is history an albatross around the Maritimes’ neck? I wonder if such a question is ever asked of other regions of Canada. Designed, she suggested, to “get my dander up,” the question…