Two memoirs of the Nazi era are a needed reminder for our own times
November 2016
More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the shadow cast by the Shoah lingers. Monographs, memoirs and occasional diaries continue to appear, as some who lived and suffered through those years are speaking up at last as they approach the end of what are by now long lives. We may assume that not many more of these will be published—the survivors are now in their eighties and nineties—yet their stories are needed more than…
The many-sided mind of pioneering Canadian historian Frank Underhill
June 2015
Toward the end of Frank Underhill and the Politics of Ideas, his engaging and perceptive book about the historian, Kenneth Dewar, professor emeritus of history at Mount Saint Vincent University, describes Underhill’s 80th birthday dinner, held in Ottawa’s Rideau Club in November 1969.
Although it is now hard for me to believe, I was there that night and can still clearly remember the speech Underhill…
Glimpses of Canada through other literary eyes
July–August 2012
Canada is not a place that turns up regularly in the poetry, novels, plays or non-fiction memoirs of other cultures. Maybe that is because when foreign writers come here they tend to have immigration on their minds rather than tourism. Once they settle within our vast borders, we embrace them pretty quickly as Canadian authors, even if their palette is Mumbai rather than…
There was a lot more to R.B. Bennett than the Bennett buggy
June 2010
Was Conservative prime minister Richard Bedford Bennett (1870–1947) a leftist? The question has been around for years. During the 1969 meetings of the Canadian Historical Association I listened with some skepticism to a paper with the title “R.B. Bennett as a Reformer.” In addition to discussing the 1934 Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act and the 1935 New…
