In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon speaks to Wes Olson about his book The Ecological Buffalo: On the Trail of a Keystone Species. The Ecological Buffalo is co-authored by Johane Janelle, Olson’s wife, and includes a beautiful collection of photographs by Janelle. The book is an in-depth history of the bison based on their combined experiences and years of studying and photographing bison in Alberta. Olson explores how North America’s largest land mammal, the bison, is a keystone species in the Great Plains ecosystem, and examines the historical extermination of the bison in the colonization of Canada. His focus is on ecological preservation and re-establishment of bison and other endangered Canadian species, and he highlights the impact to Indigenous people when this chain is disrupted. Wes Olson was a warden in the Canadian National Park System for over 30 years. He grew up in the foothills of western Alberta and currently lives on an acreage of forest and beaver ponds beside Elk Island National Park in central Alberta. 

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.  

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

The Historical Massacre and Re-Establishment of Bison in the Great Plains

--Made of brass, most likely in France, ca. 1720-1750

--1 inch long, with depictions of St. Ignatius Loyola & Saint Mary with Latin inscriptions

--Found in ruins of Fort Michilimackinac;  in collection of Mackinac State Historic Parks, Michigan

A small brass religious medallion found in the house of a French fur trader inside a fortress on the remote Straits of Mackinac shows the immense power of small numbers of merchants and missionaries to control sprawling networks of diplomacy and trade, stretching from Europe all the way into the deep interior of North America, and to sway the course of wars and imperial power struggles.

Special thanks to Mackinac State Historic Parks and Dr. Lynn Evans for their help in producing this lecture.

UNLOCKED:  Hist. of the U.S. in 100 Objects -- 18: Jesuit Brass Medallion with I. Loyola

In the late 1800’s, European immigrants — mostly German and Scandinavian — flooded Minnesota, and the population boomed like few other times in history. This new majority of people in a new land needed myths and stories to fill in the blanks about why and how they came here. Like the story of Kensington Runestone. A purportedly 'discovered' rune stone that proved that Nordic exlorers made it to Minnesota in the year 1362. In this episode of the MinneCulture podcast, reporter Matthew Schneeman dives into the connection between the stone and Minnesota's white population, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of folk archeology.

Music from "Runestone! A Rock Musical": https://garyrue.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-runestone-a-rock-musical

Artifact or Artifice: The Kensington Runestone Hoax

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne speaks to Daniel Rück about his award-winning book, The Laws and the Land: The Settler Colonial Invasion of Kahnawà:ke in Nineteenth-Century Canada published by the University of British Columbia Press for the Osgoode Society Canadian Legal History in 2021. Based on his doctoral dissertation, Rück’s work is a history of the relationship between Kahnawà:ke and Canada and the interference of settler law on Indigenous law. By focusing on land use rights, Rück reveals the ways in which the settler nation conflicted with Indigenous laws and governance of Kahnawà:ke. He further details the tactics of the colonizers in expanding the settler state. The book also investigates larger issues such as legal pluralism, historical racism, inequality, and human relations with the environment.
Daniel Rück is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa in Department of History and the Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies. He is a settler scholar living and working on the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation along the Kitchissippi (also known as the Ottawa River).

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.
Image credit: Library and Archives Canada

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Interfering with Indigenous Law: Settler Colonial Invasion and Land Theft

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne speaks with award-winning author Jim R. Miller about his book Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts its History published by University of Toronto Press originally in 2017 and reprinted in paperback in 2022.

In his book, Miller addresses and explains the institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Providing an analysis of archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.
Jim Miller is a professor emeritus of history and a former Canada Research chair and native newcomer. Relations at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of numerous works on issues related to Indigenous peoples including Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens and Shingwauk’s Vision. Miller authored the first ever accounts of Canada's residential school system and shaped public understanding of issues including treaty rights. He is an officer of the Order of Canada, a winner of the SSHRC Gold Medal for Achievement and Research, and winner of the 2014 Killam Prize in the Humanities.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Unlearning Distorted Views of History: Residential Schools and Reconciliation

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon speaks with P. Whitney Lackenbauer about his book People, Politics, and Purpose: Biography and Canadian Political History published by University of British Columbia Press in 2023 and co-edited by the late Greg Donaghy.

People, Politics and Purpose presents a collection of micro-biographies on key figures—including lumberjacks, prime ministers, and Indigenous leaders—to reflect on Canada’s political history. These rich histories of individual lives have been compiled by the contributors of this collection to address broad historical questions while presenting critical reflections on the dynamics of Canadian politics and society. Further, this illustrative collection provides insights into Canada’s place in the world and stimulates fresh thinking about political history.

P. Whitney Lackenbauer is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Study of the Canadian North and a Professor in the School for the Study of Canada and the Department of History at Trent University. Whitney specializes in Arctic security, sovereignty and governance issues, modern Canadian military and diplomatic history, and Indigenous-state relations.

This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.
Image Credit: Gar Lunney/Library and Archives Canada/PA-188614

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Critical Reflection of Individual Lives: Biography and Canada

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Kent Roach about his book, Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2019.

In August 2016, Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In a trial that bitterly divided Canadians, Stanley was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter by a jury in Battleford with no visible Indigenous representation. In Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice, Kent Roach critically reconstructs the Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie case to examine how it may be a miscarriage of justice. Roach provides historical, legal, political, and sociological background to the case including misunderstandings over crime when Treaty 6 was negotiated.

Kent Roach is a professor of law at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. A thoughtful and prolific author, he has worked on over 13 collections of essays, over a dozen books, and approximately 300 articles on a wide range of topics including criminal law, policing, terrorism, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. Kent has won numerous research and teaching prizes and has been appointed a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt.
Image Credit: Beinecke Library, https://www.flickr.com/photos/23948320@N05/5036265062

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Indigenous Injustice and Canada’s Legal System: The Death of Colten Boushie

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Arthur J. Ray about his book, From the Frozen Sea to Buffalo Country: The Life and Times of Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1667–1724, published by the Champlain Society in 2022.

Henry Kelsey is remembered for being the first European to travel from Hudson Bay to the territories of the Plains Assiniboine and Cree as a young Hudson’s Bay Company servant in 1690-91. He remained with the Company for another thirty-one years, rising through the ranks to become Governor of Hudson Bay five years before retiring under a cloud in 1722.

Taking advantage of the opening of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Archives in the late 1960s and the voluminous new research in the fields of Indigenous and fur trade history, From the Frozen Sea to Buffalo Country: The Life and Times of Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1667–1724, offers a new look at Kelsey’s papers and includes his previously unpublished Swampy Cree-English dictionary.

Arthur J. Ray is the author of numerous award-winning books and articles on the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He also has been actively involved in offering historical evidence before Canadian courts in aboriginal and treaty rights litigation. Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, Ray’s Life and Death By The Frozen Sea: The York Fort Journals of Hudson’s Bay Company Governor James Knight, 1714-1717 (Champlain Society, 2018) has received wide acclaim for its sensitive appreciation of life at an HBC post in the early years of the 18th century.

This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt.

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

The Life and Times of Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company

Welcome to Witness to Yesterday. This summer, we will be reissuing our top 10 episodes. We hope you enjoy revisiting these with us. The Witness to Yesterday team is working hard, and we're excited to bring you the next new season in September, 2023. Thank you for listening.

Original Episode Description: Greg Marchildon interviews Matthew Betts, the editor and principal author of Place-Making in the Pretty Harbour: The Archaeology of Port Joli, Nova Scotia published by the University of Ottawa Press. Over the past decade, Matthew and his fellow archaeologists have been digging up artifacts at one of the richest Mi’kmaq sites in Canada. From this evidence, they have been reconstructing the pre-European contact history of the Mi’kmaq in Canada. In his research, Betts relied on the history on the region and people previously published by the Champlain Society. He explores the connection between archaeology and documentary history. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

<p>If you like our work, please consider supporting it: <a href="https://bit.ly/support_WTY">https://bit.ly/support_WTY</a>. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society&rsquo;s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada&rsquo;s past.</p>

Mi'kmaq Life before the Europeans(2023 Reissue)

Welcome to Witness to Yesterday. This summer, we will be reissuing our top 10 episodes. We hope you enjoy revisiting these with us. The Witness to Yesterday team is working hard, and we're excited to bring you the next new season in September, 2023. Thank you for listening.

Original Episode Description: In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Benjamin Hoy, the author of A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands. Published by Oxford University Press in 2021, Hoy’s book is a history of the infrastructure, policies, and personnel that were put in place over the past three centuries to create a boundary between the United States and British North America and, subsequently, Canada after 1867. Hoy also examines the impact of this boundary on Indigenous peoples who lived on either side of this border, or on both sides simultaneously. A transnational historian and a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States, Benjamin Hoy is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan.

<p>If you like our work, please consider supporting it: <a href="https://bit.ly/support_WTY">https://bit.ly/support_WTY</a>. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society&rsquo;s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada&rsquo;s past.</p>

The Canada-US border: a history of a fluid and unstable boundary (2023 Reissue)

August - Cassandra Pybus, Dr William Crowther as the fall guy

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon talks to Ken McGoogan about his book, Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2023.

Arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective. Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures, yet, many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discover the Northwest Passage.

This book challenges that vision as it interweaves two main narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy’s Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected lost eleven of his twenty-one men to exhaustion, starvation, and murder. The second discovers a startling new answer to that greatest of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin’s last expedition in 1845?

Drawing on his own research and Inuit oral accounts, McGoogan teases out intriguing aspects of Franklin’s expeditions, including the explorer’s lethal hubris in ignoring the expert advice of the Dene leader Akaitcho. McGoogan will captivate readers with his first-hand account of travelling to relevant locations, visiting the graves of dead sailors and experiencing the Arctic—one of the most dramatic and challenging landscapes on the planet.

Ken McGoogan is a globe-trotting, history-hunting storyteller who has published fifteen books – mostly nonfiction narratives, but also novels and memoirs. His best-selling titles include Dead Reckoning, Celtic Lightning, Fatal Passage, 50 Canadians Who Changed the World, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Flight of the Highlanders.

Image Credit:  Douglas & McIntyre

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery

November - Kate Warner, My pathway to the Pathway to Truth-telling and Treaty Report

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Jonathan Swainger about his book “The Notorious Georges: Crime and Community in British Columbia’s Northern Interior, 1909-25”, published by UBC Press in 2023.

In The Notorious Georges, Jonathan Swainger explores how the local pursuit of respectability collided with caricatures of a riotously ill-mannered settlement frontier of Prince George, British Columbia, in its early years. Anxious that the Georges were being overlooked by the provincial government and venture capitalists, municipal leaders blamed Indigenous and mixed-heritage people, non-preferred immigrants, and transient laborers for local crime. Swainger combs through police and legal records, government publications, and media commentary to demonstrate that the reputation was not only exaggerated, but also unfair as “respectable” white residents were responsible for the lion’s share of the disorder.

This lively account ultimately tells us about more than a particular community’s identity. It also sheds light on small-town disaffection and unease with a diminished place in modern Canada.
Readers interested in the history of the Canadian West, and in particular crime, social reform, and community history, will find this a fascinating and accessible exploration of the northern BC interior. 

Jonathan Swainger has been a professor of history at the University of Northern British Columbia since 1992. After eight years teaching in the Peace River region, he relocated to the main campus in Prince George where he has worked since 2001. His research interests are Canadian legal and crime history, and he is particularly interested in crime in the Peace River region from that took place between 1910 to 1960.

Image Credit:  UBC Press

If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.

The Notorious Georges: Crime and Community in British Columbia’s Northern Interior, 1909-25

We are thrilled to bring our hit Virtual Museum Lecture Series to the podcast. With over 40 lectures on Youtube, we’re so happy to bring the lecture audio to the podcast format so that more of you can enjoy these fascinating stories and join in on the historical adventures.

On today’s episode of VMLS via Podcast we’re sharing a lecture titled "The Indigenous Underground Railroad" with special guest Dr. Roy Finkenbine, professor of history and Director of the Black Abolitionist Archive at the University of Detroit Mercy. 

This lecture was originally recorded on April 26, 2022.

Enjoy the lecture.

VMLS via Podcast

VMLS via Podcast - The Indigenous Underground Railroad

MinneCulture is KFAI’s award-winning audio storytelling program. We produce audio documentaries exploring Minnesota’s art, culture, and history — stories about musical sensations, small town heroes, cultural icons, local lore, and everything in between.

The Tasmanian Historical Research Association promotes research into and the publication of Tasmanian history.

The official podcasts of the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre: Museum Chat Live! and One Hour in the Past. Find footnotes to podcast episodes at stcatharinesmuseumblog.com. Find us online at facebook.com/stcatharinesmuseum, Twitter and Instagram: @stcmuseum, and at stcatharinesmuseumblog.com.

History lectures by Samuel Biagetti, a historian (and antique dealer) with a Phd in early American history; my dissertation was on Freemasonry in the 1700s. I focus on the historical myths and distortions, from "the Middle Ages" to "Race," that people use to rationalize the world in which we live.   More info at www.historiansplaining.com

Please see my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632, if you want to keep the lectures coming, and to hear the patron-only materials.

Immerse yourself in Canada’s history! Witness to Yesterday episodes take listeners on a journey to document a time in Canada’s past and explore the people behind it, its significance, and its relevance to today. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://bit.ly/support_WTY. To learn more about the Society and Canada’s history, subscribe to our newsletter at https://bit.ly/news_WTY.

New tracks tagged #Indigenous history