This is a continuation of the previous post, Donnacona. If you haven’t read that yet, I suggest you start there. Agona As Cartier sailed away from Stadacona with his ten captives, he left behind 25 dead crew members in the land he’d come to call Canada. Five years later, as he sailed away from France to … Continue reading Agona
Last week I wrote about the country called Wendake and the peoples of the Wendat confederacy, some of whom had lived in the land they called Wendake for more than one thousand years when the Wendat confederacy was destroyed soon after the arrival of the French. In telling Wendake’s story I intentionally kept mentions of the … Continue reading Life in Wendake vs. life in France
Regular readers know I’ve become interested in the idea that it’s very difficult to understand the past unless you can gather enough context to develop what some call “historical empathy.” In short, people from the past have world views different enough from ours that their actions and experiences can’t be interpreted through our own sets … Continue reading A circular past and an extended present
As Canada celebrates 150 years, it’s worthwhile to think back to an earlier time when southwestern Ontario was a collection of villages. The population of just the area between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron was around 20,000 or 30,000, spread out over about 20 small communities. The economy was different than it is today, but still … Continue reading Ontario
It would be difficult, should the American experiment fail, for the rest of the world not to gloat. After all, Americans had so often held themselves up as the ideal republic, to be emulated by lesser nations. That was at least the feeling in much of Britain and Canada as southern states began to secede … Continue reading Canada vs. The Union
When searching for this website’s header image, I first looked for any photo of Canada from space, because I love space, and because I wanted to try and capture some sense of Canada’s expanse. But when I came across this particular photo, I knew it was the one. Even from space it contains only a small fraction of the country, yet so … Continue reading Where the Great Lakes pour into the sea
If, hypothetically, you wanted to define “historic Canadian values,” you’d have a hard time. For example, I’m currently working my way through a large book about the history of the Wendat, a confederation of nations that ruled southern Ontario for centuries, with ancestral roots in the region running back even further. Today the Wendat are better known … Continue reading The sex-positive Huron-Wendat
