The Charlottetown Conference: The Meeting That Helped Create Canada In September 1864, delegates from the Province of Canada arrived in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where representatives of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were discussing a possible Maritime union. The Canadian delegation, led by John A. Macdonald, George-Étienne Cartier and George Brown, presented…
Marc Milner, Second Front: Anglo-American Rivalry and the Hidden Story of the Normandy Campaign. Yale University Press, 2025. 800 pages. Marc Milner’s Second Front is a magnificent, provocative and deeply important reassessment of the Allied victory in Normandy. Sweeping in its interpretation, formidable in its research and unapologetically Canadian in perspective, it challenges one of…
By Greg Scott On the morning of August 19, 1942, thousands of Canadian soldiers approached the occupied coast of France in small landing craft. Ahead of them lay the port of Dieppe, its rocky beaches overlooked by cliffs, fortified buildings, artillery positions and German machine-gun posts. For many of these young Canadians, the grey outline…
Review: Stop Scholarly Cheating: It’s Time to Change Peer Review by Professor John Bonnett Professor John Bonnett’s Stop Scholarly Cheating: It’s Time to Change Peer Review is one of the most thought-provoking and intellectually ambitious essays to appear in recent years on the state of modern scholarship. Published in the Summer 2026 edition of The…
British Columbia Day: The Story Behind Canada’s Pacific Province Join the Canada History Society as we explore the remarkable story of how British Columbia became part of Canada. From Indigenous societies and the arrival of European explorers to the gold rush, the Alaska Purchase, and the Confederation debates, this short video traces the events that…
Dr. Barry M. Gough Honoured with the 2026 True North Book Prize as a special Lifetime Achievement Award The Canada History Society is proud to announce that the recipient of the 2026 True North Book Prize as a special Lifetime Achievement Award is Dr. Barry M. Gough, one of Canada’s most distinguished historians and internationally…
By Barry Gough “We are Canadians and not Americans because of a foolish war that scarcely anyone wanted or needed, but which, once launched, no one knew how to stop.” — Pierre Berton, The Invasion of Canada: 1812–1813 These two schooners of the United States Navy were constructed at Erie, Pennsylvania, in time for naval…
Benedict Arnold’s Arduous Expedition to Quebec 1775: Visions and Realities By Barry Gough The battles of Lexington and Concord brought a military confrontation to a rapidly growing division between Americans and British. After the engagement at Bunker Hill on 17 June 1775 the dogs of war were let loose. General George Washington, the young commander-in-chief,…
On April 1st, 2026, British Columbia’s literary and historical community paused to recognize a figure whose career has long been woven into the province’s intellectual fabric. Barry Gough—historian, teacher, and author—was named the recipient of the prestigious George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, an honour reserved for those whose contributions to letters have shaped the cultural…
