13 October 1812 Before daylight on 13 October 1812, boats began pushing away from the American shore of the Niagara River. They carried soldiers from an army that had come to accomplish what another American force had failed to do at Detroit only two months earlier: invade Upper Canada, establish a secure foothold, and demonstrate…
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham, fought outside Quebec on September 13, 1759, was one of the most consequential military encounters in Canadian history. The fighting was brief, but its effects extended far beyond the battlefield. It helped bring about the British conquest of New France, altered the balance of power in North America…
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…
