Curious Canadian History

Welcome back to Season 10!! In the first episode of the newest season we take you to Penetanguishene, Ontario along the shores of Georgian Bay where once existed the Oak Ridge ‘Criminal Insane Building.’ Oak Ridge has been deemed the ‘Alcatraz of Canada’ and ‘the most terrible institution of all.’ For decades it housed some of Canada’s most violent criminals and in particular violent criminals with serious psychiatric illnesses. Yet in the 1960s an intensive and radical therapy program arrived, promoting the widespread of drugs and treatment methods that frankly bordered on torture. The Social Therapy Unit at Oak Ridge is still remembered by some as a successful venture in utopian experimentation though for others it embodies a state-authorized subjection of the individual without any checks or balances. A place where patients became test subjects in a radical and controversial program of rehabilitation.This week’s book recommendation is Watching the Devil Dance by William Toffan, published in 2020 by Biblioasis.Don’t forget! You can pre-purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca

**SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT – NEW BOOK** Our very own David Borys has a new book coming out in September titled “Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867” published by Dundurn Press. The book is an easy to read, single volume history of Canada at war since 1867. This photograph-rich volume covers nearly 150 years of the Canadian military, tracing its evolution from a small, underfunded, poorly trained militia to the modern, effective military it is today The book will be released on September 24th in Canada and October 22nd in the United States.  As part of the pre-sale campaign CCH is dropping a series of short readings by David from sections of the book. Today’s excerpt takes us back to 1870/71 where the Canadian government has sent out a military expedition to secure the annexation of the Red River Colony. This expedition, known as the Wolseley Expedition, is not sure if they are going to encounter violence when they finally arrive in Red River after what was an arduous and challenging journey to what would become Canada’s newest province.   You can pre-purchase a copy right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca

**SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT – NEW BOOK** Our very own David Borys has a new book coming out in September titled “Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867” published by Dundurn Press. The book is an easy to read, single volume history of Canada at war since 1867. This photograph-rich volume covers nearly 150 years of the Canadian military, tracing its evolution from a small, underfunded, poorly trained militia to the modern, effective military it is today The book will be released on September 24th in Canada and October 22nd in the United States.  As part of the pre-sale campaign CCH is dropping a series of short readings by David from sections of the book. Today’s excerpt takes us back to 1870/71 where we dive into the middle of the last gasp efforts of the Fenian Brotherhood to invade Canada and incite rebellion in Ireland.  You can pre-purchase a copy right now at the below links:AmazonIndigoDundurnGoodreadsIndiebookstores.ca

Imagine you are a maritime Canadian finishing your PhD dissertation in Germany right when the First World War breaks out. As a subject of the British empire, your country (and empire) is automatically at war with Germany and thus you are now an enemy alien in that country. This is the situation that faced Winthrop Bell in 1914, and it began an incredible story that led to Winthrop Bell becoming a British imperial spy in Germany, and in many ways, a prophet. Long before anyone predicted the horrific regime that would become the Nazis, Canadian Winthrop Bell was already sending back warning signs about this emerging National Socialist party, their agenda, and the growing public support for the ultimate goal of that regime.  Today we have on as a guest Jason Bell, PhD. Jason is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in Germany (at Winthrop Bell’s alma mater, the University of Göttingen) and has taught at universities in Belgium, the United States, and Canada. He is currently writing a book on Allied deception operations in the Balkans during World War II.  This week’s book recommendation is Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code by Jason Bell, published by Pegasus Books in 2024. 

When the British government declared war on Germany in August of 1914, no one in Canada (who was automatically thrust into the conflict by Britain’s declaration) ever could have predicted the incredible contribution the country would make in manpower, material and money. By the end of that war 650,000 Canadian soldiers were in unform and Canada had one of the most powerful corps formations on the western front. But what people often don’t think about, is how did Canada find the cash to support such a significant contribution. And that question is the focus of the newest CCH episode. How did Canada figure out a financing system that supported an almost unbelievable contribution to the world’s first global industrial war? Who was in charge? How was the program carried out and what was the reaction of every day Canadian? To answer these questions we have brought on David Roberts. David is a retired editor/historian at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada. In addition to writing several articles for that publication, he is the author of In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis (2006), published by Wayne State University in its Great Lakes Books series.  Mr Roberts lives in Don Mills, Ontario.Today’s book recommendation is David’s newest book Boosters and Barkers: Financing Canada's Involvement in the First World War published in 2023 by the University of British Columbia Press for the Canadian War Museum's Studies in Canadian Military History series.

Several episodes back, season 9 episode 15, we had on as a guest Alan Greer to talk about alcohol and its role in early colonial North America. One of the areas that was touched upon, that I thought would make an excellent future episode was alcohol’s role in the fur trade. As many are probably aware much of Canada’s early interactions between First Nations and Europeans came in the form of the fur trade. Some could make a strong case that the Canada we know today owes much to that early fur trade process.  In this episode we look back on how alcohol played a role in allowing Europeans to impose a credit/debt system within the fur trade, and the effects that this system had on European-Indigenous relationships. As well, how was alcohol used at the sharp end, where Europeans and Indigenous traders interacted? And was this all simply a European imposed system or did Indigenous traders act and react, resist and accept or outright reject these European tactics, tools and techniques of trade? Book recommendation: Allan Greer’s Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern America, Cambridge Univ. Press in 2018