A collection of 55 posts
The author’s widely celebrated 2013 novel, ‘The Orenda,’ helped educate Canadians about their country’s colonial roots. It shouldn’t be cast into literary oblivion just because Boyden misrepresented his ancestry.
In the thirteenth instalment of our series on the history of Canada, Greg Koabel describes the crucial battlefield alliance that French explorers forged with Indigenous allies in 1609.
In the twelfth instalment of an ongoing Quillette series on the history of Canada, Greg Koabel describes France’s halting efforts to create a permanent Canadian settlement in the early 1600s.
In the eleventh instalment of his series on the history of Canada, Greg Koabel describes how Samuel de Champlain fundamentally redirected France’s transatlantic colonial project
Legal equality and the politics of disappointment.
Terrible things happened at many of Canada’s Residential Schools. But describing these institutions as instruments of mass murder is inaccurate.
Far from being an ‘architect of genocide,’ John A. Macdonald championed policies that were humane by 19th-century standards
In the fifth instalment of an ongoing Quillette series on the history of Canada, Greg Koabel describes Jacques Cartier’s first encounters with the Mi’kmaq and Iroquois.
In the fourth instalment of an ongoing Quillette series, historian Greg Koabel describes how the quest for cod and a possible passage to China sparked England’s first transatlantic ventures
Around the world, trans activists are cynically attempting to drape their faddish colonial theories in the garb of timeless Indigenous wisdom.
Grappling with Western misdeeds does not require us turn indigenous tribes into pious exemplars of moral instruction.
In the second instalment of an ongoing Quillette series, historian Greg Koabel describes how Leif Erikson ended up in Newfoundland
The project that (finally) got me hooked on Canadian history.
In a new Quillette series, historian and podcaster Greg Koabel traces the global origins of the land we now call Canada.
In a new, meticulously sourced book, two authors use personal case studies to illuminate the injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples by Canadian governments and churches.