The Contested Past: Reading Canada’s History - Selections from the Canadian Historical Review

This collection of selected excerpts focuses on the contributions of The Canadian Historical Review to the study of Canadian history from the journal’s founding in 1920 to the present. The excerpts, each accompanied by critical commentary, were chosen as representative of the major trends, crucial studies, and main controversies in Canadian historical writing. Shore has arranged them chronologically and thematically into four sections: Nation and Diversity, 1920-1939; War, Centralization, and Reaction, 1940-1965; The Renewal of Diversity, 1966 to the Present; and Reflections. Among the key themes explored by Shore and the contributing historians, Native-European contact, society and war, the nature of Canadian and Quebec nationalism, class-consciousness, and gender politics are highlighted.