Canadian History Perspective

As family historians we rely on historians to provide context. What was the world in which our ancestors lived like? What was happening in society that influenced their lives? A genealogy with no context may be instructive, but rarely captures anything but passing interest from other family members.

So what captures the attention of historians? The word cloud above, from a post by Tom Peace on ActiveHistory.ca is for keywords in papers  at the 2013 Canadian Historical Association annual conference at the University of Victoria.  He compares this to CHA conferences for the past decade.

The word clouds from those, available here, "don’t look all that different than the one from this year’s CHA. War, British, women, public, Ontario and politics dominate in both. Indeed, if you look at the year-by-year word clouds it appears that what has been called the Conservative vision of history (history with a focus on Canada’s military and British heritage), a centre piece of a new warrior nation, has been alive and well during most CHA meetings."