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  • Women in the Labour Force

    Women are considered Labour Force participants only if they work outside the home. In the past women have been expected to be in the labour force only until they marry; this reflects the historical, idealized notion of a society in which the man is the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker. This notion of the family has not been a reality in the past and is not so today, since more than ...

  • Who Should be Canada’s Next Head of State?

    Canadians know who the next Governor General will be, but who will serve as the country’s next head of state?

  • Origins of Labour Day

    In a time when the news of labour "strife" is dominated by disputes between millionaire athletes and billionaire owners, history provides a useful perspective on a time when working people had to fight to work less than 12 hours a day. The "Nine-Hour Movement" began in Hamilton, Ontario, and then spread to Toronto where its demands were taken up by the Toronto Printer's Union. In 1869 the union ...

  • Stratford Festival

    Stratford Festival (founded 1953). Although its official name is Stratford Shakespeare Festival, it is commonly called the Stratford Festival. In 1951 Stratford businessman Tom Patterson formed a local committee to explore the prospects for an annual drama festival in his hometown on the banks of the Avon, some 177 km west of Toronto. His real motive was to find a way to save Stratford's dying ...

  • Fringe Festivals

    It’s summer, time to enjoy long days and balmy nights. And time of course to head off to the hippest part of town for avant-garde theatre at the fringe festival. For artists, the play's the thing. For audiences, squeezed into tiny makeshift theatres or gathered under the summer sun, enjoying regional cuisine and sudsy drinks, the fringe is all about fun. The story of how this playfully anarchic ...

  • Canadian National Exhibition

    The Canadian National Exhibition, Canada's largest annual exhibition, and the fourth largest in North America, is held in Toronto for 18 days in late August. The CNE, or "Ex" as it is popularly called, originated in an agricultural fair that circulated among the towns of Canada West in the 1840s (see Agricultural Exhibtions ). In 1878 the city of Toronto leased 20 ha of land on the lakefront as ...

  • Pacific National Exhibition (PNE)

    Pacific National Exhibition (PNE), host of an annual 17-day summer fair held in Vancouver' Hastings park. Founded in 1907 as the Vancouver Exhibition Association, it was later named the Pacific Nation Exhibition. The first Annual Fair, then called the Industrial Exhibition, was opened on 16 Aug 1910 by Sir Wilfrid Laurier . At the time, it was one of the largest fairs of its kind in North ...

  • Tegan and Sara

    Double threat!

    Sainthood suits indie rock duo Tegan and Sara.

  • Our Pet, Juliette!

    Juliette was Canada's most successful television entertainer for over a decade.

  • K'Naan

    K'Naan (b Keinan Warsame). Rap artist, songwriter, singer, b Mogadishu, Somalia, 30 May 1978. K'Naan fled Somalia's civil war in 1991, and lived in Harlem, New York, for less than a year before settling in Toronto. K'Naan was exposed to North American hip hop while living in Somalia, and despite the language barrier, was immediately entranced. He learned English with the help of hip-hop lyrics ...

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Most recent articles and blogs in HistoryWire

  1. Article

    Women in the Labour Force

  2. Article

    Who Should be Canada’s Next Head of State?

  3. Article

    Origins of Labour Day

  4. Article

    Stratford Festival

  5. Article

    Fringe Festivals