The Cold War ends, identities take centre stage and history itself goes digital. Discover the words that describe Canada’s place in a new century and how the past is remembered.
These terms were extracted from Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Has come to signify the terrorist attacks on multiple targets in the United States on 9 September 2001, and the beginning of the "War on Terror."
When 9/11 produced the War on Terror, Islamicist groups understood Canada to be first and foremost an ally of their sworn enemy.
Following 9/11, an alliance of forces including Canada which initiated a military campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. Troop withdrawals from active duty were complete in 2014.
The commitment of troops and materiel to the Afghanistan War was substantial.
A jihadist group pieced together in the 1980s by Americans to fight against the Soviet Union.
Canada’s interests in the Middle East are complicated by its relationship with Israel, the central foe of organizations like al-Qaeda.
Refers to collections of enormous data sets that typically include large quantities of demographic information useful in social analysis.
Just as Big Data is reshaping contemporary society, for better or worse, so too will it reshape the historical profession.
The essence of the Cold War in that there were two superpowers in existence. Juxtaposed with the unipolar world at the end of the Cold War.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world became unipolar instead of bipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.
Also called the Calgary Accord; in 1997, an agreement signed between all provinces but Quebec; established principles for future constitutional change while enshrining principles regarding equality of rights, inclusion, and multiculturalism.
The Calgary Declaration of 1997 parcelled out veto powers over future constitutional change and received the endorsement of every provincial government apart from Quebec.
1992; a package of proposed constitutional changes; defeated in a national referendum.
Explain the failure of both the Charlottetown Accord and the 1995 Referendum.
The study of very recent history.
What Korinek identifies is, in part, the challenge of contemporary history.
An examination of the relationship between text and meaning.
Deconstructing a war memorial means asking what its words and images say, and what they leave out.
A variant on genocide in that it combines extermination with expulsion of an identifiable ethnic group. Strongly associated with the war in the former Yugoslavia.
Canada’s involvement in this phase was as an aerial combatant: CF-18s flew repeated sorties into Serbia in an effort to bring an end to ethnic cleansing in the Albanian enclave.
A country that has no national administration; usually associated with civil wars.
No longer able to whipsaw the East against the West, Somalia became a failed state in which there was no national administration, only warring factions.
A device intended to measure levels of arousal in a test subject; applied by Canadian security services in their efforts to identify sexual "deviants" and homosexuals.
The so-called fruit machine was bad science, and it damaged (and destroyed) careers, as did Cold War-era interrogations of suspected security risks associated with homosexual orientation.
Conflict between generations of historians that spiked in the 1990s; pitted national/nationalist historians against historians of society and culture.
“The History Wars,” writes University of Guelph historian Mark Sholdice, “are really not about history, but rather politics.”
An orientation in politics that begins with a sense of oppression or loss among a constituency (an identity) and moves toward an agenda of initiatives that will address those inequities; distinct from ideological politics, which begin from a position of principles and ongoing goals that are society-wide.
Account for the rise of “identity politics” in the post-Cold War era.
Or "national historians"; scholars who believe that the principal role of history is to analyze and explain the history of the nation state.
The nationalist historians went down swinging.
In the context of the post-Cold War era, a United States-dominated international stage in which diminished expenditures on nuclear arsenals would be turned into resources to build up economies globally; in the context of wars in the Gulf and Middle East, an effort to impose the (Western) rule of law on recalcitrant states.
This was not to be the case globally, since President Bush continued to pursue a New World Order.
The potential for, or the act of, formally dividing an established jurisdiction. In the case of Canada, Quebec's separation from Canada would not constitute because it existed before Confederation, but the removal of anglophone-dominated areas and Inuit and Cree territories would constitute a partition of Quebec.
The idea of partition had supporters within urban Quebec as well.
At the end of the Cold War it was widely predicted that the cost of maintaining readiness in the face of the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact and other communist countries would come to an end and resources would be spent in other ways.
There was hope in the early 1990s that the end of the Cold War would bring with it a peace dividend.
A provocative (and often ironic) term to describe attempts to modify language in such ways as to minimize unnecessary offence, typically of minorities, women, and vulnerable populations. The inclusive ethos of sensitive language — which was essentially self-reflection on the ways in which language binds social roles and relationships — has been challenged by privileged groups in particular who regard restrictions on the ability to defame others as a loss of freedom.
The rise in the 1990s of the notion of political correctness provoked right-wingers within the party.
Mental health consequences of trauma, typically within the context of warfare; associated with research in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy.
Another feature of war that has changed is the awareness and treatment of what has been called, since the 1970s, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The study of the historic experience of LGBT individuals and communities; also the analysis of popular and governmental attitudes toward LGBT communities.
The literature on queer history is still in its infancy — although it is a robust infant.
Term used increasingly in the 1970s to describe the existence of "have" and "have-not" provinces whose inequalities were a product of long-term economic circumstances.
Respectively, they were able to bind together over issues of colonialism, patriarchy, and regional disparities in federalism.
Beginning in the 1960s, a belief in the existence of un- or under-recognized rights as well as the importance and value of extending and enshrining rights to under-protected groups.
The extension of legal tolerance at first, and then actual, legally enshrined rights for gays and lesbians from the 1960s on is a manifestation of the growing rights culture in Canada during those years.
The upper house has been the subject of chronic criticism for decades. These critiques intensified in the 1960s and especially in the 1980s. See also Triple-E Senate.
Senate reform was more clearly spelled out than in Meech, similar changes extended to the Supreme Court, and there was a commitment to education and social policies and principles.
Political and military scandal arising from Canadian Airborne Regiment's violent, arbitrary, and murderous behaviour which led to several civilian deaths (including the beating death of Shidane Arone).
As the new Liberal administration led by Jean Chrétien (b. 1934) rounded their fiscal guns on the Forces, news of the Somalia Affair broke, and a Commission of Enquiry was launched.
Three Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, the first of which was signed in 1991; committed the signatories — the USSR and the United States — to making substantial reductions in their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems.
In July 1991, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) and United States President George H. W. Bush (b. 1924) signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which committed their countries to reducing their nuclear arsenals by 25%.
The fundamentalist Islamic regime in Afghanistan; deposed in 2001 following the NATO invasion in response to 9/11.
In 2005 troop numbers were increased substantially as the focus of the war shifted to dealing with a resurgent Taliban.
Call for reform of the upper house that would see it become elected, equal, and efficient; a plank in the Reform Party platform since the 1980s.
Western Canada’s long-standing appetite for Senate reform was a key measure, taking the form of a Triple-E Senate — elected, equal, efficient.
Following on the collapse of multipolar global relations in the 1940s, and the subsequent age of bipolar superpowers, the unipolar era was defined by one superpower (the United States) dominating global affairs.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world became unipolar instead of bipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.
Initially a military campaign launched against non-state organizations responsible for targeted attacks on American bases or civilians; after 9/11 included military attacks on regimes supportive of organizations regarded as "terrorist"; conducted by a broad alliance of nations predominantly in the West.
The attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon brought a cry for revenge from the United States, and President George W. Bush (b. 1946) declared the War on Terror.