Witness to Yesterday (The Champlain Society Podcast on Canadian History)

About Witness to Yesterday (The Champlain Society Podcast on Canadian History)

Immerse yourself in Canada’s history! Witness to Yesterday episodes take listeners on a journey to document a time in Canada’s past and explore the people behind it, its significance, and its relevance to today. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://bit.ly/support_WTY. To learn more about the Society and Canada’s history, subscribe to our newsletter at https://bit.ly/news_WTY.

Publisher

The Champlain Society

Category

history

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Sept 2017

Latest episode

6 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

390 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Nov 2026

   The Air Marshals: Canadian Air Force Commanders, 1920–1964

   Larry Ostola speaks with Richard Mayne and Mike Bechthold about their book The Air Marshals. The Air Marshals tells the story of the first four decades of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) through the careers of its commanders, from the beginning of powered flight to the early Cold War. In 1924, the RCAF was born. The small, independent service navigated times of boom and bust over the next forty years while taking a key role in nation-building and defending Canadian interests. Multiple wars, the threat of nuclear attack, and challenges posed by the integration of the military all shaped the direction of the force. The Air Marshals explores these transformative decades through the lens of RCAF leadership, profiling the officers who dealt with the turbulent issues of their day. All had extensive experience, some as air combat veterans, others in staff positions, and they confronted an array of shifting circumstances: operations, personnel matters, procurement, air force expansion and contraction, training, and professionalization. Collectively, these profiles highlight the qualities that define effective leadership: the ability to work with all parties, to listen, to act decisively, or to defer when needed. These hallmarks of success remain as true for today’s generation of RCAF commanders as they were for those pioneering early leaders. Richard Mayne is chief historian and director of the Royal Canadian Air Force History and Heritage Office. Among his many publications on Canadian military history and defence issues is Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership. Mike Bechthold is a historian with the Royal Canadian Air Force History and Heritage Office and teaches history at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is the author of Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940–1941 and editor of Airpower and the Normandy Campaign. Image Credit: UBC Press

2. 

   30 Oct 2026

   Canada in the Age of Rum

   Larry Ostola speaks with Allan Greer about his book Canada in the Age of Rum Canada in the Age of Rum describes the years between the 1670s and the 1830s in the colonies that would later become Canada. Millions of litres of the sugar-based liquor were imported every year to supply a comparatively small population of colonists and Indigenous people. Why rum, and why so much? Rum was cheap and plentiful. Intimately connected to the West Indian slave plantation complex, rum shipped to early Canada and around the Atlantic World was part of the early modern expansion of intercontinental trade known as the first globalization. Canada in the Age of Rum shows what happened to the vast quantities that came to Canadian shores. Rum was especially important to workers in the early Canadian staples industries. Fishermen and fur-trade voyageurs drank rum in massive quantities, supplied on credit and at grossly inflated prices by their employers, an arrangement that served to claw back wages and ensure the profitability of enterprises that would not have been viable otherwise. Traders deliberately sought to get hunting peoples hooked on rum in order to ensure a steady supply of pelts – alcohol was not so much a commodity for sale as it was a gift used to induce hunters to conform to the ways of the capitalist economy. However, Indigenous people drank rum in their own ways and for their own reasons; and when drinking became a serious social problem, they organized to resist it. The story ends in the 1830s when the combined effects of the temperance movement and the rise of whisky led to a sharp decline in rum consumption. This brilliant history follows the thread of a single commodity from West Indian plantations to Newfoundland, Quebec, and the west, revealing rum as a critical lubricant of the social life of early Canada and its particular version of early capitalism. Allan Greer is professor emeritus of history at McGill University. Image Credit: McGill-Queens University Press

3. 

   23 Oct 2026

   John Hart: A Businessman in British Columbia Politics

   Nicole O’Byrne speaks with Patricia Roy about his book John Hart: A Businessman in British Columbia Politics Diplomacy works better than bluster, as John Hart knew well. Hart, an Irish immigrant with a talent for compromise and a famously winning smile, was at the heart of BC politics during the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on government records, politicians’ papers, and newspaper reports, John Hart illuminates his remarkable achievements. Hart, a businessman, ran and won in seven elections. He served as a Liberal member of the legislature, finance minister, and ultimately premier in a career spanning four decades. He managed British Columbia’s finances during and immediately after the First World War, using his knowledge of the bond market to refinance old debts while improving the provincial credit rating. During the Depression and the Second World War, many of his financial dealings were with the federal government. As premier, he established the BC Power Commission, negotiated with Alaskan and Washington State politicians about transportation, initiated major highway construction, and laid the groundwork for the northern extension of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway. As premier, Hart led a coalition with the Conservatives that provided businesslike governance and established the persistent BC political theme of free enterprise versus socialism. Like all good biography, John Hart is also the story of a particular time and place. It helps fill a large gap in the political and economic historical record of British Columbia. This exemplary, well-documented study will interest scholars and students of Canadian history, political science, federal-provincial relations, and public administration, and more generally people who enjoy reading political biography and the history and politics of British Columbia. Patricia E. Roy is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Victoria and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her major publications include A White Man’s Province, The Oriental Question, and The Triumph of Citizenship, three books on the responses of white Canadians to Chinese and Japanese immigrants and their descendants; Boundless Optimism, a biography of BC premier Sir Richard McBride; and The Collectors, a history of the Royal British Columbia Museum. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Image Credit: UBC Press

Who has been a guest on Witness to Yesterday (The Champlain Society Podcast on Canadian History)

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Kevin Nikkel
• Patrice Dutil
• Micah True
• Daniel Macfarlane
• Shannon Stunden Bower

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

20 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 50 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

64

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

90

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