Avie Bennett Historica Lecture

Since 2004, The Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History has served to promote the study of Canada’s heritage as a vital and lively academic discipline. The Chair was established by the Historica Foundation of Canada, endowed by York Chancellor Emeritus Avie Bennett. Each year, an esteemed lecturer is invited to share their research with historians, students, faculty, and the public at large.

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20 Years of the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Chair in Canadian History

The Viewbook presents the research and publications of Professor Marcel Martel, the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Chair in Canadian History. It also features information on our engaging public lectures, external grants, alumni accomplishments, and more.

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2025 Avie Bennett Historica Lecture

The Shifting Canadian Political Landscape

Avie Bennett 2025 speaker Chantal Hébert in front of Canadian map and a flag

Date: September 17, 2025
Location: Schulich – Private Dining Room
Time: 4-6 p.m. (Lecture 4:00 - 5:15 p.m.; Reception 5:15 – 6:00 p.m.)

Six months in the tenure of Mark Carney as prime minister, a look at the state of play on and off Parliament Hill and on the US/Canada front. Mark Carney came to the job of prime minister with an ambitious agenda but also zero parliamentary experience. How has he adapted and is the delivery living up to his campaign promise to reinvent the Canadian economy? And what does his track record so far suggest about the longevity of his minority government?

Presented by Chantal Hébert, journalist (CBC, The Toronto Star, L’Actualité, and Radio-Canada).

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Past Events

Canada’s Transnational Fighters

September 19 - 20, 2024

Throughout its history, when the Canadian state has decided if the country will go to war, usually in following imperial decisions, national interest, or alliance obligations, its professional service personnel, its reservists, and its citizen base have formed the armed forces. Swearing an oath to the Crown, wearing a uniform, and being bound by a military code of conduct that is different than that of civilian norms and laws has defined those who served and continue to serve in Canada’s armed forces. And yet there is another group of Canadians who have fought in foreign wars. Known as transnational fighters, these Canadians have left Canada to fight abroad. The line between foreign fighters and mercenaries can be a thin one in some cases, but mercenaries are usually fighting primarily for pay. Transnational fighters almost always have other motivations. While some of the transnational fighters have been former members of Canada’s armed services or veterans of its official wars, these soldiers, airmen, or other types of warriors have fought in these conflicts not in the Canadian uniform or guided by its military’s regulations. They are not paid by the Canadian state, have no special veterans’ benefits, and their military commitment has not been officially commemorated. Tens of thousands of Canadians have nonetheless served from immediately before Confederation in wars beyond Canada’s borders. This public lecture will explore why individual Canadians have felt compelled to leave their communities to fight overseas. It will also touch on their experience in the conflict zone, the fighters’ return to Canada, and their treatment within society.

A difficult history of the Hudson’s Bay Company

September 28, 2023

How should historians understand the fur-trade, and powerful corporate entities associated with it, as a chapter in a global history of colonialism and dispossession? This talk will aim to trouble the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company by centering it in difficult histories of violence, conflict, and the theft of knowledge, land, and lives in North America, ones with implications for the lived present of colonialism in Western Canada.

Writing Difficult Histories in Difficult Times

January 18, 2023

This talk was about the challenges of writing difficult histories in difficult times. It asked how members of the historical community should respond to the demands for social justice and inclusion being placed on a profession. Focused primarily on the Canadian context, this talk also considered for whom these histories are difficult and the academic, institutional and bureaucratic challenges that they present for the university.

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Chief Clarence Louie on Indigenous Peoples and the wine industry in B.C.

September 23, 2021

For the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Public Lecture in Canadian History, Settler Vines was honoured to welcome Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band. The Osoyoos community created the first Indigenous-owned winery in North America. Chief Louie discussed Indigenous Peoples and the wine industry in British Columbia in the context of globalization and climate change.

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Carried Away: Forgetting and Remembering the Great Influenza Pandemic in Canada

March 26, 2021

In this timely lecture, Professor Esyllt Jones, author of the award-winning book Influenza 1918: Death, Disease and Struggle and professor at the University of Manitoba, explores the Great Influenza (1918-1920) in light of renewed interest following the COVID-19 pandemic. By following work by writer Alice Munro, Jones to suggests a new interpretation of how pandemic disease survivors remembered their experiences, and how those intimate histories interacted with large-scale social forces and upheavals.

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Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History

November 7, 2019

University of Calgary's Professor George Colpitts has dedicated much of his research to understanding the very meaning of wildlife and how that definition has changed over time. His 2019 keynote address explored the ways in which historians have been at the forefront of new research in human-animal studies, blending traditional archival and oral history research methods with interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks that de-centre humans in historical narratives in order to better understand the past from non-anthropocentric perspectives.

Prairie Settler Suffragists and Indigenous People

September 27, 2018

Award-winning author and Native Studies Professor Sarah Carter, from the University of Alberta, delivered a lecture titled “Prairie Settler Suffragists and Indigenous People,” drawn from her book, Ours By Every Law of Right and Justice: Women and the Vote in the Prairie Provinces. The book is part of the Women’s Suffrage and the Struggle for Democracy series by the University of British Columbia Press.

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20 Years of the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Chair in Canadian History

2025 Avie Bennett Historica Lecture

The Shifting Canadian Political Landscape

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Past Events

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