Category Archives: Upcoming Lectures

“Nova Scotia’s first public servant: the Governor’s Secretary”

By | | Public Lecture Series, RNSHS Public Lectures, Upcoming Lectures
Comments Off on “Nova Scotia’s first public servant: the Governor’s Secretary”

Wednesday, March 19th, 2025, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Lindsay Children’s Room on the 2nd floor at the Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Click here for the Zoom link to attend the talk virtually.

Christopher McCreery has served as an advisor to the Canadian and British governments on honours policy. Author of eighteen books, his works, The Canadian Honours System and The Order of Canada are the principal works on the history of honours in Canada. McCreery has served in various positions in the Senate of Canada and Privy Council Office and is one of the Commonwealth’s foremost scholars on the symbolic and constitutional position of the Crown. Since 2008 he has served as Private Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. From 2012-18 he served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum of History. Along with Professor Michael Bliss and Richard Gwyn, he was part of the triumvirate of historians who diversified and made more accessible the museum’s Canada History Hall which was opened in 2017.

Abstract: 
The arrival of the first Governor of Acadia accompanied by his secretary, Jean Ralluau in 1604, signalled the haphazard beginnings of an administrative structure that would eventually develop into a formal public service. This lecture will examine the development of the position of the governor’s secretary and its transition from transient patronage post, sometimes secure, and topic of vociferous legislative debate, into a statutory office that would come to be replicated across Canada.

 

“The Tides of History: Exhibit Renewal at Halifax Citadel National Historic Site”

By | | Public Lecture Series, RNSHS Public Lectures, Uncategorized, Upcoming Lectures
Comments Off on “The Tides of History: Exhibit Renewal at Halifax Citadel National Historic Site”

Wednesday, February 19th, 2025, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Lindsay Children’s Room on the 2nd floor at the Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Click here to join the Zoom call. 

Keith Mercer is the Cultural Resource Manager for Parks Canada in Mainland Nova Scotia. Michael Kilfoil was the Project Manager for the “Fortress Halifax: A City Shaped by Conflict” exhibit development.

Abstract: 
In 2022, Parks Canada opened a new flagship exhibit at the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site. “Fortress Halifax: A City Shaped by Conflict” replaced the “Tides of History,” an aging but much-loved theatre-style historical experience from the late 1970s. Learn about the exhibit renewal project and how historians attempted – and sometimes struggled – to diversify the range of stories told at this British military site.

“Ireland, Atlantic Canada and the Crimean War: imperial connectivity and shared experiences?”

By | | Public Lecture Series, RNSHS Public Lectures, Upcoming Lectures
Comments Off on “Ireland, Atlantic Canada and the Crimean War: imperial connectivity and shared experiences?”

Wednesday, June 25th, 2025, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Lindsay Children’s Room on the 2nd floor at the Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Zoom link will be shared soon.

Dr Paul Huddie is a historical researcher from Ireland, who is interested in war and society, principally within the British Empire in the long 19th century. He is a graduate of University College Dublin (BA, 2008; MA 2009) and Queen’s University Belfast (2014) and the author of The Crimean War and Irish Society (2015). His research has been published in several edited volumes and multiple peer-reviewed journals, including the British Journal for Military History, Women’s History Review, and Mariner’s Mirror, and he is also the co-editor of New Perspectives on Conflict and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, which will be published by Liverpool University Press in Spring 2025. He is currently employed as a Research Project Manager at University College Dublin, where he supports three prestigious European Research Council-funded projects.

Abstract: 
How did Canadians’ experience of the Crimean War of 1854-56 compare to people in Ireland (or Britain)?  Using the Welsford-Parker Monument in Halifax as its focal point, this lecture will explore the themes of popular culture, identity, and memory within both the imperial and settler-colonial contexts of Atlantic Canada and contrast them with the Irish experience. All with a view to identify shared experiences of imperial warfare in the nineteenth century. This research and lecture has been supported by the Ireland Canada University Foundation’s Craig Dobbin Legacy Programme.

 

Paul Huddie, UCD Centre for War Studies

 

 

 

“Not Just Nice Guys: Uncovering the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union”

By | | Public Lecture Series, RNSHS Public Lectures, Upcoming Lectures
Comments Off on “Not Just Nice Guys: Uncovering the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union”

Wednesday, April 16th, 2025, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Lindsay Children’s Room on the 2nd floor at the Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Click here for the Zoom link.

Born in Truro (the glittering metropolis an hour’s drive from Halifax), Alex Robben is a graduate of Dalhousie’s MA History program. Alex’s research focuses on labour, a specialization inspired by a litany of odd jobs, especially warehouse work for a certain Atlantic Canadian grocery chain. His work attempts to bring Nova Scotia’s public-sector labour culture to the fore in an area dominated by central Canadian, private-sector labour history. Having worked in positions ranging from shuttle driver to substitute teacher, Alex has more recently been involved in Halifax-area political organizing.

Abstract: 
Not Just Nice Guys attempts to advance the existing patchwork history of the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union between the 1940s to the 1980s. In this predominantly archives-based work, particular attention is paid to re-discovering the militant elements of the union and how they were contained by internal and external actors. It situates the union in the postwar professionalization of the Canadian labour movement and details teachers’ struggles with all levels of government and themselves.