There were celebrations that first day, July 1, 1867, for the new “Dominion of Canada.” But neither the date, nor the name nor the designation was a sure thing even a few months before. The celebrations were hardly a spontaneous public outpouring of nationalistic fervour.
Read more...“It is clear that the electronic world will force changes not only in the delivery of the information, but in the very nature of the information itself.” The Canadian Encyclopedia recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the publication of the printed volumes in 1985. It is in fact 30 years since I began work assembling The Canadian Encyclopedia in Edmonton, Alberta (see my history of The Canadian Encyclopedia).
Read more...It was my good fortune on October 26 to attend the final lecture on Adam Gopnik’s tour to deliver this year’s Massey Lectures on the theme of “Winter.” It took place in the beautiful Koerner Hall at the Royal Conservatory, University of Toronto. Gopnik of course is the famous New Yorker writer, with a number of bestselling books, including Paris to the Moon. On “winter,” this most Canadian of themes, the author is careful to point out his bona fides, that though born in Philadelphia, he grew up in Montreal.
Read more...The encyclopedia genre has played a significant role in the digital world. Even before the World Wide Web, encyclopedias were among the most successful products of the CD-ROM interim. Microsoft’s Encarta was the prime example (though it was a second-rate text licensed, not created, by the software giant), while World Book and others sold hundreds of thousands of copies to schools. Our own Canadian Encyclopedia appeared throughout the 1990s and was successful in retail as well as schools and libraries.
Read more...I had the most remarkable sense of historical context while reading Deborah Lipstadt’s book The Eichmann Trial at the very time President Barack Obama announced that American forces had invaded Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. Lipstadt recounts the remarkable reaction in the United States to Eichmann’s abduction from Argentina. On May 20, 1960 a team of Israelis drugged Adolf Eichmann and spirited him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel for war crimes. The abduction caused a sensation around the world. No-one blamed the Argentines for being furious at the violation of their sovereignty....
Read more...