Glasstry news

John Warkentin Went down to the annual meeting of the Champlain Society the other day, always a gathering of the tribe for Torontonians interested in published Canadiana. The Society  discovered in recent decades that its century-old model -- members pay a hundred bucks a year, get a handsomely published book of carefully edited Canadian documents on a chosen subject, and thereby subsidize the dissemination of accessible documentary knowledge  -- just was not working anymore.  Library building among Canadians is not such a big thing anymore, 'tseems.  Proof: plunging membership, plunging revenue, looming collapse. That was a decade ago. This AGM demonstrated that the Society has successfully been re-orienting itself away from dependency on membership dues and into other sources of revenue, along with other vehicles for disseminating historical knowledge. One of those new vehicles is the Society's very active and ambitious podcast Witness to Yesterday .  Listener...

The blog of the Champlain Society has been cross-posting me every so often lately, which is extremely nice of them, and the least I can do is counter-plug, I'm not an earbuds guy, and don't follow podcasts much. Audio is so slow! And so linear! In the time it takes a couple of podcasters to clear their throats and introduce themselves, I can skim scores of blog posts and stop on the interesting ones. But for you with your ears on, the Champlain Society's CanHist podcast "Witness to Yesterday" must be pre-eminent in the field of talking Canadian history.  There is lots to choose from at the site, the production quality is high, and the people doing it are both knowledgeable and enthusiastic about what they do. And they range widely across Canadian history from new research to classic publications of the Champlain Society. Substantial too. I broke my rule today and listened to Greg Marchildon and Patrice Dutil, together the backbone of "Witness to Yesterday,...

The Champlain Society , a member-supported organization that for more than a century has been publishing scrupulously edited Canadian historical documents in handsome editions, has also been expanding into new ventures, not least of which is " Witness to Yesterday ," a podcast series that has been running for some months on the society website, and on iTunes and other podcast sources. It's hosted by Patrice Dutil, Greg Marchildon, and Kenna Turcotte, and while the focus of each episode is a particular historical document, they tend to talk about just about any CanHist topic that takes their fancy: the Canadian Irish, the diary of Lucy Morrison, the birth of the NHL, the religious use of peyote in Canada.  And more. If you need something new in your earbuds....