On 23 February, Dr. Steven Jobbitt will be giving a free public presentation on “The Refugee Crisis in Europe: Global and Historical Perspectives" at the Thunder Bay Museum.

Since 1908, the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society (TBHMS) has been regularly holding talks on a wide range of topics on the fourth Tuesday of each month at the Thunder Bay Museum (425 Donald Street East) from September to April. The TBHMS's 2015-16 Lecture series is being sponsored by the Department of History and forms part of its 2015-16 Speaker Series.

Written by the late Ernest Zimmermann and completed and edited by alumni and faculty Michel S. Beaulieu and David Ratz, The Little Third Reich explores the eighteen months during the Second World War that the Canadian military interned 1,145 prisoners of war in Red Rock, Ontario (about 100 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay). Camp R interned friend and foe alike: Nazis, anti-Nazis, Jews, soldiers, merchant seamen, and refugees whom Britain feared might comprise Hitler’s rumoured “fifth column” of alien enemies residing within the Commonwealth. For the first time and in riveting detail, the conditions in one of Canada’s forgotten POW camps is illuminated.

The book launch and presentation will be held on 17 December at the Red Rock Public Library beginning at 6:30 pm.

The Lakehead University Historical Society will be holding a social in The Outpost (or Study if closed) from 4 to 6 pm. All students, alumni, staff, and faculty are invited to come by!

The keynote speaker  this year will be renowned historian Dr. Jack Granatstein. A complete program can be found at https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/departments/history/annual-military-symposium

The symposium will be held on the 14 November at the  O’Kelly VC Armoury (317 Park Avenue) between 0830 and 1600, with a reception in the Officer's Mess and a tour of the Thunder Bay Military Museum on the evening of the 13 November. The event is free and coffee and lunch is provided courtesy of Canadian Legion Branch no. 5 and Rose N' Crantz Roasting Co.

The annual event is a joint-initiative of the Department of History, Lake Superior Scottish Regiment, the HMCS Griffon, and the Thunder Bay Branch of the Canadian International Council. Additional partners this year include the Ontario Historical Society, City of Thunder Bay - City of the Poppy Committee, Thunder Bay Military Museum, Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, Northwestern Ontario Archivists' Association, and the Thunder Bay Public Library.

St. Paul's United Church will be hosting a presentation and discussion by current department member Peter Raffo and Professor Emeritus Victor Smith on the "Pity of War." Central to their presentation will be the question "why didn't they make peace in 1915 - and spare us Bolshevik Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and another great war, the Holocaust...?"

The Department of History invites you to an information session/ workshop on SSHRC and Other Graduate Funding Opportunities on October 28, 2015 from 2.30 pm to 3.30 pm in Ryan Building 3024.

This session will give you the opportunity to find out about Federal and Provincial funding for Graduate Studies. Trish Sokoloski and Maegen Lavallee from the Faculty of Graduate Studies will lead the workshop and answer questions about the funding process.

If you have any questions, contact Dr. Pallavi Das at pvdas@lakeheadu.ca

The Department of History is pleased to present Dr. Matthew Farish (Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto) who will be speaking on “Boards and Bodies: Militarizing the Human Sciences in the Cold War North.”

This presentations is part of a new joint initiative between the Departments of History at Lakehead University and Nipissing University to live beam speakers between the two universities. The event is also co-hosted with the MES/MESc Seminar Series at Nipissing.

Guardians of Eternity is a film produced as part of the Toxic Legacies Project and deals with the issue of how we communicate to future generations the danger of the 237,000 tomes of arsenic trioxide that is buried in the Giant Mine in Yellow Knife where it has to be frozen in perpetuity. It will be toxic forever, it is water soluble (the mine is on Great Slave Lake) and there is enough there to kill everyone on the planet. The film has been made in partnership with the Yellowknife Dene First Nation (YKDFN) and they are the focus of the film.

Members of the Department of History played key roles in its production. Ronald Harpelle is the film's Executive Producer and Kelly Saxberg is the Director of Photography and a Producer. Alumnus Gabriel Harpelle is the Editor. The film's production was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Guardians of Eternity's award-winning trailer can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/35522130

The screening will be at the Finnish Labour Temple on Bay Street on 10 December at 7 pm.

It is an event brought to you through a partnership between the Department of History, RESRG, and the Bay Street Film Festival’s Docs on Bay.

Cost is $8 or pay what you can.

The Department is pleased to present Dr. Róbert Győri, Chair of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and a Lakehead Visiting Scholar. He will be speaking on "Geography and Politics in Twentieth Century Hungary."

Dr. Győri is associate professor and Chair of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and head of the Tibor Mendöl Geography and Earth Sciences Workshop at the Eötvös József Collegium of ELTE. His research fields include historical geography, urban geography, and the history of geographical knowledge. His current research focuses on how science was controlled and managed by a totalitarian regime, and how Hungarian geography in particular was crushed as a result of Soviet- era transformations. He is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at Lakehead University.

This event is free and open to the public.