On The Night Table of Margaret Conrad

Margaret Conrad is the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at the University of New Brunswick, has also written widely on the history of women.

January 2009

“John Leroux’s Building New Brunswick: An Architectural History is a beautifully produced book that became an instant classic the moment it was published. Who knew that New Brunswick had so many architectural gems?

“Stephen Kimber’s Loyalists and Layabouts: The Rapid Rise and Faster Fall of Shelburne, Nova Scotia: 1783–1792 chronicles the fate of what, for a brief moment, became a city of 10,000 people when the Loyalists arrived following the American Revolutionary War. Kimber is a journalist with an exceptional flare for historical topics. A terrific book; I read it in one gulp.

“I recently read Lawrence Hill’s award-winning novel The Book of Negroes. It explores the difficult experiences of African Americans who made up 10 percent of the Loyalist migration of 35,000 refugees to what are now the Maritime Provinces of Canada.

“Serge Courville’s Quebec: A Historical Geography, translated by Richard Howard, offers a fascinating angle on the development of Quebec.

“Margaret MacMillan’s The Uses and Abuses of History addresses the complicated ways that people draw on the past to shape the present and is therefore a ‘must-read’ for someone like myself who is engaged in researching the construction of historical memory.”