Pan Historia, and Other Nonsense

"Je croîs sous la rose": The History of the Quebec Nationalist Movement

Quebec has had a unique place in Canada: it is the location of the first successful European settlements, it is the largest province by area, and it is the only province whose official language is French. The Québecois have developed their own identity since the days the province was a French colony. Following transfer of sovereignty to the British, dissent amongst the population rose, culminating in the ill fated Lower Canada rebellion.

When the 20th Century rolled around, the national identity of the Québecois began to demand recognition, and soon calls for sovereignty became deafening. This resulted in two referendums, various controversial legislation proposals, and an armed resistance, resulting in the kidnapping of two government officials.

Music:

Gens de Pays

A Jest Society: A History of Canadian Comedy

Laughter is contagious. It is an action which brings joy in the hearts of people worldwide. Canada is no stranger to comedy. It has produced some of the most talented and famous comedians, clowns, filmmakers, theatre artists, and even musicians who have cause audiences everywhere to fall backwards in their seats. Join Pan Historia as they dive into a history of comedy from their home country of Canada.

Music:

Having an Average Weekend by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet

I Like That Old Time RefOOOOOOORRRRMMMM by Don Ferguson (as Preston Manning)

KKKanada: The KKK's Expansion into Canada

The Ku Klux Klan has imbedded itself in history as a destructive, poisonous organization. United under the common hatred of anything not white Anglo-Saxon protestant, the Klan has engaged in campaigns of terrorism, using intimidation, assault, murder, and even bombings in their crusade against equality. Their white robes bring about an image of fear to those who come across them. Today, they continue to march for many lost causes due to their refusal to accept they lost those wars long ago.

 

During the early to mid 20^th century, the Klan began to expand internationally to Canada, with chapters popping up most predominately in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and the largest membership residing in Saskatchewan. However, further efforts to gain a significant following here resulted in a series of events which boiled down into a comedy of errors. It wouldn't be a coordinate police effort, nor a united antiracist front who would bring them down, but greed, lack of organization, and overall lack of interest/necessity which brought about the downfall of the Kanada Klan.

Music:

Clip from Mississippi Burning (1988)

The KKK Took My Baby Away, The Ramones

COINTELPRO: Hoover's War on Common Human Decency

J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was a paranoid monster. So great were his delusions, he managed to convince the government to conduct one of the largest and most devastating domestic espionage rings in history, one which the FBI is still dealing with the consequences to this day. The Counter Intelligence Program, better known as COINTELPRO, was designed to spy on, infiltrate, and destroy groups and individuals suspected of going against the ordinary way of American life, whatever that means.

Thousands of lives were ruined, peaceful activists were targeted for threats and violence, and some of the greatest American heroes were attempted to be discredited by the project. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fellow civil rights activists were not safe from Hoover's wrath. Furthermore, the actions of COINTELPRO soon devolved into political assassination.

Frustrated by years of unchecked violations, a group of ordinary academics decided to take matters into their own hands. Using similar intelligence gathering methods, these activists single handedly blew the whistle on the whole operation, and opened the larger can of worms of the American intelligence community as a whole.

#BlackLivesMatter

 

Music:

Stealing People's Mail, The Dead Kennedy's

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Always Get Their Man: The History of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Along with beavers, maple syrup, and asshole geese, the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a renowned national symbol. The Red Surge, beige stetson, blue pants, and riding boots are what make up the image of the Mountie. Their legendary status is now global, as they are the only police force to be municipal, provincial, and federal. The force was romanticized in early black and white films as those bringing law and order to the wild frontier of Canada's west. And as the famous saying goes, "They always get their man."

Unlike the films, their history wasn't black and white. When it began as the North-West Mounted Police, it was used as a cheap militia to colonize the newly annexed western territories. This resulted in conflict with the First Nations and Métis populations as they were rounded onto reserves towards the dawn of the new century. When the First World War concluded, they acted as strikebreakers during the growing labour movement, and later as intelligence services at the beginning of the Cold War. They were even the ones at the front of one of the largest manhunts in world history.

Their history is long and varied, but not many know the full story. Thus, Pan Historia is proud to sit down and tell the full history

 

Music:

Dudley Do-Right Theme

Indian Love Call from Rose Marie

The Forgotten Pandemic: The 1918 Global Influenza Outbreak

In 1918, Death wandered on his horse through the barren grounds of the frontline trenches. The war was nearly over, but the dead continued to rise in numbers. The horrors of this war were unseen up to this point in history; people lost their sons, fathers, mothers, their homes, their everything. What nobody knew is a new horror was lurking, ready to spring up with devastating effect. This came from an unseen enemy, one humanity has faced since the dawn of our existence. Reports of illness sprang up in Kansas, then quickly to the trenches. Spain, uninvolved in the war, began reporting on a strange new type of influenza afflicting the population. Soon, the world referred to this silent killer as the Spanish Flu.

As the war in the trenches continued, a new war ignited, one which infected 500 million people worldwide in 9 months, and kill between 17 million and 50 million. Hospitals became overrun with infected patients, entire Indigenous communities were wiped out, and the bodies of the dead became too much for morgues to handle. At first, governments in Europe and the US denied the severity or even the illness's existence, continuing to hold their patriotic parades and liberty drives, leading to more becoming ill rapidly. A new horseman now walked the Earth on a sickly steed, a horseman named Pestilence. Soon, the horrors of war were accompanied by the horrors of disease.

 

Music

The Dance Macabre, Camille Saint-Saëns

Two Historians and a Philosopher, and Other Nonsense

Another season is done, and a new one is beginning. In this season closer/opener, the pair have a chat with Dr. Annie St. John Stark, assistant professor at Thompson River University and former professor of Lyndsay's. The three sit down and talk politics, philosophy, the hardship of marking papers, and other nonsense.

The Hammer Falls: The End of the Soviet Union

Throughout history, humanity has witnessed the rise and fall of countless empires. Typically, internal unrest either weakened these states into collapse, or vulnerability to invading forces. The Soviet Union was like an empire, one meant to be the beacon of workers around the world. Instead, it ended up ruled by the same elites it aimed to destroy. By the time Gorbachev came along, the cracks had already expanded clear across the country, and it was too late to repair. Gorbachev still tried, with Glasnost and Perestroika aiming to improve both domestic issues and diplomacy with the west.

The various Soviet Republics saw this as an opportunity to to seek self determination instead, bringing the union to its denouement. The 80s ended with civil unrest, ethnic tensions, and even civil war across the land, and only the die hards felt anything could be savaged. On a hot August day in 1991, those die hards attempted to seize control, and save the union. To their shock, the people were beyond done with the old Soviet ways, rallying instead to the reformers Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, unafraid of the soldiers and tanks surrounding them. Before the year's end, the world's first communist state came to an end.

 

Music

Frank Sinatra, My Way

CornFlakes Strategy, Soviet Anthem - Slow Piano - instrumental 2000 subs special

1:23:45: The Chernobyl Disaster

Most of the city of Pripyat was fast asleep in the early morning of April 26, 1986. It was a relatively quiet night, save for the sounds from the nearby Chernobyl Power Station. All was calm until just before 1:30AM, when a small explosion echoed through the air, followed almost instantly by a second, larger fireball. Emergency operators received alarms of a fire at Chernobyl, believed to be a destroyed control system tank setting fire to the roof. Inside, workers frantically worked to ensure Unit 4s reactor continued to receive cooling water and prevent the fire from causing meltdown.

Firefighters rushed to the scene, most having just gotten out of bed, and wearing nothing but short sleeve shirts, some still in pyjamas. As they assembled their hose equipment, all they could think about was the taste of metal in their mouth. Little did they know, only meters away from them, was a hole where the reactor once lay. It was now nothing more than an inferno, burning as hot as the surface of the Sun, and spewing toxic radiation into the sky. A large plume of black smoke floated over the forest towards Pripyat. When it arrived, the city was darkened by the shadow of death.

 

Music:

Tower (Metro 2033 Soundtrack) –  Alexey Omelchuk

When Ronnie Met Mikie: The Friendship of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan

One was a man born in Russia during the height of Stalinism, who rose to power through hard work and perseverance.

The other was a man, a proud American with great charisma, and once acted alongside a chimpanzee.

Both men were leader of their respective countries, long rivals who on more than one occasion nearly brought about nuclear war. There was little in common between these two men that could possibly bring them together.

Or was there?

Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and American President Ronald Reagan first met at a summit in Geneva in 1985. It was at this first meeting the two would develop a friendship and mutual respect for one another which – through close calls, stalemate, and disagreement – bring about the thawing of relations between their respective countries, and bring about the end of the Cold War only two years later.