Communities

Free of the Prejudices that Restrain Them: Reflections on the Stories of Canadian Children and their Childhoods

In this article, Cynthia Comacchio examines the historical shifts in children’s experiences of childhood in Canada from Confederation to the 1970s. Comacchio further explores the sociocultural history of children and their childhoods in Canada in her forthcoming book,...

Watch Now: Critical Histories of Blackness in Canada: R v. R.D.S.

This talk explores R v. RDS twenty years after this landmark legal case in Canada. A number of legal scholars and historians of Black Canadian history and Black Canadian legal history have taken the opportunity presented by this anniversary to reflect upon its...

Off the Cuff, with Alicia Koepke

Alicia Koepke is a fourth-year History and Medieval & Medievalism Studies major with a minor in English hoping to do an MA in history in the future. She has worked as a Copp Scholar student research assistant at LCSC since October 2022, and has enjoyed learning a...

Watch Now: Charter Rights and the Encampment Ruling

In the first ruling of its kind in Ontario, on 27 January 2023 the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found that the Region of Waterloo’s attempt to evict encampment residents at 100 Victoria St. N was a violation of Charter rights (CV-22-717). Moderated by Laura Pin,...

Off the Cuff, with Alyssa Firth

Alyssa Firth is a third-year Honours History major and a Copp Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Canada working as a research assistant for Tim Cook. Along with their work at LCSC Alyssa is currently the co-President of the History Students’ Association, where...

Off the Cuff, with Callie Hernandez

Callie Hernandez is a fourth-year history major with a double minor in North American Studies and Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Laurier’s Waterloo campus. Callie is passionate about Canadian history and the preservation and conservation of heritage sites and...

Off the Cuff, with Quinn Downton

Quinn Downton is a history student in his final year of his undergraduate degree at Wilfrid Laurier University. In the fall, he is beginning his Master of Arts in History, writing a research paper on the transformation of the asylum in late Victorian Britain through...

Off the Cuff, with Megan Hamilton

Originally from Vernon, BC, Megan Hamilton is a social historian of twentieth century Canada. She has a Bachelor of Arts Honours in History from Wilfrid Laurier University, where she was a Research Assistant at the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada (LCSC). She is...

Off the Cuff, with Meredith Legace

Meredith Legace is a third year Honours student in History at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has worked with the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada for the last three years, and originally started as a volunteer working on the Through Veterans’ Eyes project under...

Welcome to the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada

The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS), which has become one of Canada’s largest military history research centres since its founding in the early 1990s by Terry Copp and Marc Kilgour, is now expanding to become the Laurier Centre...

Recent Posts

Off the Cuff, with Alicia Koepke

Alicia Koepke is a fourth-year History and Medieval & Medievalism Studies major with a minor in English hoping to do an MA in history in the future. She has worked as a Copp Scholar student research assistant at LCSC since October 2022, and has enjoyed learning a...

This research cluster is inspired by the idea that broader political, social, economic, and cultural developments can be usefully captured and understood where people live and experience them—at the local level. Communities are more than groupings of people; they’re embedded in place, time, and distinct context.  With particular attention to the communities of the Grand River watershed, we study the multiple and overlapping experiences of race, gender, Indigenous-settler relations, immigration, religion, and work in both urban and rural contexts.  And we do so through local, place-based research, including oral history and public history, that emphasizes collaboration, exchange, and public service.

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