Revisiting Human Rights: Reflections on the Teaching and Study of Human Rights in Canadian History

Abstract

It has been a decade since scholars of Canadian human rights history gathered to share research on the transition of civil liberties and other rights discourses in Canada to the universalism of human rights, and the reciprocal tensions or struggles this caused both domestically and in the international rights regime. While there has been substantial growth in the historical scholarship on human rights in Canada, the recent explosion of social movement activity, from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter and the Land Back movement, along with concerns engendered by the COVID-19 global pandemic and the discoveries of unmarked graves at former residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, demonstrate the need for new approaches and a more critical questioning of Canada’s so-called “rights revolution” and its place in national narratives. To that end, we organized a workshop to address these and other new approaches in the research and teaching of Canada’s human rights history. Held at King’s University College on May 2 and 3, 2022, the workshop brought together 23 scholars to engage with critical questions about Canada’s history with human rights. Participants gathered in-person and online to share new research and to discuss how human rights history has been studied and taught by scholars in the field. This SSHRCfunded event was bolstered by in-kind and financial support by the host venue and Toronto Metropolitan University.