About Us

Teaching the Past was created as a joint venture between THEN/HiER The History Education Network/ Histoire et Éducation en Réseau and ActiveHistory.ca to bring together people interested in learning, sharing, and teaching history in Canada.

Most of our current contributors are all university based, so we are always looking for contributors in other areas of history education, such as elementary and secondary history teachers, museum educators, academic and public historians, and archivists. Contact us for more details!

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THEN/HiER is the first pan-Canadian organization devoted to promoting—and improving—history teaching and learning by bringing together the multiple and varied constituencies involved in history education: academic historians; public historians in museums, archives and historic sites; practicing teachers; researchers based in faculties of education; and curriculum policy makers. Our goal is to create more research-informed practice (from kindergarten to graduate school) and more practice-informed research through dialogue among these various communities.

ActiveHistory.ca is a website to help connect historians with the public, policy makers and the media. This is an effort to facilitate and disseminate the ideas developed at the conference “Active History: History for the Future” at Glendon College in September 2008.
They define active history variously as history that listens and is responsive; history that will make a tangible difference in people’s lives; history that makes an intervention and is transformative to both practitioners and communities. They seek a practice of history that emphasizes collegiality, builds community among active historians and other members of communities, and recognizes the public responsibilities of the historian.