Monthly Archives: August 2013

Click here for more information about the fall of Louisbourg.

Born in Halifax, Sally Ross has a B.Sc. and an M.A. from Dalhousie University and a Licence dès Lettres and her doctorate from the Université François-Rabelais in Tours, France. After teaching the history and culture of French Canada for 10 years, she has specialized in Acadian studies and lived from her pen since 1983. She co-authored with Alphonse Deveau the prizing-winning book The Acadians of Nova Scotia which was also published in French. Her book Les Écoles Acadiennes en Nouvelle-Écosse, 1758-2000, published by the Université de Moncton, traces the struggles for French-language education in Nova Scotia. She has translated 15 books and written numerous articles. For over 10 years, she has worked in various capacities for the Société Promotion Grand-Pré and from 2009 to 2012 served as media relations person. She is secretary of Les Amis de Grand-Pré and a member of the Commission de l’Odyssée Acadienne dedicated to the international commemoration of the Deportation.

Dr. Laurie Stanley-Blackwell, a graduate of Mount Allison University (B.A. Hons. with Distinction), Dalhousie University (M.A.) and Queen’s University (Ph.D.), has taught Canadian history at St. Francis Xavier University since 1989.  She is the author of such works as Unclean! Unclean! Leprosy in New Brunswick, 1844-1880, The Well-Watered Garden: The Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 1798-1860, Historic Antigonish: Town and County, and Tokens of Grace: Cape Breton’s Open-Air Communion Tradition.  She is currently researching the role of physical strength as a cultural marker among Nova Scotia’s Scots, and the significance of cemeteries in Eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton as cultural landscapes and emblems of Scottish ethnicity.

William R. Miles is a PhD candidate in History at Memorial University. His doctoral research focuses on the early modern Atlantic naval convoy system. In addition to presenting several conference papers on the subject, he has published “The Newfoundland Convoy, 1711,” in  Northern Mariner, Vol. XVIII, Issue 2 (2008): 61-83 as well as several scholarly reviews in  Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Northern Mariner and the International Journal of Maritime History. His most recent publication is “Irish Soldiers, Pensions and Imperial Migration during the Early Nineteenth Century” Britain and the World, Vol. VI, Issue 2 (Sept. 2013): 243-257.

Michael E. Vance is Professor of History at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. His research focusses on nineteenth century Scottish emigration and he has published several articles on Lowland emigration to Upper Canada. He has also written on the historical nature of Scottish identity in Nova Scotia in a collection of essays co-edited, with Marjory Harper, entitled Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory: Scotia and Nova Scotiac. 1600-1990 (1999) and in his contributions to Celeste Ray, ed., Transatlantic Scots (2005). His most recent publication is Imperial Immigrants: Scottish Settlers in the Upper Ottawa Valley, 1815-1840 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2012).

Dr. Elizabeth Mancke is the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canadian Studies at the University of New Brunswick.  Her research has focused on how European overseas expansion has shaped political practices and institutions from local government to international relations, an interest that grew out of early research on Atlantic Canada where many practices were experimented with and honed.  Her publications include The Fault Lines of Empire: Political Differentiation in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, c.1760-1830, and Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, 1500-1850, co-edited with Huw V. Bowen and John G. Reid, as well as a number of articles.  She is currently engaged in developing a database of all the pre-Confederation legislation of the British North American colonist, from 1758 to 1867, as well as writing a book entitled Imperium Unbound: European Overseas Expansion and the Making of Modern Geopolitics.