I have enjoyed a few email exchanges with Professor Margaret Conrad of the University of New Brunswick. Although retired from teaching she is still very active in the history community. She has written several key overview Canadian history books as well several on the history of Atlantic Canada.I highly recommend you check out her books, including several co-authored with Alvin Finkel and James Hiller through an online bookstore and/or your local library. I would also highlight one of her projects: Atlantic Canada Portalhttp://atlanticportal.hil.unb.caThe Atlantic Canada Portal is a collaborative effort of the University of New Brunswick's Electronic Text Centre and the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies to promote the study of Canada’s Atlantic Provinces.To do so, the Portal publishes:• news and events related to the study Atlantic Canada;• a comprehensive bibliography of works published on the Atlantic Region;• a repository of electronic publications;• a virtual archives of primary source material;• an annotated web directory of links to websites on the region; and• teaching resources on Atlantic Canadian topics.A few quotes to wet your whistle to encourage you to read more of her all-encompassing, rather than limited perspective, histories. I think a few of her thoughts will benefit participants in our national history-gathering project.In her The Principle Chronicles of Women from the Maritime Provinces of Canada (1982) she quotes Anne Douglas on what she discovered while researching her female ancestors: “...we expected to find our foremothers; we ended up finding our sisters.” [p 25] It may be the same for you. In reading letters or diaries of your ancestors you may find not great-great grandparents, but rather people much like you living in a different century and in different circumstances but with many similar feelings, hopes and desires. On the challenge of writing a concise history of Canada [or perhaps even the concise history of a community] Conrad writes in A Concise History of Canada (2012):“Deep-rooted tensions – between Aboriginal and settler, nation and province, centre and periphery, French and English, Roman Catholic and Protestant, rich and poor, white and black, men and women – frustrate all efforts to present Canada’s history as a story of triumphal progress. There are injustices in the nation’s past so mean-spirited that they are difficult to believe. At the same time, it must be conceded that Canada is one of the most successful nations on earth, a country where people from all over the world have found opportunities for community and individual fulfillment. In any concise history of Canada, it is important to pay attention to the complexity that characterizes this rich and ever-evolving nation, which now seems to be experiencing yet another transformation in the way it represents itself in the world.” [p 8]These are but two of many thousands pieces of thought, information, ‘facts’ and insights. Perhaps my favourite, however, is in her Introduction to A Concise History of Canada as it speaks to what many of us experience who write family, corporate or community histories:“Finally, I want to acknowledge my ninety-five-year-old mother, who wonders what exactly it is that absorbs so many hours of my waking hours. She will not likely read this book, but she will be pleased that I have written it.” January, 2012View article...