Essays
People, profit, and the making of modern Canada.
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Sugar and Indenture
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2024British Columbia History Magazine, Summer 2024. Open AccessBC Sugar was the nation’s fifth largest sugar company. But what many Canadians don’t know is that it also had sugar plantations abroad. This essay documents this history.
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2023Originally published as “Uncovering the Violent History of the Canadian Sugar Industry,” The Conversation, 15 March 2023. Republished in Salon, the Vancouver Sun, and other outlets. Updated July 2026. Republished with the new author’s note in NiCHE, 21 September 2026. Open AccessThis essay follows BC Sugar to its overseas plantations.
Retail and Consumer Culture
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2020Originally published in Active History, July 2020. Revised and condensed, October 2026. Open AccessAs their own records reveal, the Hudson’s Bay Company and Eaton’s were not only retailers. They were also instruments of colonization.
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2020NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), 25 June 2020. Open AccessThis essay asks whether COVID-19 would change Canadian consumer culture, and uses the history of wartime rationing and postwar recovery to answer no.
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2020The Conversation, 11 May 2020. Open Access
Women’s History
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2019With Kiera Mitchell. LSE Impact Blog, 18 September 2019. Also published as “Behind Every Successful Man”, LSE Business Review, 21 September 2019; and World Economic Forum, 24 September 2019. Open Access
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2018With Andrea Eidinger. The Conversation, 16 November 2018. Republished in the National Post and Montreal Gazette. Open Access
How to Cite
Belisle, Donica. “Essays.” Donica Belisle. donicabelisle.ca/essays.html. Accessed