Books
Retail Nation
Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada
Pierre Savard Award Best Book in Canadian Studies Honourable Mention, Sir John A. Macdonald Prize Shortlisted, John W. Dafoe Book Prize
Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada
Pierre Savard Award Best Book in Canadian Studies Honourable Mention, Sir John A. Macdonald Prize Shortlisted, John W. Dafoe Book Prize
Current Research
My forthcoming book, Indenture and Canadian Sugar in Fiji: People, Power, and Profit across the British Empire, examines BC Sugar and its subsidiary, the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company, which ran a mill and plantations in Navua, Fiji, from 1905 to 1922. My current research builds on this book. It follows the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company as a multinational enterprise, with operations and connections reaching Fiji, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Recent Essays
People, profit, and the making of modern Canada.
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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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2023The Conversation, March 2023. Updated July 2026. Republished in NiCHE, September 2026. Open AccessSugar is affordable because it was produced by enslaved and indentured people. This essay traces how BC Sugar profited from violent conditions in the sugar trade.
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2020Active History, July 2020. Revised and condensed, October 2026. Open AccessEaton’s and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s department stores were agents of Canadian colonization, as their own archives reveal.
Selected Articles
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2023Global Food History 10, no. 1 (2024): 68–86. Open Access
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2020Global Food History 6, no. 1 (March 2020): 41–59. Open Access
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2018With Kiera Mitchell. The Canadian Historical Review 99, no. 3 (2018): 456–86. Open AccessHonourable Mention, Hilda Neatby Article Prize
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2011The Canadian Historical Review 92, no. 4 (2011): 581–606.Hilda Neatby Article Prize
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2003Labour / Le travail 52, no. 2 (2003): 181–206. Open Access
Recent Highlights
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2026Third World Congress of Business History“Business and Colonization at Home and Abroad: The Case of B.C. Sugar.” University of Toronto, Toronto. July 2026.
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2026University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities Guest Lecture“Rethinking Empire: Sugar and Dispossession at Home and Abroad.” January 2026.
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2025Canadian Historical Association, 2025.
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2025With Rizwaan Abbas. Invited Lecture, Montreal History Group May Day Conference“Indian Indenture and Canadian Violence in Colonial Fiji.” York University, Toronto. June 2025.