Monthly Archives: March 2026

The 15th Annual Redding Bagpipe Competition Yields Great Results!

March 7th and 8th saw the Redding Bagpipe Competition return for it’s 15 th year. Each of the five amateur grades of solo piping were represented with a high turnout and the competition retains the title of the largest indoor competition under the Western US Pipe Band Association. Highlights of the weekend were the Sunday aggregate awards ceremony where the winner of each grade received a Scottish Sgian Dubh trophy and a bunch of extras donated by our supporters. Of particular note, Grade 1 champion, Steven McEhaney of the Prince Charles Pipe Band, received an invitation to compete at the prestigious Sandy Jones Memorial Amateur Championships held in November in Florida. The Redding Bagpipe Competition is the only West Coast qualifier for this event. Of equal note, our Grade 2 champion, Katya Teodorovich, also of the Prince Charles Pipe Band, not only took home all the Grade 2 aggregate prizes but was also awarded the Fred Rutledge Memorial, Piper of the Day Quaich for her outstanding performance across the whole weekend. Katya is a young piper rapidly making her way up the ranks of piping. It is really great to see the youth of piping demonstrate such a commitment to the future of the piping arts.

The 2026 awards for the Redding Bagpipe Competition.

The Grade 1 aggregate winner, Steven McElhaney being awarded the Sandy Jones invitation by the 2025 winner and invite, Gavin Guidotti.

Three of our Judges; Ken Sutherland, Terry Lee, and Jack Lee, present the Grade 2 aggregate awarw to Katy Teodorovich.

The Commander Fred Rutledge, Piper of the Day Quaich for 2026.

Check out three great events coming this month!

A newsletter from a fellow Canadian organization in the Bay Area.


Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News

• Final reminder: Big Give is THIS Thursday, March 12!

Upcoming Events

• Building and Fracturing Transnational Nativist Coalitions: Canada, Catholic Immigrants, and the Venezuela Boundary Dispute of 1895

• Haitcistut: Heiltsuk – Reconciliation from Below

• Thawing Ice, Rising Tensions: Canada’s Arctic Security Challenge

PROGRAM NEWS

Final reminder: Big Give is THIS Thursday, March 12!

The big day is almost here! On Thursday, the Berkeley community will come together for Big Give, a 24-hour fundraising blitz.

For us at Canadian Studies, Big Give one of the most important days of the year. Over 90% of our operating budget comes from community donations. Our donors help us put on great events like the ones below; support student research; and build a local community that can advocate for the importance of understanding Canada.

More importantly, your support helps us stand out at Berkeley. In recent years, Canadian Studies has consistently outperformed our peers on Big Give thanks to our engaged community. Last year, we raised over $28,000 from friends like you. We hope that this year, you’ll help us do even better!

On Thursday, you’ll receive an email to donate at givingday.berkeley.edu. We hope that you’ll give whatever amount you can to ensure that Canadian Studies continues to thrive at the #1 public university in the United States. Your gift makes a difference!

Here’s What Students Say About Canadian Studies:

“The Canadian Studies Program has given me such a wonderful community at Berkeley, with scholars from Canada, the US, and beyond. Together, we’ve been able to share with the university what we’ve learned about Canada and what Canada can tell us about the world. The program’s support has been indispensable for my academic development.

– Andrew Zhao, 2024-25 Hildebrand Fellow

YOUR SUPPORT MAKES EVENTS LIKE THE FOLLOWING POSSIBLE!

If you require an accommodation to participate fully in any event below, please let us know with as much advance notice as possible by emailing canada@berkeley.edu.

Building and Fracturing Transnational Nativist Coalitions: Canada, Catholic Immigrants, and the Venezuela Boundary Dispute of 1895

Thurs., March 12 | 12:00 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

This presentation examines the rise and fall of the domestic and transnational coalitional politics of the American Protective Association (APA). At its apogee in the early-to-mid 1890s, the APA was the largest nativist society in the United States. It was also led by a Canadian immigrant, W. J. H. Traynor, based out of Detroit. Shanahan’s presentation will show how APA leaders like Traynor and propagandists allied to him formulated a distinctly transnational Anglo-North American form of late-nineteenth-century anti-Catholicism that envisioned subversive (often Irish-origin) Catholic forces on the march in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. That ideology both propelled the APA’s institutional growth in the United States and proved sufficiently flexible to enable its expansion into Canada. However, Shanahan will also show how a brief war scare between the British Empire and the United States in late 1895 over Venezuela’s international boundary line – which raised the prospect of a US invasion of Canada – gravely harmed the APA from without and fractured its cohesion from within.

About the Speaker

Dr. Brendan A. Shanahan is a lecturer in history at Yale University, and an associate research scholar with Yale’s Committee on Canadian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. His research and teaching focuses on North American immigration and citizenship policy, and comparative US and Canadian political and legal history. Dr. Shanahan received his BA from McGill University, and his PhD and MA from UC Berkeley, where he was a Hildebrand Fellow and active member of the Canadian Studies Program. He is currently working on a project about transnational nativist, anti-Catholic politics in the United States and Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This event is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Bluma Appel Fund and the Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco.

This event will have a remote attendance option via Zoom. Please select the “virtual attendance” in the RSVP form to receive the link.

Haitcistut: Heiltsuk- Reconciliation from Below

Friday, March 13 | 1:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall

In October 2015, the Heiltsuk Tribal Council released a strategy for implementing a reconciliation agenda, which laid out a distinctive vision for reconciliation with provincial and federal governments.

This public lecture addresses how Heiltsuk have redefined the meaning of reconciliation, negotiated a series of joint land and water management agreements, secured funding for economic, social, and cultural development, and advanced their institutions of self-government.

About the Speaker

Dr. Courtney Jung is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. She works on identity and identity formation at the intersection of comparative politics and contemporary political theory. Her books engage normative debates about liberalism, multiculturalism, and democratic participation, and her previous publications include The Moral Force of Indigenous Politics (2009). Professor Jung received her MA from Columbia University and her PhD from Yale.

This event is organized by the Department of Ethnic Studies with cosponship by the Canadian Studies Program.

Thawing Ice, Rising Tensions: Canada’s Arctic Security Challenge

Thurs., March 30 | 1:00 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

In recent years, climate change has opened up once-inaccessible Arctic regions, leading to a new era of great-power competition. Countries like China, Russia, and the United States are scrambling to claim new shipping routes and untapped natural resources that were once frozen under ice. How can Canada, which controls 1/4 of the global Arctic, secure its vast northern regions in the face of increasing pressures from not just longtime rivals, but also traditional allies like the United States? Can it pivot a defense strategy historically reliant on the US to new key allies like the European Union? And how can it most effectively bolster and protect Canadian sovereignty in an era of geopolitical confrontation?

About the Panelists

Alexander Dalziel is a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He has over 20 years of experience working in Canada’s national security, intelligence, and foreign policy communities. He specializes in Arctic geopolitics, including international security cooperation between North America, the Nordic countries, and NATO. He holds an MA in History from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Dr. Christian Leuprecht is a Class of 1965 Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and a professor in the Department of Political Studies and the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University Canada. An expert in security and defense, he has held positions and advised governments in Canada and Europe. He received his PhD in political studies from Queen’s University.

This event is cosponsored by the Institute of European Studies and the Institute of International Studies and is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Bluma Appel Fund and the Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco.

This event will have a remote attendance option via Zoom. Please select the “virtual attendance” in the RSVP form to receive the link.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Philosophy Hall #2308

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Canadian Studies Program | Univ. of California, Berkeley 213 Philosophy Hall #2308 | Berkeley, CA 94720 US

Halifax hosts Persian Gulf 35 commemorations

An item from the Legion Magazine.


Weekly Feature
Weekly Feature

The Cenotaph at the Legion’s Fairview Branch in Halifax is adorned with wreaths placed during a commemoration of the Persian Gulf War. [Corporal Gregory Cole/CAF]

Halifax hosts Persian Gulf 35 commemorations

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Retired major Bob Crane doesn’t demand a thank you for donning the Canadian military uniform. Nevertheless, observed the Persian Gulf War veteran from Siksika Nation in Alberta, “gratitude is the one thing that we all appreciate when we do something for other people.”

Crane, a former member of 1 Canadian Field Hospital, spoke of the broader service that he and more than 5,000 comrades provided as part of a 35-country coalition force, spearheaded by the United States, to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation after the latter’s Aug. 1-2, 1990, invasion. He remembered, too, the desert, the dust—and, of course, the heat.

It was a far cry from conditions in Halifax Feb. 25-March 1, 2026, where those same comrades, encountering a brisk Maritime breeze, gathered to mark 35 years since the end of the conflict. Notwithstanding a blanket of long-settled snow, however, clear skies afforded a sizable delegation of Persian Gulf War veterans—Crane among them—the chance to participate in several commemorative events.

READ MORE

Weekly Feature
Weekly Feature

[Yevgeny Khaldei/Shawshots/Alamy/RBYNRE]

History repeats

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

There are two certainties in war: death and suffering. Flag-raisings might be another.

Flags declare victory, as Red Army troops did (below) in raising the Hammer and Sickle over the Reichstag in Berlin on May 2, 1945. The flag, originally symbolizing the alliance of workers and peasants, was used in the Second World War as a sign of resistance against Nazism. This staged and altered photograph was composed at the request of Soviet premier Josef Stalin in the wake of the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of American Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, Japan, a few months previous. Like the Iwo Jima flag-raising (which was not staged), the Hammer and Sickle picture was used as propaganda, to send a message, inspire and reassure soldiers and the populace at large that the good fight was being fought—and won.

READ MORE

The Briefing
The Briefing

Defence Chief General Jennie Carignan addresses The Royal Canadian Legion’s Dominion Executive Council in April 2025. [Aaron Kylie/LM]

Defence Chief General Jennie Carignan on the state of Canada’s military

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

General Jennie Carignan has an idea of how she went from aspiring dancer to military recruit to Canada’s defence chief. “In a nutshell, I would say it’s the diversity of experiences, the diversity of positions and types of missions, and layered on top of that, education to be prepared for different situations.”

Born in Asbestos (now Val-des-Sources), Que., Carignan enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1986. “I basically left home to join the military at 17 years old,” she said, having been raised in a family with a history of service. Whether such realities ultimately influenced her career trajectory, however, is less certain to her.

“I probably didn’t pay much attention to my [police officer] father’s lifestyle, but I do remember, of course, the uniform, the weapon, the sense of authority, and the importance of his role within our community. Maybe unconsciously, this was part of my decision process to join the military.”

READ MORE

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