Acknowledgements

The initiative for this new Canadian edition of Becoming a Historian came from CHA Council, which also provided funds for the French-language version of the manual, and the CHA’s Graduate Students’ Committee, which adopted the manual as a major project and provided on-going feedback and support. We are deeply indebted to the energetic, enthusiastic and hardworking members of the Canadian-wide taskforce of what became known as the “BaH” project. Catherine Carstairs, Dominque Clément, Robert Dennis, Lisa Helps, Rhonda Hinther, and Heather Steel worked very closely with us at every stage. They solicited feedback and supporting materials from students and faculty at universities across the country, ran study sessions, carried out research, and together wrote most of the revised and new chapters. They also kept us in good humour as we edited the final volume during long workdays at each other’s homes while juggling undergraduate and graduate teaching loads, conference commitments, committee duties, and other writing deadlines. We owe a special thanks to Sabine Hikel for accepting our invitation to write a chapter on pursuing a non-academic career. We particularly thank Dominique for his excellent co-ordination and computer skills, Lisa for building www.becomingahistorian.ca, and CHA webmaster Mark Humphries for getting the final version onto the CHA website.

We also thank the members of our Graduate Student Revision Committee for their critical reading of the original Canadian handbook and helpful suggestions for revision: Laurie Bertram, Caroline Durand, Jenny Ellison, Jarrett Henderson, Brian Shipley, Benjamin Potroff, and Danielle Terbenche. Numerous colleagues took time out from their busy schedules to field questions, fill specific requests, and provide feedback on earlier drafts. Many thanks to Denyse Baillargeon, Daniel Bender, Margaret Conrad, Krista Cooke, Lisa Chilton, Catherine Desbarets, Magda Fahrni, Allan Greer, Alan Gordon, Craig Heron, Suzanne Morton, Natalie Rothman, and Stuart McCook. As the text and links to this online manual show, many people generously shared with us their personal experiences, strategies, and/or their curricula vitae, job letters, or grant applications. We thank them for their generosity. We know that readers will benefit from their contributions. For several years, Jim Naylor has assigned Becoming a Historian to his upper level undergraduate students at Brandon University, and we thank him, and the students of his 2007 class, for sharing their responses to the manual. We kept their replies and insights in mind as we completed the new edition. We appreciate the continuing support of the CHA’s Canadian Committee of Women’s History. We owe a special debt to the many people who shared with us their personal anecdotes; in some cases, we explicitly incorporated their story or observation, in other cases, we used their personal experiences to inform our discussion particularly of the more sensitive issues raised in the manual. At the CHA office, Joanne Mineault and Marielle Campeau offered us helpful assistance. Finally, we thank Paul St-Jean of XL Translations for the French translation of the handbook. As editors, we accept responsibility for any errors. We also encourage readers who spot errors or out-of-date information to let us know about them: one of the benefits of an online version, of course, is that corrections can be more easily made. Please send feedback and comments to Lisa Helps.