Volume 30 of the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association carries on the tradition of publishing articles based on the best papers presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association. It also introduces what the editors hope will become a new tradition of sharing the annual meeting’s keynote address, and restores an earlier practice of assembling papers under a common theme. By opening with a presidential address, this issue follows a convention that has been in place through the lineage of the JCHA since 1922 (when it was called Report of the Annual Meeting). Adele Perry’s “Starting with Water: Canada, Colonialism, and History at 2019” invites us to reconsider our perspectives by placing water at the centre of historical questions. Perry’s address flows through several thousand years of history to discuss colonialism and the weight of the past on people today. With a focus on the area around Winnipeg, but a view that sees much further, Perry begins with and returns to “intimate, consequential” water to bring us into a thoughtful and subtle critique of what it means to be a historian of Canada and a member of Canada’s largest professional organization for historians.
