Keith Johnston

Animal Trainer. Filmmaker. Fraudster.

The composer of Canada's anthem wanted his homeland to become the 39th state. 145 years later, I bought a piece of his annexationist past.

He was called a “savant” and a “savior,” thought a contender for a Nobel Prize and named alongside John Steinbeck as an American “genius whose work will live on through the centuries.” Four years later he was dead of a heart attack, though one former colleague called it a suicide.

Jean-Louis Beaudry devoted his life to public service, but few Montrealers know about him. In L.A., meanwhile, kid brother Prudent continues to be venerated.

Chapter in Mike Duignan, ed., Events and Society: Bridging Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2025).

There are many kinds of lunch. There are brown-bag ones, three-martini ones, power ones, and working ones. There are ones “for wimps” and ones for “ladies,” though, alas, there are no “free” ones.

The extraordinary life of a New York heiress who rallied Civil War troops, persuaded senators to fund a polar expedition and gave her name to an arctic river she never saw with her own eyes.

Themed crossword for Spyscape.

An abolitionist standard, now with nutmeg.

Conducting an orchestra is among the most rarefied and coveted positions in the performing arts. But during the pandemic, it’s a job that’s been upended like everyone else’s.

“It’s very unsettling because we don’t know how to do our jobs in the way we’ve always done them,” says Rosemary Thomson, Music Director of the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra. “But there’s two sides to that coin.”

Herbert Cumberland Wilson was a man of extraordinary musical gifts, but also many misdeeds.

City’s history has seen multiple variations since Champlain named the site after a seditious royal who backed the wrong Duke.

On a hot November day in 1926, a 13-year-old boy dressed as the Pied Piper led more than 1,000 children not out of town, but to the Central Library of Los Angeles.

It's all about a love of lucubration.

* Featured on Slate's Political Gabfest

We’re used to taking it figuratively. One “slays” on guitar, is a “killer” pianist, or wants to “die” listening to a miraculous piece of music. History, though, is surprisingly rich with examples of people actually killed by musical instruments.