Canadian History Roundup – Week of October 16, 2016

A young girl in a red sweater holding a black cat (1953-1964). Rosemary Gilliat Eaton. Library and Archives Canada, e010980903. CC BY 2.0

The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.

Missed last week’s roundup? Check it out here.

• It’s a bit late, but the Missed in History podcast did an episode on the Orphan Tsunami, which struck the coast of Japan in 1700. It took until the late 20^th century for anyone to figure out that the earthquake that spawned the tsunami originated in Cascadia. The podcast does a good job of looking at the oral histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Cascades and their knowledge of earthquakes and tsunamis, both general and specific. While the Japanese and the Indigenous peoples of the Cascades have known for centuries that earthquakes and tsunamis are connected, it took until the 1960s for Western science to figure that out.
• The results are in and NiCHE has selected the winners of their summer photo contest! The photos are just gorgeous.
• Active History has a must-read blog post this week from Krista McCracken. She recommends ten works about teaching and reconciliation for archives, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations.
• You can see just how much information a genealogist can find by looking at Yvonne Demoskoff’s research into her ancestor, Alphonse Grozelle (1854-1921). In addition to basic biographical details, she’s also been able to find his last will and testament! Some juicy family gossip in there as well.
• Here on Unwritten Histories, I talked about managing secondary source research with the Papers 3 app. This special blog post is a video!
• The Canadian History Bits blog has a spooky list of 5 haunted places in Canada!
• The Margins of History blog takes a look at the Tisdale Municipal Building, constructed in 1940 in Timmins, Ontario.
• Megan Prescott, a GIS technician for the Empire Trees Climate project (learning history from building timbers) talks about her experiences at the 2016 ERSI Canada User Conference. Find out about some of the cool technology that is being used to study history!
• Nancy Janovicek reviews Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties, an edited collection by Lara Campbell, Dominique Clément, and Gregory S. Kealey, for the BC Studies blog.
• It’s not strictly Canadian, but check out this awesome list of scholarly work on pirates!
• In NiCHE’s latest blog post, Bethany Waite talks about the history of timber smuggling in North-western Ontario. That’s so cool.
• Esther Reiter has a new book about the history of the Jewish left in Canada. The book came out in September, and has a super cool cover.
  • And, in related news, there is a new exhibit about the history of Jewish farming in Ontario. These farming projects were sponsored by philanthropic organizations and were part of the colonization process of western and central Canada. Nearly all of these communities are gone, but the history remains fascinating.
• The Virtual Museum of Canada has another new virtual exhibit. This latest exhibit focuses on women in the apple-packing industry in BC from 1907 to the 1950s.
• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography also has a new entry this week. This latest entry is on architect Dalbé Viau, who built the St. Joseph’s Oratory, among other things.
• BAnQ has digitized the weekly magazine, “La semaine à Radio-Canada,” which ran from 1950-1966.
• The UBC Digitization blog explores the process and technology of digitization through an examination of the Berkeley Poster Collection.
• Emily Lonie talks about her experiences at the BC Museums Association Conference of 2016.
• Hayden King speaks to his experiences watching Gord Downie’s The Secret Path concert.
• Chris Aivalis discusses Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program in Ontario for Active History this week. Publicly-controlled energy projects have been around in Ontario since 1906, and they remain controversial to this day.
• Library and Archives Canada has an update on their work with extracting and preserving data from out-dated storage devices. You can find out about what kind of information will be released in the next few months. I can just imagine all the poor floppy disks. Did you know kids these days (sigh) don’t know what the disk image on the save button means?
• Though I think the article means ‘first house built by non-Indigenous people,’ this blog post takes a look at the oldest known house in Winnipeg, built in 1851.
• Stephen Blocking has once again posted some information about a class in his Canadian environmental history course. This specific class looked at the history of the environment and the formation of Canada. He talks about the readings he used, the topics he chose to discuss, and also includes the slides he used.
• Merna Foster has won the 2016 Pierre Berton Award for Popular Canadian History, for her work on the Great Canadian Mysteries Project and on women’s history in Canada. Congratulations! Find out about the other winners of the Governor General’s History Awards here.
• Sophie Dubois, writing for Histoire Engagée, talks about the Refus Global, and how the text wrote and rewrote the collective memory of the Grande Noirceur as part of the Quiet Revolution.
• Tim Cook has won yet another award, the Ottawa City Book Award for non-fiction. Congrats!
• Carmen Nielson talked to Jarett Henderson’s class about sexism in the historical profession. Check out Henderson’s live-tweets from the talk.
• A production company called Armistice Films is creating a series of videos about internment camps in Canada from WW1. Episode 7 has just been posted; it deals with the cemetery in Morissey where many internees were buried. Check out the whole series, including future episodes, here.
• Marvellous Grounds is a new book and website project that “that seeks to document and create space to vision the ways that QTBIPOC (queer and trans Black, Indigenous and people of colour) create communities, innovate projects and foster connections within Toronto/Three Fires Territories and beyond.” The first issue of their web-based journal is out, entitled QTBIPOC Space – Remapping Belonging in Toronto.
• Don’t miss this talk by Adam Gaudry and Darryl Leroux about “evocation of métissage,” where new communities of people in Quebec and the Maritimes are emerging, consisting of individuals who claim to have Indigenous heritage and thus wish to be defined as Métis.
• Darryl Leroux also has a talk about genealogy and genomics in Quebec and how they are connected to ideas about race and national identity.
• Paul-André Linteau has won the 2016 Medal of the Montreal Historical Society for his research. Congratulations!
• The Canadian Centre for the Great War has a blog post providing some context for the Canadian War Museum’s recent acquisition of the ship’s wheel for the WW1 ship, the HMCS Niobe.
• Krista McCracken has a short preview of the latest issue of the Archives Association of Ontario’s magazine, Off the Record. The latest issue is open access and focuses on Indigenous issues around archives. This issue includes a contribution from McCracken herself and her work at the Shingwauk Residential School Centre.
  • Here’s a link to the issue itself!
• Andrea Bear Nicholas has won the Canadian Studies Network Prize for best article published in the Journal of Canadian Studies! Congratulations!
  • The full citation of the article is : Andrea Bear Nicholas, “The Role of Colonial Artists in the Dispossession and Displacement of the Maliseet: 1790s-1850s,” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 49, no. 2.
• Don’t miss this Twitter essay by Crystal Gail Fraser about the settler gaze in historical photographs, and just how different many of these photographs would be if they were taken from the perspective of and by Indigenous peoples.
• The Retroactive blog, which looks at the history of Alberta, has profiled three pioneering women for their latest blog post. Included are Diane Loranger, geologist and paleobotanist, Eda Owen, meteorologist, and Esther Marjorie Hill, architect.
• A new digital archive has premiered this week. Rise Up: A Digital Archive of Feminist Activism focuses on Canada from the 1970s and 1990s. There goes my weekend…
• Canadian History in the News
  • CBC’s The Current created a virtual reality documentary about the Highway of Tears from the perspective of Ramona Wilson, an Indigenous girl who went missing in 1994 and has never been found. Lisa Jackson directed the documentary. You don’t need special equipment to watch it either, since you can get the same effect on mobile using Youtube and or the CBC VR app. More details at the link above.
  • Susan Blight and Hayden King have a must-read article about how territorial acknowledgements and renaming are positive gestures towards reconciliation, but we need to focus on our actions as well as our words.
  • John Price won the BC Museums’ Association Award of Merit for his work on the Chinese Canadian Artifacts Project. Check the project out here: Congrats!
  • Library and Archives Canada has funding again after six years of budget cuts, and is resuming its place in the arts community of Ottawa. Let’s hope this is a sign of good things to come for the Canadian historical community. Cause every time I think things can’t get worse, they somehow do…
  • UBC is partnering with a local startup, Motive, to create an interactive audio walking tour of the downtown eastside.
  • There is a new exhibit in Toronto called “Welcome to Blackhurst Street: about the history of black migration to the area around the intersection of Bathurst and Bloor. Information about the exhibit, including where to find it, is available here.
  • The federal and Ontario governments have signed a land deal with the Algonquin people of Ontario. The modern treaty involves the signing over of large parts of Eastern Ontario to the Algonquin, including parts of the Ottawa Valley. A monetary settlement is also part of the deal.
  • Did you know that in the summer of 2015, Scott Parker spent six months interviewing residents in southern Saskatchewan as part of an oral history project called the Grasslands Project? And that these interviews were made into a film? I didn’t. Penny Allen talks about the film on her blog, including a breakdown of the shorts. Find out more about the project itself by going here.
  • October 18^th was “Person’s Day,” in honour of the Persons case where women were legally made “persons” under the law in 1929, allowing them to sit in the Senate for the first time. While many hail this moment as a triumph for women’s rights, it’s important to remember that Indigenous women were not permitted to vote in band elections until 1951. Nor were they permitted to vote in federal elections until 1960. Asian women (and men) were also not permitted to vote in federal elections until 1948.
    • Learn more about the history of women’s suffrage in Canada, including the very racist aspects of the movement, by reading the Canadian Encyclopedia entry by Veronica Strong-Boag.
  • Emma Jones, writing for The Globe and Mail, talks about the implementation of mandatory Indigenous-centred spaces and Indigenous studies programs at several different universities.
  • Archaeological excavations on the site of Brantford’s future YMCA have produced more than 400,000 artefacts, dating from 500 B.C.E. to the late 19^th century. Wow. Just. Wow.
  • The home in North Bay where the Dionne quintuplets were born, and which served as the Dionne Quints Museum until last year, is being appraised for a possible sale.
  • Canadian Running Magazine created an interactive history map of the course for Scotiabank’s Toronto Waterfront Marathon. History and running are two of my favourite things, so this is beyond good. You can go to the website and use the interactive map even if you aren’t running the race this year. 😉
  • I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that a local brewer in the Gulf Islands was making cider from the apples of abandoned orchards. Red Rover Craft Cider is doing the same thing in New Brunswick! The public is invited to go “scrumping,” an old term for stealing fruit from other people’s trees. Hehehe.
  • Caroline Montpetit, writing for Le Devoir, talks about the impact of widespread budget cuts to museums in Quebec. At least 34 museums have had their funding slashed.
  • Archaeologist Joanne Hammond talks to CBC about the impact of development on historic sites where Indigenous peoples lived in the Kamloops area. While many sites are protected, they are not necessarily fully investigated before new development goes up.
  • I know everyone’s depressed about the Blue Jays (except me, mostly because I’m still an Expos fan even though the team no longer exists), but you can read about the history of professional baseball in Toronto! That’s something!
  • The Colours (that’s flags) of the 25^th and 85^th infantry battalions out of Nova Scotia have been repatriated and are on display in Halifax’s Government House. And by repatriated, they mean brought out of the archives.
  • Historica Canada has a beautiful new Heritage Minute this week on Kenojuak Ashevak, an Inuk artist who made Inuit art famous all over the world. All but one of the cast members were actual family members and the minute was shot in Nunavut. The minute also features some of her artwork, and is available in English, French, and Inuktitut.
  • The Royal Canadian Navy is trying to clean up Esquimalt Harbour, and in the process they found a ton of atefacts from Canada’s naval history. My favourite find: “A vice-admiral’s personalized coffee mug that disappeared 30 years ago was sifted out of the dredged sediment and has been returned to the now-retired officer.” They also found a perfectly preserved ID from the 40s or 50s too.
  • The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre has a new exhibit on Canada’s response to the Holocaust. The exhibit features artefacts and documents from both rescuers and survivors who subsequently moved to Canada.
  • Senator Murray Sinclair is calling out the federal government for breaking its agreement regarding the multi-billion dollar residential school settlement for survivors. Apparently, lawyers are trying to do everything they can to disqualify individuals, while refusing to release information that would support the claims of survivors. WTF is wrong with people? Why is it that we always seem to treat survivors, some of the most vulnerable among us, so badly?
  • If you are feeling up to it, here’s an article about Peter Van Loan complaining that Confederation isn’t one of the themes of the Canada 150 celebrations. Sigh.
  • Medals belonging to a Nova Scotia WW1 veteran have been returned home by an American collector.
  • Richmond, BC, where I live, has just launched a new online database for its archival records! Included on the website are more than 1,000 maps and 5,000 photographs.
  • The Huffington Post dug up Canada’s version of Hamilton — Billy Bishop Goes to War — released in 1978. So strange that it wasn’t as popular…..
  • There was a massive estate auction on Saturday in Victoria at the Empress Hotel, consisting of the personal collection of Anne-Lee Ross. Ross was married to a member of the Ross family that established Butchart Gardens. NBD. There are lots of beautiful antique pieces.
  • This week the Historicist looks at clowns. Clowns are terrifying. You guys are on your own for this one.

That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a brand new blog post about women’s history in Canada!

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