Canadian History Roundup – Week of April 2, 2017

Ernest Senécal. “La Péninsule de Gaspé Peninsula.” Poster. (c. 1948). Marc Choko Collection. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1990-106-10. Copyright: unknown

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

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

• Beyond Borders kicked off the week with a new blog post by Carly Ciufo, who argues that the new Canadian history must integrate contemporary Indigenous issues, and discusses the transformative role that Buffy Sainte-Marie has played in her life.
• Library and Archives Canada has premiered its series on Vimy Ridge, in collaboration with the UK’s National Archives.
  • In their first post, they discuss the Canadian Corps and its preparations for battle
  • In their second post, they talk about more preparations, right up to the hour of the battle.
  • And they’ve also released their latest podcast episode, also on Vimy Ridge.
• LAC Also shared a glimpse into its substantial collection of Canadian erotica! Oooh lala.
• Active History has reposted a translated version of Christine Chevalier-Caron’s interview with hip hop musician, Webster. The piece originally appeared on Histoire Engagé.
• John Reid reflected on his experience working at the LAC Digitlab.
• Adam Gaudry wrote a piece for the Queen’s equity blog, “Together We Are,” about the importance and role of Indigenous Studies departments in Canadian universities, and the services that these universities should provide for Indigenous communities.
• This week, Mary-Ellen Kelm was interviewed by SFU about what happened when she invited her students to help co-create her syllabus. Omg, this is so cool!
• Jessica DeWitt’s weekly post about the most-used words in top environmental history posts is out! This week’s top words are “American,” “People,” and “Said.”
• This week on Unwritten Histories was a new how-to post on writing scholarly book reviews! This blog post was inspired by a question from Anne Dance.
• The Chicago Manual of Style is coming out with a 17^th edition! And apparently Ibid is going the way of the dinosaur. L But Ibid saves so much typing….
• The latest Canada150 blog post from the ROM is out! This week’s post focuses on Diechmann Pottery, made by Kjeld and Erica Deichmann in one of the earliest Western-style pottery studios in Canada.
• Nic Clarke has a piece on Active History this week about Vimy Ridge, part of their ongoing series on WW1. In this post, he unpacks some of the mythology of Vimy, and asks: “whether the great colossus that Canadians have constructed stands on feet of clay.”
• Also on Active History this week is a piece by John D. Pihach about his new book on role that Robert Armstrong (Irvin Mudeater) played in the 1885 Rebellion and the capture of Louis Riel. Pihach focuses on Armstrong’s dual identity as white Canadian hero and the son of a Wyandot chief. The book also features Armstrong’s actual memoir.
• Active History also has a new piece this week by Adam Coombs about the political conservatism of the working classes in Canada.
• In Daniel Macfarlane’s latest piece for NiCHE, he interviewed Bill Cronon on the 25^th anniversary of the publication of Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and The Great West, a landmark book in environmental history.
• Angry Inuk is now available on NFB! It’s free for CAMPUS subscribers, or you can rent or download it for a small fee.
• The Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project, out of the Ontario Council of University Libraries, has just released their work to digitize and georeference maps on Ontario from the first half of the 20^th century. So far, there are more than 1000 available, and you can see them all here.
• The latest episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast features an interview with Alan Taylor about seeing the American Revolution as a continental conflict that went beyond borders.
• Instantanés talks about their recent acquisition of the Bernadette Lemieux fonds. Lemieux was a photographer and videographer in the 1960s who spent time living in several First Nation communities across Quebec, including Manawan, Bersimis, Caughnawaga, La Romaine, and Odanak.
• This week, Histoire Engagé has a new post by Étienne Lapointe about Maurice Richard and his role as a symbol for Quebec Francophones, which in turn influenced journalistic coverage of his career. I am an unabashed Habs fan, so this was a fun read!
• Claire Campbell has yet another fantastic post on NiCHE, about being a Canadian at the American Society for Environmental History annual meeting, and the important perspective we can provide. Don’t miss Sean Kheraj’s comments either! And I so miss Due South.
• Raquel Simpson talks about her work preserving the documents of the Kingston Historical Society at the Queen’s University Archives.
• The Graphic History Collective has released their 4^th poster in the Remember|Resist|Redraw series! This latest is by Orion Keresztesi, with an introduction by Jarett Henderson, and focuses on the 1837-38 rebellions. The poster focuses on the rebellions as a moment of consolidation for settler colonialism in Canada. I’m absolutely loving this series.
• This week, the UBC Digitizer’s blog is a list by Kristina McGuirk about pieces from their collection that bring to mind contemporary books.
• I’ve recently learned about Queen’s History Department’s Youtube page featuring their lecture series!
• The Canadian Museum of History blog has a post featuring staff members selecting and discussing their favourite items from the museum’s collections!
• The Retroactive blog takes a look at the practice of naming places after war-related events, particularly Vimy Peak in Waterton Lakes National Park.
• So we all know that The Story of Us was terrible. However, Canadian historians on Twitter have been making hilarious suggestions for how to improve the series! Check them out here and here.
• Bob Muckle posted this really cool image of a ceramic foot/bed warmer from his excavation of Japanese-Canadian timber camps in BC!
• This week on the Climate History Podcast, with Dagomar Degroot, was a feature interview with Bathsheba Demuth, a historian who specializes in the history of the arctic. During the interview, she talks about her time in Old Crow, Yukon, the people and animals who live in the far north, and Russian and Canadian/American relations across the Bering Strait.
• Also on the ROM blog this week is Part 3 in an ongoing series about a visit by Wyandot artists Richard Zane Smith and Catherine Tammaro to the ROM’s Wendat pottery collections. In this post, Smith and Tammaro discuss how they, as Wyandot arists, approach and interpret ancient Wendat ceramics.
• Neil S. Forkey reviewed Edward MacDonald, Joshua MacFayden, and Irené Novaczek’s Time and Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island for Acadiensis.
• The new biography from DCB this week is for Paul Bruchéshi, the son of a Montreal grocer who grew up to become the Archbishop of Montreal.
• Also from NiCHE this week is a report by Mica Jorgenson, Tina Adcock, and Josh MacFayden on their experiences at the American Society for Environmental History conference. It sounds fascinating!
• The Laurier Centre is back with Part 2 of their look at the memorials of George Hill and Emanuel Hahn. Author Alan McLeod focuses on the statues of Ontario and Quebec in this edition.
• The BC Studies blog gives us a peek at program for the 2017 BC Studies conference! See the preliminary program here.
• The 8^th and final episode of the CCGW’s Dear Bessie podcast has been released!
  • And this week’s regular CCGW post focuses on the March 1, 1917 raid and fighting around Vimy, prior to the battle itself.
• Tom Morton reflects on his experiences teaching about (the battle of) Vimy Ridge, and also provides a list of suggested articles and books for students and teachers who want to learn more. I would also encourage anyone to read the relevant chapter in Jonathan Vance’s Death So Noble.
• Historica Canada has released some new teaching tools for Vimy Ridge. One exercise, created by Historica, asks students to look at Vimy from the perspetctive of letters from soldiers. And the Vimy foundation created several that are grouped together as well (which you can access here), focusing on nationalism, war, and art. Both sets of tools are bilingual, and both are designed for middle and high school students, but can easily be adapted for use in universities and/or colleges.
• The Dartmouth Heritage Museum has a new blog post featuring Starr skates made especially for a wounded WW1 veteran.
• The St. Catharines Museum has posted Walk D from their collection.
• Joseph Gagné, of the Curieuse Nouvelle France blog, has been featured by the SSHRC Storyteller’s project!
• Check out this Twitter essay from Ian Mosby about a new Canada150 poster, and why it’s full of it.
• Eve Lazarus visited a new exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum on true crime, and shared her experiences on the blog.
• The Vancouver as It Was blog discusses membership transfers (or letters of dismissal/admission) at the First Baptist Church. Did not know that was a thing.
• The Canadian Science and Technology Museum has just released more than 3,000 newly digitized images!
• Joanne Hammond once again tells it like it is, about why it’s important to combat historical narratives that dehumanizes Indigenous peoples.
• The St. Catharines Museum has also posted another podcast, also on Vimy, with excerpts from the diaries of soldiers.
• Whistorical celebrates the Whistler Answer newspaper’s 40th anniversary!
• Canadian History in the News
  • I’m just going to put all the Vimy news stuff together
    • This could be filed under potentially invasive species disaster or cute story: Monty McDonald is growing a forest of trees from acorns picked up by a Canadian WW1 soldier at the end of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
    • Find out about the man who sculpted the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, Walter Allward.
    • The Globe and Mail looked back at its actual coverage of Vimy and Hill 70.
    • The CBC profiled Henry Norwest, a Métis sniper during WW1 who fought at Vimy and was one of the CEF’s top marksmen.
    • Jamie Swift has a great piece in The Star taking aim at the persistence of the national myth of Vimy Ridge.
    • CBC spoke with Paul McKenzie, whose father, Pte. Elmer McKenzie, fought at Vimy Ridge. His son now owns his father’s diaries recording his experiences during WW1.
    • The CBC also featured UVic’s virtual exhibit, Victoria to Vimy, including some of the exhibit’s letters.
    • And in this piece, CBC remembers one Cape Breton farmer, Percival William Anderson, and his experiences at Vimy, centred around the map he carried as he led his men into battle.
    • You can see all of the CBC’s coverage of Vimy 100 here.
    • Tour Vimy Ridge with Peter Mansbridge.
      • And hear his thoughts on the battle. Just remember, he is a journalist, not a historian, because “not everyone who studies the past is a historian.”
    • A wooden cross that was raised shortly after the battle to honour Canada’s dead has just been returned in time for the 100th anniversary.
    • The identity of Helen Pearl, and what she meant to Ptr. John Harold Cook, remains a mystery.
  • A group of volunteers in Calgary are trying to build a replica of the Avro Arrow that could actually fly!
  • There has been more backlash to The Story of Us, for focusing on the history of English Canada and their choice of experts
  • The Halifax Municipal Archives has just released a new series of digitized photographs showing how Halifax has changed over the past 100 years. See the photos themselves here.
  • Ducan McCue devoted an episode of Cross Country Check-up to the debate over changing the names and streets that honour problematic historic figures. This seems pretty straightforward to me….
  • Meanwhile, Vancouver city counsellor Andrea Reimer is introducing a new motion to ensure that the city’s signage reflects the area’s diverse population. Yes!
  • Miawpukek First Nation Chief Mi’sel Joe is working to repatriate the remains of two Beothuk people from a Scottish museum. This is in spite of the fact that negotiations between the Canadian, Newfoundland, and Scottish governments appear to have stalled.
  • This weekend, the Reconciliation Pole was raised at UBC’s Vancouver campus. It looks beautiful, and I can’t wait to see it in person.
    • The president, Santa Ono, wrote about why the Reconciliation Pole is so important.
    • CanadianArt spoke with the master carver of the Reconciliation Pole, James Hart (Haida).
    • And this graphic explains the different symbols on the Reconciliation Pole.
  • David Campion and Sandra Shields have created a new video game called “Grand Theft Terra Firma,” which depicts the violence inherent in colonization and Canada’s colonial past. The goal is to steal the land in whatever way you can. Unfortunately, you can’t actually play the game, and the creators argue that no one should, but you can see it at The Reach Gallery in Abbotsford. Some of the images are also available on the news article.
  • Senator Murray Sinclair is continuing to demonstrate his endless well of patience by throwing some epic shade at the Globe and Mail for a recent editorial they published that I refuse to even link to. Read the news coverage of this here, and the actual response here.
  • Amy Shaw, of the Literary Review of Canada, reviewed Tim Cook’s Vimy: The Battle and the Legend.
  • History nerd alert! The Star spoke with Kristina Llewellyn about her work on a new project, Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation, a virtual reality program using Oculus Rift goggles that showcases oral histories. The first is based on Gerry Morrison’s memories of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. Omg, I need to see this.
  • There is new genetic research showing more than 10,000 years of genetic continuity along the western edge of the North American continent. What part of “Since Time Immemorial” is so difficult for scientists to understand?
  • The city of Montreal is looking for descendants of Sarah Maxwell, a teacher and principal at Hochelaga Protestant School, who lost her life while trying to save her students during a fire. The city is hoping to name a park after her.
  • Inuit Elder Mary Avalak has created three beautiful wall hangings for the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay depicting the lives of the Kitikmeot Inuit before trading, during the 1950s, and today.
  • This week on the Torontoists’ Now and Then series about Toronto’s historic plaques is a look at the Anti-Greek riots after WW2.
  • A new app and website is set to launch in June allowing people to take self-guided historical tours of Alberta.
  • Apparently Vice Canada does historical stories too! In this new one, journalist Patrick Lejtenyi talks about Canada’s first university shooting. The article says “university” because it focuses on the 1992 shooting at Concordia, where Valery Fabrikant murdered four faculty members, rather than discussing Ecole Polytechnique. Still, it seems a curious distinction.
  • Also from Vice this week is another article about the 1932 riot in downtown St. John’s Newfoundland that almost killed the Newfoundland prime minister! The date pretty much explains why…
  • 60 years after a BC mine started leaking acid runoff, the Alaskan government is still waiting for BC to take any kind of action.
  • On April 6^th, 1917, some women in BC got the right to vote. The CBC talks about this story, and interviews Lara Campbell! But as the article notes, this was only for white women, since Indigenous, Japanese-Canadian, Chinese-Canadian, and South-Asian Canadian women had to wait much longer.
  • Lawson A. W. Hunter and Charlotte Gray make the case that Canada should have a national portrait gallery.
  • This week the Bank of Canada announced the final design of the new $10 bill, available starting this June. This website explains the meaning behind the design. But I’m a bit confused; I thought that Viola Desmond was going to be the first woman on a Canadian dollar bill besides the Queen, but it looks like Agnes Macphail beat her.
  • So remember how there was that debate at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about whether or not Canadians should be ashamed of their history? Well, debaters Jack Granatstein and Noah Richler published their replies in The Globe and Mail this week. Warning, read the Granatstein one at your own risk. Side effects may include migraines, nausea, indigestion, and the strong urge to burn copies of Who Killed Canadian History and/or smash the computer screen. (But Richler’s response is great!)
  • Africville’s historic black church will once again celebrate Easter this year.
  • A Truro photographer is looking for individuals who may appear in a collection of negatives he inherited of family photos from the 1960s to the 1980s.
  • Check out this super secret(ish) preview of a new exhibit from the Virtual Museum of Canada, coming April 20^th.
  • The official campaign to make Mount Royal a UNESCO World Heritage Site is on. I have mixed feelings on this.
  • Did you know that a number of Americans actually came to Canada to enlist to fight in WW1?
  • In contrast to the Story of Us the History channel has launched a series of short videos highlighting important moments, events, and people in Canadian history. Check out the series, called Thank You Canada here. There is even one about the Roberston screw and another about Marshall McLuhan! It seems much less offensive and much more restrained than the CBC series. Although that’s still not really saying much, is it?
  • There is a new updated and online version of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Read it yourself here.
  • Ryan McMahon was interviewed by the CBC’s The 180 about the need for “decolonization before reconciliation.”
  • Check out some cool images from a new exhibit at the Museum on the Plains of Abraham, featuring archaeological finds made between 1993 and 2011.
  • Western University Archives has digitized a portion of their more than 8,000 images from the centennial year, and made them available online! See the pictures themselves here.
  • The Royal BC Museum is hosting a pop-up museum featuring items from the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. While most of us can’t attend, you can see images of some of the artefacts here.
  • Ian McGuire reviewed Paul Watson’s Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition this week for the New York Times.
  • Apparently Lisa Raitt has joined the club of politicians who say stupid things with this comment on Twitter.  Je ne suis pas impressed.
  • The Star also interviewed Daniel Bender about how he teaches the history of food at UofT.
  • A new database, called Siku, is being created to preserve environmental knowledge from Inuit Elders in Husdon Bay.
  • So the Guardian claims that “Canada has no colonial history.” Adam Barker responds to this asinine statement in this Twitter essay.
  • Under threat of a lawsuit, the justice department is releasing their records on St. Anne’s residential schools.
  • Jamie Bradburn is a saying good bye to the Historicist after a decade.
  • Gordon Pinsent sets the record straight about Canadian history, on This Hour has 22 Minutes. And for that matter, don’t miss their Canada150 special (where the clip originates) which is ironically far more accurate than another CBC Canada150 production…
  • There is a new book out about the history of bootlegging in Hamilton.
  • The Halifax Municipal Archives is also looking for unidentified people (and buildings) who are featured in photos taken between the 1950s and 1960s.
• Better Late than Never
  • Robert Vipond, David Cameron, Lesley Jacobs, Jacqueline Krikorian, and Marcel Martel have released their findings regarding a survey of historians and political scientists about how Canadian confederation is taught and studied.
    • The discussion on Twitter was also interesting. Check it out here and here.
  • The records of the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation, a conservation society, will now be housed at the Laurier Archives at Wilfrid Laurier University.

•  Calls for Papers
  • The Canadian Journal of History is publishing a special issue on the Material Realities of Energy Histories, guest edited by Andrew Watson. They are currently seeking proposals! Go here for more information.

(I seem to be on a travel poster kick…) When I asked about possible changes to the roundup, there seemed to be a pretty even split between people who like it the way it is, and people who wanted things grouped topically. So I’m going to compromise, and group things that are relevant, as above, on a more consistent basis. You guys also asked for CFPs, so I added those too! I’m going to release the survey results soon, so if you still haven’t taken it yet, go here! I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup. If you did, please consider sharing this post on the social media platform of your choice! Don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for our regular monthly review of the latest journal issues on Canadian history! See you then!

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