Canadian History Roundup – Week of February 11, 2018

A Valentine Gift for You
1900-1960, 20th century. C271_B8.03. McCord Museum.

This week’s top stories include the latest on Black History Month, the history of Canada at the Olympics, Valentines Day, and the role of history in the Stanley verdict.

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

• Beyond Borders kicked off the week with a new post by Brendan Gillis on severed ears and rethinking the application of British criminal law in eighteenth century Quebec.
• This week’s most popular words in #envhist, according to Jessica DeWitt were: “Water,” “One,” and “Wonderful.”
• Brian Bertosa reviewed Matthew Evenden’s Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-Electricity During Canada’s Second World War for the Laurier Centre this week.
• This week, LAC focused on the history of radio technology in Canada, and profiled their Flickr album of images on the same subject.
  • And they also added some new band and instrumental music to the Virtual Gramophone.
• This week on Unwritten Histories, we talked about the complicated nature of the Women’s Suffrage movement in Canada, and why historians generally are reluctant to celebrate it.
• Erin Millions has a fantastic post on Active History about what non-Indigenous scholar-allies can do to help in the wake of the Stanley decision.
• The bizarre holiday known in BC as Family Day rolled around again this year. And the UBC digitizer’s blog celebrated it with a look at some of their favourite family photos from their collections.
• This week Shayla Sabada wrote a new blog post for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives on women, sex, and disability, with a particular focus how organizations like the Body Politic helped to bring awareness to the fact that people with disabilities can still be and are sexual.
• Bill Waiser’s latest blog post focuses on the historical debates about whether Palliser’s Triangle was a desert or an agricultural paradise.
• There was some more Olympic coverage this week:
  • The Canadian Museum of History shared Hayley Wickenheiser’s 2010 Olympic jersey.
  • The Toronto Public Library shared some images of past winter Olympians who were born in Ontario.
  • Meaghan Duhamel and Eric Radford have just been added to The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  • Whistorical remembered how Vancouver/Garibaldi lost the 1976 Winter Olympics bid.
• The Dartmouth Heritage Museum celebrated Galentines’ Day with some of their favourite images of female friendships.
• In the latest Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Liz Covart spoke with Marisa Fuentes about her recent work on North American and Caribbean colonial port cities and their connections to the slave trade.
• Joanne Hammond put together a new Twitter essay this week on the Constitution Express.
• Lots of Valentines-Day-ish-themed blog posts this week!
  • The University of Toronto shared some of the prettiest Valentines Day cards in their collection of over 500, dating back some 200 years!
    • More on the collection here.
  • LAC profiled the Joseph Gaetz collection, including 536 letters he wrote to his fiancée Jean during and after WW2. While he did come back home safely, he died at only 41.
  • Can you decipher this mid 19^th century Valentine?
  • Even Beyond Borders got into Valentines Day this year with a new blog post by Shirley Tillotson on some black-market candy. I am again in awe of her ability to make tax history interesting.
  • The Instantanés blog honoured the 100^th anniversary of the fatal fire at the Montreal General Hospital, on Valentines Day, 1918.
  • More pretty Valentines from the South Peace Regional Archives!
  • The Textile Museum of Canada shared this beautiful Hutterite “friendship handkerchief” made in 1916 by Magdalena Wipf for Peter Entz.
• The University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library has just re-launched four new digital collections, including one on the development of insulin and another on J.B. Tyrrell’s exploratory surveys of the Barren Lands west of Hudson Bay.
• Lots of big NiCHE News this week! First, they have a brand new Instagram account, @niche.Canada! And they launched a new peer-reviewed publication, Papers in Canadian History and Environment, aka PiCHE!
• Cora Jackson has written the latest blog post for Atlantic Loyalist Connections on legal terms in 19^th century New Brunswick court documents.
• Do you remember how last year I mentioned that some students at Concordia were going to catalogue documents from the Montreal Negro Community Centre? Well, here’s an update on the project!
• Find out about the latest acquisitions at the Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta.
• The Toronto Public Library remembered Mr. Dressup.
• Retroactive discussed how historic timber architecture is preserved.
• The Virtual Museum of Canada has launched its latest Community Stories online exhibit, “Gold Rush: Stories of Big Mines and a Little Town named Malartic.”
• Ottawa Rewind remembered the Civic Pharmacy sign, which unlike so many others, is being restored.
• Whistorical looks back at the week of February 15^th from 1979 to 1985.
• LAC has their monthly update on the digitization of CEF personnel files. They’ve reached the last name ‘Swindells.’
• The Living Heritage Podcast spoke with the outgoing head of Memorial’s Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Joan Ritcey, about the field and the development of the Periodical Article Bibliography.
• LAC recently acquired new records relating to federal Cabinet meetings from 1977 and 1979. In this blog post, Michael Dufresne talks about why these documents are important and how to find them.
• Linda Grussani has written a new post for the Canadian Museum of History blog about their newest exhibition, “Picturing Arctic Modernity – North Baffin Drawings from 1964.”
• Check out this really neat video about the development of written Inuktitut, and why it uses abugida (symbols representing a consonant and a vowel) rather than an alphabet.
• The Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto shared the regulations issued to its congregation for Lent 1928. No theatre, movies, or dances for a month? Yeesh, that’s harsh.
• Stephanie Bellissimo has written a brand new blog post about how Canadians Fred and Norah Urquhart helped find the wintering ground of the monarch butterfly. This story always makes me smile.
• Have you ever heard of the Woodward’s $1.49 day jingle?
• Clearly I will take any opportunity to include a tiara in the roundup. Ooooh… sparkly….
• The latest episode from the Witness to Yesterday Podcast launched this week, featuring a discussion between Greg Marchildon and Ken McGoogan on McGoogan’s book, Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage.
• Find out about the New Brunswick Great War Project, with information on the 32,000 New Brunswick soldiers and nurses of the CEF as well as a collection of local newspapers form the era. Check out the website itself here.
• Check out this outfit worn by members of the Ottawa Snowshoe Club between 1903 to 1959. There are no words.
• Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Creek) wrote a new blog post for Beyond the Spectacle about how he created the artwork for the blog.
• I’m really not sure if I should include this here or in a Best New Articles, but there is a new piece on Epoiesen by Anna Esther Heckadon, Kaylynne Sparks, Kayla Hartemink, Yip van Muijlwijk, Maddy Charter and Tamara Nicole on the recent pop-up exhibit by the UVic Anthropology department and the Royal BC Museum!
• History played a big role in the Stanley decision last week. There were several blog posts and news articles this week that explored the subject from this angle:
  • Ian Mosby explained why it is not ok to compare the Stanley decision to the American South in the 1950s.
  • This article from CBC looked back on how the Canadian legal system has oppressed Indigenous peoples for centuries.
  • Candis Callison and Mary-Lynn Young explained how media coverage of the trial is embedded in the colonial narrative.
  • You definitely need to read Elizabeth Vibert and Lynne Marks’s op-ed explaining how the system is stacked against Indigenous peoples. And I’m not just saying that because Lynne was my supervisor and Elizabeth was on my committee.
  • Over on Active History this week, R. Black Brown discussed how Canada’s jury selection system came about, previous discussions about the value of juries, and the declining use of juries in court cases.
  • Several pieces explored how Canadian history permitted the excuse that Stanley was “defending his land.”
    • Gina Starblanket (Cree, Saulteaux, French, Treaty 4) and Dallas Hunt (Swan River First Nation) wrote a must-read piece about settler colonialism and the settlement of the Prairies
    • Paul Seesequasis (Willow Cree, Treaty 6) wrote another must-read piece on how the history of anti-Indigenous racism in Saskatchewan also played a role.
    • Kelly Black discussed how performing and reinforcing settler narratives of Canadian history created the circumstances that allowed an all-white jury to acquit Stanley.
  • Paul Seesequasis also wrote an important Twitter essay on Fort Battleford in the settler imagination, as well as another one on the mythology and romanticization of the RCMP.
• Black History Month
  • Tiffany Gooch wrote an op-ed for The Star about how we can celebrate Black history in Canada and fight racism at the same time.
  • Former Canadian Olympic track star Sam Richardson was commemorated by his former high school this week.
  • Jean Augustine spoke with Metro News about why Canadians need Black History Month.
  • Canadaland spoke with Robyn Maynard about how Canadians ignore their own history with slavery and segregation, and how the ways in which history is taught in classrooms is implicated in this.
  • The Toronto Star looked back on the creation of the first Black Adventist Church in Canada, established by ‘The Original 8’ in a Toronto living room.
  • Melayna Williams and Desmond Cole spoke with CTV about why Canada needs Black History Month.
  • Check out Alison Duke’s amazing documentary series, The Legacy Project, which focuses on the lives of five Black activists from Toronto.
  • Nantali Indongo brought together Sean Henry, Duke Eatmon, and Shari Okeke on CBC to talk about why Black history matters.
• Canadian History in the News
  • Do you have an extra $25,000 sitting around and a love of all things PNE? Well, this might be the couch of your dreams.
  • Looks like the nuns at Sydney’s Holy Angels Convent were up to some fun! And afraid of witches and evil spirits.
  • Derek Simon explains how, in the Cornwallis debate, it is actually Mi’kmaq history that is being erased.
  • Find out about Winnipeg’s Hollywood history!
  • And then check out these Winnipeg Police Museum mug shots from 1899 to 1906!
  • Mona Parsons will be honoured at the next Nova Scotia Heritage Day.
  • McGill University has acquired the personal archives of Jean Drapeau. What a coup!
  • It’s more than 170 years late, but Parks Canada is finally launching a new initiative to collect information on the Franklin expedition from Inuit elders in Nunavut. I’m gonna call that an E for effort.
  • CBC remembers former UBC president and “Mr. UBC,” Walter Gage.
  • I’m not really sure what to do about this article on a new musical group called the Afro-Métis Nation. As several people have pointed out, including Kim Tallbear (enrolled Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, descended from the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma), Chelsea Vowel (Métis), and Alicia Elliot (Haudenosaunee), having Indigenous ancestry does not make one “Métis.” So read with caution.
  • CHEK News spoke with Rueben Rose-Redwood about the politics of renaming, particularly in relation to the movement to change the name of Trutch Street in Victoria.
  • Fred Koe (Gwich’in Nation), the father of Canadian curler Kevin Koe, spoke with CBC this week about his residential school experience, and how curling helped him to create strong bonds with his children.
  • Do you remember me mentioning a few weeks ago that there was a 98-year-old document on the treatment of sick First Nations children that LAC was refusing to release for undisclosed reasons? Well, they caved, on that document at least.
  • Marc Boudreau is filing a motion for a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the Duplessis Orphans to compensate survivors for the physical and sexual abuse so many suffered.
  • Efforts are ongoing to ensure that David Currie’s Victoria Cross stays in Canada. The family has only until July before the government will approve the sale to a British collector.
  • The Department of National Defense is looking for people to join their Casualty Identification Program, which locates, identifies, and buries the remains of nearly 28,000 missing war dead.
  • Port-la-Joye-Fort Amherst National Historic Site in PEI will be renamed Skmaqn-Port-la-Joye-Fort Amherst National Historic Site, in recognition of the original Mi’kmaq name for this location.
  • There is a mystery afoot: some fake California university is using bits of pieces of Canadian history and culture on their website. I’m so confused. Although this is also hilariously ironic.
  • Allan Downey (Dakelh, from Nak’azdli Whut’en) was interviewed on CBC Tapestry about his new book, The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood!
  • The latest APTN Investigates episode takes a deeper look at the history of Edward Cornwallis and his statue.
  • A canoe first discovered in 1970 in Pigeon Lake has now been dated to between 1732 and 1807.
• Calls for Papers
  • The American Society for Environmental History Graduate Caucus and NiCHE are organizing a Twitter conference to coincide with the ASEH 2018 Annual Meeting. Presentations from both ASEH 2018 presenters and those who cannot attend the conference are welcome. The deadline to submit is February 21.

It may have been a crazy week, but it’s been a short roundup! And yes, I know that Valentine’s Day is over. 😛 I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup. If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. Don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a brand new blog post on teaching Canadian history in the wake of the Stanley decision. See you then!

Liked this post? Please take a second to support Unwritten Histories on Patreon!