Two Women on Snowshoes. 1866. Frances George Coleridge. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-138-24. Copyright expired.
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Missed last week’s roundup? Check it out here.
Environmental History
- The most commonly-used words in #envhist last week, according to Jessica DeWitt, were: “Menindee,” “Water,” and “River.”
- This week, NiCHE, the Climate History Network, and Active History have joined forces to organize a special series titled, “Environmental Historians Debate: Can Nuclear Power Solve Climate Change.”
- You can check out the series introduction, by Daniel Macfarlane, here.
- The first post is by Nancy Langston, and argued that closing nuclear power plants will increase climate risks.
- Once again, Alan MacEachern wins Twitter.
- The tweet above was part of a larger thread of Alan’s regarding the early twentieth-century Canadian debate about whether bears or groundhogs should be forecasting the weather. I die.
Archaeology
- Find out how archaeologists are exploring the burial ground at Fort Anne with non-invasive techniques.
- There was some pretty big news this week from a new study suggesting that colonization of Turtle Island may have contributed to the cooling of Earth’s climate. However, Dagomar Degroot explained that the study has some major flaws, and provided some important nuance about the conclusions in this Twitter thread.
- A new project to excavate the Shickluna Shipyard in St. Catharines has just been funded.
- I really wish they hadn’t used the term “land bridge” here, but this is an interesting study showing what Beringia would have looked like.
History Education
- The Landscapes of Injustice team spoke with middle school teacher Laura de la Salle about how she, along with partner Sarah McCurdy, used the Landscapes of Injustice teaching resource pilot program in her classroom.
- You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, Unreserved put out a call on social media for feedback from teachers on integrating Indigenous content in their classrooms. Well, this week Unreserved published the results of that conversation!
- Jenny Kay Dupis’ (Nipissing) book about her grandmother’s experience in residential schools is finally being translated into the Nbising dialect of Nishnaabemwin. This was the language that Dupis’ grandmother was punished for speaking at residential school.
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History
- In his latest piece on Histoire Engagée, Philippe Néméh-Nombré spoke to Lucas Charlie Rose about Rose’ artistic work, and how the historical and contemporary experiences of Black Montrealers has influenced him as a hip-hop artist and activist.
- Patrick Lacroix posted part two of his look at nineteenth century emigration from Canada to the United States. This latest post focused on the period between 1849 to 1857.
- This week marked the beginning of Black History Month in Canada and the US.
- In honour of the occasion, Kathleen Newman-Bremang is going to be sharing the story of one Black Canadian woman that you should know on Refinery29, every weekday this month. They will all be available at the link above, and the first person profiled is Mary Ann Shadd Cary!
- Shree Paradkar shared the story of Peggy, an enslaved Black woman, and her son Jupiter.The slave owner was Peter Russell, the namesake of Peter Street in Toronto.
- Included in the thread are some fantastic sources for educators for Black History Month as well.
- In the National Post Douglas Quan spoke with Rodney John, a key participant and witness to the 1969 Sir George Williams University sit-in-turned-riot, about his experiences.
- Jonathan Swainger and Steven Schwinghamer engaged in a fascinating discussion about Black immigrants to Canada at the turn of the last century, how Canadian government officials attempted to stop it, and the coded language that was used as part of this effort. I highly recommend clicking through the different posts to see the entire discussion.
- Sean Carleton critiqued CBC Radio’s Essentials’ handling of Black History Month, particularly how they focused on Maestro Fresh-Wes’ work but failed to include “Nothing At All,” on the Black experience in Canada.
- Adrian Harewood published a great Twitter thread on Alberta Jackson, Canada’s first Black postal worker.
- Bashir Mohamed published a Twitter thread on Edmonton City Council’s attempt to ban Black immigration in 1911.
- When most of us think about the displacement of historic Black communities in Canada, we think about Africville. However, a similar process happened in all over the rest of the country. Steven High published a new piece in English and French on Little Burgundy and the Ville-Marie expropriations. You can read the piece in English here, and in French here.
- Carla-Jean Stokes published a fantastic Twitter thread on her findings regarding photographs of Black Canadians in official Canadian WW1 photographs.
- The NHL will be celebrating Black History Month for the first time, with a series of videos profiling Black hockey players past and present.
- The name of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site might be changed to incorporate Josiah Henson, the formerly enslaved man who founded the settlement where the cabin is located.
- Find out about the first census of Toronto’s Black population, taken in 1840.
- Do you know who Angela James is?
- Eric Hoar published a special guest post on Retroactive this week, on the history of Icelandic settlers in Alberta and the establishment of Stephansson House.
- Do you know about the uniquely Chinese-Canadian foods?
Indigenous History
- You may remember that last week I mentioned Brian Deer’s (Kanien’kehá:ka) wonderful work. He now has his very own Wikipedia page!
- LAC recently announced the creation of two new initiatives specifically directed towards the preservation of Indigenous history and language. The first, “We Are Here, Sharing Stories: Indigenous Digitization and Digital Access Initiative,” will help make LAC’s collections more accessible to Indigenous communities. The second, “Listen, Hear Our Voices: Digitization of Indigenous Language Recordings,” will help support Indigenous communities to digitize and preserve audio-visual recordings under the custody of Indigenous communities and organizations. These projects were just announced at the beginning of December, so there isn’t a lot of information available about them yet.
- Alan Downey (Nak’azdli First Nation spoke with CBC about his work on lacrosse, identity, and Indigenous community.
- Joanne Hammond published a new ReWriteBC placard!
- She also explained how highways and pipelines bleed Indigenous territories of resources without consent or compensation.
- The title on this article is wrong. It should be that the Oral Tradition of the Lake Babine First Nation confirmed archaeological findings at Nass Glee Village.This village dates back more than 1,300 years, and remnants of 1,000 year old fishing weirs were also found.
- Joanne Hammond put together a great Twitter thread explaining how the Babine people caught and processed salmon on this spot, and how settlers destroyed the ecosystem.
- Find out how the near-extinction of the bison continues to impact Indigenous communities across North America.
New France/British North America
- This is a fascinating look by Peter Olsen-Harbich at Prince Edward (son of George III) and his profligate spending habits, including his visit to Nova Scotia, a mis-guided attempt to make him useful.
Political History
- Also on Histoire Engagée this week, Gabriel Monette reviewed Elsbeth Heaman’s Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917.
- The Ottawa Citizen profiled Ottawa’s first female mayor, Charlotte Whitton.
- Find out about the sketchy history of Stats Can.
- Shirley Tillotson explained what “sunk duties” were in the eighteenth century.
- Max Dagenais and Julien Mauduit spoke to McMaster about their recently published edited collection on transnational perspectives on the Upper and Lower Canadian Rebellions.
Social History
- There is a new audio documentary and exhibit on Kitchener medium, Thomas Lacey’s, séances in the 1960s.
- Check out this 112-year-old illustration of the different ways to fall on the ice during a Montreal winter.
- Do you know about the Lord’s Day Act? It prohibited work, trade, and leisure on Sundays, the Christian sabbath. This week, the Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto take a look at debates in the 1950s over whether to allow sports on Sunday.
- This year the Pointe-Saint-Charles Community Clinic celebrated fifty years of social justice activism.
- The Canadian Museum of History just acquired George St-Pierre’s UFC belt, won in January 2009. I happen to know that this acquisition and announcement was the result of fantastic work by Jenny Ellison, since I got the inside scoop!
- More on this, including comments from Jenny, here.
Local History
- Once again there were several new entries from Historic Nova Scotia, including:
- Sharon M.H. Macdonald and the Halifax Women’s History Society on Jewish women volunteers during WW2.
- The Nova Scotia Museum on Africville boxer, George Dixon.
- The Nova Scotia Museum on Chief of Pictou Landing and Founder of Millbrook First Nation, Peter Wilmot (Mi’kmaq).
- The Nova Scotia Museum on Mi’kmaw Elder, Mary Ellen Robinson.
- Andrew King takes a nostalgic look at mall fountains in Ottawa.
- Whistorical looked back at the changing name of The Point.
- The Vancouver As It Was blog looked back at the 700 block of Seymour Street in 1947.
- And traced the ever-shifting location of the Grand Union Hotel.
- Heritage Winnipeg profiled the Bright and Johnston Building.
- Eve Lazarus looked back at the history of the St. Andrews-Wesley Church at the corner of Burrard and Nelson. I’ve been inside it, and the stained glass windows are just stunning.
Digital and Public History
- Read this piece by Peggy O’Donnell on settler fantasies and the prairies dress trend. It is just fantastic.
- The UBC Digitizer’s blog posted part two of their look at some of the earliest CPR hotels in BC.
- The Virtual Museum of Canada premiered a new online exhibit this week, “Remembering the Merchants of Main Street, Windsor.”
- The City of Winnipeg is seeking input regarding the future of statues, monuments, and other public history markers that reflect the colonial history of the city.
- A new poll showed that the majority of Indigenous peoples in Manitoba are more interested in education than in renaming historical markers.
- As I mentioned last week, I was in Ottawa recently for the Canada’s History Forum and the Governor General’s History Awards.
- Special thanks to James App for letting me know about the launch of Photostories Canada, a searchable database of over 800 photo stories created by the National Film Board’s Still Photography Division between 1955 and 1971. What a fantastic resource!
Doing History
- This is a pretty neat story about how a painting from McGill University’s Visual Arts Collection was reunited with the sitter’s relative.
- Another real accidental archive/library discovery: a personal letter from Stephen Hawking to a UVic professor was found inside a copy of Hawking’s The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.
- The St. Catharines Museum explained what we can learn from looking back at yearbooks. I hope mine never surface ever again.
- This week Instantanés profiled the Roger Poirier fonds, showcasing the dramatic transformation of Hull’s downtown area in the mid-twentieth-century.
- And they also ventured into their rare books collection, to learn what lies inside a beautiful white leather box.
- Old cameras are so cool.
- The UBC Archives Photograph Collections will now allow researchers to search within specific collections.
- This week LAC published a guide to using the estate files held in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development fonds.
- The University of Toronto has received a four-million-dollar donation to establish a Chinese-Canadian archive.
- This week on Unwritten Histories, we published the latest in our popular Historians’ Histories series, featuring Jessica Knapp!
Miscellaneous
- The latest biography from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for clergyman Robert Winkworth Norwood.
Podcasts
- In the latest episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Liz Covart spoke with Susans Sleeper-Smith about her book, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women and the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792.
- This week on the Witness to Yesterday podcast, Greg Marchildon spoke with Valerie Korinek about her latest book, Prairie Fairies: A History of Queer Communities and People in Western Canada, 1930-1985.
- Scott Neigh published a new Rabble.ca podcast on anti-Black city building and Black community resistance in Halifax, featuring LaMeia Reddick and Ted Rutland.
- Last week’s episode of History Chats featured a roundtable from the 2014 CHA on the presence of Canadian historians in the media.
Better Late Than Never
Calls for Papers
- The Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project has issued a CFP for a workshop in July 2019. Proposals are due March 1.
- Do you remember Active History’s Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI) reflections series? They are calling for applicants for the 2019 edition, on the theme of Anishibaabekwe (women) leadership! I want to go so badly, but Ontario is sooo far.
- The 15th Annual Graduate History Symposium has issued a CFP for their upcoming annual meeting. This year’s theme is “Unwieldy Archives: The Past, Narratives, and History.” Proposals are due February 25.
I always enjoy getting to hang out with my awesome friends in Ottawa (and meeting new people!), but this week reminded me that I love living in the Lower Mainland. I’m still emotionally traumatized from the cold. In any case, I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a brand new sartorial blog post! See you then!
Leave a Reply