Canadian History Roundup – Week of July 21, 2019

Man photographing women [sic] in red bathing suit climbing out of pool, small child watches, Fundy National park, New Brunswick. July 1953. Chris Lund. ibrary and Archives Canada. 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: ‘Said,’ ‘People,’ and ‘Climate.’
• The Graphic History Collective has released a new poster on the history of national parks, colonial dispossession, and Indigenous resilience. The poster was created by Nancy Kimberley, and Wacey Little Light (Member of Siksika Nation, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Treaty 7) wrote the accompanying essay.
• Susan Nance has written a new blog post for NiCHE about how the Calgary Stampede continues to include chuckwagon racing despite the fact that several horses die in these races every year.

Military History

• The latest soldier spotlight from the South Peace Regional Archives is for WW1 solider, Captain Clement “Jim” Mead.
• The latest Findings/Trouvailles blog post is by Joe Martin, about his uncle Jon, who served in WW1 with John Diefenbaker.
• An Italian Collector found a backpack that belonged to Paul-Étienne Saint-Laurent, who lost it while fighting in the Italian Campaign in WW2. The backpack is now being returned to his family.
• Adam Bunch spoke with CBC about the last duel ever fought in Toronto, 202 years ago.

Archaeology

• Robyn Lacey’s lastest post for the Woodland Cemetery History blog is about the gravestone of baby Ida Grace Laing.
• Find out more about the dig going on at Fort St. Louis, mentioned in last week’s roundup, in this interview with project lead Katie Cottreau-Robins.
• The latest guest post for the Retroactive blog, by Emily Moffat, explains the history of knife river flint quarries and their connection to Alberta.
• Paul Ledger and Véronique Forbes have just published a new paper showing potential evidence of Indigenous human occupancy at L’Anse aux Meadows, after the arrival of the Norse.
• The latest Dig It column is out, and it’s by Joanne Hammond herself. Building off her Twitter thread from a couple of weeks ago, Hammond shows the fact that Tk’emlups families owned and occupied the land now known as Kamloops lies just beneath the surface.
• While working on Keith Island, in the territory of the Tseshaht First Nation, Ian McKechnie has uncovered archaeological evidence that the Nuu-cha-nulth people were eating geoduck clams 500 years ago. This finding could play a role in future court cases regarding Indigenous fishing rights, particularly in relation to a 2009 ruling arguing that there was no “historical evidence” of Nuu-cha-nulth harvesting the clam. Because of course, Indigenous Oral History isn’t good enough…. SMH Content warning: settlers “discovering” things about Indigenous history.

History Education

• The final blog post in Active History’s series on teaching Mary Jane Logan McCallum (Lunaape heritage and a member of the Munsee Delaware Nation) and Adele Perry’sS tructures of Indifference was posted this week. Written by Christine Ceci, it featured her experience teaching the book to a graduate level seminar on nursing knowledge.
• The latest blog post on the CHA Learning and Teaching blog is by Karen Roberts, and featured her advice to new history instructors and students.
• Carla Peck spoke with The Star about the new Alberta government’s decision to pause testing of a newly developed social studies/history curriculum.
• The CHA announced this week that it will be awarding new teaching awards.There are two categories: “early career researcher” and “open career state.”

Transnational History

• Maxime Dagenais published a new blog post on the Age of Revolutions blog about his newly published book with Julien Mauduit, Revolutions Across Borders: Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion.

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History

• The National Association of Japanese Canadians, headed by president Lorene Oikawa, has organized a series of consultations across the country (and online)  about how the BC government’s apology for internment could be accompanied by meaningful action.
  • More here, along with comments by Jordan Stanger-Ross from the Landscapes of Injustice project.
• This week on Q, Maestro Fresh Wes discussed the history of the first Canadian rap song to crack the Billboard Top 40, Let Your Backbone Slide.
• Natasha Henry published a great new Twitter thread on the history of Emancipation Day celebrations in Canada.
• The US National Archives posted a new blog post about the Black Loyalists this week, part of the new exhibition called Forgotten Soldier at the American Revolution Museum, on the history of African-Americans in the Revolutionary War.
• Patrick Lacroix’s latest blog post is about a central document in Franco-American history: the Wright Report.

Indigenous History

• LAC published a new blog post on Inuk photographer, Judith-Pauline White and her work.White was from Nunatsiavut, and documented the history of her own community. The post was also written by another Inuk woman from Nunatsiavut, Heather Campbell.
• The Manitoba Metis Federation honoured the eightieth anniversary of the burning of the Metis community of Ste. Madeleine. Content warning: description of violence against Indigenous peoples.
• Indigenous petroglyphs have been discovered for the first time in Newfoundland. The Chief of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Miawpukek First Nation, Mi’sel Joe, and archaeologists are seeking official protection for the site.
• The latest biography from The Canadian Encyclopedia is for Inuk senator, William Adams.
• An eighteenth-century manuscript of liturgical choir songs written in the Abenaki language has just been restored, and will be an important resource for language revitalization.

New France/British North America

•  This week on Unwritten Histories, we posted part three of our summer series on Acadian history. This post was written by Christopher Hodson, on how trauma studies can help us to better understand the history of the Acadian Deportation.
• Niigaan Sinclair (Anishinaabe) wrote another fantastic piece for the Winnipeg Free Press this week about how the slave trade was instrumental in the establishment of the HBC and NWC.

Political History

• So it turns out that the FBI was tracking FLQ leader Paul Rose while he was in Dallas before the visit of Richard Nixon.
• Speaking of spying, check out what the RCMP did when a group of Soviet hockey players toured Canada in 1957.
• Shannon Stettner has written a fabulous blog post for the University of Toronto Press Journals blog on decentring milestone legislation. The post accompanies her article with Katrina Ackerman that I profiled in the latest Best New Articles.
• Ruth Panofsky has written a new piece for The Conversation on the earliest women in Canadian publishing: Irene Clarke, Claire Pratt, Anna Porter, and Bella Pomer.
• Steve Hewitt spoke to Global News about what a union could mean for the RCMP. 

Social History

• This week Our Digital World shared op-eds and reflections by Ontario religious leaders on the moon landing.
• If you love fashion history as much as I do, you need to watch this video from the Museum of London, on Canadian-born corset maker, Roxey Ann Caplin.
• There has been a new rabies death in BC, the first in many years. So CBC took this opportunity to explain the history of rabies in Canada. Kinda awkward…

The History of Gender and Sexuality

• The Canadian Jewish News profiled an early Jewish leader in the Canadian gay community, Johnny Abush. Content warning: use of “pioneering” language.

Local History

• The latest entry from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for Quebec lawyer and politician, Lawrence Arthur Cannon.
• This week on the Railway and Main blog is a post about gambling at the Seymour Hotel in Kindersley.
• The latest post from the UBC Digitizer’s blog showcased images of downtown Vancouver from the Uno Langmann Family Collection.
• Whistorical got fit and fun this week at Myrtle Philip Elementary School.
• The Vancouver As It Was blog questioned the identity of a woman in a notable portrait.
• The Chilliwack Museum and Archives blog shared a story from their current exhibit, “Five Faces, Five Corners,” about Nylon Day, 1946. Random Andrea fact of the week: my grandfather courted my grandmother by giving her nylon stockings during the war.
• Heritage Winnipeg looked at the history of the Gault Building.

Digital and Public History

• Black Loyalist Rose Fortune has been designated a historically significant person by the Historic Sites and Monument Board of Canada. Yay! For those of you who might not know her story, she was a successful business owner and is considered the first female police officer in Canada.
• Also receiving a designation as “historically significant” from the HSMBC this week was the Rossland Miner’s Hall in BC.
• The Galt Museum and Archives is looking for LGTBQ2S+ stories and materials for an upcoming exhibit on the queer history of southwestern Alberta.
• The Fortress of Louisbourg is hosting two volunteers from Basque Country this summer!
• There was a new entry in Active History’s ‘Historians in the Movies’ series by Stephen Brooke, who reviewed the film Lucky Jim.
• Also on Active History this week was a post by the Graphic History Collective and Jesse Thistle (Métis), about the film that Thistle made and screened at the CHA in Regina about his great-grandmother and the process of making the GHC poster, “When Canada Opened Fire on My Kokum Marianne with a Gatling Gun,” with his brother Jerry. I was lucky enough to see this film at the CHA, and I cannot recommend that you watch it enough. The post also includes an interview with Thistle conducted by Sean Carleton.
• A team of researchers from the “Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database” have created a 3-D model of an eighteenth century slave ship.
• Shirley Tillotson shard her recent experience seeing a remodelled exhibit at Fort Anne National Historic Site in this great Twitter thread.
• There is a new historical walking tour app for Edmonton!
• A new Buddhist monument will be placed in Slocan cemetery in honour of Japanese-Canadians who were cremated there during internment.
• The Federal government unveiled their 2019 Veteran’s Week Poster, featuring Lieutenant Maxime Llewelyn Bredt, a Nursing Sister who treated soldiers during the Italian Campaign in WW2.

Doing History

• The federal government announced the construction of a new Parks Canada facility that will house around 25 million artifacts from across the country.
• But as Laura Peers and MaryAnne Mihychuk explained, the current plan is hugely problematic because it separates First Nations and Métis communities from their heritage.
• Rick Garber wrote a guest post for the Ottawa Jewish Archives about a mysterious typewriter.
• The latest edition of Intersections, the CHA bulletin, was released this week. I would highly recommend Adele Perry’s piece, “Reading the Royal Historical Society’s 2018 Report,” which is available separately here.
• The Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada has received an $8.8 million grant from the federal government, and construction will now begin.
• Over on NiCHE this week, Katie Hemsworth discussed collaboration and overcoming disciplinary boundaries in research on the history of the environment.
• CBC spoke with Terry Bishop-Sterling about a new symposium at Bonavista about the history of women in Newfoundland and Labrador, and why women’s history matters.
• Remember that CSIS file on Pierre Trudeau that was destroyed? Well, it turns out that there was an attempt to prevent its destruction.
• The Université de Montreal profiled Lisa Dillon and Alain Gagnon’s current project creating database-based census materials from 1851 to 1921, part of the Canada People’s project with PRDH.
• @Indigitization on Twitter put together a fantastic thread about protocols, permissions, and Indigenous-led projects and resources for people working in the GLAM fields and history.
• Claire Campbell wrote a beautiful Twitter thread about what it’s like to work as a Canadianist abroad.
• Douglas J. Jonston reviewed Monica MacDonald’s new book, Recasting History: How CBC Television Shaped Canada’s Past for the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Podcasts

• The latest episode of Notice History featured a discussion with Ali Norton about historical castles and GIS.
• The St. Catharines Museum has launched a new podcast series called “One Hour in the Past.” The inaugural episode explores the history of sidewalks in St. Catharines.
• The latest Secret Life of Canada podcast episode is a mailbag episode!
• The latest Juno Beach and Beyond podcast episode featured a conversation with David O’Keefe about the Battle of Verrières Ridge.

Calls for Papers

• The British Association for Canadian Studies and Centre of Canadian Studies at the University of Edinburg have issued a CFP for their forty-fifth annual conference. This year’s theme is the impact of successive international orders in Canada. Proposals are due November 18.

In case you can’t tell from the pool picture, it’s been super hot this week out in the Lower Mainland, and I’ve been dreaming of going swimming. Growing up in Montreal, I spent every summer in the pool. It’s not quite as easy to do that out here. 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 Elizabeth Mancke’s contribution to our series on Acadian history. See you then!

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