Canadian History Roundup – Week of July 30, 2017

Two young women in front of flags at Place des Nations, Expo 67, on opening day. April 27m 1967. Library and Archives Canada. 3198220

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

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

• Ian Mosby shared this fantastic community cookbook he received from his in-laws!
• Library and Archives Canada celebrates the 75^th anniversary of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, first established in 1942, and lists some of their major collections relating to the service.
• Rachel Bryant has another fantastic blog post about a beautiful Passamaquoddy picnic basket, and misattribution. She raises questions about the narratives that settlers tell about Indigenous artefacts, and what these narratives might be concealing.
• It seems like Olivar Asselin liked puppies as much as we do!
• Robyn Lacy reports on her last full week of excavation at Ferryland! She talks about what she has learned, and why she did not find any graves. Also, a memorial to a mouse.
• Katrina Ackerman and Whitney Wood explore the history of medical concerns about female bodies and exercise, particularly when these bodies happen to be pregnant. Gotta watch out for those wandering uteruses!
• Joseph Gagné has a must-read post about the challenge of being a bilingual researcher in a unilingual academic world. I have wrestled with many of these same challenges, including whether or not to translate the roundups. Merci, Joseph.
• Martin Heavy Head has an important Twitter essay about the white supremacist language that is prevalent throughout the field of education. History is heavily implicated in this. If you teach anything at any level, you should read this.
• This week on Unwritten Histories, I had another special guest post! This latest one is by Stephanie Pettigrew, and is a preview of the upcoming British North America Legislative Database! This project is seriously amazing.
• Last week’s most popular words from the world of #envhist, according to Jessica DeWitt were: “Twitter,” “Clinton,” and “One.”
• Find out about the clothing that was worn by enslaved peoples in the Americas, made of osnaburg fabric, in this post by Christy Hyman.
• Bill Waiser is back with his regular column on Saskatchewan history. This time, he looks at the substance used by farmers in the early 20^th century to combat grasshopper plagues: criddle.
• The South Peace Regional Archives remembers the Battle of Hill 70.
• The latest blog post from Instantanés looks at the work by architectural firm, Côté Chabot Morel, architects.
• The Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog is back with Part 2 of their look at the Abel Sands mystery. In this post, Bethany Landmaid talks about the difficulty of tracking specific individuals through the archives, the identity of a mysterious third Abel Sands, and having adventures in the archives!
• The Champlain Society now has its own podcast, “Witness to Yesterday!” Each episode considers one document, and the entire first season (10 episodes) has been released!
• Sean Graham comments on the announcement of the new anchors of The National for Active History.
• Éliane Laberge has an absolutely fascinating new blog post for the Canadian Museum of History blog this week. This post looks at the process used to discover what happened to a Sadlermiut woman, whose remains were uncovered during an excavation in 1954. The Museum used 3-D technology to discover that she had been attacked by a polar bear. Which is both fascinating and morbid at the same time. The remains of this woman have already been repatriated to Nunavut.
• In the latest post in Active History’s series on Canada’s First World War, Sarah Glassford and Rose Morton talk about the role that archives play in making the history of WW1 accessible to the public and researchers.
• Adam Coombs has written a new post for Active History about The Proud Boys and their understanding of the history of this country. Frankly, this is terrifying.
• The latest CHESS reflection from NiCHE is by Ashley Caranto Morford. Morford breaks down the concept of “firsting,” (as in first to discover, etc…) as a colonial myth linked to notions of “civilizing” both the people and the land of North America.
• The Mountain Legacy Project, which explores how Canadian mountains have changed over time through photographs, has just launched a website! I can totally see this being used by many environmental historians for both research and teaching.
• LAC has just uploaded more than 40 new videos from their collection to Youtube!
• Check out this year’s annual report from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives to find out about the cool stuff they’ve been doing.
• Check out this article by John Steckley for the Champlain Society’s blog, Findings/Trouvailles, about the persistence of the St. Lawrence Iroquoian language.
• This week the Heritage Winnipeg blog profiles the Confederation Life Building, and how it echoes the history of the city.
• This week’s #TBT from the ROM features Dorothy Burnham filling the fourth case in the exhibit
• Tom Morton talks about the recent Victoria 2017 Provincial Heritage Fair. I so wish we had these when I was in high school. Though to be fair, I did do an essay on the Greek and Roman mythology of the rainbow for my grade nine science fair project.
• Stephen Kimber reviews Michael Dupuis’ Wearing Witness: Journalists, Record Keepers and the 1917 Halifax Explosion for the Acadiensis blog this week.
• You need to check out this absolutely beautiful glass steam engine as well as the amazing glass Coronation Coach by Elmer Hookway, featured in Heather Read’s most recent Canada150 blog series from the ROM. I’m flabbergasted.
• This week’s blog post from the Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto is all about the familiar graduation song, “Pomp and Circumstance,” and the letter they hold written by the composer.
• Patrick Lacroix has written the latest blog post from Histoire Engagée, which is a reflection on the recent “Franconnexions” conference, exploring links between Quebec and New England. He also explores the recent surge of interest in this particular subject and the widening scope of what is traditionally considered French America.
• Trent University profiles Julia Smith for her work on flight attendants as well as her contributions to the Graphic History Collective.
• Retroactive has republished a piece this week on the history of the Oxley Ranch Site, and efforts to “Canadianize” the region.
• This week the Vancouver as It Was blog takes a look at a photograph by Stuart Thomson of a trophy ceremony, and the world of amateur baseball in 1920s Vancouver.
• You absolutely must read this post by Crystal Fraser and Sara Komarnisky on 150 Acts of Reconciliation for the last 150 days of this year. It is superb.
  • And don’t forget to use the #150Acts hashtag to follow the discussion on Twitter!
• The latest biography from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is of James Arthur Little, who was heavily involved in natural resource extraction and politics in the early 20^th century
• In honour of the 50^th anniversary of Caribana, the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections has put together an archival guide to holdings relating to the celebration.
• There are a whole bunch of new songs that are now available from LAC’s Virtual Gramophone!
• The Archives of Montreal have now reached the beginning of August in their Expo 67 Day by Day series.
• Adam Gaudry has another fantastic Twitter essay this week about Louis Riel’s politics and nationalism.
• Christopher Ryan tells us about a tragic fire on Gladstone Avenue in Ottawa in 1953.
• This week Eve Lazarus discusses the “buried houses” of Vancouver, homes that had commercial storefronts added to them during the Great Depression. I’ve always wondered about these buildings!
• Annelise Down recounts the history of student publications at McGill in her latest post by the McGill Library Digitization team blog.  All of these publications, spanning 140 years, are also now available for download at the Internet Archive, and you can access them here.
• Canadian History in the News
  • There is a new plaque that honours the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters!
  • CBC profiles Jéan Sexsmith, a Dene man who went back to school to become an archaeologist after a career as a security guard. In this profile, Sexsmith talks about his desire to help his home community and share Dene heritage with the public. Just all of the yes.
  • Someone apparently declared this the week of the diary:
    • Diaries belonging to Andrew McCullosh, noted engineer, have been donated to the Penticton Museum and Archives.
    • The diary of Frank Baker, a sailor who happened to be in Halifax on the day of the Halifax Explosion, has recently been recovered. I believe I mentioned this in a previous roundup, but it’s in the news again this week, and there is a great deal more information provided this time.
    • UBC Special Collections recently acquired the first document by a white woman written about her experiences in the Pacific North West. The diary, written by Susannah Weyton in 1852, has been fully digitized and can be viewed here.
  • Les Couchi, from Nipissing First Nation, has looked back at over 100 years of news coverage by the Star on the subject of Indigenous people. And the results were worse than you would expect. This is a must-read article, written by Couchi himself.
  • It’s Pride this weekend in Vancouver.! CBC spoke with David Myers, co-host of the first gay radio show in Vancouver, about his memories of the first Pride Parade in the city.
  • Find out about the Maltese community of Toronto, and the museum that commemorates their history.
  • Find out about some of the items being discovered at the dig at Fort Macleod that I mentioned in last week’s roundup.
  • There is also more news about the excavations at the Fortress of Louisbourg.
  • You’d never know it, but parts of Calgary’s history lie in storage yards, including the remains of seven historic buildings. It’s like a graveyard of forgotten dreams. 🙁
  • Amani Saini is collecting the oral history of the Punjabi community of Canada as part of the Punjabi Canadian Legacy Project. Saini has partnered with the Royal BC Museum, University of the Fraser Valley, and the South Asian Studies Institute to undertake this project which  will hopefully preserve these important memories while also making Punjabi-Canadian history more visible to the general public.
  • Sean Carleton and Julia Smith were interviewed by Talking Radical Radio (rabble.ca) about their work with the Graphic History Collective.
  • Find out about the new regional history magazine, “Empreintes”, which looks at the history of the Mauricie and Centre-du-Québec districts! Thanks to Gail Dever for this news!
  • The Billy Two Rivers lawsuit I mentioned last week has been settled out of court.
  • It’s been thirty years since Edmonton’s Black Friday, when, in 1987, 27 people were killed by a tornado.
  • Joshua Ostroff has written a new piece for Maclean’s about the 1862 smallpox epidemic of BC, the devastation it wrought among Indigenous communities in the area, and the long-term impacts that it has had with respect to Indigenous rights and land claims. And of course, we must also consider the 1782 epidemic.
  • Find out about the new Langley Memorial Hospital Archives!
  • Michael Rice is calling on the Bank of Montreal and the City of Montreal to remove a plaque on the BMO building about Paul de Chomeday, Sieur de Maisonneuve “killing the chief with his own hands.”
  • A group of people are honouring the 75^th anniversary of the construction of the Alaska Highway by driving restored military vehicles from Vancouver to Yukon. Cause why not.
  • Emancipation Day (when slavery was abolished in the British Empire) was this week!
    • The annual Underground Freedom Train Ride ran on schedule.
    • And CBC spoke with Pamella Houston, a descendent of one of the people who escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad.
  • Shelia Willis, executive director of the Friends of Historical Northern Alberta, is creating a road-trip history app!
  • Maclean’s has picked up on the story about the Montrealer who served at Dunkirk, James Campbell Clouston, who was transformed into a British officer by the name of Boulton for the film.
  • A new exhibit honouring Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian internment during WW1 has just opened as part of the Canadian History Hall at the Canadian Museum of History.
  • Heritage Kitchener has just created a new map listing houses, buildings, and other locations built before 1867. You know, those things we used to use before app were invented?
  • Jessica Dunkin was interviewed by Information Morning – Fredericton host Terry Seguin for an episode on the canoe, part of his series on the Symbols of Canada.
  • I’d like to know WTF the people who came up with Edmonton Eskimos’ new slogan (“One Empire”) were thinking.
  • If you’ve been to the Canada Science and Technology Museum sometime in the last fifty years, then you’ve likely encountered the Crazy Kitchen. The designer of this exhibit, and many others, John Arnold, has just passed away.
  • Neil Young will soon release an online archive of his music career.
  • Andrew Duffy tells the fascinating story of “Lucky” Bill LaChange (what a name…), the only survivor of the worst avalanche in Canadian history, which occurred in Rogers Pass, BC, on March 4, 1910.
• Better Late than Never
  • The CBC took a look at the “Eskimo Identification Tag System,” where Inuit were forced to wear round numbered tags for identification purposes. However, as Joanne Hammond pointed out, the title of the article is misleading because “controversial is not a synonym for racist.”
  • Lots of people are really unhappy that Parks Canada is planning to close several of its archaeology labs and move their contents to Gatineau. Politicians and archaeologists in Atlantic Canada are particularly upset.
    • There is more coverage of this, focusing on the mayor of Annapolis Royal, here.
  • The Vancouver Sun looked back on the history of Lost Lagoon, in Stanley Park.
  • The Chilliwack Museum and Archives has launched their own Project Naming, which they are calling “Project Naming: Stó:lō and S’olh Temexw Version.” This is awesome!
• Calls for Papers
  • Lauren Beck and Routledge are seeking chapter proposals for a new book that explores the history of “firsting” in the Early Modern Transatlantic World. Proposals are due November 1^st.
  • The AAIHS is seeking proposals for their Third Annual Conference, to be held at Brandeis University in March of 2018. The theme of the conference is “Black Thought Matters.” Proposals are due November 15th.

The internet seems so quiet this week. Also, where did July go? Sigh. I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice! And as always, don’t forget to check back in on Tuesday for the last special guest post of the summer. Trust me, you’ll not want to miss this one. See you then!

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