Family enjoying a meal at the beach, seated around a fire, British Columbia. Photo by Gar Lunney, 1969. National Film Board of Canada. Library and Archives Canada. 4301659 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.
- Canadian history has been blowing up on Twitter this week!
- Earlier this week, Maclean’s published an article, saying that we in Canada should “celebrate” our British heritage. Among the many problems with this article, the author refers to Canada as “her.” Seriously.
- Derek Simon wrote a great response ripping apart the author’s argument about the British bringing freedom and free enterprise.
- And Rachel Bryant responded by refuting his argument about the lack of better “local alternatives” with a great blog post about the sophistication of Indigenous civilizations in North America prior to European contact
- There was a great deal of discussion about the renaming of Langevin Block, Sir John A. Macdonald, and residential schools recently. Discussion reignited with the publication of Sean Carleton’s op-ed saying that Macdonald was the real architect of the residential school system.
- The Outremont summit on Mont Royal will be soon be renamed Tiohtià :ke Ostirà’kehne, which was selected by the three Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) bands living near Montreal. This name means: “Around the Fire, on the Island, which separates man and river,” and is pronounced djodjâgué otchira’guéné.
- I think this is awesome, but predictably (because, racism), some people are upset and are trying to use history to back up their point.
- Daniel Rück has written a fantastic Twitter essay explaining the real history of the area, and why the renaming is actually really important.
- Perry Bellegard, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, made a call last week to have all 60 Indigenous languages in Canada designated as official languages, alongside English and French. The CBC interviewed Onowa McIvor, who said that this is totally doable.
- Thomas Peace created a Twitter essay showcasing the many examples where this is already unofficially the case.
- Maddie Knickerbocker was walking through Pioneer Park outside of Chilliwack, and found a highly problematic plaque. So she wrote a must-read Twitter essay about the erasure of Indigenous history. Cause she’s just that awesome.
- This week on Active History, Alan MacEachern has a new blog post about the Bering Land Bridge Theory, and the ways in which it is being used to make the argument that “Indigenous peoples are immigrants too.” And there is discussion in the comment section that you need to check out too!
- Adam Gaudry wrote a great response on Twitter about how the continued focus on the Bering Land Bridge Theory distracts from the more important conversations we need to be having.
- And Eve Tuck also wrote this great essay on Twitter about the origin stories from her Indigenous community, who live on the Bering Straight, and the fact that there is no bridge in these stories.
- And Daniel Rück also posted another Twitter essay about how the Bering Land Bridge Theory is taught and how we can/should engage with it.
- Robyn Lacy is back with a report from her first week of excavation in Ferryland. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be sitting here reliving my childhood dreams of being an archaeologist.
- According to Jessica DeWitt, last week’s most used words from #envhist were: “university,” “CFP,” and “science.”
- This week, Borealia hosted a special mini-series, featuring two blog posts by Paula Dumas, about working with online databases while researching Loyalist history. These are revised and expanded versions of two of the essays that previously appeared on the blog, Isles Abroad.
- The first post focuses on the Haldimand Papers and other digitized documents and how to search them effectively.
- The second post focuses on how to use these documents to follow the life story of one person, in this case, Henry Anguish.
- Blair Stein has written a must-read post for NiCHE this week all about her experiences teaching her first course. My favourite part was her discovery “…that the blazer was inside me all along.” I can totally relate, though in my case, it was more cardigans than blazers.
- Catch up with Olivar Asselin as a military attaché in Paris (ooh la la), where he encounters some unfriendly French journalists and bureaucrats.
- This is not really historical, but if you are an Indigenous ally or want to be one, you need to read this.
- The Bata Shoe Museum has posted this absolutely stunning pair of beaded boots, made by an unnamed Northern Plains artist between 1960 and 1980.
- The Canadian International History Committee has just relaunched their website!
- BC Studies has created a cool map that allows you to find articles based on their geographical location!
- Katie Biitner will be blogging about the course she is teaching this summer, Archaeological Field Methods! Find out about her experiences during her first week and her course preparations. Incidentally, she and I both started 6-week summer courses at the same time!
- This week on Unwritten Histories was another edition of the ever-popular Historian’s Histories series! Our latest victim volunteer was Maxime Dagenais, the research coordinator at the Wilson Institute at McMaster University!
- The Graphic History Collective has released another poster in their Remember|Resist|Redraw series. This latest, by Jerry Thistle and introduced by Jesse Thistle is titled “When Canada Opened Fire on a My Kokum Marianne with a Gatling Gun.” It tells the story of the Métis fighter Marianne Morrissette, née Ldeoux, just 16 years old, who was cooking for her cousin Louis Riel when General Middleton opened fire on Batoche. Her life was saved when Riel threw her out a window to safety, but she never forgot the fear she experienced.
- LAC has posted a new Flickr album this week, containing images of bowling and lawn bowling. See the pictures themselves here.
- Check out this new online exhibit from the Archives of Ontario featuring the photography of Melvin Ormond Hammond, curated by Madeleine Anne Bognar.
- Take a video tour of the Manitoba Museum’s “Legacies of Confederation” exhibit thanks to Canada’s History.
- There is a new Community Stories exhibit from the Virtual Museum of Canada available. This one is from the Aurora Museum and Archives, and looks at the history of Town Park.
- The ROM Textiles department posted a picture of this beautiful buffalo robe made by Running Rabbit, Blackfoot Sikiska, in 1909.
- Daniel Ross alerted us all on Twitter that the Historical Atlas of Quebec is now available in open-access PDFs! Unfortunately, this resource is only available in French.
- In the latest Ben Franklin’s World podcast episode, Liz Covart speaks with Manisha Sinha about her recent book, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.
- This week on Instantanés, BAnQ talks about the history of medicine in New France, as well as some of their most important related holdings.
- Steve Marti has written a blog post for Active History discussing the recent interruption of a memorial for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Halifax by comparing how the Canadian and New Zealand militaries have dealt with their British pasts.
- The latest Canada’s History Newsletter has been released!
- There is actually quite a bit of HBC news this week!
- They have unveiled a new collection of historical documents that are now available for research. This collection contains trial manuscripts from the Pemmican War.
- Over on Instagram, they posted this amazing image of a 1970s housecoat.
- Also on LAC this week is a blog post all about Mount Royal Park and Frederick Olmstead. As with most Montrealers, my experiences of the park were pretty much limited to driving through it.
- Jessica DeWitt is back with the June edition of #envhist worth reading!
- Retroactive has a new blog post this week all about the edible plants that would have been consumed by Indigenous peoples in Alberta more than 1000 years ago, as well as some of the techniques that archaeologists use to unearth this information.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia has updated their entry on Métis poet, Katherena Vermett
- Jana Grazley wrote about her experiences at the Association of Canadian Archivists Conference this past June for the City of Vancouver Archives blog.
- Now available from the Provincial Archives of Alberta is a new fonds from the Moler Barber School.
- Find out what it’s like to be an archivist at the Pier 21 Scotiabank Family History Centre with this profile of Nicole Dalrymple.
- Find out about some of the manuscripts that are currently on display at the Toronto Reference Library’s exhibit, “Destination Canada,” which focuses on the history of immigration in Canada.
- The Acadian Museum posted information about two new artefacts this week, including a candle mould and a wooden potato shovel.
- McGill Library is looking for people who like to solve puzzles to help them decode one recipe book written by Eliza Smithson between 1805 and 1834. These riddles are a play on table settings, and actually look really cool. Too bad I suck at riddles. If you don’t, you could win a $25 gift certificate to the McGill bookstore!
- This week on the Canadian Museum of History Blog, Éliane Laberge shows drawings made by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic as they were being forcibly relocated in the 1960s and how they can teach us a great deal about social and cultural change.
- This week’s new biography from the DCB is for John Pease Babcock, a fisheries conservationist in BC in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
- LAC has its July update on the digitization of WW1 personnel files. They have reached the name Pilkey.
- The St. Catharines Museum and Archives has posted Walk K from “St. Catharines A-Z” walking tours. This time we are off to visit the doctor.
- A diary including a new eye-witness account of the Halifax Explosion has just been uncovered. The diary belonged to a Royal Navy sailor named Frank Baker.
- The Heritage Winnipeg Blog looks back on the history of the Assiniboine Park Conservatory.
- Merle Massie posted a fantastic blog post about the discovery she made during her research of a letter from 1889 written in Cree syllabic. In the post, she talks about how she found the letter and what it says.
- The Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto looks at documents relating to communism in their collections.
- The latest blog post from the Canadian Centre on the Great War focuses on the American soldiers who fought as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, long before their compatriots joined the war effort.
- Whistorical looks back at the adventures of Mollie Stephenson.
- Scrapbooks from the infamous Vancouver club, Marco Polo, have been recently rediscovered.
- Canadian History in the News
- A former Vietnamese refugee discovers an old photograph of himself and relatives in a CBC news story.
- Andrew Watson was interviewed by The Agenda about his work on the history of Muskoka!
- Accompanied by a longer article!
- A group of individuals from New Brunswick recreated the famous Canadian rowing victory at the World’s Fair Regatta in Paris in 1867, as depicted in a Heritage Minute. They even included the pink hats and brown suspenders. You can see the Heritage Minute here.
- Just before the opening of the new exhibit at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich on the Franklin Expedition, a letter has surfaced from Nunavat Premier Peter Taptune, saying that Parks Canada has taken artefacts without permission from the Nunavut government and the Inuit Heritage Trust.
- Rio Wharf, in Brazil, has just been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Wharf is the location where nearly 1 million enslaved people from the continent of Africa were brought to the Americas.
- Kristina Llewellyn and her work on the virtual reality experience of the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children was profiled on The Record.com.
- The Nova Scotia Archives , in the person of Michelle Boychuk, talked about their community albums program on Global Morning News from Halifax.
- The diaries of Lucy Maud Montgomery will soon be fully available in print!
- The statue of Edward Cornwallis was in the news again this week.
- The mayor of Halifax has argued that removing the statue will set the process of reconciliation back.
- Martha Walls and Corey Slumkoski wrote an op-ed about the debate, which has also been republished on the Acadiensis blog.
- On Saturday, the statue was shrouded by the city during a planned protest.
- And you can see how this entire event unfolded here.
- Steve Bonspiel reminds us about how little has changed since the Oka Crisis, with took place twenty-seven years ago.
- Toronto’s Caribbean Carnival turns 50 this year! Find out about the history of this event, and the plans for this year’s celebration.
- Emma Gray (Inuk) set out to find out about her missing great-great-grandfather and in the process, found a whole family. Gray’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Gray, was a Scottish HBC employer who was discharged for being “too familiar,” and left behind a wife and three children in Fort Chimo.
- Ancient Indigenous sacred sites across the country are being vandalized, and the Canadian government is doing very little to prevent this from happening. Ancient pictographs are a frequent target.
- BC is burning. As this article from the CBC explains, the evacuation of First Nations communities is complicated by the fact that this type of event is a trigger for many residential school survivors and their descendants.
- The Etobicoke Historical Society has a fascinating new project to honour six historical figures.
- Ok, this is super cool: there is a new outdoor billboard in Brandon, Ontario, which illustrates the boundary between Treaty 1 and Treaty 2. This is the first of a series of billboards that will showcase local Indigenous artists over the next two years.
- Going to the Calgary Stampede? Catch up on your cowboy fashion history.
- Work will soon be underway at The Forks in Winnipeg to revitalize the area and recognize its Indigenous history with a permanent interpretation centre, an Indigenous art gallery, and new ceremonial space.
- A live cannon ball from the Battle of the Plains of Abraham was just discovered, more than 250 years late! It’s always in the last place you look…
- Because hope springs eternal, there is a new effort to recover potential models of the Avro Arrow from Lake Ontario. The search is being sponsored by a number of private companies.
- So, apparently some people think it might be a good idea to store archival documents in an old Norad Bunker from the Cold War. Sure. Why not.
- Alison Norman, along with Karyn Recollet, spoke with CBC about the meaning of land acknowledgements.
- Indigenous communities have a great deal of traditional knowledge to share about forest management and wildfire prevention, if settlers are willing to listen.
- Better Late than Never
- The architecture of cities like Toronto can reveal a great deal about their history. Find out about the architectural history of Toronto in this article in The Globe and Mail.
- Calls for Papers
- The 2017 Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association Conference has extended their CFP to August 31st.
- The Rachel Carson Centre, the University of Oregon, and the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture are co-organizing a symposium on pacific whaling, to be held at the University of Hawai’i – Mānoa in June 2018. The deadline to submit proposals is September 1st. Darn it, I need to find an excuse to research pacific whaling. Or how about we petition the CHA to hold its annual meeting in Hawai’i in the near future?
- The American Review of Canadian Studies is seeking submissions for a special issue on the subject of “Social Violence, the Peaceable Kingdom, and the Northeast Borderlands,” in honour of Scott See’s retirement. Abstracts are due on October 1st.
- Earlier this week, Maclean’s published an article, saying that we in Canada should “celebrate” our British heritage. Among the many problems with this article, the author refers to Canada as “her.” Seriously.
Apparently this was the week of fantastic Twitter essays! That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this week’s roundup, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a look at my favourite articles from the past month! See you then!
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