Inauguration de c première rame du métro à la Canadian Vickers, en présence notamment du cardinal Paul-Émile Léger et du maire Jean Drapeau. Août 1965. VM94-Md19-006. Archives de la Ville de Montréal/Inauguration of the first metro line at Canadian Vickers, in the presence of Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger and Mayor Jean Drapeau. August 1965. VM94-Md19-006. Archives of the City of Montreal. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Missed last week’s roundup? Check it out here.
- Distinguished Canadian social historian Michael Bliss passed away this week.
- You can read about his life and his accomplishments here, here, and here.
- And don’t miss this beautiful reflection from Elsbeth Heamon on Borealia.
- Last week on the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog was a post on Hannah Ingraham, who chronicled her family’s move to New Brunswick as a child. This week on the Boston 1775 blog is a blog post featuring additional information about Ingraham!
- Sean Munger’s podcast, The Second Decade, posted a new episode this week about “Old Ironsides,” the USS Constitution and the War of 1812.
- This week’s most-used words in the most popular #envhist articles, according to Jessica DeWitt are: “said,” “water,” and “Trump.”
- LAC has posted their monthly update on the digitization of CEF Personnel files. They have reached the name “Oliver.”
- Can you believe that Congress is only a week away? Damn, where did May go?
- Active History has a fantastic post by Thomas Peace on what the CHA programme for this year’s annual meeting tells us about the state of Canadian history. Spoiler alert: there are some pretty significant gaps.
- Beyond Borders has a great introduction to the special panel, Decolonizing 1867, by organizer Stacy Nation-Knapper. I am so totally there.
- NiCHE has a special post devoted to what’s on offer for Canadian environmental historians this year, particularly on Tuesday the 30th.
- In Part 4 of Paula Dumas’ exploration of live webcams, she showcases some of the amazing ones that cover the Prairies.
- This week on the Junto is an interview with Maria J. Fuentes about her latest book, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archives.
- Convergence, the official blog of the Association des archivistes du Québec is a look at the Notre-Dame-Du-Cap Sanctuary’s archives.
- Instantanés is back with another letter from Olivar Asselin, this time about the weather forecast in the trenches.
- Find out why it’s so important that we call residential school survivors “survivors,” rather than “victims.”
- I’m not sure if this is new, or just new to me, but the The’wá:lí Community Digital Map is now online!
- The Two Nerdy History Girls talk about 18th century baby clothes, featuring a beautiful shirt belonging to Jane Hodge Nicols.
- This week on Unwritten Histories I posted my regular monthly review of the most recent articles published in Canadian history! Find out which ones were my favourites.
- On May 17th, Montreal celebrated the 375 anniversary of its establishment. So, as you can imagine, there have been several blog posts on the subject
- For the anniversary, McGill Library has digitized a number of rare maps of Montreal dating from 1556 to 1946. In this blog post, they explain how they accomplished this task, while showcasing several of the maps as well. They are just absolutely stunning. And even better, they are all now available online! Go here to check them out.
- Instantanés has posted a funny little text about the glories of Montreal, even though it’s not as good as Paris or Athens. Ah well.
- MQUP is offering a 35% discount on books about Montreal’s history until May 31st! They also have a list of suggestions. Books? Sale? Two of my favourite words.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia has put together an interactive exhibit for the anniversary as well.
- Stephanie Bellissimo has a fantastic blog post where she explains how she organized her very first archival fonds. Just fascinating.
- This week on NiCHE, Kristine Kowalchuk interviewed settler artist Peter von Tiesenhausen, who became internationally recognized for copyrighting the farmland that he depicted in his artwork to protect it from oil and gas development.
- In the latest Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Liz Covart speaks with Spencer McBride about religion and politics in Revolutionary America.
- Jordanna Mation has written a blog post for Black Perspectives about decolonizing the curriculum, and the need to teach students the problems with the current national narrative in order to address the realities of life in the US right now. I could not agree more, and I think this is a must-read regardless of whether you are American or Canadian.
- LAC has posted another album of images from our provinces and territories! This week is all about Nunavut, so I’m back on track! Go here to see the images themselves. And I’ll see you next week, Manitoba!
- The Ontario Jewish Archives wants your old stuff!
- Ryan McMahon has curated a list of podcasts dealing with Indigenous history in North America. I’ve only listened to one of these episodes so far (the one on American Football from Radiolab), but they look great and cover a wide range of topics!
- Clint Carroll has written a commentary for part two of Engagement’s series on the Environmental Anthropology of Settler Colonialism.
- Stephanie Halmhofer has written a blog post summarizing her experiences at the 2017 Canadian Archaeological Associations Conference. I so wish I could have gone, since it looks like it was super cool!
- There is a new exhibit from the Virtual Museum of History! This latest one, titled “Radical Reform: Education and Society 1845-1945,” all about the establishment of the public school system in Canada. It looks fantastic! Though I’m a little uncomfortable with the central focus on Egerton Ryerson, particularly given his work implementing the residential school system.
- Veronica Strong-Boag has written a new blog post for Active History about what happened to the women’s suffrage moment and women in politics after (white) women won the right to vote. Warning: it’s depressing, and shows how little things have changed, but is definitely worth reading.
- Also on NiCHE this week is a new post by Josh MacFayden about why environmental history is good for business by looking at the history of the Archer-Daniels-Midlands weather and crop forecasts and the phenomenon known as “weather markets.”
- Éliane Lagerge has a great new post for the Canadian Museum of History blog about the new Canadian History Hall, International Museum Day (May 18th), and why it is so important that museums share our difficult stories. Find out just how much care and thought goes into putting together an exhibition like this.
- Krista McCracken has a new blog post reflecting on a class talk she attended given by Mike Cachagee, a residential school survivor, about the importance of discussing the relationship between residential schools and white privilege, both in the past and the present.
- Also from Instantanés this week is a post looking at the portrayal of Louis Riel in theatre and opera.
- Which just so happened to coincide with a must-read post by Adam Gaudry reflecting on his experiences watching the Louis Riel opera. In this post he reflects on cultural ownership, particularly in relation to Indigenous culture and history, and how Louis Riel has been used to shore up nationalist myths about Canadian history.
- Also from LAC this week is a short guide to using their collection of Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada from 1867 to 1925, including what kinds of information you can find within them and how to search them.
- And speaking of Sessional Papers, the UBC Library is also in the process of digitizing their collection of British Columbia Sessional Papers from 1865 to 1982. I’m pretty sure all Canadian political historians just collectively went nuts.
- Harold Bérubé has new blog posts on his series for Montreal’s tricentennial for:
- This week at Unwritten Histories we also had our regular blog post about upcoming publications in Canadian history, this time for the month of June.
- Daniel Macfarlane has written a new blog post for NiCHE about the history of flood planning around Lake Ontario following the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, as well as the development of Plan 2014. TL;DR: Don’t build in a flood zone and then be surprised when it floods.
- The Laurier Centre has the fifth instalment of a series looking at the military history of Jeffrey Storey, and his ancestors.
- Robyn Lacy explains how to use ground-penetrating radar when searching for graves, based on her work in Newfoundland.
- The UBC Digitizer’s Blog’s latest post takes a look at one of their many Vancouver-based collections, this time for Kinesis. Kinesis was a national newspaper dedicated to women and women’s issues, and was published between 1974 and 2001.
- The City of Vancouver Archives blog has a new post where they discuss how the city’s website is being archived! It’s a fascinating introduction to digital archiving, as well as a look back at the early internet. Who else here had a Geocities site?
- The latest Retroactive post looks at the history of the Alberta Provincial Police Building and policing in the town of Coleman.
- The latest entry from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for Édouard Fabre, the first French-Canadian to win the Boston Marathon!
- The latest issue of Canada’s History is out! At least in print. Hopefully it will be online soon!
- Jessica DeWitt is back with her review and discussion of the best articles on #envhist from the last month!
- The Canadian Network on Humanitarian History is seeking photographs to be part of a new exhibition on humanitarian photography, refugees, and Canadian aid.
- The South Peace Regional Archives is back with another blog post about the process of creating the Bill Turnbull archival fonds.
- The St. Catharines Museum and Archives Blog has posted Walk G, from their “A Walk Around Town” series.
- Peter G. Toner reviews Anna Kearney Guigné’s The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports: As Taken from Kenneth Peacock’s Newfoundland Field Collection, 1951-1961 for the Acadiensis blog this week.
- In their latest post, the CCGW explores the phenomenon of “fake news” during WW1. We often forget the extent to which news media was manipulated by governments during the war.
- The ROM posted a picture of a beautiful pair of leggings made by the Kainai Nation/Blood Tribe, in Alberta, around 1885.
- Joanne Hammond has written another great and beautiful Twitter essay about why museum curators (and the public) should treat objects as personal and sacred objects. Who else thinks we need to make a Joanne Hammond tribute blog, where we post all of her Twitter essays?
- Whistorical explains the meanings behind the names of their mountain bike trails. Some of them are hilarious.
- The St. Catharines Museum has also posted their latest episode of Museum Chat Live! The subject of this latest podcast is Victoria Day.
- The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has a new blog post about how the Japanese-Canadian community struggled for redress after internment, focusing on the work of Lena Hayawaka in particular.
- UVic’s Anth 367: Heritage and Historical Archaeology Field Course has an official blog that I’ve just found out about! In their latest blog post, by Morgan King, they talk about the work they are doing to record the headstones in Victoria’s Jewish Cemetery.
- Eve Lazarus remembers an epic belly flop competition held by Tom Butler in 1979. And of course, the “divers” jumped from a hot air balloon. This sounds like a recipe for a lawsuit, but hey, it was the 70s… Also, those things hurt!
- The latest blog post from the Champlain Society is here! This one, by Roberta Lexier, takes a look at the NDP’s Waffle Manifesto.
- Dennis Molinaro, whom you will remember from his great guide to ATI requests, has put together a petition, which is being sponsored by Murray Rankin, calling for reform of the ATI and LAC Act in order to ensure that historical documents are properly preserved and made available to the public within a reasonable time frame. Go sign it!
- Just this week, the first public history kiosk, created by Carleton Public History graduate students, was unveiled! This first kiosk, on a 1891 lacrosse game, will be followed by several more. Each one comes equipped with a QR code, allowing members of the public to learn more. Omg, I’m totally nerding out right now! This is so amazing!
- Canadian History in the News
- CBC has a special video interview with archivist Ry Moran about his work preserving the story of residential school survivors and ensuring that Canadians never forget what happened.
- There has also been a lot of media coverage of Montreal 375.
- Radio-Canada looked back at Montreal’s sport history.
- They also have a neat feature where you can look at how Montreal’s built environment has changed over time, since the advent of photography.
- Andy Riga explores the early history of the island now known as Montreal, arguing that Montreal’s history did not begin only 375 years ago.
- This article, from Le Devoir, explores the history of Hochelaga, the Iroquoian settlement that existed on the island now known as Montreal prior to the establishment of the first (French) settlement at Ville Marie.
- CBC has a neat interactive map showing you how old some of Montreal’s buildings are. They even have my parent’s house there, which was built in 1955! No, I’m not telling you the address. 😛
- There is a brand new historical walking tour app out in Edmonton!
- Ryan McMahon has another must-read article this week about why Canadians need to recognize the truth about Indigenous history in this country, and just how terrible it was.
- Check out these amazing images of Vancouver from the 1970s, before it was completely transformed for Expo. The difference is quite startling.
- The Fashion History Museum in Cambridge has a new exhibit on Canadian fashion since 1867. And it’s pretty much about what you expect.
- Find out how the class makeup of Toronto has shifted from the 1950s to today.
- This week CBC had a great live roundtable dealing with the subject of Black history in Canada, featuring Nikki Clarke, Afua Cooper, Andrea Davis, and Karen Flynn. I’m not sure how they fit so much awesome on one panel.
- And don’t miss this list of suggested books to learn more!
- Quebec’s museums are entering into the digital age! Find out about some of the new projects going on around the province using the latest technological innovations, like virtual reality.
- If you’re a bit of a true crime or mystery lover like me, don’t miss this behind-the-scenes look at Vancouver’s Police Museum, though I should warn you, some of the language is problematic. I so need to visit.
- CBC explores the history of “eh.” Take it for what it’s worth.
- Justin Trudeau will formally apologize for discrimination against LGTBQ+ public servants, RCMP officers, and military members, particularly for the Cold War-era government purge that was believed to be justified over “national security” concerns. Apparently pardons are also forthcoming for those who were unjustly charged with associated criminal offenses. This is fantastic, even if it took far too long.
- A new plaque has been placed at the gave of Nicholas Flood Davin, the author of the “Davin Report,” which advocated for the use of residential schools as tools for assimilation. The language on the plaque, however, is quite problematic, as Cindy Blackstock points out, particularly because it’s described as one of the “Great Canadian Profiles.”
- A crowd-funding effort to reprint the 1974 CBC Graphic Standards Manual has been fully funded! Omg, it’s so trippy.
- There have been new archaeological findings at the Point Edward’s Waterfront Park in Ontario, a known gathering place of Indigenous peoples in the past.
- See one of the “colonist cars,” the trains that transported settlers to the Prairies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, being restored by Calgary’s Heritage Park.
- The Falcon Lake UFO incident is back in the news this week, with the son of one of the men involved planning to write a book about it.
- The latest column for the Dig It series in Kamloops This Week has been posted, and it looks at the impact of flooding on archaeological sites.
- CBC is adapting Alias Grace in the form of a 6-hour miniseries. I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch it, given all the crap going on with canlit right now.
- In the latest episode of Unreserved, Rosanna Deerchild discuses the effort that has gone into honouring Henry Norwest, an Indigenous solider who served at Vimy Ridge and was decorated, but was only included on the cenotaph in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta in 2008.
- The winning design for the memorial for the victims of communism has been unveiled.
- Find out about some of the archaeological finds being made at the excavation of Queen’s Marque, in Halifax.
- The latest Canada Post stamps to be issued honour Montreal’s Formula One history. Also known as “that time of the year where no sane Montrealer goes downtown because it’s swarmed by F1 fans.”
- Canadian Geographic sat down to talk with Tom Hawthorn about his new book on the Centennial.
- Justin Trudeau is also planning to ask the Pope to issue a formal apology for the involvement of the Catholic Church in the residential schools system.
- A really neat map of the area that we now call Kitsilano (in Vancouver) went up for auction on Saturday. The map is an illustrated land claim for the area that became Kits Beach, back when it was still forest. There is quite the scandal attached to this particular map!
- There are two articles out this week about doggie history!
- This one, from the CBC, looks at Leading Aircraftman Butch, rescue dog and mascot of Edmonton’s Royal Canadian Air Force 418 Squadron in WW2. I’m pretty sure my husband just melted into a pile of goo. He may or may not regularly send me videos of puppies on Instagram.
- And this one, from The Columbia, looks at the history of dogs in Fort Vancouver’s history.
- Efforts by members of the Montreal Irish community to build a memorial to famine victims may be overturned by a land sale.
- Shawn Micallef has written a new article for The Star explaining how the history of Pride has always been political.
- This week is also the 78th anniversary of the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the parents of Queen Elizabeth II, to Montreal.
- The Montreal Gazette republished a neat little article about the role that Canadian artwork played.
- As well as another article about the local reaction to the visit.
- Global remembers the close relationship between Canada and the Netherlands.
- It’s not quite swimming weather yet, though Vancouver’s outdoor pools have just opened for the season. The CBC takes a look back at the history of these pools and some of their unexpected visitors.
- The Historicist is back this week with a blog post about go-go dancing sensation Dora Drummond (aka Mama Chikie). Drummond became famous for dancing on Yonge Street in 1969, despite being a 63-year-old woman. You need to see these pictures! You do you, girl!
- The Globe and Mail has a fascinating article out this week about the life of Jackie Shane, a noted R&B singer who was also a trans woman, that spent much of her career in Toronto. A collection of her performances will be released in October, and Shane herself was involved in the project, despite having retired from public life.
- Better Late than Never
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- A new plaque was unveiled last week to honour the important history of Vancouver’s Chinatown.
- Ok, this is kinda funny: find out about the major problem of bison knocking down telegraph poles because they were itchy. Tee hee hee. I guess when you got an itch, you gotta scratch!
- Afua Cooper was interviewed for a fantastic piece for The Monitor earlier in the month about the importance of making Black history in Canada into Canadian history, and the new minor in Black and African Studies at Dalhousie University.
- Calls for Papers
- The American Society for Environmental History as just released their CFP for their 2018 conference! Next year’s theme will be “Environment, Power, and Justice.” Proposals are due on July 14th.
- The International Federation for Research in Women’s History conference for 2018 has been moved to Vancouver, and they have announced a second round of paper submissions! These proposals are due July 1st.
- Are you a graduate student who does environmental history? Then NiCHE and Edge Effects wants to hear form you! They are currently inviting blog post proposals for their second year of collaboration! The deadline to submit is June 1st. This is a great way to get experience!
That’s it for this week! Do you have any exciting plans for this weekend? I’m mostly going to be relaxing, because the next two weeks will be quite busy. Why, do you ask? Well, first of all, the CHA is coming up! So I will be in Toronto from May 27th to June 1st. Second, we have a super exciting plan for the coming week on Unwritten Histories. I will be more details for you on Tuesday, but there will be three extra blog posts this week, all leading up to the CHA! There will also be some schedule changes:
Saturday May 27th: Roundup a day early
Sunday May 28th: My Top Picks for the CHA 2017
Monday May 29th to Friday June 2nd: no blog posts, but I will be live-tweeting the CHA.
While I will definitely be archiving all of the CHA tweets, just like I did last year, I have not yet decided if I will be doing this during the conference, or afterwards. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?
The roundup will come out on either Sunday June 4th or on Monday June 5th, mostly depending on how tired I will be. I will definitely let you know when closer to the actual date. And finally, our regular schedule will resume on Tuesday June 6th.
Whew. Did everyone get that? 😉 See you on Tuesday!
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