Man and woman selling apples in baskets, Quebec. (1955-1963]. Credit: Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada.
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: “Horses,” “Horse,” and “Cavalry.”
- Some of the language in this article is problematic, but it is a really neat history of the pawpaw.
- Check out the latest then-and-now photos from the Mountain Legacy Project.
- Researchers at the University of Waterloo are looking for samples of a corduroy road that was unearthed in 2016. The road was originally built by local Mennonites between 1790 and 1816, and buried around 1840.
- Over on NiCHE this week, Blake Butler explored the history of seal and sea lion culls and orca killing in BC, and how attitudes have shifted with respect to these species over the twentieth century. Warning: images of dead seals.
Military History
- The latest entries in LAC’s series on Victoria Cross recipients from WW1 were for:
- The Canadian Centre for the Great War took on the subject of the Fall of Cambrai this week.
- As part of their ongoing Premiere series, LAC also profiled the aeronautical engineers at A.V. Roe Ltd, who developed air craft for both military and civilian purposes.
- There is a new exhibit on at the Canadian Science and Technology Museum on cryptology. The CBC article on the exhibit showcased some of the artifacts in the exhibit and discussed the history of cryptology in Canada.
- The Graphic History Collective has published a brand new poster in the Remember/Resist/Redraw project! Illustrated by Orion Keresztesi with accompanying essay by Kassandra Luciuk, it deals with the internment of Ukrainian-Canadians during WW1.
Archaeology
- There is a new theory on the origins of the Bayers Lake mystery walls. Johnathan Fowler’s work on the site suggests it was an animal enclosure from the 18th century. Imagine what people in the future will make of our smartphones…
- Hakai Magazine created a short video showing archaeologists working in the Discovery Islands on Ice Age settlements in coastal BC.
- If you don’t want to watch the video, you can read a summary here.
- Joanne Hammond showed how the wildfires in BC can help us better understand the Indigenous history of the area, particularly with respect to finding stone tools.
History Education
- Check out this neat piece on how Tom Peace used Wikipedia in his recent Crisis and Confederation course.
Transnational History
- CIH has released another digital briefing book and accompanying blog post, by Daria Mancino, on Canada’s involvement with NATO and the British government’s “Global Strategy” from 1952-1953.
- Sandrine Murray has written a new blog post for the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History on Jill Campbell-Miller’s recent talk on the Colombo Plan Fellowships, which brought international students from South and Southeast Asia to Canada between 1950 and 1968. And clips from the talk are included!
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History
- Bashir Mohamed had several Twitter essays this week:
- First he discussed some of the many civil rights cases that were brought forth in Alberta.
- He also discussed the Black soldiers who were involved in building the Alaskan Highway in 1942.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia published a new article on Chinese-Canadian restauranteur and human rights’ activists, Jean Lumb.
- They also had a new entry for the Black Cross Nurses, auxiliary members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
- This is only tangentially Canadian, but definitely check out Karen Paul’s piece for CBC on the Great Purge, the mass arrest of 9,000 German Mennonites in Ukraine in 1936-38 that prompted many of their families to immigrate to Canada and elsewhere. The Ukrainian government has recently opened the KGB archive, allowing descendants and family members to finally learn what happened to the individuals who were arrested.
- The Acadiensis blog published part two of Chantal Richard’s look at Acadian language and politics in English-language newspapers in New Brunswick in the 1880s and 1890s regarding Le Grand Dérangement.
- Do you know about the British home children of PEI?
- Find out about African Nova Scotian culinary history, and how it has helped to preserve African Nova Scotian tradition, in this new piece by Chantal Martineau.
- Find out about the long history of Muslims in Canada!
Indigenous History
- This week the UofA Faculty of Law blog covered the history of important Aboriginal law cases, including:
- Molly Swain (otipêmsiw-iskwêw (Métis woman) from otôskwahnik, Treaty 7 territory) has written a new post for Active History on Jim Brady, a Métis communist community organizer, focusing on his work with resource cooperatives in the Métis Settlements in 1938 and his involvement with the CCF.
- Also on Active History was part three of Stephanie Danyluk and Katya MacDonald’s series on the Our Stolen Children Camp in Regina. This post focused on the legacy of white hegemony and what reconciliation requires.
- There is a cool new project in progress at the waterfront at Maplewood Flats which seeks to restore the mudflats at this location where the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation used to harvest seafood. This project is something that the Tsleil-Waututh are interested in, and they hope to be able to harvest seafood in this location one day.
- Jordan Mae Cook wrote a really fantastic review of the new exhibit at the Royal Alberta Museum on the history of residential schools.
- While the asinine Supreme Court ruling this week is not historical, it will have long-term historical implications. Also, reconciliation my aunt fanny (insert stronger language here).
- Jennifer Adese (otipêmsiw/Métis) posted images of some amazing historical documents that suggest that Indian agents were communicating to the North-West Mounted Police Comptroller in code in the wake of 1885.
- Audrey Monette-Deschênes, an Indigenous student at Laurentian University, wrote this fantastic letter to Radio-Canada after she visited an archaeological museum in the Côte-Nord, on museums as colonial tools.
New France/British North America
- Benoît Grenier and Alain Laberge wrote a hell of a response on Borealia and Histoire Engagée to Allan Greer’s blog post on the myth of the seigneurial system. I think my monitor is on fire…
- Christine Lovelace wrote a continuation to last week’s blog post on the Atlantic Loyalist Connection blog on Nehemiah Beckwith. This blog post focuses on two women in the Beckwith family: Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart and Elizabeth Beckwith Hazen.
- Also on Borealia this week, Lauren Beck wrote the third post in their Cartography and Empire series. Beck’s post focused on the early-modern settler place names that survive to this day.
- Bashir Mohamed also examined the problematic history of Martin Frobisher.While I totally agree with everything he wrote, his linking of Martin Frobisher to Thanksgiving in Canada was, to my mind, problematic, since that is part of the settler mythmaking of the holiday (more on this here in my blog post on the holiday). He’s not wrong about Thanksgivng being a problematic holiday, but the problem isn’t that it celebrates Martin Frobisher, but that people think it celebrates Martin Frobisher. This is a subtle, but important difference. But this doesn’t diminish Mohamed’s point about Frobisher being a horrible person to celebrate.
Political History
- Check out Christo Aivalis’ latest piece for Canadian Dimension, on the Canadian left and the popular 1970s cartoon, Mouseland.
Social History
- The latest biography from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for Toronto public health pioneer, Charles Hastings.
- Find out about the history of polio in Winnipeg between 1928 and 1953 in this post by Leah Z. Morton.
The History of Gender and Sexuality
- The Nova Scotia Archives put together a fabulous Twitter thread on midwifery and midwives in Nova Scotia History.
- Kate Carmack, a Tagish First Nation woman who played a major role during the Gold Rush, was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame this week.
- I love this hooked rug by Flora Higgins, made to celebrate International Women’s Year in 1975!
- This week on Unwritten Histories, I shared my experiences at the recent International Federation for Research in Women’s History conference!
Local History
- Do you have a profound love of McIntosh apples and a need for an old farmhouse? Then you’re in luck: the birthplace of McIntosh apples is for sale!
- The Vancouver As It Was blog profiled turn-of-the-last-century musician, Horace W. Harper.
- Winnipeg Heritage looked back at the history of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Hall.
- The final stop of the Vancouver Skytrain Canada Line is Richmond-Brighouse. Find out where the name comes from in this blog post from the Richmond Archives. I mean, besides the Richmond part; that should be pretty obvious.
- Retroactive is celebrating Canadian Library Month this week by looking back at the history of early public libraries in Alberta.
- The City of Vancouver Archives has posted all of the photographs from the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay. Just writing that made me feel old.
- Eve Lazarus was back with part four of her look at the future North Shore’s Spirit Trail. This week, she looked at Mosquito Creek.
- Check out these archival photographs of Stanley Park from the last 130 years.
- And these archival photographs of sports at Concordia University.
- The Archival Moments blog took a look at a photograph album created by Martha H. Dickson (later Camera), specifically images of Harrington Harbour.
- For Women’s History Month, Whistorical celebrated some of the women who have contributed to Whistler’s community.
- Anyone up for a historical mystery in someone’s attic? No corpses are involved, alas.
- Find out how the buildings on Calgary’s 17th Avenue S.W. have changed over the past 100 years.
- Anyone who thinks that historical discrimination has no impact on the present should read this piece about homelessness in Vancouver.
- Do you remember how the West Edmonton Mall used to have a fake beach? This was news to me…
Digital and Public History
- Once again, Joanne Hammond kicked proverbial butt in this great response to a horrific article by a certain person (that I will neither name nor link to) on Indigenous alphabets.
- The UBC Digitizer’s blog has continued their series on web archiving this week, with a new post on a student’s experience of the process.
- Find out about the new Western Libraries Barnett Legacy Project, which is hoping to digitize some of Western University Library’s rare books.
- Memorial University’s Digital Archive Initiative has been restored!
- A pair of history enthusiasts are hoping to revive the old road from Louisbourg to Gabarus.
- Somebody’s stealing bronze plaques from Parks Canada again.
- I want to go on this tour of Halifax.
Doing History
- Join the Toronto Public Library on a treasure hunt of sorts for a forty-five-year-overdue library book.
- Alexandre Klein has written a new blog post for Histoire Engagée on the Langlois Collection at the Pavilion Albert-Prévos Library’s archive, and the extent to which historians are responsible for safeguarding historical documents.
- Go behind the scenes at the City of Saskatoon Archives.
Miscellaneous
- The first Halloween blog post of the year is from the University of Toronto Library, about an exhibit on supernatural creatures!
- HISTORICAL KITTENS! Ahem. Though as Maddie Knickerbocker noted on Twitter, points for mentioning archives as being about “settler culture,” but points off for the use of the term “crazy.”
- I have no idea how to characterize this. Just go read it.
Podcasts
- The latest episode of Juno Beach and Beyond was on General Harry Crerar’s Lieutenants, who had one of the most dangerous jobs in WW2.
- The latest episode of the History Chats podcast is a talk by Richard Harris on “The Making of Dufferin-St. Clair: 1900-1929.”
That’s all for this week! I’m feeling a strange urge to go apple picking this week, hence the photograph for this week’s roundup. 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 in on Tuesday for a brand new blog post! It will deal with something that was mentioned in the roundup. That’s all I’ll say for now. 😉
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