The Unwritten Rules of History
“Betty Chan, a Chinese Canadian, admiring Pipe Major Bill MacLeod’s tie, made from the MacLeod tartan at the festival in Winnipeg’s Kildonan Park. Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Photo by Chris Lund and Gar Lunney. 1960. Office national du film du Canada. Service de la photographie. R1196-14-7-F. Library and Archives Canada. Copyright expired.
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Surprise! So this is something that Krista McCracken (of Active History) and I have been working on for the past few months now, and we’ve both really excited to see it launch! So what is Beyond 150: Telling Our Stories? Here’s a snippet from the Active History post:
The Active History editorial team is excited to announce that in collaboration with Unwritten Histories, Canada’s History Society, and the Wilson Institute we’re organizing the first-ever Canadian History Twitter Conference. Beyond 150: Telling Our Stories will take place on Twitter August 24-25, 2017.
With this conference we hope to diversify the historical narrative and uplift marginalized historical perspectives. This event is designed to encourage collaboration, public engagement, and spark discussion about Canada’s history in a way that is accessible to everyone.
The format of the conference is modeled after the Public Archaeology Twitter Conference. Designed with no conference fees and no travel costs the online platform of Beyond 150 aims to breakdown barriers and stimulate discussion across the country and across multiple disciplines.
Would you like to learn more? Go here to read the rest of the Active History post and here to check out the official website! And don’t forget to follow our official account on Twitter (@Beyond150CA) and the conference hashtag, #beyond150ca. So be sure to spread the word and submit your own paper!
Because, let’s face it – who has time to catch up on all the journal articles published in Canadian history?
Welcome back to the Best New Articles series, where each month, I post a list of my favourite new articles! Don’t forget to also check out my favourites from previous months, which you can access by clicking here.
This month I read articles from:
* The articles were published in their “latest articles” section, which contains articles that will appear in the next issue.
Here are my favourites:
Massif de fleurs, virevent géants et le Paratrooper, at La Ronde Amusement Park. 1970. Archives de la Ville de Montreal. VM94-EX276-1182 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian ststory.
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I was recently talking about the Louis Riel podcast episode from Stuff You Missed in History. This blog post is based off of that original Twitter essay.
Special thanks to Krystl Raven, Catherine Ulmer, and Melissa Shaw for their help reviewing this blog post, and also to Krystl Raven and Adam Gaudry for reading recommendations on this subject! Finally, a big thank you to my friends on Facebook, who insisted that I needed to write this post.
As I was getting ready for bed the other night, I received a notification that a podcast that I occasionally listen to, Stuff You Missed in History Class, had a new episode. I clicked over to see what it was, and immediately felt uneasy. The subject was Louis Riel. Not that there is a problem with the subject, but in most cases, the history of Louis Riel is handled poorly.
I do want to make it clear here that I’m not trying to pick on Stuff You Missed in History Class. To be fair, the hosts of the show do not claim to be historians. And the show is not intended to be academically rigorous. It is for entertainment value, though the hosts do try their best to be accurate and provide a list of their sources.
However — and it is a big however — I believe that they failed in their due diligence to ensure that they accurately and fairly represented this particular subject, especially given the sensitive and political nature of it. And I know they can do better; I’ve listened to some great and well-sourced podcast episodes from this show (like their series on Redlining or their “Unearthed” episodes!) But, if you’re using a public platform to explain and disseminate information about history, the onus is on you to present your information accurately and fairly.
This blog post is not a re-telling of the history of Louis Riel. Rather, I focus on some of the major errors in the podcast episode and the ramifications of these mistakes. You may think that this is just another historian griping about some non-historians being inaccurate about random obscure facts that no one else cares about, but perpetuating certain dominant historical narrative can do great harm.
I’m back! Did you miss me? For those who missed last week’s programming notice, the blog and my Twitter feed have been a little quiet as of late because I was off attending this year’s Canadian Historical Association’s Annual Meeting. As with most conferences, this year’s CHA was a blast, and totally exhausting. Before we let this year’s CHA fade gently into the night, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on my experiences, what I learned, and what we and I can take forward for CHA 2018. Enjoy!
The CHA 2017 Annual Meeting might be over, but that doesn’t mean it should be forgotten!
This year’s CHA was, as always, absolutely incredible. I saw some absolutely fantastic panels, and did my best to live-tweet as many as possible! In between, I did all of the things, went all of the places, and met all of the people. My poor little hermit brain feels like it is about to explode! But before it does, I wanted to put together our annual Storify archive of tweets from the conference.
Who’s excited for the CHA? I know I am! If you remember last year, back when Unwritten Histories was still a tiny little baby blog, I wrote a Beginner’s Guide to the CHA, including my top picks for the conference. Just because I love you guys, I have rewritten and updated the guide for this year’s CHA! However, this year, my guide is being hosted over at the CHA’s website! Go check it out!
But what about my top picks? You guys seem to think my opinion is important, so of course I am not going to leave you hanging. In this post, I’ll go over the panels that I think will be the most popular as well as the ones that I am planning to attend! Think of it as a history version of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,” only it’s just me, not some super exciting spy. Just remember that these are just my recommendations, and I wish there was a way to attend multiple panels at once. 🙁
One final note before I get down to business: if you happen to spot me running around at some point, please say hi! I promise, I don’t bite! 😉 I would tell you to look for the short, quiet girl with brown hair and glasses, but since that describes at least half of the female CHA attendees, I’m not sure that it’s so helpful…
Fort de l’île Sainte-Hélène, Juin 1966, Archives de la ville de Montreal VM94-AD35-003. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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What is CHA Reads? Find out here!
UPDATE: Now includes the conversation that happened on Twitter! Scroll to the end to see.
Welcome to the seventh and final post in CHA Reads 2017! This post features the discussion that took place all week long between the other scholars and myself. In order to make the discussion easier to follow, questions are in green and names are in bold.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as we have! We will definitely be doing this again next year. Don’t forget to check us out all day on Twitter, where we will be continuing this discussion using the hashtag #chareads2017. And I’ll see you back here tomorrow for an early roundup!
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