Unwritten Histories

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Tag: identity

Why on this night, only matzah? Matzohgate 1996

April 16, 2019 / / 2 Comments
Close up shot of matzah.

 “Descent into Matzah Canyon,” by Avital Pinnick. via flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard me say that I’m Jewish girl from Montreal a time or two. Well, it just so happens that this Friday is the first night of Passover. For those who might not be familiar with this holiday, think the movie The Ten Commandments, but for real. It’s an annual holiday where Jews gather to remember the liberation of the Jewish peoples from enslavement in Ancient Egypt.* The celebrations take place over seven days and seven nights. On the first two nights, family members will gather to have special meals called seders, where the story is recounted. The holiday is intended to be one of remembrance and celebration. At least, that was the case in Montreal until April 1996. So join me today as we travel back in time to see what happened when the Jewish community of Montreal went head to head with the Quebec government in an event that has come to be called “Matzohgate.”

(Do you know where the quote from the titles comes from? Read to the end of the blog post to find out!)

 

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Guest Post: “The Sourdough’s Favorite Beverage”: Place, Identity, and the Klondike Brewery, 1904-1919

June 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Neon sign that says: "Craft Beer for the People."

 

Note from Andrea: I’m just finishing up my marking for my condensed summer course, so we have another special guest post for you today! When I found out that Heather Green was researching beer in the Klondike, I just knew I had to talk her into a blog post. Enjoy!

 

Image of Heather Green.Heather Green recently received her PhD from the University of Alberta studying environmental and indigenous histories of gold mining in the Klondike region of the Yukon from 1890 to 1940. She is an incoming Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University where she will research trophy hunting tourism in the southern Yukon from 1920 to 1950.

 

This blog is the early research for a larger collaborative project with Matt Papai (University of Alberta) on the connections between local identity, environment, and beer production in the Yukon. Both collaborators are craft beer enthusiasts, and the idea for this project arose in 2015 from discussions about the environmental impacts of Northern beer production while researching in the Yukon and Alaska. Our next steps include examining liquor laws, temperance, and prohibition movements in the Yukon, as well as tracing commodity chains of brewing ingredients into the North. We also hope to investigate how successful O’Brien’s ad campaign was in reaching the public.

The craft beer movement has gained momentum over the past few decades with new microbreweries popping up each year all over North America and around the globe. In Canada, the microbrewery movement began in the 1980s, primarily in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Vancouver, British Columbia. Today, you are guaranteed to find at least one craft brewery in most towns and cities in Canada. Around the world one thing seems to ring true no matter where you go – breweries, and the beer they produce, hold a connection with place and local identity.

 

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Unpacking DNA Ancestry Tests

February 6, 2018 / / 6 Comments

This photograph was taken from the perspective of someone standing on the ground, looking up in the the canopy of a forest. Tall tree trunks climb high in the sky, converging at one point in the centre of the image. You can see some blue sky between the leaves of the tree canopy.

Special thanks to Shannon Stettner for her help with this piece.

If you’ve spent any time either watching television or on social media in the past few months, there is a high likelihood that you’ve run into a commercial, blog post, or Youtube video featuring DNA ancestry tests. Companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe have been pushing these tests as important ways to find out about your family history. Which sounds pretty cool. However, much like Canada150, many historians find themselves incredibly frustrated by the increasing popularity of these tests. I can neither confirm nor deny that some yell incomprehensibly at the television screen whenever one of the Ancestry.com commercials comes on. Now, there are numerous articles out there explaining the scientific limitations of these tests. For instance, this recent piece on Gizmondo talks about how the results of these tests aren’t always reliable, due to the limited availability of comparative data, which alleles are being used to access ancestry, and just plain error. However, there haven’t really been any detailed discussions about the limitations of these tests from a historical perspective. So, in today’s blog post, I’m going to talk about exactly that, with a particular focus on the complicated nature of historical populations, the “science” of race, the role of white privilege, and notions of belonging and community.

 

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A Jewish History of Christmas

December 5, 2017 / / 2 Comments
This Christmas card shows a father and son from the 1870s, standing outside on a snowy hill. They are wearing wool coats in cream with red accent stripes, and tuques. The son is wearing snow shoes and is standing to the left. Next is his father, carrying the snow shoes. They are followed by a brown dog. In the background, two boys are going downhill on a toboggan. And further in the background there are pine trees topped with snow, and a log cabin with snow on the roof. The card’s sentiment is: “Compliments of the Season,” and in smaller lettering at the bottom, it says “Young Canada on snow shoes.”

Compliments of the Season, Young Canada on Snow Shoes. 1873-1878. Christmas card that was part of G. & W. Clarke’s first Scenic Series. Card has a scene of father and son snowshoeing. Child is a popular image used widely in Canadian imagery, known as “Young Canada”. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Arch. Ref. No. R11648, album 9, item 12 ; Copyright: Expired.

It’s always a little strange being Jewish around Christmas. When I was growing up, Chanukah wasn’t really a big deal. My sister and I would each get a gift (just one, not eight), some chocolate money, and we would light the menorah. My mother would make latkes, but I never really liked them (turns out the problem was her recipe, not latkes in general). Christmas wasn’t really a big deal. We did put out milk and cookies, though in hindsight, this was mostly for my dad. I do remember being convinced by my dad that Santa had to be real, since CTV News was tracking him via radar. But this was pretty much the extent of it. Because Santa didn’t give presents to Jewish girls.

But one year the impossible happened: Santa came! My mother, for reasons that I still don’t know, put out presents on the two living room chairs. One chair was for me, and the other was for my sister. They contained a board game, some other little things, and a chocolate advent calendar. It was magical. I was so excited. Santa didn’t forget me! And while from that point on my mother would always give my sister and I chocolate advent calendars on Christmas, our Christmas chairs remained empty. And yes, my mother is very well aware of how advent calendars work. She’s just repurposed them for our family tradition.

These days, in shopping centres, online stores, and social media, you’ll find a wide array of gifts and decorations specifically for Chanukah. From strings of lights with Stars of David and menorahs, to the hilarious Mensch on the Bench, the options are really quite endless. But this is a very recent phenomenon, as I mentioned last week. I just couldn’t keep  you guys hanging like that! So in today’s blog post, we’re going to take a look at the emergence of Chanukah as an important holiday celebration in North America, its relationship to Christmas, and the religious aspects of Canadian identity.

 

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