Steamship Empress of Asia – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week, I’m joined by Dan Black, author of Oceans of Fate: Peace and Peril Aboard the Steamship Empress of Asia. We talk about the ship’s earliest voyage following its 1913 commissioning, its service during the First World War and the Chinese Labour Corps, and its refitting after the war. We also talk about its interwar service, its sinking during the Second World War, and how the ship’s history is best told through the story of those who were on-board.

Historical Headline of the Week

John Mackie, “Historic Chinese, Canadian Pacific Railway and Klondike Collections Unite in new UBC Museum,” Vancouver Sun, April 26, 2024.

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Queering Atlantic Canada: Stories, Histories, Archives

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by Jess Wilton

Cradled by the Atlantic Ocean, the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island (PEI), and Newfoundland and Labrador occupy a unique place in queer and Canadian history. “Queering Atlantic Canada: Stories, Histories, and Archives of Atlantic Canada” is an ActiveHistory.ca series guest edited by Jess Wilton. Over the next year, this series will offer an introduction to the work of activists, archivists, historians, community members, and artists in the region as we come together to share our stories and preserve our histories. This first post offers a brief foundation to the history of Atlantic Canada and its queer pasts. 

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Understanding the Tools We Have and Rethinking the Tools We Need in Ontario’s Heritage Industry

Sara Nixon

This essay is part two of a series. Read the first installment here.

Three men standing in front of a large, brown stone historic home. They are standing around a sign that says "The Brown Homestead 1317 Pelham Road."
MPP Sam Oosterhoff, The Brown Homestead Executive Director Andrew Humeniuk and Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism Michael Ford in front of The John Brown House. December 2023.

In Fall 2022, the Ontario government passed Bill 23, which aims to facilitate housing development in the province. As a result, on January 1, 2027, approximately 36,000 properties listed on Municipal Heritage Registers but not designated under the Ontario Heritage Act will lose their municipal protections, their already-tenuous classification facing even more risk.

As heritage professionals and volunteers scramble to secure provincial heritage designations for properties of historical significance in their communities, it’s imperative we consider the bigger picture; Bill 23 is a symptom of widespread misunderstanding of heritage in Ontario. Even if heritage properties gain provincial designation in time, as long as the government and the public view heritage and development as mutually exclusive, the heritage industry will remain insecure. Conversely, by educating the public about heritage designation, incorporating heritage into urban planning, and connecting with our wider communities, we can cultivate a brighter future for Ontario’s heritage industry.

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Indigenous Art & Reconciliation – What’s Old is News

By Sean Graham

This week I’m joined by Eugenia Kisin, author of Aesthetics of Repair: Indigenous Art and the Form of Reconciliation. We discuss what qualifies as ‘art’, how the intent shapes understanding of cultural materials, and how works are commoditized. We also chat about artistic agency, the impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the value of having time to reflect on research before writing.

Historical Headline of the Week

Ben Fenlon, “B.C. Indigenous coffee company brews truth, reconciliation, one cup at a time,” The Williams Lake Tribune, December 27, 2024.

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Confessions of a Textbook Author

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Alan MacEachern

Last year, an email informed me of a death. Two, actually. Top Hat would no longer publish Origins: Canadian History to Confederation or Destinies: Canadian History since Confederation as either print or e-books. These twin textbooks, once as much staples of Canadian history survey courses as, well, the staples thesis, were being discontinued due to low demand. Origins had met its destiny.

Origins and Destinies first appeared in 1988, co-written by three fortysomething white male professors: R.D. Francis (University of Calgary), Richard Jones (Université Laval), and Donald B. Smith (University of Calgary). Over the next three decades, the books bounced from Holt, Rinehart, and Winston to Harcourt to Nelson and finally to Top Hat, each publisher finding sufficient promise of new Canadian history students to justify new printings and new editions. My colleague Robert Wardhaugh – a fortysomething white male professor – signed up to revise the seventh editions singlehandedly in 2012. I joined him for the eighth in 2016, in the interests of diversity: I was fifty.[1]

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Ontario’s Bill 23 and Upheaval in the Heritage Industry

Sara Nixon

Perhaps you read Nathan Ince’s 2024 Active History article about John Norton. You may be interested to know that his cabin is preserved at The Brown Homestead in Niagara, alongside the family home of John Brown. The Brown Homestead stands on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, land later granted to Brown for serving with the Butler’s Rangers, on the side of the British, during the American Revolution and operating as a waystation for thirsty travellers during the era of the War of 1812. Now, a charitable foundation manages the site and its buildings to preserve this enduring remnant of rural Niagara history and to reimagine it as a vibrant community gathering place that nurtures a growing passion for connection, learning, and innovative thinking. As a public historian and the Community Engagement Manager at The Brown Homestead, I have built a career working to engage the public with why heritage matters. Local history, and the built heritage that helps define the character of a community – like The Brown Homestead – matters. Heritage gives texture to our shared sense of place, belonging, and local identity.

However, Ontario’s heritage industry faces a challenge. On January 1, 2027, the Province of Ontario will remove some 36,000 heritage properties listed on Municipal Heritage Registers in communities across the province if they have not been formally designated under the Ontario Heritage Act. It’s a startling move buried amongst sweeping changes first implemented by Ontario’s Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, the omnibus housing legislation passed in the Fall of 2022. Taking a “Designate or Lose It” approach, the amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act introduced a two-year time limit for properties on the Municipal Heritage Register, wherein if they were not designated by the deadline they were to be removed from the registry altogether. Furthermore, they can not be re-added to the registry for a period of five years following their removal. Though proclaiming that these changes were to prevent non-designated properties from languishing indefinitely on heritage registers, the Province’s decision only exacerbated the issues facing Ontario’s heritage sector.

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Exeter Book Riddles – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week I’m joined by Jennifer Neville, author of Truth is Trickiest: The Case for Ambiguity in the Exeter Book Riddles. We discuss the background of the riddles, who may have transcribed them and why, as well as the challenge of deciphering their meaning. We also talk about the literary tradition behind the riddles, the various interpretations and arguments surrounding potential answers, and what they can tell us about the nature of literature both 1,000 years ago and today.

Historical Headline of the Week

Jo Livingstone, “What do our oldest books say about us?The New Republic, November 7, 2018.

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“Encouraging the Behaviour We Want to Encourage”: Faded Promises of Security in Toronto Public Housing

David M. K. Sheinin

Colour photo of a city street corner with a police car marked "Metro Police" in the midground. Labeled "City of Toronto Archives, Series 1465, File 169, Item 144."
Looking north on Armadale from Bloor [with Metro Toronto Police vehicle]. [between 1980 and 1998].

This is the fifth in a series of articles on Toronto public housing in the late 1980s. All entries in the series will be collected here.

In May 1988, the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA) launched a new initiative to improve tenant security across public housing in Toronto. It began with a letter soliciting residents for their views. “You are well aware,” the letter started, “that a serious problem exists in your building with drug dealing, prostitution, purse snatchings, assaults, and related criminal activity.”  It went on to note that tenants sometimes became involved with drugs or sex work “and cannot get free from the persons who control these activities.” MTHA promised the deployment of more police officers in surveillance and investigation operations that would include stepped up raids on peoples’ homes. Advice from MTHA was jarring. Don’t carry a purse “if you really don’t have to.” Don’t carry cash “you don’t need to have with you.” Don’t thread a purse strap around an arm. You could be badly injured in a robbery. Apartment doors were to be kept always locked. “Sometimes, transients knock on tenant doors asking for a drink of water or to use the bathroom or to stay overnight. These are tricks that are used to rob unsuspecting tenants.” The letter was signed simply, “Management.” MTHA took as a given that violent crime was a dominant feature of life in public housing that sucked in vast numbers of residents. Despite that grim outlook, MTHA had no notion of how to improve resident life in the face of sometimes violent criminality. In what seemed to some MTHA workers a bizarre self-fulfilling prophecy of failure on the matter, MTHA also took it upon itself to modify the behaviour of all residents. Toward that end, it hired the criminologist and security “expert” Clifford D. Shearing to write a pilot study on how to solve MTHA security problems. What, Shearing asked in an Orwellian line at the outset of his work, “should we do to encourage the behaviour we want to encourage?”

Shearing formed three teams of MTHA employees to build strategy. However, by the mid-point in his work, he found that Community Relations Workers (CRWs) on the teams remained doubtful about his process. He admitted that team members were under considerable stress as a result. The primary focus of the project was a vague combination of what he repeatedly called “caring” (without defining the term) and maintenance of MTHA properties. The latter was identified by the project as a “source of symbolic echoes and resonances that, in addition to portraying a message of caring, can be used to establish an ambiance of symbolic restraint… that will promote safety.” This sort of ambiguous language in project reports featured prominently in Shearing’s approach and may well have generated the doubts he reported among MTHA employees working alongside him for security improvements. Meanwhile, as the project unfolded CRWs and other MTHA employees who worked directly with residents noted problems in Shearing’s plan that the project had no way of addressing. As always, an inadequate budget limited the parameters of the possible, from fixing elevators to making certain building doors locked on closure. Moreover, CRWs recognized that when ideas about maintenance and security were communicated to maintenance staff, that was done in haphazard form.

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Non-Professional Theatre – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week I’m joined by Robin C. Whittaker, author of Alumnae Theatre Company: Nonprofessionalizing Theatre in Canada. We discuss the establishment of the Alumnae Theatre Company and its place as Canada’s longest-running women-led theatre group, how the group survived its early years, and the place of non-professional theatre in 20th century Canada. We also chat about the economics of amateur theatre, the challenges of writing original productions, and the legacy of Canada’s non-professional theatres.

Historical Headline of the Week

Joshua Chong, “A glimpse inside Canada’s independent theatre sector, the forgotten lifeblood of the arts,” Toronto Star, November 25, 2024.

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Mass Confinement – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week I talk with Aidan Forth, author of Camps: A Global History of Mass Confinement. We talk about the definition of camps, the commonalties among camps, and the ubiquity of mass confinement. We also talk about studying these sites across cultures, how echoes of past camps inform modern confinement, and the continuing legacy of camps.

Historical Headline of the Week

Nurith Aizenman, “What World War II taught us about how to help starving people today,” NPR, April 19, 2024.

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