March 2010

Public Trust at Your Local Museum

March 31, 2010

The ethic guidelines established by the Canadian Museum Association (CMA) maintain that museums which operate in the public trust have two main responsibilities to the public: stewardship and public service.  Stewardship refers to the need for museums to acquire and preserve valuable heritage, as a means of protecting this heritage for the general public.  The [...]

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Book Review Section Launched

March 29, 2010

Our new book review section launches today with the publication of our first review. John Horn, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Gumboot, a community blog out of Vancouver, has reviewed Craig Heron’s Booze: A Distilled History. Please check out his fun review. Our book reviews will have community members and involved citizens reviewing academic works. We [...]

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A Century of Neglect: Epidemic Tuberculosis in Native Communities

March 24, 2010

by Jane Whalen The 2010 Quality of Life Index boasted that Canada’s “health care and living standards are among the highest in the world.”  Ask your average Canadian and they would probably agree.  Ask an Aboriginal person and you would be in for quite a shock. Third world conditions exist in Canada – what an [...]

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Space and Historical Imagery: Making History Accessible

March 22, 2010

This post quickly looks at some neat new internet-based websites that attempt to make historical imagery accessible to the general public.

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Walking Tours: Brooklyn and Beyond

March 17, 2010

By Teresa Iacobelli Relocating to a new city can be exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. Recently I have made the move from Ottawa, Ontario to Brooklyn, New York, and in the short time that I have been here I have felt a slew of emotions ranging from awe to frustration. Living in a [...]

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CAW Retirees Seek Social Justice for Seniors

March 15, 2010

I had the pleasure of attending a public forum on pensions in Oshawa a few weeks ago.  Organized by the retirees’ chapter of the Canadian Auto Workers’ (CAW) Local 222, over 200 bodies were in attendance. While the theme of the evening was universal public pensions, speakers had experienced a number of social ills: a single [...]

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Colborne Street Breakdown: Public Protest, a University, and Academic Activism

March 10, 2010

This is a story about heritage buildings, those trying to save them, a city council, a university, and academics caught in the middle. It’s a story that raises questions about academics’ responsibilities in the community, academic freedom and activism, and the universities they work for.

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New Active History Paper: Citizenship Literacy and National Self-identity by Larry A. Glassford

March 9, 2010

Abstract The content of history textbooks and curriculum is an important factor in the political socialization of succeeding generations of students. This study of representative classroom textbooks authorized for use in Ontario at three distinct eras of the 20th century shows how the main lines of interpretation have shifted over time. During the pre-World War [...]

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Activating Foucault for Canadian History

March 8, 2010

by Steven Maynard “What does a queer, sadomasochistic philosopher have to do with the study of Canada’s past?” This is the question I ask students at the beginning of my first-year survey course on Canadian history. Over the years, colleagues have suggested that first-year undergrads aren’t ready for Foucault. But experience tells me that not [...]

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History and the Problem of Auto-referentiality

March 4, 2010

by Jeremy Nathan Marks Historical writing has long suffered from the problem of auto-referentiality. Auto-referentiality, as I define it, simply means historians are writing only in reference to human subjects and human problems. I don’t mean to say that historiography is populated only by human beings but we do not currently possess an extensive literature [...]

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