February 2012

Thoughts on the Drummond Report

February 29, 2012

The Beveridge Report’s proposals were implemented between 1945 and 1950, a point in which the British government’s fiscal situation was much worse than Ontario’s currently is. The government owed a massive debt to the United States that was incurred to fund the war, required exports to be one-third larger than imports to meet its debt payments and had converted most of its consumer manufacturing to military needs during the war. Given what the Beveridge Report proposed and Atlee government did, Drummond could have proposed more.

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Outreach and Collections. Encouraging Community Members to Play a Role in Saving History

February 28, 2012

This post discusses the need for professionals in cultural heritage fields to reach out to non-professionals so that we may gather and support the proper keeping of historical collections.

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Active History on the Grand: Historic Gardens

February 27, 2012

This article provides examples of historic gardens and landscapes in Ontario.

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In Dubious Battle: Inequity in Canada’s Migrant Work

February 24, 2012

By Ryan Kelly It was with a heavy heart that I read about the recent deaths of eleven workers in Hampstead, Ontario. This tragedy brought to the forefront of my mind a crisis I’ve let stir in its recesses far too often. How do we become complacent in affording migrant workers a different standard of [...]

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Hark! An Agent of Historical Change (and Jokes)

February 23, 2012

by Ian Mosby Historians are not usually known as being a very funny group of people. I can’t remember laughing out loud even once during the dozen or so hours it took me to read E.P. Thomson’s Making of the English Working Class and my own attempts at humour in lectures typically lead to more [...]

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Parliament Can Offer History More Than Just Legislation

February 22, 2012

“It’s a difficult thing to live in a country that has erased your past.” – Teju Cole, Open City Amnesty International is concerned about a new French law that would “…[make] it a criminal offense to publicly question events labeled ‘genocide’…”. The bill cleared the upper house of the French Parliament on 23 January 2012 [...]

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You Can’t Stop the Truth: The Story of the Original Founding Members of the Sugarhill Gang

February 21, 2012

By Francesca D’Amico When The Sugarhill Gang wrote and recorded “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, little did they know that this single-take recording would serve as a template for establishing an audience and market for Hip Hop, and would also mark the beginning of their thirty year-long battle with contractual turmoil. This story is not new [...]

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Visualizing the Past

February 20, 2012

I have recently been trying to figure out good ways of representing large amounts of historical information in a way that makes sense to everybody who might stumble across my work! I think that a good graphic has the ability to draw readers into what we do, letting us convey the scope, joy, or horror [...]

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The Shafia Murders, Immigration, and Misrepresenting Canadian Violence Against Women

February 16, 2012

Public debate and media coverage of the Shafia family murder trial has obscured and misrepresented patriarchal violence against women in Canada, mistakenly implying that violence against women and misogyny are not endemic throughout all of Canadian society. Violence against women and spousal violence are not unique to the Canadian Muslim community, they are systemic throughout Canadian society. In a country with a long, brutal history of violence against women, it is absurd to suggest otherwise.

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Public History at the Department of National Defence

February 15, 2012

By Dr. John Maker I was recently involved in a major project for the Department of National Defence (DND), that epitomized some of the challenges and excitement of doing public history. It included important questions of public policy, public safety, and environmental contamination. The findings were put to use in practical and immediate ways to [...]

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