Photo by Gerry Lauzon

At the end of last week, the Quebec government tabled Bill 78 in an effort to end the months of protest over planned hikes to university tuition. The bill sets restrictions on the freedom of assembly and expression, requiring those in protests over 50 people to ascertain that the protest has been officially sanctioned by police and government officials.  The bill also holds student associations, unions and their leaders accountable for the actions of their membership. The biggest problem with the law, like most draconian measures, is that it is vague in its definition of illegal activity and harsh on punishment.  Not surprisingly, countless groups – including some that disagree with the tuition-based protest – have voiced their opposition to it, culminating in a mass demonstration on Tuesday in Montreal.  Below is a translated version of an open letter, written by many of Quebec’s leading historians in reaction to the government’s bill.  It is followed by brief summaries of the posts related to this issue published by our francophone partner site, HistoireEngagee.ca.

Here is the letter:

“In the silence of rejection, the chains of the slave and the voice of the whistleblower are no longer heard.  All tremble before the tyrant.  It is as dangerous to encourage their favour as merit their disgrace.  The historian is charged with the people’s vengeance.  It is in vain that Nero prospers, for Tacitus has already been born into the empire.” – François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe.

As professors and historians who, alongside others, have documented Quebec’s political history, we affirm that we have rarely seen the government commit as blatant an assault on the fundamental rights underpinning Quebec society.

The rights to free expression, to protest, and to assemble are at the heart of our democracy.  These civil and political rights determine our belonging and participation within the life of our political community.  From the struggle of the Patriots during the 1830s to that of the union movement during the Quiet Revolution, these rights were at the heart of our province’s historical transformation; they were central to the fights of women, Aboriginal people and others for political recognition. Our political regime cannot fully claim to be a democracy without the rights enshrined in the Charters.  Democracy requires that citizens have the capacity to exercise their rights.  This is the foundation of law in this country and the primary objective of political struggles since the beginning of the parliamentary system.

The student movement, by its actions over the past three months, has merely taken up the mantle of this democratic heritage. It is unbearable to watch a government using undemocratic practices in response to these protests. The principal function of a democratic state is to guarantee its citizens their rights and freedoms.

Worst of all is the government’s more recent act, Bill 78.  According to the President of the Quebec Bar, this act calls into question the primacy of the rule of law in conflict resolution.  Indeed, in its current form, Bill 78 clearly limits the right of all citizens to peaceful protest. It severely curtails the academic freedoms within the university.  It suspends legitimate legal recourse and reverses the burden of proof by making student associations and unions responsible for the acts committed by others. Finally, it severely penalizes citizens, student associations and unions who do not comply with the provisions of this exceptional law.

In its current form, Bill 78 is a wicked and infamous law.  We call on all those in this country who care about our fundamental political freedoms to mobilize against this aggressive act against our rights and liberties.

This letter has been translated for the benefit of English readers.  I have tried to stick as closely to the original intent of the letter.  To see the original visit: http://histoireengagee.ca/lactualite-en-debat-une-loi-scelerate-et-une-infamie/

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Histoire Engagée has covered these protests in fairly thorough detail.  Below is a brief summary of each of their posts.

Why World Class Universities? And who are they for? By Martin Lavallée (May 2)

• In this post Martin Lavallée asks what the Charest government means when it states that tuition must be increased in order for Quebec to have ‘world class’ universities. Finding this term poorly defined in government discourse, he sets out to establish how the government defines this term. Referring to a 2009 World Bank report, Lavallée suggests that the ‘world class’ university is one that targets research that usefully fuels a knowledge economy rather than humanist development.  By the terms set out by the World Bank, universities that are truly world class are primarily English language institutions that focus on technical and technological knowledge. The question underlying these debates is whether les Quebecois support this shift in emphasis.

The Three Braves and the 1958 Student Strike: An Interview with Francine Laurendeau. By Maurice Demers, Annie Poulin, and Pascal Scallon-Chouinard (May 1)

• Daughter of the well-known intellectual and politician André Laurendeau, Francine Laurendeau had a prolific career as a journalist, host and director with Radio-Canada.  Along with Bruno Meloche and Jean-Pierre Goyer, she played an important role in the 1958 student strike, the first student strike in the history of Quebec. For months, those Three Braves had the audacity to aspire to meet with Premier Maurice Duplessis in order to deliver a report written by the striking students. The Premier never acquiesced to meet with “children”. They are the subject of the National Film Board’s L’histoire des Trois.  In this interview she discusses the events in 1958, their impact on her life and Quebec society, as well as their relationship to the current student strike in Quebec.

The Student Strike in the Middle Ages and the Emancipation of the Universities. By Anthony Oddo (April 9)

• Oddo presents an interesting post on the struggle over the intellectual, social and cultural nature of education in 13^th century Paris.  The university, he argues, was formed based on a covenant between the tutor and their students. This privileged relationship often caused tension between scholars, the public, ecclesiastic and royal authorities, leading to both students and faculty boycotting their universities. Although the historical context was radically different, Oddo’s piece demonstrates that the defense of university autonomy, the bond between students and professors and a focus on the common good have been recurring tensions over the centuries.

On Tuition… Again: When one strike hides another. By Louise Bienvenue and Pierre Hébert (April 6)

• Here Bienvenue and Hébert look at Quebec’s recent past, suggesting that the roots of the current situation can be found in a chain of events that began with cutbacks in 1995.  A series of reductions in the university sector led to both government and corporate intervention in university administration. Increased attention to management and performance – demanded by these two broad influences – has led to division between teaching and research, as well as a giant ballooning of university bureaucracy (promotion, development and recruitment). They suggest that these are the central issues that must be discussed in order to properly address the current situation.

A Statement from the Masters and Doctoral students at the University of Sherbrooke about the Debate over Tuition Fee Increases. (April 3)

• This statement from the graduate students at the University of Sherbrooke suggests that the strike represents a debate over the role of education in Quebec society.  They express their support for the strike, suggesting that accessibility to higher education has a direct link to the health and vitality of Quebec society.

Student Free Speech, a Victory Threatened. By Karine Hébert and Julien Goyette (April 2)

• This post looks at student societies from the end of 19^th century until the present.  It notes that up until the Second World War, university students (mostly men) were perceived by both themselves and others as the elite, focused on maintaining the status quo. But by mid-century, due to World Wars and the Great Depression, this group began to conceive of itself as a specific generation and social class that situated itself within a broader provincial and global context, focusing on issues such as liberalism, feminism and socialism. This latter vision of youth culture, the authors argue, was responsible for setting the agenda of the student movement since the 1950s. Today that student voice risks being overwhelmed by the noises of individualism and economics, allowing the government to ignore the student movement and refuse to negotiate.  This path risks a return to the earlier period.

A Brief Look at the History of the Quebec Student Movement to Enrich the Debate over the Student Strike. By Mauricio Correa (March 29)

• In this post Correa draws parallels between the current student strike and the debates that took place over similar issues in the 1950s and 1960s. The piece situates the current strikes in the context of the gains students made in the mid-twentieth century. He argues that current government proposals threaten to reverse the changes brought about by these earlier protests.  Like the striking students in Chile and Colombia, the student movement wants to assure that Quebec’s universities remain autonomous, accessible and state financed. He also compares student action during both events and warns that the students were more united in the 1950s and 1960s.  Although the current student strike has the potential of being very successful, disunity within the student movement risks compromising their goals.

Marching and Angry: The Mobilization of Students and Access to Higher Education in Quebec, 1958 to 2012.  By Martin Paquet

• This is a lecture recorded in February 2012 at Laval University.  Here Paquet discusses the stakes, successes, failures and impact of the student movement in Quebec.

Wednesday May 9th, 5pm meeting time, 5:30 start time

“Historical Landscapes and Hauntings:

Connecting place to the history and social studies curriculum”

Meet at the outside C5 entrance of the ROM (the ROM’s “crystal” overhang)

A spring walk around the University of Toronto campus

Talks by Helen Mills from Lost Rivers, Richard Fiennes-Clinton from Muddy York Walking Tours, and University of Toronto instructor Rose Fine-Meyer

ApproachingThePast-Toronto.com

RSVP now: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22FJKUDU7G6

By Thomas Peace

Frequently, when I am ‘up north’ and discussing my research on northeastern Aboriginal peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I am asked one of two questions:  Why were there no Aboriginal people living here?  Or, what happened to the Aboriginal people who were here?

The questions are good ones, and reflect the absence of Aboriginal people from general discussion of Muskoka’s (and much of cottage country’s) past.  Though it is changing, many of cottage country’s local museums, community websites and history books focus on the arrival of Europeans and creation of the towns with which we are familiar today, leaving the discussion of Native people to a short handful of sentences to mark what took place before Europeans arrived.  Aside from Bruce Hodgson and Jamie Benidickson’s The Temagami Experience, which doesn’t exactly focus on the heart of cottage country, and Patricia Blair’s Lament for a First Nation, there are few scholarly monographs or articles that address Aboriginal people in central Ontario.  Like in many places across Canada, history in this part of Ontario is told as a veritable clear-cutting of the past where Aboriginal people were replaced by the lumber industry and subsequent European settlement of the region.

It was with this context in mind that, a week and a half ago, I was pleased to see that Peter Kent, the cabinet minister overseeing Parks Canada, designated the displacement of the Anishinaabeg of Southern Georgian Bay a National Historic Event as one of 13 new National Historic Sites, Persons and Events related to Aboriginal people.  Of particular focus in this designation is the failed Anishinaabeg settlement at Coldwater, over which, after a series of negotiations, with the Chippewas of Rama, the Chippewas of Georgina Island, the Beausoleil First Nation and the Chippewas of Nawash, the Canadian government tabled a land claims settlement last year .

The Coldwater community was an attempt to settle 500 Chippewa, Potawatomi and Odawa near Orillia in the late-1820s and early-1830s.  There was meagre government support for the village and few people lived there year-round, choosing instead to maintain their customary economic practices in the Muskoka Lakes and Haliburton Highlands.  By 1837, the village had failed, though later reserves were established nearby on Lakes Couchiching and Simcoe (as well as on Lake Huron).

This story has great relevance for the history of cottage country.  Muskoka, after all, is named after Musquakie (William Yellowhead), one of the men who played an important role in both the settlement at Coldwater and in broader Anishinaabeg/British negotiations during the mid-nineteenth century.  Rather than this moniker serving as an epitaph for Anishinaabeg removal from the region, implied by the creation of these southern reserves, the name marked a place that these people continued to use as their hunting territory (Lake Muskoka) into the twentieth century.  In addition to the Wahta Mohawk Nation, who moved to Gibson Township from Quebec in 1880, the Anishinaabeg have a long and continued history in Muskoka and along the Georgian Bay shore.

Contrary to popular belief, the history of these people in the region is not undocumented.   Take, for example, Doe Lake, near Burks Falls, where my family has a cottage.  According to Joan Lovisek’s 1991 dissertation on the Anishinaabeg, only Europeans exclusively used the well-known French River route from the Ottawa River to Lake Huron.  The Anishinaabeg had other routes, some of which passed through Doe Lake (and Lake Vernon near Huntsville) and connected to the Muskoka River.  After 1800, Lovisek suggests that Doe Lake periodically served as a trading station in the fur trade.

By the 1870s, the European population had exploded and was quickly beginning to impede on Anishinaabeg land use.  Between 1871 and 1881, the railway reached Muskoka and the population grew by over five times.  As these pressures increased, complaints arose from the Anishinaabeg, who had not participated in the Robinson-Huron Treaty (1850), over Euro-Canadian use of their hunting and fishing lands.  In 1911, over fifty years after their complaints had first been lodged, the Indian Department received testimony from the Anishinaabeg regarding the extent of their unsurrendered and unceded hunting territory.  Their testimony can be found in Library and Archives Canada’s Indian Department records: RG10 vol. 2328, file 67071-1 and RG10, vol. 2329, file 67071-2.

View Larger Map

These claims help us to better understand how the Anishinaabeg use Doe Lake.  Henry Simon, a Chippewa from Christian Island, testified that for as long as he could remember (at least as early as 1867), he and his family had passed through Doe Lake on their way to their hunting grounds on Sand Lake near the town of Kearney (RG10 vol. 2328, file 67071-1, p. 78, 166-167/ LAC RG10, vol. 2329, file 67071-2, p. 60-61). Similarly, Michael St. Germain claimed from as early as 1829, his family hunting ground was between Doe Lake north (Katrine, Ont) and Pickerel Lake, just north of Burks Falls (RG10 vol. 2328, file 67071-1, p. 20-22, 178-179/ LAC RG10, vol. 2329, file 67071-2, p. 72-73).  James Ashquabe may have also travelled through Doe Lake on his way to his family hunting ground between Sand Lake and Lake O-je-che-ka-se-kak.  He describes a route similar to Simon and St. Germain but where those men mention Doe Lake, Ashquabe has a list of Anishinaabeg names (RG10 vol. 2328, file 67071-1, p. 48-50).

LAC RG10 vol. 2328, file 67071-1, p. 55

Going through these documents systematically reveals a complex Aboriginal geography that includes many places that will be familiar to cottagers around Bracebridge, Huntsville, the Haliburton Highlands and Algonquin Park.  John Bigwind from the Rama Reserve, for example, claimed that his family’s hunting camp was at Cedar Narrows on Lake of Bays (Trading Lake), not too far from where Robinson’s General Store in Dorset sits today.  There, in addition to drying furs, Bigwind’s family grew corn, potatoes and pumpkin; they buried their dead on Bigwin Island (LAC RG10, vol. 2329, file 67071-2, p. 70).  In addition to these more customary practices, the Anishinaabeg also responded to the arrival of a tourist economy by guiding and craft work. Cottage country was not just a place where Anishinaabeg hunted and passed through, it was a place where they lived.

Growing up, my experience of Aboriginal people around Doe Lake amounted to shopping at the ‘blanket shop,’ a trading-post-like store run with the typical array of Aboriginal handicrafts and tourist trinkets, and visiting faux-Aboriginal places like So-Ho-Mish road or summer camps that appropriated Aboriginal terms that may-or-may-not relate to Anishinaabeg culture.   The designation of the displacement of the Anishinaabeg of Southern Georgian Bay as a National Historic Event provides a useful starting point on which to more deeply consider the Anishinaabeg presence in Ontario’s cottage country.  What is the history of this recreational space?  How, over the twentieth century, did it transform from Anishinaabeg hunting camps into a vacation destination?  And what role do First Nations have in this territory today?

Much thanks to Andrew Watson for his help in writing this post.

Tonight, at McNally Robinson [please click for event information] in Winnipeg, The People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada will be launched.  This short 80-page book is a direct response to Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, which has been widely critiqued for its restrictive and overly-politicized definition of Canadian identity (for examples or critiques see the Globe and Mail, Andrew Smith’s blog, my summary of initial reactions on AH.ca, Ian McKay’s podcast on the right-wing reconception of Canada). As in the official immigration guide, The People’s Citizenship Guide’s editors, historians Esyllt Jones and Adele Perry, have brought together a diverse group of scholars in order to succinctly reflect on the nature of Canadian citizenship and modern-day Canada.

The People’s Citizenship Guide closely mirrors Discover Canada.  It is broken down into the same ten sections as the book published by the government.  Both texts address citizenship and identity, history, governance, symbols, economy, regions and issues Canadian citizens should consider.

The biggest difference between these two works is that Canada’s colonial and liberal legacy is directly acknowledged in The People’s Citizenship Guide.  Rather than taking Canada as a historical inevitability, with only ‘regrettable’ instances of social and ethnic conflict, The People’s Citizenship Guide more explicitly emphasizes that “Canada is a construct, a product of collective imagination and history” that in the past (and today) has included some people, while excluding others.

Treatment of Aboriginal peoples serves as a good example of the difference between the two guides.  When the Discover Canada Guide was first released, historian Christopher Moore lamented the lack of discussion about Aboriginal people and treaties in the government’s portrayal of Canada’s past.  The emphasis of the government’s text is on cooperation rather than conflict and dispossessions, making it seem that First Nations unconditionally welcomed European newcomers.  The People’s Citizenship Guide is much more explicit about the inherent nature of First Nation’s sovereignty and the legacy (and complexity) of treaties and land dispossession.

At $14.95, it is unfortunate that The People’s Citizenship Guide will not be as accessible as the free Discover Canada Guide (available as a PDF online).  In many ways, Jones’s and Perry’s text will better serve immigrants to Canada.  Particularly in their discussion of the provinces and territories, The People’s Citizenship Guide is much more frank about each province’s and territory’s economic prospects, political challenges and complicated histories.  For many immigrants it could be a helpful tool in assessing where in Canada they would like to settle.  More generally, The People’s Citizenship Guide represents a more diverse and complex picture of Canada.  The book pays greater attention to the rights of Canadian citizens and the resources available when those rights are infringed upon (though, both guides could discuss the Supreme Court of Canada in greater detail).

This book is a welcome political intervention.  From its title through to its back cover, The People’s Citizenship Guide’s politics are open and easily discerned.  Such overt and provocative language, which on the first page labels the vision of Canada presented in Discover Canada as “nationalistic, militaristic and racist,” may turn people off the book before they can digest its important content.  That being said, the explicit nature of the book’s politics provides excellent contrast to the political perspectives that are often left implicit in Discover Canada.  In publishing The People’s Citizenship Guide, Jones and Perry should be lauded for calling explicit attention to the politics of citizenship.

Indeed, one of the book’s strengths is that it closely follows the structure of Discover Canada.  Both guides can literally be read side-by-side.  There is significant pedagogical and civic merit to this exercise.  Reading both books’ sections on trade and economic growth, for example, illustrates the political differences between these texts.  Discover Canada begins its section on trade and economic growth with these two sentences:

“Postwar Canada enjoyed record prosperity and material progress.  The world’s restrictive trading policies in the Depression era were opened up by such treaties as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now the World Trade Organization (WTO)” (DC 24).

The People’s Citizenship Guide takes a broader and more global perspective on the postwar period.  Its section on trade and economic growth begins this way:

“The Canadian economy forms part of an unequal global economic system, a system which, shaped by the legacies of colonialism, continues to privilege industrialized nations over those of the global south.  The postwar period was a time of economic boom for wealthy nations like Canada, and many Canadians achieved greater material comfort than they had previously enjoyed” (PCG 31).

This type of comparison makes the Discover Canada Guide and The People’s Citizenship Guide useful for teaching critical reading skills in high schools and introductory university courses.

The People’s Citizenship Guide does not intend to be a replacement for Discover Canada.  To find out about government structures, how to vote, or the date of important national observances – like Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day (Nov. 20 for those of you who regularly fail the Historica-Dominion Institute’s quizzes) – one is better to consult the government’s official guide.  If, however, you would like a short introduction to Canada that represents the diversity of Canadian experiences and contextualizes many of the critical issues currently facing Canadians, The People’s Citizenship Guide provides a useful starting point.

The People’s Citizenship Guide is being launched tonight in Winnipeg at 7 p.m. in the atrium of McNally Robinson at Grant Park.  You can purchase a copy of the guide from Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

In the mid-1990s, the music of the Wakami Wailers set me on the path to becoming a historian.  Singing the old songs from eastern Canada’s nineteenth-century lumber shanties, this group of former Ontario Parks workers instilled in me a sense of the past and its importance for understanding present realities.  By connecting some of Ontario’s premier provincial parks and province’s lumber industry, the Wailers encouraged me to consider the complex interconnection between logging and recreation in central Ontario (i.e. Muskoka and Algonquin Park).

I have come to realize over the decade and a half since I first discovered the Wailers that popular music can serve as a useful entry point for understanding the past.  This should not come as a surprise.  Approaches to teaching and learning, such as John Bigg’s SOLO taxonomy, emphasize the importance of understanding foundational concepts before higher order thinking can take place.  Popular culture serves as an easy way to establish these concepts by capitalizing on students’ everyday experience.

Music can be used to teach about the past in at least seven overlapping ways (feel free to add other categories and examples in the comments section):

1) Trivia and basic facts:  Although I am not a hockey fan, thanks to the Tragically Hip, I don’t think that I will ever forget that Bill Barilko went missing after he scored the goal that won the Toronto Maple Leafs the Stanley Cup.  The Leaf’s didn’t win another, until 1962, the year he discovered.  Boney M’s Rasputin is another song full of biographical detail about Grigori Rasputin, adviser to Czar Nicolas II.

2) Commemoration of Events:  U2’s or John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Sunday Bloody Sunday can be used to teach about the 1972 killing of civil rights protestors by British soldiers in Derry, Ireland.

3) As a Primary Source: Songs like Pete Seeger’s Bring ‘Em Home, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier, and Edwin Starr’s War (originally recorded by the Temptations) serve as useful primary sources to introduce people to the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

4) Commemoration of Historical Processes: Neil Young’s Pocahontas is useful for beginning discussions about the European colonization of North America and dispossession of the continent’s Aboriginal people.

5) Change over time: Although it’s a rather simple song, Istanbul (not Constantinople), (first recorded in 1953 but perhaps now better known by its cover by They Might Be Giants) can be used to illustrate how the meaning of places change over time.

6) Teaching Oral Traditions: Organizations like Mariposa in the Schools emphasize the importance of oral cultural traditions in the school system.  Their music program emphasizes themes such as migration and cultural interaction as well as the development of specific types of music such as folk and the blues.

7) Telling Alternative Narratives: On the eve of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 it is worth noting Stan Rogers’s efforts to tell some of the lesser known stories of the war.  One of Rogers’s better known songs about 1812, MacDonnell on the Heights, tells the story of a valiant major who met his death during the battle of Queenston Heights but whose legacy languished because of General Isaac Brock’s legacy (Brock, incidentally, died at the beginning of the battle with which he is most frequently associated).  For more on Stan Rogers and the relationship between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ history see Nick Baxter-Moore’s article “Recording the War of 1812: Stan Rogers’ (Un)sung Heros.”

We have to be careful not to over-emphasize what music can teach us.  Music – particularly folk music – often instills romantic notions of the past and tempts us to create simple and somewhat singular narratives about the past.  Like all primary and secondary sources, music needs to be critically evaluated.  But as a tool through which historical events and concepts can be introduced, it serves as a bridge between students’ everyday experiences and the past.

This was originally posted on Teaching the Past.

Dartmouth Hall

Inequitable funding for band-operated schools in many First Nations communities has created a crisis.  Despite education being a treaty right for many First Nations, the panel notes that “fewer than half of First Nation youth graduate from high school, compared to close to 80 per cent of other Canadian children, and some 70 per cent do not have a post secondary degree or diploma.”

As an historian of the eighteenth century studying Aboriginal engagement with European forms of higher education, these numbers startled me. In much of my research these figures are reversed.

In both Quebec and Ontario, First Nation communities were some of the first to develop community-based schools.  Even before European settlers had developed schools in many of their communities, Huron-Wendat, Abenaki, and Mohawk people were instructing their youth in formalized school settings. Although this subject is deeply imbedded in Canada’s colonial history, examining First Nation interaction with European forms of education in the period before residential schools helps us to better understand the challenges faced by communities in determining how to educate their youth.

Eighteenth-century First Nations people, like their European neighbours, saw education as a useful tool to maintain their communities as European populations increased around them. In Jeune-Lorette, a Huron-Wendat village near Quebec City, the community maintained many aspects of their language and culture as French farms expanded around them. They also achieved a literacy rate in French of about 20% by the 1790s. This was average for francophone communities in the St. Lawrence Valley at the time, but it was significantly higher than the literacy rate for the French farmers living around the Huron-Wendat village (about 3%).

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Jesuits heavily influenced this community. As French Jesuit influence diminished following the British conquest of New France, community-centred education became a prominent part of Jeune-Lorette’s identity. Unlike neighbouring francophone communities, who did not develop schools until the late-1820s and 1830s, the Huron-Wendat established a community-run day school taught by a member of their community. The Abenaki at Odenak did so as well a few years later.

These two schools had high attendance rates.  Mathieu Chaurette’s research on First Nation day schools along the St. Lawrence River during this period demonstrates that at Jeune-Lorette, almost all of the community’s children attended school at one point or another during the 1790s and early 1800s. The school also attracted students from neighbouring Mi’kmaq, Wulstukwuik, Abenaki, Haudenosaunee and Algonquin communities. Fewer students attended the school at Odenak (attendance was between 20% and 30%). Importantly, however, this rate of attendance was similar to the proportion of francophone children who attended school at the time.

Access to higher education was important in establishing both of these schools. The teachers at these schools were from the community and had attended Dartmouth College in the 1770s and 1780s. The teacher at Odenak, Francois Annance, attended Dartmouth for a number of years but did not finish his studies before returning to his community. We know much more about the teacher at Jeune-Lorette, Sawantanan (Louis Vincent, Dartmouth class of 1781). He was one of the few Aboriginal people to graduate from a colonial college during the eighteenth century. In addition to his native Huron-Wendat tongue, he was fluent in French, English, Mohawk and Wabanaki languages. Before returning to Jeune-Lorette he also taught school among the Mohawk on the Bay of Quinte (modern-day Tyendinaga). Annance and Sawantanan were two of over forty students from the St. Lawrence Valley who attended Dartmouth College, or its predecessor, Moor’s Indian Charity School, between 1770 and 1850.

Understanding how these communities, and others, engaged with European forms of education before the creation of residential schools is critical to reforming structures of schooling in First Nation communities. Reserve schools did not just follow residential schools; they also preceded the residential school system. Observing how communities chose to engage with these structures before education was imposed on them is instructive in providing models for successful forms of education.

Studying First Nation education during this crucial period in Canada’s colonial past teaches us lessons about the role of government and outside organizations (churches in the past, big business today) in shaping education policies in First Nation communities. We should be wary of outsiders wishing to directly influence the direction and nature of First Nation education. More often than nought, outsider input into First Nations education has failed.

Sometimes this failure has been for the good. In Jeune-Lorette, Sawantanan ignored Dartmouth’s goals of promoting Protestantism and “civilization.” Instead of introducing a curriculum that sought to completely assimilate his community to the culture of their New England neighbours, Sawantanan began selectively teaching concrete skills – such as literacy in both French and English – that allowed his community to reinforce its claim to territory around Quebec City. At the same time as the Huron-Wendat established their school, the community began petitioning for long-held rights to the seigneury of Sillery and for access to traditional resources. Education was seen as a tool that could benefit the community, but it sought to achieve goals that were far outside of Dartmouth College’s desired outcomes.

More commonly, though, influence from government and other outsider organizations have hindered First Nations communities. Chaurette’s work has demonstrated that education can be divisive and that community initiatives could be smothered or co-opted by political and religious authorities. For the powers at the time (the Catholic church and colonial state), education had to be controlled in an attempt to make sovereign First Nations subject to European control. The impact of this sort of interference was magnified and expanded as residential schools became more prominent through the nineteenth century.

The history of these schools also illustrates that education is not a panacea solution to all social problems. As much as education could be used as a tool for self-governance and greater autonomy, it also led to considerable cultural erosion. As Chaurette has emphasized, the curriculum in these schools shared many similarities with their French neighbours. French, and sometimes even English, was often the language of instruction. These schools fuelled processes of linguistic and cultural change that had begun with the arrival of Jesuit missionaries at the beginning of the 17^th century.

Education is not neutral, nor is it universally beneficial or corrosive. It is important to understand the complex relationship many First Nations have had with non-indigenous systems of education. “Schools used to be used as weapons,” Manitoba Treaty Commissioner James Wilson recently told the Montreal Gazette, “If schools are seen in any way as a means of assimilation, communities will opt out.”

Understanding the early history of how some First Nation communities opted into European structures of education before residential schools is important. It teaches us about the nuances of Aboriginal engagement with European forms of education.  It also demonstrates the creative strategies that communities used when confronted with European colonialism, and the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches they took.

The National Panel on First Nation Elementary and Secondary Education seeks only to make suggestions, rather than impose “solutions,” leaving it up to First Nations’ governance structures to determine what types of education will best serve their communities. Scott Haldane, the panel’s chair, told the Globe and Mail that “[w]hat we’re hoping is that perhaps we can make some recommendations that would allow some other regions of the country to develop their own institutions that make sense for them.”

This is what occurred at the end of the eighteenth century in Jeune-Lorette and Odenak. First Nation communities selectively embraced European-style schooling in an effort to provide stability in the face of a rapidly changing colonial environment.  European forms of education were modified by the community to meet their specific needs.

For more on the challenges and proposed solutions currently facing First Nation communities:

• Assembly of First Nations’ Education Policy and Research Documents
• Michael Mendelson, Improving Education on Reserves: A First Nations Education Authority Act (Caledon Institute for Social Policy, June 2008).

For more on First Nation engagement with European-style education during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see:

• Colin Calloway, The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2010).
• Mathieu Chaurette, “Les Premieres &Ecoles Autochtones au Quebec: Progression, Opposition et Luttes de Pouvoir, 1792-1853″ (MA, UQAM, 2011).
• Hope MacLean, “A Positive Experiment in Aboriginal Education: The Methodist Ojibwa Day School in Upper Canada, 1824-1833,” Canadian Journal of Native Studies, vol. 22, no 1 (2002), 23-63.
• Jean-Pierre Sawaya, “Les Amérindiens domicilies et le protestantisme au XVIIIe siecle: Eleazar Wheelock et le Dartmouth College,“ Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’education, vol. 22 (Fall 2010), 18-38.
• Thomas Peace, “Two Conquests: Aboriginal Experiences of the Fall of New France and Acadia,” (PhD, York University, 2011), chapter 7. For a summary of the relevant sections of this chapter see “European Education/Aboriginal Activism: Cultural Metissage in the Late-Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries” a paper I gave at the 2009 annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association.

“Places possess a marked capacity for triggering acts of self-reflection, inspiring thoughts about who one presently is, or memories of who one used to be, or musings on who one might become… When places are actively sensed, the physical landscape becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving imagination, and where the latter may lead is anybody’s guess.” – Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 107.

Just as I read these words last week, the Toronto Star disclosed municipal plans to close three of the City of Toronto’s ten museums.  Montgomery’s Inn, Gibson House and the Zion School House – museums outside of the downtown core and closely allied with the Etobicoke and North York Historical societies – are on the chopping block due to municipal cutbacks.  This decision builds on the recently announced closure of the Air and Space Museum at Downsview Park, one of a few other museums in the north end of the city.

In an age of austerity, as Sean Kheraj noted last week, all public institutions supporting culture and heritage are vulnerable. But these cuts do not just reflect cutbacks in the culture and heritage sectors. In a city already bereft of recognized historical sites outside of the downtown core, this municipal decision reinforces urban and suburban differences in how Toronto’s past is told. If places have the power to shape our self-perception and how we situate ourselves in the world, as Basso and others have suggested, how has the uneven distribution of historical places influenced the culture and politics of Canada’s largest city?

Take a look at this map.  On it, I have coded Toronto’s proposed and existing heritage conservation districts in green, municipal museums in blue, and the three museums slated for closure with red pushpins.  Notice the centralized distribution of sites deemed worthy of preservation.  Most are located in the pre-1998 City of Toronto and few are located in the other former boroughs of Metro Toronto.  Historic properties are similarly distributed. Within the boundary outlined on the map lie 12,258 of Toronto’s 13,660 heritage properties (about 90%).  What emerges is a gap in historical interpretation.  One part of the city is steeped in officially sanctioned historic sites; in the other part, the past is almost entirely absent from the city’s landscape.

View Toronto Museums in a larger map

Now take a look at another map. This map reflects voting patterns in Toronto’s 2010 mayoral election.  A similar image emerges.  People living in the historic core of the city voted one way; people living on its periphery voted another.

Although there are lots of reasons that account for this similarity (interestingly household income does not seem to be a factor), I would like to suggest that perhaps some of these differences have emerged because of the way that the past has been used and not used to construct a sense of place in Toronto.  Recognizing historic sites has an important role in protecting architecture, determining the design of new buildings and shaping the city’s network of parks and roads.  In other words, it helps to determine how urban residents live and go about their daily tasks in their city’s spaces.  Historic places also build connections to those people who lived in these places before, establishing patterns of continuity and discontinuity with the past that shape our outlook for the future.  In the core of Toronto, I wonder whether the more prominent presence of the past helps to foster a greater sense of collective identity and corporate welfare than elsewhere in the city.

The differences in how the past has been interpreted in urban and suburban Toronto stem from the city’s development.  Historic Toronto was where the city slowly took birth.  It had the highest population, better infrastructure and was more heavily industrialized and developed.  As it expanded, it consumed agricultural areas that were less dense and more easily developed.  For many, these were empty spaces whose history remained to be written.

This interpretation, though, reflects a particularly pernicious view of the past, which – as social historians have emphasized for the past couple of decades – excludes just as much as it explains.  Neither the historical downtown nor ahistorical suburb was developed from pristine forest or abandoned farmland.  The space that comprises Toronto today is one with many stories.  In every part of the city, there is a physical legacy of an Aboriginal presence, the arrival of non-Aboriginal farmers, the building of industry and lives of workers, and the process of urban development.  Sites like the Parson’s site along the Black Creek, aircraft manufacturing at Downsview airfield, and the development of highway 401 shaped how people conceived of the spaces around them in the north end of the city.

In the core of the city, though, this story has been better displayed in public spaces and official commemoration, building a stronger sense of civic identity and community.  Outside of the core, the tale of change over time and urban evolution remains silent.  There are few spaces beyond the perimeter of the downtown core that encourage people to consider the city’s diverse pasts and the experiences of those people who lived there before.  Isolated from the contexts of the past, people in these places are left to build different forms of community, less anchored to place and the lessons of the past.  In Toronto, and many other cities, inscription of the past onto the urban landscape has been used to build different places and different visions of urban identity.

The closure of these museums exacerbates these differences and creates a larger chasm between the everyday experiences of those living in Toronto’s core and those living elsewhere.  Equally as important, though, these closures encompass the three museums most closely identified with local historical societies for the former boroughs of Etobicoke and North York.  If successful, the result of these closures will be a further simplified public telling of Toronto’s past as a historical urban core and an ahistorical suburban periphery.

Toronto historians have voiced their opposition to these cuts in an open letter to Toronto’s city council.  You can voice your opposition to the proposed cuts by signing a petition.  Also, you can visit Zion School House during the next Approaching the Past workshop (Secret Lives, Affective Learning: Using Drama to Teach History) on November 29^th.  Click here to RSVP.

Last week a story in Le Devoir caught my attention.  The headline read: ‘Quebec’s history has been left behind by the universities.’  The article reports on a study lamenting the quality and quantity of history-specific training in Quebec universities.  More importantly – and this is what caught my attention – the spokesperson for one of the study’s sponsors, the Coalition for the History of Quebec, argued that the teaching of political and economic history had been subsumed by an over emphasis on social and culture history.  After reading this critique of Quebec’s university history departments, I realized that the so-called ‘History Wars’ are still alive and well in the Canadian public sphere.

For most professional historians the debate between ‘non-national’ social and cultural history and ‘national’ political and economic history has subsided.  In Canada, it reached its peak with the publishing of York University history professor J.L. Granatstein’s Who Killed Canadian History, but by the mid-2000s the debate had begun to abate as the principal figures concerned with the rising importance of social and cultural history began to retire.  “The battle has been won!” declared Christopher Dummitt in his provocative essay “After Inclusiveness.”  Citing a 2007 study in the American Historical Association’s magazine Perspectives, Dummitt observes that the three largest historiographical fields are now social, women’s, gender and cultural history.  For Dummitt and many other historians working in universities “the battle between social and political history has lost any of the intensity it once possessed.”

Last week’s article in Le Devoir suggests that this is a premature conclusion.  In Dummitt’s words: “the public is not with the professors.”  It is this disconnect on which the History Wars are being reignited.  The piece in Le Devoir is the most recent volley in a public political campaign to return to a narrowly focused vision of Canada’s (political and economic) past.  As Dummitt so clearly outlines, as the historical profession re-oriented and re-tooled, the public was left behind.  The chasm between the profession and the public has helped make the past a contested public space.

Canada’s Conservative government is leading the charge.  The first clear inklings of the government’s desire to shape Canadians’ understanding of their past was well laid out in the discussions following the release of the Discover Canada guide.  But the Conservative vision of Canada’s past has been building over the course of the decade.  In 2000, Jason Kenney, the minister under whom the Discover Canada guide was released, laid out the vision of his future government: “A country which does not know from whence it came,” Kenney stated, “is a country that has no direction for the future.”  The speech from which this line came makes direct reference to the History Wars’ terms of engagement as laid out in Who Killed Canadian History.  A decade later at a National Forum on Canadian History, Kenney was more explicit.  There he lamented that many Canadian historians place too much emphasis on social history, oppression and injustice in their work.  Stephen Harper was less direct but equally focused in a speech celebrating his five years as Prime Minister: “You cannot build a united country by burying and rewriting its history” – a subtle attack at the historians responsible for the historiographical shifts during the 1990s.  This was reiterated during the most recent election campaign when the Conservatives called for a restoration and renewal of Canada’s historical memory.  The clear implication in these statements is that the government is not satisfied with the current historical narrative.  In their view, it is critical for Canadians to return to a historiographical golden age.

Over the past five years, the arguments that fuelled the History Wars have continued in some of Canada’s most important corridors of power.  Despite a handful of laudable apologies (Residential Schools and the Chinese Head Tax), and recognizing Quebec as a nation, the Conservative government usually draws on (a narrow vision of) the past in order to edify The Nation or their party.  In 2009 the Prime Minister famously quipped that unlike so many other members of the G20, Canada has no history of colonialism.  Ignoring much of Canada’s past interaction with First Nations, he claimed that Canada “has all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.”  More recently, the Prime Minister took aim at his predecessors, claiming to be the best travelled PM in our country’s history – a remark that was quickly corrected by the Liberal Party.  Most recently the addition of ‘royal’ to some components of the Canadian Forces – a move that has been condemned by historians on both sides of the History Wars – has been seen as an attempt to re-inscribe the monarchy into Canada’s past.

Rather than focusing on the factual merits of these statements, it is more important to emphasize the place this perspective seeks to occupy in the popular understanding of the past.   There is no room for an alternative narrative in this vision of the past.  From this perspective, Canada has only one uncomplicated past.  Framing Canadian history in this way means that the past cannot be questioned.  Whether intentional or not, this serves as an assault on critical engagement and it is an oversimplification of the work of professional historians.

Few (good) social and cultural historians ignore the political, economic, or national context in which their research is situated.  Many of the celebrated works in these fields demonstrate how these approaches are interconnected.  In adding these fields to historical practice, new stories – particularly related to women, First Nations, and immigrants – have emerged and become part of Canada’s popularly recognized past.  As Christopher Dummitt has emphasized, the resolution of the History Wars among professional historians has in fact helped lay the ground work – though not completely – for a re-invigorated revisiting of Canada’s political and economic history.

Despite a familiarity with the History Wars, though, few historians have engaged with its new political incarnation.  A handful have openly criticized the government’s depiction of the past in the Discover Canada guide (for a summary see our post on the guide or hear Ian McKay’s podcast), but for the most part the profession has been silent.  Last week’s article in Le Devoir demonstrates that the debate continues.  It is being fought in a different venue and requires a different set of tools than those used a decade ago.  But, in a profession with an increasing focus on public and community engagement, it is important for historians – on either side of the first History Wars debate – to enter into the fray.  The Conservative desire to restructure Canada’s past suggests the stakes have never been higher.

Like many other types of high school romances, I fell in love with history in my parents’ backyard.  A series of trails behind their house opened the door to worlds decades and centuries past.  These trails at the Head of the Lake (Dundas, Ontario) introduced me to Aboriginal canoe routes, Ontario’s nineteenth-century industrial heritage, and the area’s transportation history.  The places I visited on these trails are places with a deep connection to the past that people pass by daily, often without notice.  As summer days begin to wane, I thought that it might be interesting to compile a list of under recognized everyday places that have awakened our historical imagination.  Below, I’ve included a few of the places that cultivated an interest in the past among my friends and family.  I would like to add more places to this list.

If you have an everyday place that has helped you to engage with the past more deeply or more critically, send an e-mail to tspeace[at]gmail.com and I will add it to this post.

Place: East Dundas and the Desjardins Canal – Hamilton, ON
What about this place opened your eyes to the past: For a short time, before the railway boomed, the Desjardins Canal brought ships from Lake Ontario into Dundas Ontario.  Today, the canal has silted up and the space has become a wetland known as Cootes’ Paradise.  The canal, and the trails around it, tells much of this community’s history.  The canal ends where one of Ontario’s first roads begins (built on a well-established Aboriginal portage between Lakes Ontario, Erie and St. Clair).  The community was well situated to be one of Ontario’s key transit points and a booming industrial hub.  Instead, however, it developed into a small town and is a (relatively) small suburb of the City of Hamilton.  In a province dominated by large cities, the canal, and Dundas itself, is a good reminder of the failed promises of the past.  It challenges us to think about the environmental, technological, social and cultural reasons why this community did not develop like its much larger eastern neighbours.

Place: Blue Beach – Hantsport, NS
What about this place opened your eyes to the past: There are many rocky beaches in Nova Scotia, and it can be fascinating to dig amongst those rocks to find different ‘gems’ – seashells of all shapes and sizes, and many types of stones like agate, amethyst and quartz.  What is even more fascinating, but not always visible right away, is finding layers of shale, or some other stone, and seeing within those layers the imprint of an ancient creature which has been solidified in that stone for millions of years.  It’s a history that goes back well beyond any human impact, a time when nature itself was the only influence.  People can look at these fossils and layers of rock to determine various things about the past, like what a particular climate was like and for how long.  Humans have come up with many ways of recording the past, but nothing seems to record the past so concretely as something that has been solidified in stone for such a long time.  And although they do not have specific details that come with them, these stone records can provide a lot of information about the earth’s past, how it evolved into what it is today, and how it may change in the future.

Place: Université Laval – Québec, QC
What about this place opened your eyes to the past: Although there are many wonderful historical sites in the area around Quebec City, it is the campus of Université Laval that helped me to best understand the history of New France.  From atop the campus residences, you can see why Quebec was chosen to be the centre of France’s seventeenth and eighteenth century colony.  At Quebec, Atlantic and Great Lakes geography meet.  To the east, the St. Lawrence widens and steep mountains rise as the river flows towards the ocean; to the west, the St. Lawrence narrows significantly and the landscape flattens and becomes more pastoral.  From this vantage point, it is not only possible to see the town’s strategic location, but also how it was suited to support most elements of the colony’s economy (fishing, trading and agriculture).

Editors Note: Yesterday and today ActiveHistory.ca offers two perspectives on the recent controversy that erupted in Halifax over the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High School.

It should come as no surprise that the recent controversy over the renaming of a junior high school erupted in Nova Scotia.  On 22 June 2011, the Halifax Regional School Board voted unanimously to change the name of Cornwallis Junior High.  The school board was concerned about the legacy of Edward Cornwallis, the city’s founder, who in an effort to secure the town site placed a bounty on Mi’kmaq heads.  The board’s decision has caused considerable controversy and according to the media it seems that many people want the school’s name retained.  The changing of the school’s name, however, fits within a long history of name changes in Nova Scotia.  It presents a good opportunity to reflect on the diverse roots that make up Nova Scotia’s population and the province’s relationship with its past.  Renaming landmarks is a sign of a growing and evolving society that is in critical dialogue with its past.

Today, few places in Nova Scotia are known by their original names. The community known as Annapolis Royal was once called Port Royal by the French and Tecopsgig by the Mi’kmaq.  Truro was known as Cobequid and Wagobagitk.  Sydney had a plethora of names including Cibou, Riviere Denys, Dartmouth Harbour and Spanish Bay before it was named after Thomas Townshend, the first viscount of Sydney.  Halifax itself was renamed in 1749, replacing the Mi’kmaq name Chebucto with that of the presiding president of the British Board of Trade.  In each of these cases, place names have changed to reflect emerging social and political conditions – most recently the political and military domination of the British Empire.

Each change left a significant legacy.  Many people embrace the names brought by the British, but others continue to use the names from earlier eras.  Today, some Mi’kmaq residents still consider the province as Mi’kma’ki (the land of the Mi’kmaq), while for some Acadians it remains Acadie (the land of the Acadians).  These place names have roots that precede, or at least emerged contemporaneously with, Nova Scotia.  They have coexisted for centuries, with each, at various times, dominating how this large Atlantic peninsula and the places within it have been defined.  None of these definitions have completely disappeared.  The communities for whom they held meaning continue to exist.  The heritage of past place names haunts the debates of the present.

Two concepts of place lie at the heart of the tensions over the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High.  Most of us are familiar with one of the more-mainstream visions.  Halifax is one of Canada’s premier cities with a rich military and cultural history of which Canadians should be proud.  Edward Cornwallis bears much of the responsibility for building a successful European settlement on the shores of Chebucto Bay.  The other vision is less familiar.  In this vision, a Mi’kmaw fishing village (Chebucto) was overrun by European settlers, reducing their access to important marine resources and customary forms of subsistence.  When the Mi’kmaq resisted this intrusion, Edward Cornwallis placed a bounty on Mi’kmaq heads in an effort to re-inscribe the local landscape from a Mi’kmaq to British geography.

Historians and activists differ over what aspects of Cornwallis’s career were most important: the creation of Halifax or the reduction of Chebucto.  One group argues that Cornwallis’s scalping policy reflected European attitudes towards Aboriginal people and the tense climate of war in the mid-eighteenth century.  Although they caution that this policy should not be celebrated, Cornwallis deserves a prominent place in Nova Scotian history and its commemoration.  Place names and monuments in his honour serve as a good reminder of this important city founder and also of how the past is different from the present.

The other group, which is best represented by Mi’kmaw author and activist Daniel Paul, believe that the 1749 scalping policy amounts to ethnic cleansing.  This was a clear policy to push the Mi’kmaq off their land.  The scalping policy was the most obvious sign that the Mi’kmaq would have little say in the transition from Chebucto to Halifax and Mi’kma’ki to Nova Scotia.  In this context, Paul argues that Cornwallis’s name should be vanquished from the twenty-first century Nova Scotia landscape just as thoroughly as Cornwallis had sought to rid the Mi’kmaq from Halifax.

There is truth in both perspectives.  Cornwallis’s scalping policy mirrored similar European policies in both New England and New France.  But calling him a man of his time goes too far.  Just like you and me, Cornwallis had choices to make.  Some of Cornwallis’s contemporaries – particularly those affiliated with the Indian Department – took different approaches, choosing to negotiate with Aboriginal people rather than attack them.  Even the Board of Trade sought to rein-in Cornwallis’s approach to the Mi’kmaq because of its potential to create tensions with Aboriginal people further west.  The eighteenth-century British Empire was a heterogeneous entity, where imperial officials had considerable flexibility in the decisions that they made.

The renaming of Cornwallis Junior High touches on the ambiguities of Nova Scotia’s eighteenth-century history and its many name changes.  Halifax was not created from a virgin forest.  It was built without Mi’kmaq consultation on land that the Mi’kmaq used regularly.  In deciding to rename Cornwallis Junior High, this decision reminds the Canadian public that the past has different meanings for different parts of the population.  For some Nova Scotians, Edward Cornwallis is a figure who should be celebrated; for others, he represents the erosion of their community’s autonomy and independence.  Our public institutions should accommodate these differences and challenge the public to consider how past decisions affected and shaped different parts of Canada’s population.  Some of Canada’s great moments brought about significant hardship for some people living in our country.  Our place names should not ignore this legacy.

Despite the success of Will and Kate’s recent visit, Canada is no longer defined solely by its British heritage.  Cornwallis Junior High should be renamed.  The Halifax Regional School Board’s decision fits into a long Nova Scotian tradition of changing names with evolving social and political conditions.  As Canadian society increasingly recognizes and listens to the diverse communities within our borders, some place names need to change.  As previous name changes have demonstrated, this does not mean that the past will be forgotten; rather name changes reflect a growing and evolving understanding of our past.  This is a sign of a healthy society; one that uses history to learn from the past rather than merely seeking glory from it.

For more information about Edward Cornwallis and the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High see:

The story has been covered in the National Post, The Coast, The Chronicle-Herald as well as over the radio and television waves.

Here’s a short list of historians who have written on some of the issues at stake:

John Grenier, The Far Reaches of Empire

Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not the Savages

Geoffrey Plank, An Unsettled Conquest

John G. Reid, Essays on Northeastern North America

William C. Wicken, Mi’kmaq Treaties on Trial

William C. Wicken, The Colonization of Mi’kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928