Promotional image for Season Five of Mad Men

By Jay Young

Like many people, I anticipated the return of Mad Men (AMC, Sundays, 10 pm EST), one of television’s most acclaimed series of the past decade.  Now in its fifth season, the show looks at the life of Don Draper and other workers in the New York advertising industry during the 1960s. At the same time that I became reunited with Don and his gang at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, I also began to re-watch The Wonder Years.  Running from 1988 to 1993, the series told the coming-of-age story of Kevin Arnold, a teenage boy living in an unnamed American suburb during the late 1960s and early 1970s.  What struck me as I watched Mad Men and The Wonder Years is the different ways in which both shows explore history, nostalgia, and life during the turbulent decade of the 1960s.

Mad Men and The Wonder Years share many of the same overarching historical themes of political, social, and cultural change during 1960s America.  Specifically, both shows illustrate how the everyday lives of people at the time intersected with the events and trends that have become engrained in popular memory of the decade.  The civil rights movement, feminism, the Vietnam War, and the emerging counterculture – to name a few of the major forces of the era – serve as subtext for both series.

Despite their similarities, both series employ different historical chronologies, geographies, and narrative techniques in order to dramatize the transformations of the decade.  Season One of Mad Men is set in 1960, and the current season is set in 1966.  This periodization allows the show to emphasize a gradual transition from the conservative 1950s to the liberal 1960s.  From the open drinking in the morning office to the overt sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, adultery, and homophobia of its characters, the series’ chronology also enables it to illustrate the negative side of an era perceived by some conservatives today as a simpler time before the emergence and influence of liberal and radical social movements during the 1960s.

My guess is that Mad Men will end in 1968, the year that many historians see as the high point of 1960s radicalism.  The year 1968 is the starting point for The Wonder Years, which concludes in 1973.  Although the values of Kevin’s parents – especially his father – often seem like a caricature of 1950s conservatism, the series takes off as the changes of the 1960s are already well underway.  Whereas Man Men emphasizes the continuities between the early 1960s with the 1950s, The Wonder Years does the same with the early 1970s and the late 1960s.

Different geographies and social classes also mark both shows.  Many of the characters in Mad Men, such as Don Draper, are jet-setting elites who work (and in some cases live) in Manhattan.  Of course, the characters do not directly witness all major historical events of the time, but they seem closer to the epicentre of change.  For example, Don’s ad firm seeks to represent Richard Nixon in his failed presidential run against John F. Kennedy in 1960.  Later on in the series, Don realizes the business opportunities from the changing tide of social perceptions against smoking, so his new ad firm publicizes in newspapers their opposition to tobacco advertisements, despite his own chain-smoking habit.  Similarly, Season Five begins with a civil rights demonstration outside a rival ad agency that ultimately leads to Draper’s firm hiring its first black employee.

In contrast, The Wonder Years is set in middle(-class) America.  The big events of the era directly affect the Arnold family.  To recount one instance, in the show’s first season we learn that the older brother of Kevin’s childhood friend, Winnie, has died in Vietnam.  Yet the geographical position and the ordinary status of characters in the show often make them seem like respondents to major historical trends, rather than agents themselves.  As such, major events come into the Arnold home most prominently through visuals and sounds of the nightly news that emanates from the family’s kitchen television, often simultaneous to their discussions of the mundane details of their own daily experiences.

Paul, Kevin, and Winnie from The Wonder Years

A striking feature of The Wonder Years is its distinct storytelling method.  Viewers will remember that the show features the narration of an adult Kevin, who looks back on his youth with not only a sardonic wit about the idiosyncrasies of his family and the contradictions of the era, but also a sense of nostalgia for his youth.  Along with the use of Arnold family home films interspersed with dramatic scenes, Kevin’s adult voice gives the show a sense of realism.  Adding to this realism is the fact that I suspect the show’s main viewer demographic consisted of baby-boomers, who watched in part because of their own nostalgia for the idealism of the 1960s.

Much has been made of the sleek aesthetic style of Mad Men: its suits, dresses, cars, furnishings, and music of an era long gone.  Such characteristics, along with Don’s own hidden past identity, makes the show feel more like fantasy than realism, more like the dream-world of television advertising than grainy home films.  And unlike the baby-boomers who might relate to Kevin Arnold, Mad Men draws its audience from not only members of that generation, who never worked in an office building during the early 1960s (although their parents may have), but also members of Generations X and Y, who never even lived through the era.

Ultimately, both shows struggle with the meaning of the Sixties, the effects of historical forces on everyday life, and the legacies of such forces on more recent times.  Communications scholar Daniel Marcus has written that during the early 1980s political actors in the United States – such as Ronald Reagan – began to use the dichotomy between perceptions of the 1950s and the 1960s in popular culture as “a primary way … to shape (and reshape) public memories according to their own needs.”  Conservatives, for example, have rejected social movements that arose out of the 1960s as an unfortunate turn from what they conceive as the golden years of the 1950s.  Mad Men and The Wonder Years show how popular culture can complicate our impressions of these decades.

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.

By Alison Deplonty, MA Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario

What do Top Gear, Ax Men, and Rodeo: Life on the Circuit have in common with Greatest Tank Battles, Lost Worlds, and Battle 360?  They’re all programs on History Television.  If you’re like me and you’re wondering what the former have to do with history, you’re not alone.  What happened to the evenings of Digging for the Truth, Underworld Histories, and Patton 360?  The History Television bio on Twitter says that they provide “entertaining programs that bring to life people and events from the past and history in the making.”  Maybe the folks at History Television think that Around the World in 80 Ways, Ice Road Truckers, and similar programs depict history in the making, but I don’t—no matter how entertaining they may be.

Don’t get me wrong, I love watching History Television!  I’ve spent hours watching M*A*S*H with my father, and programs like Digging for the Truth are part of the reason I decided to get involved with public history and archaeology.  But another part of me is sad to see History Television’s emphasis on ‘reality TV’ programming lately.

It’s possible that History Television is trying to appeal to a broader audience and become more ‘family friendly’ with these ‘reality’ programs, and for shows like Hairy Bikers or Around the World in 80 Ways I might agree.  But when it comes to Outlaw Bikers and Swamp People, I find this harder to believe.  Especially when ‘family friendly’ programs like Beast Legends, haven’t been renewed.  And their current programing appears to be directed towards a mostly ‘male’ audience.

Besides this turn towards ‘reality TV’ History Television is increasingly airing programs that depict more far-flung interpretations of history.  Ancient Aliens, The Lost Book of Nostradamus, and Brad Meltzer’s Decoded may be loosely related to historical events or figures but they definitely depict ‘alternative’ versions of ‘history.’  And I’m not even including actual fiction programs, mini-series, and movies that are aired on the channel.

I’ve used examples from Canada’s History Television line-up, but the same kinds of programs are found on the History Channel in the United States.  Unfortunately, much of the public’s understanding of history comes from mass media sources, like the shows aired on History Television, and not from professional historians or educators. However, one has to wonder about History Television’s ability to educate the public about the past if the focus is on ‘reality TV’ and ‘alternative’ interpretations of history.

If I was in charge of programming for History Television, what would I do?  Put back the history!  I’d say enough with the ‘reality TV’ and ‘alternative’ histories.  I’d air history oriented programming during the day, not the middle of the night.  You don’t have to run them all in primetime slots – you can leave those for newer shows like Museum Secrets or Battle Castle, but at least try to make primetime shows fit with your mandate.

And above all, don’t get rid of M*A*S*H.

Almost everyone has at least one memory of working with a ‘lifer’ or ‘old-timer.’  In some cases these employees have been at the organization since its inception, in other cases they have worked there for their entire career or as long as anyone can remember. The phrase “can remember” is often at the heart of discussions about institutional memory.

The Society of American Archivists’ glossary of archival and records terminology defines institutional memory as:

“The information in records and in individuals’ personal knowledge that provide an understanding of an organization’s or group’s history and culture, especially the stories that explain the reasons behind certain decisions or procedures.”

All too often memories of an organization’s past projects, milestones, and failures are kept only in the minds of employees.  When an employee moves on, retires, or simply ceases to remember, details these memories are lost to the organization.  Without establishing a culture and practices which foster institutional memory the tangible past of an organization can quickly become non-existent.

Why should organizations care about institutional memory?

On the most basic level institutional memory can help prevent the repetition of past mistakes.  Often the biggest gaps in institutional memory occur during a change in administration or management.  For example, a newly hired administrator implements new methods without being aware of what has worked or failed in the past, and he makes the same mistake that was made six months ago.  Institutional memory isn’t designed to stall innovation (though it can be misused that way).  Rather, it can help organizations avoid reinventing the wheel. Having records which highlight past work allow for informed decisions to be made in the present.

Given the rise of short term contracts and people having multiple careers over their working lifespan, institutional memory can be linked to the sustainability of organizations.   Institutional memory (and good records) can be used to compensate for a lack of continuity in staffing.  For example, within universities in colleges the number of adjunct professors is on the rise.  Adjuncts may work at multiple institutions throughout their career and may not feel the need to contribute to the documentary history of institution.   Knowledge, departmental history, and university cultural heritage can easily be lost when an adjunct professor leaves the institution.   Institutional memory and record keeping practices can help avoid this loss of information.

Additionally, Institutional memory can help cultivate institutional culture and pride.  Remembering past triumphs and projects can help employees see the long term impact of their work and the institution at large.  Celebrating anniversaries and other important dates in the organization’s history can further instill pride and a sense of longevity.

How can organizations cultivate institutional memory? 

Most organizations are legally or ethically required to practice some degree of record keeping.  These records have the potential to be not merely paper memories but also resources to cultivate knowledge management within an institution.  The implementation of a record management system can help make these records accessible to employees and assist in the transfer of knowledge between generations.

In addition to mandatory record keeping encouraging a policy of documentation at all levels can help curb institutional forgetting.  When a new procedure, policy, or task is implemented the creation of documentation can help assist later employees learn these tasks.  The use of internal wiki can be used to collect this information, allow changes to be tracked, and make information accessible to all employees.

Creating strategies for outgoing employees to share information with new employees is essential to institutional memory.  Without this passing on of knowledge whenever an employee leaves part of the organization’s memory also leaves.  This may include having a retiring employee train a new employee, having an exit interview process, or creating a documentation plan.

Institutional memory is important to both public and private institutions across many fields of employment.  Human memory is by its very nature fallible.   Reinforcing oral history and employee memories with record creation processes helps retain knowledge, can inspire organizational pride, and can make new ventures easier.

By Andrew Nurse, Mount Allison University

Ottawa House by the Sea is a museum on the Parrsboro shore in Nova Scotia.  It is anything but polished. Ottawa House is old, at least by Canadian standards, and it did serve as Sir Charles Tupper’s summer home for nearly two decades. But, it is a far cry from the Georgian-styled “mansion” promised on tourist web sites. One could, in fact, argue that Ottawa House epitomizes everything that is wrong with small-town historic houses.

I don’t want to make this argument. Nor do I simply look to contend that local history sites are potential venues for active history. This point is self evident. Instead, this post tries to make the case that Ottawa House is already the site of a very interesting type of active history, even if that history might not be immediately recognizable as such.

What is wrong with Ottawa House? The answer depends on one’s perspective. From the perspective of the modern tourist-oriented heritage industry – deftly explored by Ian McKay and others – one might say: just about everything. Ottawa House is set in a stereotypically picturesque location, but it is not easily accessible from main travel routes, it has next to no virtual presence, and the building itself shows serious signs of wear. It may have been gracious in its day, but its interior lacks the consistent look and feel that draws out for tourists the elegance it advertises.

From the perspective of professional historians, Ottawa House will appear more as a storage site then a lieu de mémoire. Officially, it tells a three-part story based on stages of settlement: Native, Acadian, then prosperous ship-building town tied to the Maritime economy. In reality, its rooms are so packed with objects that it appears more as a post-modern mélange then a narrative.  And, even the narrative is unclear. What causes social change? How did different peoples living on the Parrsboro shore interact? On these questions, the interpretive design is silent. In short, as both lieu de mémoire and interpretive narrative, Ottawa House fails.

What makes it interesting is precisely these failures. Ottawa House is clearly the work of amateurs, by which I mean a local history society run by volunteers. Its exhibitions are notable for two characteristics. First, they are a product of local activism. The artifacts on display were donated by community members, ransacking (one feels) their own attics. The slippery language of artificial authenticity (“similar,” “from the time,” etc.) is absent. What Ottawa House presents is a bunch of old stuff, saved by community members, and put up on display.

Second, Ottawa House strives hard to be “politically correct.” This is an overused term whose very overuse has made it meaningless so a word of explanation is required. There is no doubt that a critical analysis of Ottawa House could demonstrate that its displays are implicitly coded in ways that contribute to racialization, sexism, and class-based conceptions of the past. But, the people who put the displays together have tried to address these issues. They have tried, in other words, to devote space and energy to Original Peoples, women, and workers. Whether or not they succeeded will be a matter of debate. What is important is that they have tried to build an historic site that encompasses difference without collapsing it into a single plot line. Said differently, Ottawa House puts a local understanding of difference on display and makes what looks like a serious effort to treat this difference in as even-handed a way as possible.

Like many small-town historic sites, Ottawa House runs into problems. Its official discourse (if it can be said to have such a thing) plays with standard “golden age” themes in which history, at a certain point, just ends. The important local shipbuilding industry, for example, disappeared with the changing times but how and why and the effects of this change are not addressed. It leaves one with a semi-pervasive sense of nostalgia that is very similar to many other small-town historic sites in the Maritimes.

For all its shortcomings, the history on display at Ottawa House tells an interesting story. Through its displays and artifacts, it is a story that links the local history of the Parrsboro shore to wider historical dynamics: to trade and transportation networks, the mercantile economy, Confederation, and patterns of population displacement. Ottawa House has its standard and forced series of firsts (“legend has it …,” etc.) that are supposed to appeal to tourists, and its connection to colonial grandés, but these heritage industry standards are downplayed in the face of the House’s accumulation of ordinary things from days gone by. Moreover, these ordinary things are not purely local, at least in origin. They come from all over the place, demonstrating the way in which goods moved across networks and ended up in specific places at specific times. The criteria used to set up displays seem to be a particular objects use value in the past; not its aesthetics or supposed authenticity.

The end result is that visiting Ottawa House is something other than a trip down a nostalgic lane.  By virtue of its very lack of polish, commitment to community artifacts, and desire to treat different social groups fairly, we get a museum that presents more than a frozen past. It is not perfect, but it shows an active past, where goods moved along a range of trade networks to reach destinations far from their starting points.

Ottawa House’s clogged rooms give us a different sense of the past. If the standard historic site is concerned with “authenticity” and period consistency, Ottawa House is concerned with interchange, use, and the accumulation of artifacts that might or might not create a consistent look and feel. In its very diversity, it creates a sense of activity: of people working, and going to school, making meals, and adding to their households according to their own inclination or taste or wealth.

It is also a product of community activity and so, in this sense, meets two different objectives of an active history: to convey a sense of the past as something other than a static vacation land and to promote a broader community involvement in the consideration of the past.  What more could those of us interested in an active history ask for?

By Jay Young

I recently spent an extended weekend in New York City.  Along with the well-known sights, sounds and tastes of the Big Apple, I was excited to visit the Tenement Museum, a restored five-storey building at 97 Orchard Street that educates visitors about life in the Lower East Side during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The non-profit museum, which also features an exhibit space, connects people to the history of the building through the vibrant stories of immigrants who made the tenement home.

German immigrant Lucas Glockner built 97 Orchard Street in 1863.  At the time, this area of the Lower East Side was still known as Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany.  Multi-story brick buildings – they became known as tenements – replaced small wooden structures that lined the neighbourhood’s narrow streets, and soon after, the area’s ethnic composition changed from a population of mostly German and Irish inhabitants to include newcomers of Italian and East-European Jewish heritage.  Unlike most tenement owners, Glockner lived with his family in the building during its early years.  Over the next seven decades, almost 7,000 people resided in the five-storey building until its owners evicted its last tenants in 1935.  During the 1950s, the city condemned the building because it failed to conform to new regulations requiring metal staircases.

97 Orchard Street

Then, historian and social activist Ruth Abram discovered 97 Orchard.  Abram and her co-founder Anita Jacobsen aspired to use an old tenement as a venue to understand the immigrant experience in the United States.  In 1988, they found 97 Orchard, a “time capsule” that had remained (officially) unused for decades.  Researchers uncovered the history of the building and the lives of those who resided there, while preservation experts restored the rooms inside.  Four years later, the first restored apartment was complete, a number that now stands at six apartments.

According to its mission statement, the museum “forges emotional connections between visitors and immigrants past and present; and enhances appreciation for the profound role immigration has played and continues to play in shaping America’s evolving national identity.”  To fulfill these aims, a number of activities take place.  Over 40,000 students have come to the museum to experience the history of immigration and city life.  ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students also arrive at the museum to learn English through a program that maintains a connection between lives of past immigrants and those of today.  The museum features a stimulating website, where educators can download lesson plans to teach their students (elementary to high school level) about material history, archival documents, and oral history.  Lectures, discussions, and other community events that explore the history of New York also take place at the museum.

The best way for the first-time visitor to get to know the museum is to participate in one of the guide-led tours.  These tours explore the restored apartments through the lives of the building’s families.  Each tour focuses on a small number of real families of various ethnic backgrounds who lived at 97 Orchard in order to learn about wider historical themes of specific decades.  If you can’t make it to Manhattan any time soon – you can get a sense via online tours found on the website.  I opted for the “Hard Times” tour, which looked at two families struggling to get by during the economic depressions of 1870s and 1930s.

Participation and conversation are key parts of the tours.  At the outset, as we stood outside the stoop at 97 Orchard, our informative and energetic tour guide explained to us that she was going to ask us questions throughout the tour.  This interactive dimension created a lively atmosphere between tour participants.  She also asked us to turn off our cell phones – for the sake of historical accuracy, of course!

The first apartment we visited was the home of the Gumpertzs, a German-Jewish family that migrated from Prussia in 1858.  We were all immediately struck by the size of the apartment, which consisted of a small bedroom, an even smaller kitchen (featuring a coal stove), and a larger living room – the only room to feature natural light.  Our tour guide revealed the most dramatic part of the Gumpertz story: Julius, husband to Natalie and father to four children, abandoned his family a year after the Panic of 1873.  Natalie had to make ends meet by sewing.  This led to a discussion about what strategies we might pursue if we needed help.  Who would we turn to?  With the state providing a minimal social safety net during the 1870s, people of the Lower East Side turned to family, friends, and local mutual aid societies for assistance.

Next, we walked across the hall to our second apartment, inhabited by the Baldizzi family.  The Baldizzis left Sicily in 1923.  Greater restriction on immigration following passage of the Johnson-Reed Act a year later meant that the family probably arrived in the United States by “creative means,” as the tour guide put it.  Entering the Baldizzi’s former home, our tour guide asked us to think about continuity and change.  What was different about this apartment, restored to emulate the space during the 1930s, compared to the previous apartment?  New technology stood out, as running water was installed in 1895, followed soon after by indoor plumbing.  The building was wired for electricity in the early 1920s.  An electric iron in the corner of the room signaled such change.  Tour participants also noted more windows, as the building was retrofitted to increase air flow and natural light.  After we heard about daily life for the Baldizzis and their struggles during the Great Depression, our tour guide asked us to share memories about how our own families had dealt with the economic trials of the 1930s.

The tour ended with a discussion of life in the neighbourhood since the 1950s.  The Lower East Side has seen an influx of immigrants from other areas of the world, especially Latin America and Asia.  Our tour guide also mentioned the ways in which gentrification is having an impact on the area.  Middle-class New Yorkers with disposable income are moving in.  Old tenement apartments sell for astronomical prices and new luxury condominiums pop up.

I suspect the museum is at the crossroads of this process.  On the one hand, it seeks to preserve the legacy of past immigrants who struggled to make it in New York.  It also provides useful services to more recent newcomers.  On the other hand, the museum is a sign of the changing local economy.  Orchard Street is now lined with chic clothing stores and hip restaurants.  By attracting tourists and other visitors willing pay $22 (adult price) to see the tenements, the museum serves as a significant economic motor for the area.  A nearby restaurant, for example, advertises a ten percent discount with purchase of a museum ticket.  Local shop owners seem to realize that heritage can be good business.

My time at the museum was short, but I left in agreement with one aspect of its mission: “In recognizing the importance of this seemingly ordinary building, the Tenement Museum has re-imagined the role that museums can play in our lives.”

Unidentified “orphaned” class photo from the author’s collection

By Melissa Mannon

History by its very nature is a collaborative field. Those working in the field aim to tell the stories of communities. We aim to shed light on diverse groups; to find similarities among us; to tell stories that shed light on the constant evolution of civilization. To properly accomplish the work of history, professionals need to actively reach out to members of our communities so that we develop relationships that invite understanding. Those of us who work to maintain the “stuff” of history – the documents, artifacts, and books – need to explain the value of family items to communities and to encourage unofficial family archivists to value history through a personal lens. We do this through effective “outreach.”

The word “outreach” is an umbrella term used to discuss the work library, archives and museum professionals do to encourage community engagement. Outreach can take the forms of programming and exhibits. Or, when people say “outreach” they may mean going outside of their institution to attend a community event in order to get the word out about their work. Outreach can also mean adopting a social media strategy that encourages the public to talk about collections and cultural heritage.

Outreach work involves a concerted effort on the part of an institution that seeks a receptive public. Additionally, it should seek to increase understanding about the value of cultural heritage work among those who may not immediately recognize it. In most cases, outreach does not happen naturally. Instead, active engagement must be initiated by the history professional with the goal of having the public – the non-history professional – value the goals for identifying, collecting, preserving, and sharing historical materials. When done well, the public should also feel that they are part of those goals and can help take responsibility for retaining the “memory” of society.

Lately, the subject of outreach has been swirling around cultural heritage professions. Museums, libraries and archives – our so-called “memory institutions” that work to preserve the documentation of history – are wondering how they can get people to more actively engage with their work. In my opinion, the best way is to make the community active partners in what we do. First, the professional must be open to this and recognize the role that the non-historian / non-professional can play. Second, they must actively and effectively show the public how they fit into a community puzzle.

Family correspondence, such as this letter about a day on a Midwestern United States farm, can reveal a lot about society in a certain time and place. From the author’s collection of “orphaned” letters

As an archives consultant I have recently had a small shift in my thinking. Where I once focused my consulting work on those employed in memory institutions, I have lately been giving more attention to the individuals who maintain “lost” pieces of history in their homes. People often do not realize that the documentation that they possess is important to a larger community outside of their families. History professionals need to tell the public this and by doing so, they are laying those foundations for open communication and an engagement that will help non-professionals better recognize the value of cultural heritage work.

A story I recently heard on NPR in the United States about a project by historian Noah Andre Trudeau that speaks to this point of view. Trudeau is seeking to tell the story of the last days of Abraham Lincoln from a different angle. He is seeking diary entries, letters, and other primary sources that shed light on these days. He is asking people in Virginia, where Lincoln spent time before his assassination, to look in their homes for these materials. In so doing, he is actively engaging the public in his work while also promoting his goals.

In my own experiences, one instance of engaging a member of the public stands out in my mind. I imagine this type of story will be a familiar one to colleagues, but perhaps not to non-professionals.  Working as a young archivist in the Special Collections of a public library, I found family materials mixed in with a collection that related to the writing of a book about the local community. The library had no formal documents giving it the right to keep the items. I wrote to members of families and asked each if we could create a written agreement giving the library these rights. One family member wrote back to say that he wanted to do that and that he had a few more materials that the library might want to own. He hesitated when he visited me with a box full of family materials. He said he was not sure that we would want these items. When I opened it, I found materials from his family members going back through the nineteenth century. These ancestors had participated in the Gold Rush, Civil War, Women’s Suffrage Movement and other major historical events in American history.

How could someone not realize these materials would be important to a cultural heritage institution or historian? In fact, now that I am focusing on this issue, I encounter this every day. When I give talks about family papers, audience members are excited about keeping THEIR family history. Then I introduce the idea of keeping this history for the community. There is some confusion until I talk about how the events in which past and present family members participate shed light on our society. I compare Civil War letters to the correspondence of soldiers in Iraq. I talk about how one family or even one person is just a microcosm of the community and times in which they live.

The author discussing the value and preservation of family materials at the Derry Public Library, Derry NH

Professionals need to get out and tell people this. In return, we can fill gaps in our collections, encourage partnerships in finding the “stuff” of history, and gain some loyal support for the work that we do. How we do it can fit a much larger blog post, but this mindset needs to be at the forefront of cultural heritage work. Recognizing that professionals and non-professionals can be — and I would argue that they need to be — partners in gathering and maintaining cultural heritage can drive all outreach efforts.

Melissa Mannon is an archivist and cultural heritage professional with almost twenty years experience focused on archives management, cultural heritage institutions, community building, cross-professional collaboration, and information literacy.  She can be found at archivesinfo.com

“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 and could be signed into law by President Nicolas Sarkozy as early as the end of this month.

The international human rights group notes that such “…legislation would criminalize the exercise of freedom of expression that is seen as ‘outrageously’ contesting or trivializing historical events or their characterisation.” Such legislation would also be largely redundant in the broader context of France’s current laws pertaining to freedom of expression, which can classify certain forms of historical denial as hate-speech.

The new law appears to be transparently aimed at Turkey, for the would-be European Union entrant’s longstanding refusal to acknowledge the violence directed against Armenians, from 1915-16 and through to the final days of the then Ottoman Empire in 1923, as genocidal. The Armenian Genocide, recognized by at least twenty members of the international community, resulted in significant displacement and approximately one and a half million deaths.

This new French law follows a 2001 declaration by the French Parliament that officially designated the event as meeting the requisite definition of genocide.

If passed, the law would likely affect French citizens (from the native born to the newly arrived) far more than it might entice Turkey to examine and retract its official position. It could also trigger a perilous international race to the bottom, with respective states moving to tighten their own laws out of fear that they are not strict enough.

While it remains to be seen whether or not the would-be law will even survive judicial scrutiny (a group of senators have already petitioned the nation’s top court for a review), it asks us to question whether such legislation is the most appropriate means of protecting such historical events and history in general.

The basic intention of the law appears to be no different than censure, the other central power held by parliamentary bodies, used to denounce unbecoming behaviour exhibited by their own peers, state officials and citizens, and even those on the international stage. While such resolutions are generally non-binding, they can certainly serve memory well by turning any given issue into a minor political scandal at the very least.

Of course, France cannot actually force Turkey to change their official policy but they might better serve the memory of this event with a series of parliamentary resolutions (similar to their 2001 declaration) than with drastic domestic legislation. After all, this is generally the same traditional ‘shout-down’ approach we take with individuals who elect to deny historical events in the face of clear, overwhelming evidence.

A persistent campaign of parliamentary censure would not only serve history by allowing the world to revisit significant events (like this and others) but also provide a space of recognition and consciousness, however conceptual, for those who still reside within the borders of a state that has erased their past. It would also work to establish parliament as not just a place where a nation’s laws are drafted, debated, and passed, but as a welcome environment for historical consciousness.

Unidentified sappers of the Royal Canadian Engineers (R.C.E.) examining an unexploded German 15.5 cm. shell, Caen, France, 10 July 1944 Credit: Lieut. H. Gordon Aikman / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-162666 Restrictions on use: Nil Copyright: Expired

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 address areas of emergent need. The project also had its share of frustrations and barriers, which epitomized the practice of public history, especially the kind carried out for government departments.

The project was with DND’s Unexploded Explosive Ordnance and Legacy Sites Program. Their website notes:

The DND UXO and Legacy Sites Program was created in 2005. The program works to reduce safety risks posed by unexploded explosive ordnance (UXO) at all “legacy sites” across Canada. A UXO legacy site is any property that was owned, leased or used by DND but no longer resides within DND’s inventory and for which there exists a UXO risk associated with past Departmental activities.

DND also notes that as Canada’s population increases and as housing and industrial development begins to encroach on previously unoccupied lands, “it is expected that people will come into more frequent contact with UXO.”

You might ask: “How many unexploded bombs are really out there in Canada? We’ve never had a major industrial war within our borders.” This is true, but Canada has taken part in major industrial wars, produced millions of munitions, and trained millions of service people from across Canada, the United States, and the British Commonwealth. This has left a physical legacy in this country. Most UXO products ended up in the ground as the result of training activities in preparation for the First and Second World Wars.

Jeff Lewis, in an article for the Canadian Military Journal, notes:

Unexploded ordnance is a by-product of live fire training… UXOs are live munitions that fail to explode as intended, and end up scattered on the surface or subsurface of military impact areas. Unlike other common forms of contamination, such as petroleum or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), used by many industries, the origin of UXOs is indisputable. Identifying and remediating UXOs is expensive because no technology exists that can reliably and cost-effectively locate them without a great deal of human labour.

Some UXO ended up at the bottom of the ocean in Canada’s waters, sunk with the ships carrying them. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that the presence of large quantities of UXO poses health, safety, and environmental risks significant enough to justify the expensive and difficult remediation project described here.

There were many great benefits to this project as an exercise in public history. First and foremost, it involved a great sense of personal and professional fulfillment largely because the contribution being made to the public good was clear and undeniable. The practical uses of history as a discipline as well as archival research were essential factors in the success of this project. It was existentially satisfying. In a field with dwindling possibilities for traditional forms of academic work, this project displayed that there is a world of possibilities in which historical inquiry plays an essential part in a society whose intellectual capital is so dominated by econometric imperatives.

The project relied on the skills and methods that historians themselves take for granted much of the time. It reminded me of John C. Burnham’s article in which he wrote, “As historians, we take our training much too much for granted. We use it every day and do not appreciate it.”  For this project, those skills included uncovering a massive and diverse set of data, analyzing it (that’s fancy speak for “reading it and figuring out which bits are the most important”), and embodying these findings in succinct, but comprehensive written reports – dozens of them. We also included detailed GIS maps that our mapping wizard produced based on a torrent of geographic, topographic, textual, and cartographic data we fed to him in his office that was overflowing with map tubes and photocopies of coordinates and sketches drawn decades ago.

These reports were then passed on to officials at the UXO office who used them to direct field teams to the likely location of UXO. The activities of DND’s field teams were governed by our historical UXO reports, the GIS maps, as well as other information including reports of UXO discoveries on the ground, and in some cases, detailed electromagnetic surveys.

The project was not without significant challenges, some of which are common to all historical inquiry, and others we were not expecting. As usual there was the classic research barrier of finding both too much and too little evidence… That is, we sieved through archival box after archival box, book after book, map after map, and file after file at several repositories for each legacy site (for which there was too much information) looking for very specific pieces of evidence (of which there was often too little); looking for needles (or at least a firing pins) in haystacks. Similarly, the scope of the project just kept growing. It was like feeding an insatiable animal; the more we nourished their desire for useful information, the more they wanted. The initial number of legacy sites assigned to us grew—once we showed the type of detailed information that could be pieced together through historical means—by about 50% before the project was complete.

This required the allocation of more resources. You think that with the number of students, MAs, and PhDs eking out an existence in Ottawa, it would be a cinch to fill the ranks. Evidently not. After the team had grown to include numerous PhDs, even more MAs, and several administrators, it became difficult to recruit new team members to help meet the increasing demand who also met the high standards that DND required. Not only did those coming on board need adequate credentials, they also needed adequate security clearance. This too was a time consuming, but necessary, process that often slowed down progress, but once granted, gave researchers instant access to those coveted “Code 32” boxes at Library and Archives Canada (and entry into the hallowed “Restricted Reading Room”)

The project was unique in my experience in that it brought together a couple of dozen people who would only normally collect together in an academic setting. It allowed for challenging individual research, but required the kind of collaboration so often missing from university departments with their intellectual fiefdoms, grant money competitions, and solitary working conditions. The project was rewarding both for its intellectual and collaborative benefits, but also because it made a clear contribution to implementing public policy and in helping to ensure public safety and environmental remediation across Canada.

Reference:

Jeff Lewis, “The Military and the Environment,” Canadian Military Journal. Accessed 27 January 2010 <http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol10/no4/08-lewis-eng.asp>

CDCI Research is a public history and research firm with locations in Vancouver and Ottawa.

by Ryan O’Connor

I grew up on Prince Edward Island. As a youth I heard stories of the once-booming silver fox industry, which brought considerable wealth to the province in the early 1900s. While fox ranching has long since ceased, one need look no further than the provincial armorial bearings, adopted in 2002, for a reminder of its former significance.

Red foxes are native to the woods and fields of Prince Edward Island. (The silver fox is a rare mutation of the red fox.) Despite spending countless hours exploring the Island’s outdoors as a youth, I only spotted a fox once before moving out of the province to attend graduate school. I still recall that moment. I was in grade ten, and was taking my dog for a walk. We were cutting through a nearby wheat field when I spotted the fox leaping through the rows. It was majestic. Over the next few days I mentioned my sighting to a number of friends and family members and, for the most part, they shared stories of the rare time they too spotted foxes.

Much has changed in the past fifteen years. Fox sightings are now commonplace, even within Charlottetown. Whereas foxes once avoided human contact, they now venture up to parked cars, presumably looking for food. Likewise, their kit can be found playing alongside popular city walking paths during the early summer.

The increased visibility of the province’s fox population is startling, particularly given its rapid occurrence. At the root of the problem is the recent introduction of the eastern coyote. It is believed that coyotes first entered the province in the late 1970s, having crossed the Northumberland Strait during the winter. While the two animals enjoy the same habitat and enjoy many of the same food sources, the much larger coyotes, which typically weight 30 pounds but have occasionally grown larger than 50 pounds, have driven the foxes into the human sphere.

What happens next? Some Islanders fear that coyotes may pose a threat to their children and pets, and therefore want to see the coyotes culled. Biologists have argued that placing a bounty on the animals will not be effective, and that Island residents will have to get used to life with coyotes. By extension, Islanders will have to get used to the new position of foxes.

This past December I was visiting my family on Prince Edward Island. One day, as I drove between the communities of Bonshaw and Cornwall, my car hit a fox that was running across the highway. I felt awful. Furthermore, the strike caused significant damage to my car’s bumper, so the next day I took it to an autobody shop. As I explained what happened one of the employees laughed and said “I wish you’d hit a few more of them. Those foxes are all over the place!” Looking back at this statement I can’t help but wonder if we’re seeing a shift in the public conception of foxes. Are these beautiful creatures on their way to becoming considered public nuisances?

Ryan O’Connor is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Trent University. A historian of Canada’s environmental movement, he maintains a research blog at www.thegreatgreennorth.com.