Image by Radha-Prema Pelletier

By Jessica Van Horssen

So the winter semester is over, and for those of us at Quebec universities, what a semester it’s been! Specifically, McGill University has had its share of drama this year, with strikes, occupations, computer hacking, and demonstrations against the Quebec government’s plans for tuition hikes. With all of these things going on, it’s no wonder one of McGill’s dirty little secrets has been quietly pushed aside.

Attached is the talk I gave at McGill in March about the historic connection between the university and the asbestos industry. University ties to massive, ethically-questionable corporations is nothing new, and certainly not McGill-specific. Quebec’s continued support of the asbestos industry, of which it was once a world leader, is also nothing new. Neither is the public’s general outrage when information on these ties emerges, nor is the public’s gradual loss of interest in this topic, which contributes to the perpetuation of the toxic legacy of asbestos in Quebec, Canada, and the world.

This time around, the outrage and loss of interest began with a CBC documentary that aired earlier this winter and exposed McGill’s Dr. John Corbett McDonald’s relationship with the asbestos industry, and questioned his findings on how Canadian asbestos impacted human health. While it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone funded by the asbestos industry produced reports claiming that the carcinogenic mineral wasn’t so bad after all—as long as it came from Quebec’s mines, of course—what is absolutely frustrating is McGill’s reaction.

McDonald was exposed in the 1970s by CBC Radio and the New York Times shortly after his pro-Canadian asbestos reports were published in well-respected medical journals—the public was outraged then too, but again, forgot about it soon afterwards—and McGill received and processed the cheques coming from the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association (QAMA) to aid in his research endeavors. Despite this, McGill apparently had no idea McDonald’s legitimacy and authority were questionable. Closing ranks around one of their own is a tough habit to break.

Despite their immediate defense of McDonald, McGill launched an internal preliminary review into his ties to the industry, and investigator Dr. Rebecca Fuhrer, head of the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatics, and Occupational Health at McGill, attended my talk in March.

Now, the struggle for the legitimacy of historians amongst scientists is, again, nothing new, although it remains unfortunate, and I hoped that Dr. Fuhrer would be inspired by my talk to look deeper into the evidence. I was glad that during the question period, we got into a nice discussion on ethics, and what defending McDonald and his outdated conclusions, (which were outdated even in 1970 when he published them), says about McGill.

McDonald has won awards for his contributions to public health in Quebec. It seems he also had ties to an industry that was notorious for corruption and deceit. The information McDonald published on this greatly contrasted the conclusions respected members of the global medical community had been making on the dangers of asbestos for decades, and the reason they differed so much is not because Quebec asbestos is safe—although it is safe if you believe that jumping from the 16^th floor of a building compared to the 18^th floor will give you a different result.

On April 4^th, Dean of Medicine Dr. David Eidelman, sent an email to the McGill community to inform us that Dr. Fuhrer’s preliminary report had been submitted and stated that there was no evidence of research misconduct, but that more time and research is needed to assess McDonald’s research “integrity.” What is the difference between misconduct and a lack of integrity? A dilution of accountability?

As predictable as the internal review’s non-conclusion conclusion is, it’s also frustrating. Sure, the general public has once again forgotten its outrage, so the heat is off McGill, but what about the long-term and far-reaching effects of researchers like McDonald, and what about McGill’s role as an internationally respected institution? In navigating McGill’s archives, did Dr. Fuhrer take the time to examine McDonald’s published conclusions within the context of what every medical professional not funded by the industry was saying about Canadian asbestos and health?

Quebec’s asbestos workers were usually kept far away from nosey medical professionals the companies didn’t have in their pockets for fear of what they would discover. There’s a reason they allowed McDonald to study them, and there’s a reason QAMA was head over heels happy over his conclusions. What was that reason? While examining these workers, McDonald made choices on who was important enough to study and who wasn’t—the female workers in the industry certainly weren’t, even though the first recorded person to die of asbestos-related disease was a woman, and reports on the specific vulnerability of women to diseases asbestos causes had been widely discussed in the global medical community for decades.

Did McDonald, a revered researcher and now professor emeritus at McGill, not keep up with the literature on the subject he was rapidly becoming the Canadian expert on? Who else did he overlook in his examination of Quebec asbestos workers? What could possibly make him believe Canadian asbestos was safe? And, of course, WHY?!

The asbestos industry has a long, well-documented history of manipulating medical professionals and medical evidence. Asbestos companies began doing this at McGill in the 1930s. I would love McGill investigators to first ask, then answer, this question: based on his published work, was McDonald a pawn of the asbestos industry, making his bizarre, dated conclusions based on evidence manipulated by companies, or a knave, willingly contributing to the legacy of misinformation and disease in Quebec and around the world in return for funding?

Take some time to listen to my talk. McGill is one of the most respected universities in Canada, and for good reason. However, in defending McDonald and deflecting criticism by waiting for a tumultuous semester to end and the public to lose interest, has McGill itself been a pawn or a knave in the past and present Quebec asbestos trade?

To listen to Jessica’s talk, “Quebec’s Asbestos Industry and McGill University: The Historic Relationship,” click here.

Jessica Van Horssen is a postdoctoral fellow in Quebec Environmental History at McGill/UQTR. She is primarily interested in the ways communities understand and internalize environmental contamination and risk, and the wide-reaching effects this can have. For the most part, she keeps her research to asbestos communities, but these are part of a much larger tradition of global resource towns.

"Pollution" (2008) by Bob August. Licensed under Creative Commons.

By Ryan O’Connor

One of the challenges I confronted while researching my dissertation was figuring out who the founders were of Toronto’s pioneering environmentalist organizations. This might sound like a simple task, but records of this sort are often difficult to find.

Sometimes the records that exist present a one-sided story. In Front Row Centre: A Perspective on Life, Politics and the Environment, former alderman Tony O’Donohue makes reference to his founding of the Group Action to Stop Pollution (GASP) in 1967. While O’Donohue makes the organization sound like a solo creation, an ensuing conversation with James Bacque, the former chief editor at Macmillan Company of Canada, lawyer Joseph Sheard, and their spouses led to a claim that GASP’s genesis occurred during a meeting in Sheard’s living room. To the best of their knowledge, O’Donohue was not at this meeting. All of the aforementioned attended the group’s public launch in December 1967. The following month saw the creation of GASP as a legal entity. The accompanying document was signed by Bacque, Sheard, and three others. So, who are the founders? Would it be the people present when the idea of forming an anti-pollution group was first proposed? Would it be the people attached to the organization when it made its public debut? Or would it be the people who signed the group’s legal charter?

For some, this may seem trivial. That said, this is a country where a small but vocal segment of the population believes Louis Riel deserves to be recognized as a Father of Confederation, even though he did not attend any one of the Charlottetown, Quebec, or London conferences that led to the creation of Canada.

The group at the centre of my dissertation is Pollution Probe, Canada’s first high profile environmental activist organization. Over the years, many of Pollution Probe’s early members have risen to prominent positions elsewhere within the movement. Some have cited themselves as founders of the organization even though they did not join until several months after it began operations. Further confusing the matter is the fact that a small number of its members were officially recognized by the organization as “founders” several years ago. One person that was recognized as such later told me that she was not involved with Pollution Probe until autumn 1970. (Pollution Probe held its first meetings in spring 1969.) As she explained, “I was credited with being there earlier because I think they wanted to say that there were more women involved …. It was a politically correct move to call me a founder.”

The most evident case of historical revisionism within Canada’s environmentalist community is that of Greenpeace. As it turns out, two of the organization’s former members have seen their status as founders publicly renounced. Greenpeace evolved out of the Don’t Make A Wave Committee (DMAWC), which was created to oppose nuclear testing in the Aleutian Islands. In 1971 a crew supported by DMAWC loaded onto a chartered vessel, the Phyllis Cormack, with the goal of sailing into the test site. Traditionally, members of DMAWC and the environmentalists aboard the Phyllis Cormack have been recognized as Greenpeace’s founders. However, Patrick Moore, one of the latter, has noted that various branches of the organization have written him out of their history.  Paul Watson, who was involved in DMAWC as well as the Aleutian campaign as a member of the shore crew, had also been recognized as one of the founders of Greenpeace.  However, in recent times Watson, like Moore, has been stripped of this recognition. According to Moore, Greenpeace is distancing itself from him due to his outspoken support for nuclear energy. Watson, on the other hand, was voted off of the Greenpeace board of directors in 1977, and has since then denounced the corporatization of the organization while adopting more radical tactics in his own work. Recognition as founders of Greenpeace, and the credibility this provides, is a valuable commodity for Moore and Watson. However, it appears that Greenpeace wishes to deny this to figures whose views it disagrees with.

Who, then, is a founder? The definition is up for debate, and apparently varies from organization to organization. That said, two things are clear. Being a founder has inherent value, and there are people who want to control who receives this recognition. It is the historian’s job to be aware of this and to prevent a Big Brother-styled rewrite of the past.

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.  You can follow him on Twitter: @ryaneoconnor

“Knowing your Public(s)—The Significance of Audiences in Public History”
2013 Annual Meeting, National Council on Public History
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 17-20, 2013

In 2013 the National Council on Public History will meet at the Delta Ottawa City Centre, in the heart of downtown Ottawa, Canada, with Canada’s Parliament buildings, historic ByWard market, national museums and historic sites, river trails, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Rideau Canal, and numerous cafes and restaurants within easy walking distance. The program committee invites panel, roundtable, workshop, working group, and individual paper proposals for the conference. The Call for Poster sessions will be issued in fall 2012.

As Canada’s capital, Ottawa is the national centre of the museum, archival and heritage community, and its historical and cultural attractions draw 5 million national and international tourists annually. Ottawa’s two universities have strong connections to public and applied history. The federal government employs many history practitioners and creates a market for private consultants. With so many diverse fields of Public History theory and practice represented, Ottawa is an ideal place to consider issues and ideas associated with the theme of “Knowing your Public(s)—The Significance of Audiences in Public History.”

These could include:

• the changing nature of the public and the evolution of the discipline over the last forty years;
• how the public and Public Historians influence each other in the production of history;
• the effects of changing approaches to public participation, reciprocity, and authority on Public History theory and practice;
• the impact of digital media on expanding or excluding public engagement;
• generational differences including Public History for the millennial generation;
• intersections between Public History practised at universities and in the broader community;
• issues related to working with ‘closed’ audiences in fields such as litigation, or government-directed, research;
• access to and use of grey literature
• the increasing need for audience relevance in times of economic recession;
• and diverse cultural and multi-national approaches to commemorating events such as the bi-centennial of the War of 1812 or the 60th anniversary of the armistice of the Korean War.

We welcome submissions from all areas of the field, including teaching, museums, archives, heritage management, tourism, consulting, litigation-based research, and public service. Proposals may address any area of Public History, but we especially welcome submissions which relate to our theme. Case studies should evoke broader questions about practice in the field. The program committee prefers complete session proposals but will endeavor to construct sessions from proposals for individual presentations. Sessions are 1.5 hours (working groups may be longer); significant time for audience discussion should be included in every session. The committee encourages a wide variety of forms of conversation, such as working groups, roundtables, panel sessions, and professional development workshops, and urges participants to dispense with the reading of papers. Participants may be members of only one panel, but may also engage in working groups, introducing sessions and leading discussions. See the NCPH website at www.ncph.org for details about submitting your proposal and be sure to peruse past NCPH programs for ideas about new session/event formats.

Proposals are due by July 15, 2012.

All presenters and other participants are expected to register for the annual meeting. If you have questions, please contact the program committee co-chairs or the NCPH program director.

2013 Program Committee Co-Chairs

Michelle A. Hamilton
Director of Public History
The University of Western Ontario
mhamilt3@uwo.ca

Jean-Pierre Morin
Treaty Historian
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada
JeanPierre.Morin@aadnc-aandc.gc.ca

NCPH Program Director
Carrie Dowdy
dowdyc@iupui.edu

by Mike Commito

Titanic at the docks (Wikipedia Commons)

This week marks the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the luxury ocean liner, R.M.S. Titanic. The vessel was on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City when it struck an iceberg on the night of 14 April 1912, sinking in the early hours of the morning.

The ship was supposed to make history through its luxury, power, and efficiency. However, after fatally colliding with the iceberg, it still made history but in a much more profound and unintended way. The incident resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people, making it one of the worst maritime disasters on record. Moreover, it was a watershed moment in human history: it highlighted the limitations of technology and the idea of human infallibility. But it also spurred a memory industry that has continued to re-remember the ship and its fateful night in April 1912.

As the centennial anniversary of this event approaches, we will be bombarded by television specials and radio spots that commemorate its history. Most notably, James Cameron’s blockbuster and Academy Award winning film, Titanic (1997), was re-released on the silver screen on 4 April 2012, enhanced and in 3D format. In addition, the M.S. Balmoral recently set sail from Southhampton on 8 April as part of Miles Morgan Travel’s promotional Titanic Memorial Cruises for the month of April. The Balmoral and another ship scheduled to depart on 10 April will both replicate the Titanic’s maiden voyage albeit with a few minor adjustments to compensate for technological improvements. Tempting fate or paying homage in a peculiar way?

As an historian I am curious about the ways in which the Titanic has been remembered by different groups and individuals over time. French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs has argued that there is not only individual memory, but also group or collective memory. Furthermore, the collective memory of a group is dependent upon the framework to which that group is exposed and how they are situated in society.  Consequently, there is, as Halbwachs wrote, “no memory without perception.” For many of my generation, it is probable that Cameron’s film was our first exposure to the catastrophe and may have been critical in generating interest in the history of Titanic. However, some have argued that the film is historically inaccurate and thus should not be viewed as a piece of historical media. Perhaps, but the film has engrained itself into our collective memory.  Bad acting aside, it has been significant in shaping our perceptions of the historical event. Besides, numerous Titanic­ inspired books, films, and other artifacts over the years have challenged the notion of historical authenticity.

German artist Willy Stöwer created one of the first visual representations of the event in 1912 with his painting, Titanic Sinking. Although iconic, the work contains a few noteworthy errors, such as the inclusion of numerous large icebergs in the background and smoke billowing from the ship’s fourth funnel.

Willy Stower, Titanic Sinking, 1912 (Wikipedia Commons)

In reality, Titanic only had three operational funnels, with a fourth dummy funnel erected to make it appear that it was on par with the speed and power of rival ships, the R.M.S. Lusitania and Mauretania, both of which had four operational funnels. Yet, it is still one of Stöwer’s most widely circulated and famous works. Since no photographs of the sinking exist, artistic renderings of the ship’s demise were the most powerful way for people to visualize an unfathomable tragedy.

In 1955, Walter Lord published A Night to Remember, a book that is still regarded by many as the definitive source about the ship and the sinking. Three years later, it was adapted for the silver screen, bearing the same title, and is still regarded by some as the most accurate Titanic film – including Cameron’s. Yet, Roy Ward Baker, the film’s director, depicts the ship sinking in one piece.  While we know today this is inaccurate, it was unknown at the time.  Robert Ballard did not discover the wreck of the ship until 1985; before then, it was unclear  if the ship had broken in two. Even so, does it matter that the above-mentioned painting and film are not entirely historically accurate? Do we as historians have to pass judgments on historical representations outside the academy? I do not believe that the historian is the ultimate arbiter of history, and therefore efforts spent policing the commemoration of Titanic or other events would be a futile exercise. After all, these representations are already part of the collective memory of our generation and those before us. The long-term viability of these paintings, books, and films has demonstrated their significance, and are therefore no less important than the works of historians.

People have also commemorated the Titanic in much more bizarre ways in recent years through the production of memorabilia. Some of these representations might be a little less tasteful than others, but it does not necessarily mean they are less important in the construction of how we remember Titanic. More importantly, with the increasing importance of global online commerce, many of these representations have allowed Titanic to transcend books and cinema.

Individuals unsatisfied with Roy Ward Baker’s or James Cameron’s big screen sinkings can actually order a giant inflatable slide that is supposed to recreate the final moments of the disaster, when the ship’s stern broke apart from the main haul before plunging into the Atlantic. Anyone looking to plan a party in April can order from the slide from Party USA. But if you really want to break the ice at your next party you should order the Gin & Titonic ice cube set from Fred & Friend’s.  Rather than chilling your drinks with standard cubes, the moulds give you the option of either sinking ocean liners or icebergs into your drink of choice.

Titanic slide (Party USA)

Gin & Titonic ice cube set (Amazon.com)

Instead of spending your money on Titanic themed party novelties, you could save up with a piggybank from Amazon that comes in the shape of a skull of a former R.M.S. Titanic sailor. A great way to teach your children the value of savings and ensure they develop an aversion to maritime travel.

Titanic skull piggybank (Amazon.com)

The commemoration of Titanic raises some important issues for historians and the public at large. Is there a best way to remember something? And more importantly for historians, do all interpretations of a historical event need to remain absolutely true to history? Even if they do not, there is no stopping or denying the significance they can have on shaping society’s perception of a given event. The year 2012 is far from over, and Titanic is just one episode that will be remembered and debated this year. From now until 2015, the bicentennial of the War of 1812 will be commemorated.  It should prove to be a contentious time for Canadian historians.

The bow of Titanic at its final resting place (Wikipedia Commons)

Mike Commito is a second-year PhD student at McMaster University. His dissertation, tentatively titled ”Orphaned Cubs and Responsible Hunters: Conflicting Values and the Management of Black Bears in Ontario, 1900-2000? focuses on the development of black bear hunting policy and management strategies in Ontario. He is interested in how various groups in the province such as biologists, policy-makers and the lay public viewed bears and how this perspective has changed over time.

By Merle Massie

A major drought of unknown intensity and duration is about to hit the Oxbow Basin in Canada. With a population of about three million people over a landbase of 175,000 square kilometers devoted primarily to agriculture, water management will consume all levels of governance, from the farmstead to the largest city.

What are you going to do?

Send members of the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security and the School of Environment and Sustainability into action! And oh yes — include an environmental historian.

Recognize the Oxbow Basin? It is a fictional place, created for the recent Invitational Drought Tournament sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on March 2, 2012 in Saskatoon. What, you might ask, is a drought tournament? A new card game? A new version of The Farming Game [TM]? Well, not yet, but something interesting is certainly growing.

The Invitational Drought Tournament is a new, interactive game tool, “designed to help institutions build their capacity around drought preparedness” (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 2012). Part workshop, part competition, the idea was to bring (ideally) multi-disciplinary teams into one room in a game format. Five University teams from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba competed in the event. Working with both existing drought mitigation options and creating new adaptations, the drought tournament was a fun venue to try to identify gaps and vulnerabilities in drought preparedness.

The room was filled with experts: climate change scientists, hydrologists, water modellers, soil scientists, policy analysts, engineers, economists… and the list goes on. David Sauchyn, well known in environmental and drought circles for his proxy tree ring research, brought an impressive group from Regina. Two teams from the University of Alberta complemented a group from the University of Manitoba – who candidly stated that if this had been a flood tournament, they would have wiped the floor with us. True enough. No one knows flood like Manitoba.

What was a historian doing there? I asked myself the same question – especially after I became the U of S team captain. But as an environmental historian who studies drought and flood events (and owns a farm, to boot), there was a space for me. I knew both the context (past drought events) and the on-the-ground implications of agricultural drought mitigation decisions.

University of Saskatchewan Invitational Drought Tournament Team in action, March 2 2012

The energy and research put into the game by its creators is extraordinary. Past extreme climate events – and yes, the Dirty Thirties certainly topped the list – were balanced with information on risk assessment, stream flow and water storage, regional characteristics of the fictitious basin, temperature and precipitation tables, and existing adaptation options from which we could choose.

I was humbled by my team. With players from the global south, the middle east, Israel, the far east and Canada, the U of S drew experience and innovative ideas from around the world. My team had put weeks of work into building scenarios, constructing models to predict the impact of drought on the overall water supply in the basin, economic potentials and drawbacks, and social stress on the system. I was lost. And I was enormously impressed.

University of Saskatchewan Round #2 drought adaptions and modeling

The drought tournament was an opportunity to work with others in a truly multi-disciplinary (and incredibly fast-paced) team environment. With the time clock ticking, negotiating and selecting short and long-term water, land, and financial management options and technological innovations left little time for exploratory discussion or debate. The game went through three years of intensifying drought.

We also opted to create some social innovations. Would you like to come to the Rain Dance we organized with the local Grand Council of the regional aboriginal reserves? With the lakes drying up and tourism plummeting, we all need something fun to look forward to. And how do you know – it might even work!

After the judges scored the overall results, the U of S team took top prize.

What is the point of all this, besides telling you about a fun day?

Increasingly, I see a shift within academia and governmental policy. While positivist natural science and qualitative social science methods are still fundamental to research streams, humanistic skills and perspectives are budging in, too. More and more, large multi- or inter- or trans-disciplinary teams are looking for the skills that historians bring to the table: document analysis; the ability to track landscapes over time and relate it to human dimensions of environmental change; and (I’m told) our ability to synthesize knowledge.

A sense of humour, some imagination, and a willingness to reach out helps, too.

Merle Massie at Invitational Drought Tournament, March 2 2012, in Saskatoon

I know that as an environmental historian, I’m a bit like a magpie: I find all kinds of neat, shiny bits of information from anthropology and archaeology, ecology, hydrology, geography, geology, soil science, economics, government reports, traditional knowledge, photographs, maps, and archival research and put it all together to create a more holistic picture of whatever it is I’m studying. What others consider “context” is my data!

In terms of the Invitational Drought Tournament game, the U of S team – like all the others – offered their multi-disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives not only to the day and the Saskatoon event, but to the game itself. We suggested a host of ways for the game to be improved for future iterations. Ultimately, the game will become a tool that multiple governance systems and levels can use to identify and mitigate extreme climate events.

Because extreme events will happen. Let’s work together, pooling all of our talents and expertise, to identify and rectify the gaps, and suggest positive innovations, while we can.

Merle Massie is a writer and historian, and a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan. Find her blog at: http://merlemassie.wordpress.com/.

"The Discovery of Canada" by Kate Beaton (www.harkavagrant.com)

by Jeffers Lennox

Historians of Canada specifically, and academics generally, have found themselves of late at the business end of some harsh criticisms.  To believe the editorials in major newspapers, academics write about obscure topics for the benefit of a small handful of other academics; we find students and teaching to be a distraction from our esoteric research projects; and we have no qualms about abdicating our public responsibility, even though most of us are paid from the public purse.  Based on these kinds of charges, it is no surprise that many Canadians are calling for reform in the university system.  But what about demanding more of Canadians themselves?

This blog has done much to demonstrate the deep interest in public engagement felt by historians of all disciplines (perhaps specifically in Canada) and critics should take note.  Too often, those taking pot-shots at historians are themselves not interested enough in history to move beyond arguments drawn from the lowest hanging fruit.  For example, David Frum recently castigated an issue of the Canadian Historical Review by listing only the titles of the articles (though he did demonstrate his credentials by almost spelling our first Prime Minister’s name correctly).  In other cases, the field is criticized in useful ways that reflect the concerns of historians and administrators.  Paul Martin is right to emphasize the need for more content on Aboriginal history in elementary and high school.  What many critics might not realize, however, is that few are harder on historians than historians.  Those of us early in our careers (taking our cues from equally concerned senior scholars) are willing and eager to address shortcomings in the curricula, participate in public events, and make our research accessible to the widest possible audience.  The growth of digital history and open access (not to mention the rise of environmental history) has facilitated the sharing of information in ways that reflect the inherent desire among historians to influence public opinion and public policy.

To put it simply, many historians are doing whatever possible to make our work publicly accessible and engaging.  This isn’t to suggest that we don’t fall into academic gibberish or occasionally engage in inside baseball, but it might be time to address another (equally troubling) question – what if Canadian citizens aren’t interested in the past?  Before I go down that rabbit hole, a quick comparison: several very successful books on Canadian history (or topics generally held to be of interest among Canadians) by American historians have been published in the United States.  Alan Taylor recently published an excellent study on the War of 1812; David Hackett Fischer offered his audience a sweeping view of Champlain and the founding of Quebec; and John Mack Faragher provided a nuanced and incisive account of the Acadian Deportation (from their “American homeland”, no less).  Historians in the United States win Pulitzer Prizes, their books can be found on the shelves at Chapters, and many (such as Jill Lepore and Gordon Wood) write regularly for major magazines.  These historians aren’t better qualified, smarter, or (necessarily) better writers than their Canadian counterparts.  The difference, in my mind, is that they have a more eager audience.

The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History (2010) by Jill Lepore

Take for example the rise of the Tea Party.  Disregarding their troubling political views, these engaged citizens are rooted in an idea of the past – the importance of the American Revolution, the ideals of the founding fathers, and the desire to return to the “true” American spirit.  Aware of this “use and abuse” of history, Harvard’s Jill Lepore offered a readable corrective in the award-winning The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History (2010).  The success of this book, and others, reflects not only good history writing (by authors) but also good history reading (by citizens).  The same is true of the books by Alan Taylor and David Hackett Fischer (who in 2011 was invited to give the Creighton Lecture at the University of Toronto).

If historians in Canada don’t enjoy the same kind of public success, is it necessarily the historians’ fault?  One would think that the rise of the Occupy Movement might have engendered greater interest in the history of social movements and public resistance beyond the (useful and influential) works of Naomi Klein.  For instance, in Vancouver (the home of Adbusters and, consequently, the intellectual birthplace of the Occupy Movement) there is not a single copy of Ian McKay’s recent Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada (2008) available in any Chapters within a one hundred kilometre radius.  And I doubt that’s because they’re all sold out.

Despite these discouraging signs, I don’t believe that Canadians are uninterested in their history.  I also don’t believe that Canadian historians are unable, unwilling, or uninterested in reaching a wider audience.  But something is obviously amiss.  It is time to stop laying blame and start working toward connecting the Canadian public to the historians who are doing their very best to understand and explain the past for the benefit of all citizens.

Jeffers Lennox is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia.  His research interests focus on how geographic knowledge influenced political and cultural relations among British, French, and Native groups in early North America and the Atlantic World.  His blog is www.jefferslennox.com

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.”

By Dan Macfarlane

National Peacekeeping Monument in Ottawa

The federal government’s recent initiatives in foreign policy and glorification of Canada’s military past (particularly in light of the bicentennial of the War of 1812) have given rise to plenty of complaints, including suggestions that the country needs to return to its peacekeeping roots. While I agree with many of the criticisms, I am not so sure that the Conservatives are really taking the country in vastly new international and security policy directions.

Unfortunately, Canada does have definite elements of a militaristic and imperialist past. It therefore does a disservice, even if the aims are admirable, to contend that we need to return to our peacekeeping and altruistic glory days. To illustrate, I’m not even going to get into the many conflicts involving Canada prior to 1945, but will engage just Canada’s peacekeeping legacy. This comes out of the so-called “golden age” of Canadian external affairs, the decade or so following the last years of the Second World War. A cottage industry of shibboleths has arisen about this period, and some historians have argued that there is a peacekeeping myth (with Sean Maloney as one of the most prominent).

In the conventional narrative, the immediate post-1945 years were a unique historical period where Canada could have guns and butter, punch above its weight internationally, and help free the world from tyranny. Canada helped create the United Nations, forge new economic systems via institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and hold the democratic and free-world front against communism. And it was capped by Lester Pearson’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the first peacekeeping force to resolve the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Aside of the tendency to credit the genesis of the peacekeeping force entirely to Pearson (it wasn’t his idea), the main goal of the peacekeeping operation proposed during the Suez Crisis was to prevent the Soviets from exploiting the situation in order to split and weaken the NATO alliance. In other words, modern peacekeeping and the Nobel Prize came out of what was above all a pragmatic attempt to solidify the western military alliance, not an altruistic attempt to share the Canadian way with the rest of the world.

Lester Pearson at the United Nations. Library and Archives Canada, C-018532, MIKAN ID 3193176

It was self-interest that shaped Canada’s foreign policy in the transition from the Second World War to the Cold War. The aim in creating economic organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund was to entrench a capitalist world order, which benefitted only certain geographic and economic interests. And when the UN soon proved to have no teeth, Canada was at the forefront of the move to create a military alliance – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – that did. NATO, not the UN, was undoubtedly the most important international body in the eyes of Canadian policy-makers throughout the Cold War.

The reality is that Canada was complicit in creating the nuclear arsenal and buttressing the expanding American power – empire, if you prefer. I suspect most who lament the militarization going on under the Harper Conservatives would find abhorrent the percentage of GDP that was spent on the military in the mid-1950s. Indeed, at the time of Pearson’s peace prize, about half of the Canadian federal government’s budget went to the armed forces and security.

Peace-keeping subsequently grew in stature in Canada for several reasons. First, the success of the initial peacekeeping mission (i.e. Pearson winning the Nobel Prize) made it a natural thing to celebrate. Second, peacekeeping required far less resources, men, and materiel, and greatly reduced the chances of Canadian casualties, than did conventional warfare. So it cost less and played well at home. Finally, it was a convenient and effective means of playing up Canadian exceptionalism and psychologically distinguishing Canada from the U.S. – a welfare rather than a warfare state.

Granted, one can make the self-fulfilling prophecy argument: that peacekeeping, though it grew out of power politics and self-interest, eventually burned itself into the Canadian psyche and identity, and Canadians did come to see themselves as peacekeepers. As an aside, I think pragmatic rather than altruistic roots could apply apply to the idea of Canada as an inherently tolerant and multicultural society. But that is another topic for another day.

But even if that was true several decades ago, we currently aren’t even close to being one of the world’s leaders in contributing to peacekeeping, and haven’t been for a long time. Moreover, the type of peacekeeping Canada has historically practiced is only useful in limited scenarios with sufficient conditions and parameters; we end up with experiences like Somalia and Rwanda. The knee-jerk reaction often seems to be to send peacekeepers, even when they aren’t viable or wanted.

Canada, though less oppressive and warlike than many other countries, is not the shining beacon to the rest of the world that some suppose it to be. We continue to export asbestos and dirty oil. And let’s not forget that the UN is investigating how this country has historically treated the indigenous peoples within our own borders.

Don’t get me wrong – I think Canada has done many things right, relative to other countries, and I am proud to be a Canadian. Nor am I advocating for armed intervention over peace initiatives. I have purposefully and selectively adopted a certain perspective here, and I am guilty to a degree of excessively judging from the present. I actually have a more favourable view of Canadian foreign policy in the early Cold War than I am presenting as I believe that historical context and contingencies can blunt the more excessive condemnations of Canada’s international policies in the early Cold War.

Nonetheless, I think there is a danger to over-romanticizing the past and cherry-picking what we want, especially when the historical precedents don’t necessarily exist. This doesn’t mean that contemporary calls for a different type of foreign policy or approach to the military need to be silenced. But appeals to history need to be accurate; otherwise, it is akin to building a house on a foundation of sand. We need to soberly assess where we have been as a country if we want to take lessons from the past to build for the future.

Bibliography

-Robert Bothwell. Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945-1984. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.

-Norman Hillmer and Jack Granatstein. For Better or for Worse: Canada and the United States into the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: Thomson/Nelson, 2007.

-Margaret MacMillan. The Uses and Abuses of History. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008.

-Sean Maloney. Canada and UN Peacekeeping. Toronto: Vanwell, 2003.

-see also: http://www.seanmmaloney.com/articles/i0077.html

-Yves Spengler. The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. Toronto: Fernwood Press, 2009.

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

by Ian Mosby

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

To a certain extent, this makes sense. Most of us study some pretty serious stuff and the last thing we want to do is seem like we’re making fun of our historical subjects or being condescending towards the past. And, while academic life is often absurd, it’s usually unintentionally so and, in the current job market, often leans towards the tragic rather than the comic end of the literary spectrum.

This is what makes the work of Canadian comic book artist Kate Beaton’s work so amazing. In Beaton’s skillful hands, even Canadian history is funny. (I know!?!)  Take our Prime Ministers, for instance.

(See more about Prime Ministers here.)

Beaton, who is originally from Mabou, Cape Breton and holds a BA in History from Mount Allision University, has been publishing her mostly historical themed comics online for a few years now, but her recent collection, Hark! A Vagrant (Drawn and Quarterly, 2011) has seen her reach a much wider international audience. In fact, it’s been on the New York Times “Graphic Hardcover Books” bestseller list for an astonishing 18 weeks and counting. In other words, a whole lot more people are getting their history from Beaton than from the article you published in that obscure (but important!) academic journal ­– and, I would argue, that’s not necessarily such a bad thing at all.

While Canadian history is one of Beaton’s fortes – which makes her international success even more impressive – her work is as diverse as her interests. While much of it is focused on prime ministers, kings, and other larger than life historical figures, she is equally adept at social history as well. One of my favourites, for instance, is her recurring series on the lives of 15^th century peasants. (See more here.)

As with these medieval snapshots, Beaton’s work, at its best, highlights the tragedy, farce, and humanity of shared past. Her work on the French Revolution, for instance, captures its madness and violence almost perfectly. (See more here.)

Part of the appeal of Beaton’s work is that it’s great history as well as great jokes. Like that other famous Canadian graphic artist Chester Brown, whose graphic novel Louis Riel is one of the better modern Canadian works of historical fiction, Beaton has clearly also done her research. As she recently told CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi, her comics typically take a long time to write because she aims to “make a comic that is funny to someone who knows nothing about that person and someone who knows everything about that person, who wrote their thesis on them.” The easy and whimsical look of her comics, in other words, is not a reflection of the hours of reading and work that goes into each frame.

For instance, any historian of science would agree that, in just six short frames and with some dark humour, Beaton manages to capture the tragedy and injustice of pioneering biologist Rosalind Franklin’s unfair treatment at the hands of her sexist, and much more well-known, Nobel Prize winning male colleagues.

I could go on with examples (like these great comics about George Orwell, Dude Watching With the Bronte Sisters, Diefenbaker, and why Canadian history is[n’t] boring) but, really, you should just go out and buy the book.

And if there’s anything we can learn from Beaton it’s that history is more funny than we think it is and, contrary to what we’re sometimes led to believe, there is a real public appetite for history. We should therefore support our homegrown popularizers of history like Beaton and Brown – perhaps by inviting them to participate our often overly exclusive conferences, by giving them some real recognition in our journals, and maybe by even trying to collaborate on a few projects that would help bring some additional financial support for their important work. And maybe, no definitely, you should just leave the jokes up to Beaton for your lectures if you want to hear more laughs than groans.

You can read Beaton’s new work via her website (http://harkavagrant.com), her Tumblr (http://beatonna.tumblr.com/), or her often very funny Twitter stream (@beatonna).

Ian Mosby is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Guelph and studies the history of food and nutrition in Canada during the twentieth century.