Former National Archives building, Ottawa

By Sean Kheraj

The conversation has been ongoing among Canadian historians for the past few years, especially since the federal government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, altered the contents of the official citizenship guide for new Canadians to place greater emphasis on military history and the monarchy while ignoring or downplaying the country’s history of progressive social policy, multiculturalism, and social justice movements. Many Canadian historians have been concerned that the Conservative Party of Canada is attempting to reinvent the narrative of the country’s past for its own political purposes.

Professor Ian McKay explicitly outlined this case in his keynote address at the 2011 New Frontiers in Graduate History conference at York University. He has also published a complete articulation of this argument in his forthcoming book (co-authored with Jamie Swift) called, Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety. A group of historians recently collaborated to publish the People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada in an effort to counterbalance the refashioning of Canadian history to suit the political interests of the governing party in Ottawa.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s recent transformation of the federal budget and his government’s policy of mass layoffs of federal employees has initiated a takeover of the public financing of historical research by the political branch of government. Cuts to the funding of the federal government’s three independent granting councils, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), constitute a total budget reduction of more than $40 million dollars. While the funding to SSHRC is set to be reduced, Heritage Canada has increased its direct control over the funding of historical research directly out of the minister’s office through new program-specific funding opportunities, including the War of 1812 Commemoration Fund and the Diamond Jubilee Community Celebration fund.

“So you think this government is interested in Canadian History?” asks Professor Eric Sager from the University of Victoria in a recent Times-Colonist op-ed, “Think again.” These policy changes affirm the recent argument of Jeffrey Simpson in his Globe and Mail column in which he alleged that “[t]he Conservatives display two-facedness in the telling of history, systematically reducing the role of the informed and the neutral in explaining the country to Canadians, while enhancing the capacity of the government to cherry-pick what it chooses to highlight.” The role of the informed will be crippled through budget cuts like the ones to Library and Archives Canada. According to the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), these cuts “will have devastating effects on our nation’s ability to acquire and preserve its history.”

At first glace this statement may seem like an exaggeration, but the proposed cuts cited by CAUT suggest otherwise:
• the elimination of 21 of the 61 archivists and archival assistants that deal with non-governmental records
• the reduction of digitization and circulation staff by 50%
• a significant reduction in the number of staff that deal with preservation and conservation of documents
• the closure of the interlibrary loans unit

These so-called “austerity” policies have also led to the scheduled closures of several government libraries and archives. And Parks Canada, one the main branches of the federal government that conducts direct historical research, has recently suffered a massive round of job losses.
In short, within the wider Conservative Party of Canada’s ideological agenda to reduce the role of government in the lives of Canadians lies a contradictory policy initiative for direct cabinet control over the financing, research, and production of knowledge about Canadian history. If left unchallenged, this anti-intellectual politicization of history, as Simpson suggests, will result in “a deformed version of the past.”

Sean Kheraj is an assistant professor of Canadian and environmental history at York University. He blogs at http://seankheraj.com

This is the third in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th.

By Ian McKay and Jamie Swift

Warmonger politicians customarily indulge in high rhetoric, attempting to rally the citizenry round the flag and boost the bloodletting. Or when invoking the glories of past wars. The War of 1812 was no exception.

Those who witness war’s gruesome reality often remember things differently, as do many historians.

“It would be a useful lesson to cold-blooded politicians, who calculate on a war costing so many lives and so many limbs as they would on a horse costing so many pounds,” wrote embittered battlefield surgeon William ‘Tiger’ Dunlop, “to witness such a scene, if only for one hour.”

In his 1847 memoir of Upper Canada, Dunlop recalled treating the wounded, often by amputation. The scene he recommended to callous statesmen unfolded in the withering heat of the ramshackle Butler’s Barracks at Fort George, down the Niagara River from Queenston Heights. Flies lighted on the wounded, depositing their eggs so quickly that “maggots were bred in a few hours, producing dreadful irritation…..”

Dunlop worked 48 hours straight before literally falling asleep on his feet. One of the 220 wounded he came upon in a single morning was a gray-haired American farmer whose wife had helped him to struggle across to the enemy side, seeking treatment under a flag of truce. She was a “respectable elderly woman,” her husband either a militia man or a camp follower. She held his head in her lap as he slowly expired.

“O that the King and the President were both here this moment to see the misery their quarrels lead to,” Dunlop recalled her moaning. “They surely would never go to war without a cause that they could give as a reason to God on the last day, for thus destroying the creatures he has made in his own image.”

Dunlop, later a prominent politician and magistrate remembered the military incompetence of poorly planned deployment of medical men like himself as “one of the many blunders of this blundering war.”

Two hundred years later Canada’s Prime Minister remembers the War of 1812 as “the beginning of a long and proud military history in Canada.” Stephen Harper has decided to commemorate the War of 1812 with a $28 million heritage extravaganza, selling what Pierre Berton called a “bloody and senseless conflict” to the citizenry for the simple reason that it was a war. That’s because Harper and his New Warrior supporters among historians, journalists and sundry militarists are attempting to establish war as the pith and essence of all Canadian history.

Military metaphysics, the presentation of war in a pleasing and glorious fashion, are a mere prelude to sure-to-be-much-bigger-and-more-glorious commemorations in the next few years.  The centenary of World War I looms large in the minds of militarists and the far right as they set about priming Canadians for the celebration of Vimy and all the rest. It will romanticize that ghastly spasm of ineptitude in the service of a “Birth of a Nation” story, all the while airbrushing out its incalculable costs.

The celebration of the War of 1812 will cost Ottawa $28 million – enough to operate its recently eliminated Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory for eighteen years. But the New Warrior government has its priorities, among them underlining the importance of yet another milestone in the history of barbarity.

According to Stephen Harper, or more likely one of his hirelings, the war helped establish Canada’s “path toward becoming an independent and free country…. The heroic efforts of Canadians then helped define who we are today, what side of the border we live on, and which flag we salute.”

This though there was no such thing as Canada at the time. The famously undefended border has become a militarized “security perimeter.” And few Canadians are known to indulge in patriotic displays of flag-waving.

No matter. In 2012 Canada is being treated to sanitized glorifications and events designed to attract tourists. In early June the anniversary of the Battle of Stoney Creek will bring scores of re-enactors to suburban Hamilton. There will be music, costumes, games, readings and tours. And certainly musket fire.

It is uncertain whether New York historian Douglas DeCroix’s summary of the dust-up at Stoney Creek will feature in the festivities. The battle, he explained, was “in many ways representative of the War of 1812 in microcosm. The American commanders are captured. The British commander gets lost in the woods. The Americans are technically defeated but retain the field. The British are victorious but they retreat.”

Such is not the message being peddled by Ottawa. Nor will we be reminded how profoundly the British double-crossed their crucial allies. Although Tecumseh is celebrated as a hero, the fact that First Nations  people were the war’s real losers tends to be downplayed. After 1814, with the Treaty of Ghent in which the British negotiators betrayed the native claims, the First Nations came to be treated as “Wards of the State,” not separate entities. And the dream of a kind of native-controlled polity in the heart of North America — to which the British had given their tentative support — was gone for good.

What remains is the war’s curious paradox – reflected in New Warrior attempts to commemorate the American invasion and the violence it provoked. This became clear in early 2003 as a surge of protest against the impending American invasion of another country  had culminated in the largest demonstrations in the history of the world.

Just as American and British troops rolled into Iraq, right-wing zealots in the Niagara region organized a “Canadians for Bush” rally, picking an odd spot for their modest get together — Brock’s Monument at Queenston. The irony seemed lost on the prominent politicians who attended. They included Ontario cabinet ministers Jim Flaherty and Tim Hudak as well as former Canadian Alliance leader and prime ministerial candidate Stockwell Day.

Day’s new boss, Stephen Harper, really did want Canada to follow George W. Bush into a war that would, as so many were predicting at the time, turn into a murderous and catastrophic blunder.

Harper had told a similar, Their-Country-Right-Or-Wrong rally in Toronto that he supported “the liberation of the people of Iraq. Let us pledge today, that in the future, when our American and British friends and our friends around the world take on the cause of freedom and democracy, we will never again allow ourselves to be isolated.”

Pierre Berton, the most successful popularizer of the Canadian story and a notable chronicler of his country’s wars, concluded his two-volume history of the War of 1812 by pointing out that “Political and military leaders constantly used the clichés of warfare to justify bloodshed and rampage. Words like honour…liberty…independence…freedom were dragged out to rally the troops, most of whom, struggling to save their skins, knew them to be empty.”

Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety, by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift, explores these themes in considerable depth. It will be published by Between The Lines Press in May.  Special thanks to Elliot Hanowski.

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

This is the second in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th.

By Jonathan Seiling

It is widely recognized that many Upper Canadians did not demonstrate utmost loyalty toward the British Crown on the eve of the war, or even during the war. Some settlers objected to the war in communities on both sides of the border, whether on pragmatic grounds, or due to “disaffection” and political dissent. Others refused to participate on principle.

In the years leading up to the war economic migrants from the U.S., who had little fondness for British rule, settled amid the Loyalists and came to represent a strong majority of Upper Canadians. This created problems for the defense of the province, just as it now creates problems for those who wish to portray early settlers in Upper Canada as a patriotic collective. We might ask ourselves today: amid this national reflection upon the war, is there adequate public space to commemorate and even celebrate the diversity of political orientations in Upper Canada during the War of 1812? Or should the inconvenient legacy of disloyal settlers, and those who refused on other grounds to fight in the war be merely viewed askance?

Among the diverse pockets of settlers, some resisted the war based on what was then called “scruples of conscience”, referring to the religious beliefs of Quakers, Mennonites and other so-called peace churches. Most of them migrated from the state of Pennsylvania starting in the 1780s and they continued to arrive up to and even during the years of the war. John Graves Simcoe regarded the industrious character of these peace church pioneers, and their general refusal to support the American Revolution, as being eminently suitable for the settlement plan of Upper Canada he was devising in the 1780s. By 1793 the Upper Canadian Parliament enacted militia laws that officially granted exemption to Quakers, Mennonites and a related group called “Tunkers”, which was later renamed “Brethren in Christ.” They were even granted exemption from swearing any oath, something that would put Isaac Brock ill at ease as he redoubled efforts on the eve of the war to summon loyalty. In exchange for a rather steep fee and a willingness to be engaged in noncombatant service, the historic peace church groups were spared militia duty. However, they were neither spared the ravages of war, nor from becoming pulled into the violent fray, often being conscripted as teamsters for hauling supplies.

These three historic traditions in Canada look, and in some ways behave, dramatically different than they did two centuries ago, which is important to acknowledge as they face the task of commemoration. Today there is a small but vibrant Quaker community in Canada, and a large, diverse group of Mennonites, many of whom descended from the original settlements in Upper Canada. The Brethren in Christ have associated closely with Mennonites, but recently, most notably in the Greater Toronto Area, they have developed a new model of churches based on a mega-church-satellite-movie-theatre-cell-group system, which has adapted various communication technologies and appealed to a younger generation with startling growth. All of these groups are racially diverse, with only a minority having any stake in the heritage of their religious group, let alone ancestral connection to the “pioneers of peace” in Canada. The “scruples of conscience” these three groups shared in the 1800s are not a uniformly prominent feature or identity marker today, yet all three groups seek to reflect on the historical legacy of their denominational forbears.

These three groups are nevertheless aware that they are the heirs to the earliest legacy of conscientious objection and war resistance in Canada. As the bicentennial of the War of 1812 approached they began to investigate the details of their experience in the war and to reflect on the nature of that legacy. With two centuries’ distance it is much easier for historic peace churches to rest more on imagined realities and assume greater uniformity among these religious communities than to embark upon a concerted and honest reflection on the details of that experience. Part of the challenge they face is that their histories have received only cursory attention by scholars, particularly that of the Tunkers and Mennonites.

My own role in these processes has been twofold: chairing the commemoration committee of these three peace church groups, while simultaneously working toward writing a general history on their varied experiences during the war.

A joint working group including Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren in Christ called the 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee has attempted to navigate a course which seeks to strike a balance between resisting creating an idealized version of the past for our present edification and admitting diversity among these constituent groups on the eve of the war without encouraging a total collapse of any collective identity and shared experience within or among the three peace churches. This effort to be historically honest and politically sensitive becomes challenging as my research uncovers some fascinating, yet complex, details of the events and actions of the members of these communities. Personal and collective motivations, allegiances and positions, make creating a shared identity a difficult task.

**********

The 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee has created webpages and a blog, hosted by Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, which provide information about peace church related commemoration activities and facilitate a forum for those who want to reflect on the voices of peace ranging from 1812 to the present: http://ontario.mcc.org/warpeace-1812

The War Resistance in 1812 blog, hosted by Carol Penner, welcomes guest bloggers, comments and links to relevant articles online: http://warresistancein1812.blogspot.com/

Historical markers have been being placed in the Niagara region, with plaques dedicated to the pioneers of peace from the Quaker, Brethren in Christ and Mennonite traditions. The texts of the plaques can be viewed on the MCC Ontario webpages, and these are also available in French translation: http://ontario.mcc.org/historical-markers-french-translations

Jonathan Seiling the is the Chairperson of the 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee and a research fellow affiliated with Brock University and the University of Toronto.

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

“Historical Landscapes and Hauntings:

Connecting place to the history and social studies curriculum”

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

A spring walk around the University of Toronto campus

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

ApproachingThePast-Toronto.com

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

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.

“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

This is the first in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th.

By Adriana Ayers, MA Candidate, University of Western Ontario

Augmented reality games (ARGs) are immersive and interactive plot-based games, which break down the barriers between the gaming world and reality. They are not played in any one place or through any one medium, but sprawlsprawled across multiple media elements, such as email, Twitter, YouTube, Wiki pages, text messages, blogs, etc.etc.. No form of communication or digital interaction is off limits. Indeed, the point of an ARG is to pull game play out of the computer and into the real world, blurring the lines of simulation and experience. Unlike a regular computer game, which is controlled by artificial intelligence, ARG players interact directly with the human beings who design and control the game, appropriately named the PuppetMasters.

Tecumseh Lies Here is an augmented reality game developed by faculty and students at the University of Western Ontario, designed to expose players to the history of the War of 1812, while teaching them traditional research techniques and skills necessary for practicing historians. In September 2011, the creators of the game ran a successful beta test on a group of unsuspecting public history graduate students—including me. Suspicious and even unwilling at first, I found myself drawn into the game through its clever incorporation of fake conspiracies among contemporary historiographical debates. My insatiable appetite for puzzles, and my perpetual need to finish what I started, made it difficult for me to ignore. Suddenly my hours spent in the archives filled more than a class requirement; I was solving riddles, unlocking ciphers, and racing around southwestern Ontario to open a GPS-powered treasure boxes.

Tecumseh Lies Here explores the life of the Shawnee war-chief Tecumseh, and the myths and controversy surrounding his death and final resting place. Although Tecumseh died at the Battle of the Thames on October 5 1813, his body was never identified, giving rise to rumors that perhaps he had not died or that his body had been spirited away. White fascination with Tecumseh and the morbid question of his remains grew throughout the nineteenth century.

Tecumseh Lies Here thrust me and my fellow players into a secret world of 1812 enthusiasts still searching for Tecumseh’s bones—a kind of metaphor for continuing contests over the commemoration of the war. Some of the characters we encountered were helpful and encouraging; some were whistleblowers in a complex historical conspiracy; and others were downright terrifying. While playing the game we found our everyday discussions, twitter-feeds, studies, seminars and eventually our dreams, completely consumed by Tecumseh and the mysteries surrounding his death. .

The game blended fictional characters with a genuine historical mystery, and questions about the memory of the real Shawnee leader, and the meaning of the war. To “win” the game, I and the other players had to comb through libraries and archives, gather evidence, interpret primary sources, analyze secondary sources, and debate the best means of moving forward and solving the clues. Heritage and historical sites were part of the game as well. There were riddles involving museum exhibits, clues hidden in parks and battlegrounds, and devices that could only be activated in certain significant locales. The game, like the past, was pervasive—its traces could be anywhere.

One of the most interesting and unexpected aspects of the game was how collaborative it was. From what I’ve read about ARGs, that was part of the point. ARGs are cooperative games that leverage the collective intelligence of all their players. Many historians can attest that sharing is not necessarily our strongest suit. The intricacy and range of the ARG’s content appealed to many learning styles and research strategies, giving everyone in the group their moment to shine. In order to solve clues and move on to a next round, it questioned the ‘acceptable’ way in which we traditionally interact with historical discourse – it challenged the way we viewed history and its creators.

ARGs have exciting potential for education, training, and addressing real world problems.  MIT’s educational ARG Reliving the Revolution (2005) turned the site of the American Revolutionary Battle of Lexington into an augmented learning environment where students learned techniques for historical inquiry, effective collaboration, and critical thinking skills. In the PBS-funded ARG World Without Oil (2007) over 2,000 players from twelve countries came together to manage a simulated global oil crisis, forecasting the results of the crisis and producing plausible strategies for managing a realistic future dilemma. And the World Bank’s Urgent Evoke (2010) enlisted over 19,000 players in an effort to empower young people, especially in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to environmental and social challenges.

Historians and history educators have only begun to take note of these developments but the potential is exciting and real. Besides Tecumseh Lies Here, another ARG for history education is the Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry, developed by faculty and students at the University of Maryland. Historians and history educators have only begun to take note of these developments.  But the potential is exciting and real.

For more discussion on this topic, I and three of the creators of Tecumseh Lies Here will be leading an informal panel discussion at The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway?. We’ll present our experiences writing, running, and playing the game, and try to open up a discussion on the politics and pedagogy of the 1812 bicentennial, and the potentials and challenges of ARGs for history and heritage education. We hope to see you there!

By Jim Clifford

Three  years ago, in the lead up to the Canadian Historical Association meeting, Christine McLaughlin, Ian Milligan, Thomas Peace, Jay Young and I founded ActiveHistory.ca.  At the time we were all graduate students in the history department at York University. The website emerged out of the Active History symposium held in September 2008. Having budgeted to disseminate the conference proceedings, we considered publishing an academic book or a special issue of a journal. But these options, we thought, seemed counter to the public outreach goals of the symposium. Instead we decided to launch a website that embodied the Active History mission, instead of simply publishing some of the essays presented at the workshop (though, Ian Milligan also worked with Left History to publish a special issue).

We launched a website with a certain amount of trepidation, as the conference attendees did not show much enthusiasm for submitting blog posts either before or after the workshop and there were not too many examples in Canada of successful history websites (Christopher Moore and Andrew Smith being the major exceptions to that rule). While cleaning up some papers one day I stumbled on a flyer for a British website called HistoryandPolicy.org. I thought I had found a model for a successful academic website.

The early months in the ActiveHistory.ca archive reflect our orientation towards Papers similar to those published by History & Policy. We issued a call for papers and published three submissions through to the end of 2009. This approach attracted some web traffic, but as Chrisopher Moore quipped in September 2009, ActiveHistory.ca needed to be a little more active. In November the Canadian Government published a new Citizens Guide and spurred Thomas Peace to write a short reaction piece. During the days that followed we watched our visitor stats jump significantly and realized people were linking back to our website. This quickly ended our reluctance to embrace the “blog” format and in the months that followed we started posting weekly Monday contributions from the editorial collective. During this same time period we started to embrace social media and started Facebook and Twitter accounts for the website. These two steps contributed to the significant growth of the website in the months that followed.

In the two and a half years since the blog started in earnest the visitor stats have grown from a few hundred visits a month, to a couple of thousand and now more than ten thousand during our best months. Our authors include a large number of regular contributors, dozens of one-off authors and six members of the editorial collective. One of our ongoing challenges has been to spread beyond our base at York University in Toronto. While none of the founding editors are originally from Toronto,  it is the city where most of us still live and this leads to a lot of focus on Southern Ontario. Thankfully we continue to add contributors from across Canada and even a few posts from people living further afield. Moreover, the editorial collective now includes three historians at universities outside of Toronto, with Krista McCracken at Algoma University, Ian Milligan at Western University, and Thomas Peace at Dartmouth College. The paper section continues to fluctuate in terms of submissions, but some of the essays, including Gérard-François Dumont’s The Berlin Wall: Life, Death and the Spatial Heritage of Berlin, remain some of our most visited webpages.

In addition to the blog and papers section we have also developed a number of additional features on our site. There is a book review section managed with the help of David Weber and George Buri.  We have cultivated a series of partnerships with the Canadian Historical Association, the Mississauga Library System, The History and Education Network, and various departments of the City of Toronto. In the fall, we look forward to an expanded Podcast section and directing more attention to the papers section of the site.

After three years it came time to renew our hosting service and we are very grateful that the history department at York University and the Avie Bennett Historica-Dominion Institute Chair in Canadian History, also at York University, both made sustaining contributions.