Active History

Everybody Can Play: Avoiding Soft Constructionism when Teaching History

September 25, 2015 No Comments

By Mark Abraham

Swift accepts her award. TaylorSwift.com

Swift accepts her Video of the Year award during the 2015 MVAs. TaylorSwift.com

Accepting her Video of the Year award at the 2015 VMAs, pop singer Taylor Swift, surrounded by the women who appear as weapon-toting warriors in her victorious video “Bad Blood,” said she was grateful that “we live in a world where boys can play princesses and girls can play soldiers.” That same night, writer Adam Fleischer posted a review of the awards titled, “Taylor Swift said F—k Gender Norms with Her Video of the Year Speech” to MTV.com.

But did she? Twenty-five years after Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and the queer turn, and smack dab in the middle of a rapid cultural reassessment of gender as trans celebrities become more visible, Swift’s post-essentialist but not-quite-unessential lip service that girls can do “boy” things and vice versa seems fairly quaint. It’s what many constructionists would call “modified essentialism”: the “girl” and “boy” things we can play at are socially constructed, but the majority of bodies—even the potentially subversive ones Swift is valorizing—still belong to “girls” and “boys.”

Serendipitously, Swift’s speech was followed by a performance by pop singer Miley Cyrus, who was surrounded by thirty drag, burlesque, and trans performers. This was, in a way, a constructionist response to Swift’s soft constructionism: that the lines between “girl” and “boy” things are especially porous, and so girls and boys and everybody can play, period. Cyrus’s performance suggested that there are girls, boys, and individuals who reject that binary in part or in whole, but bodies don’t define an identity, and the things that we can play at are a wide range of activities that aren’t rooted in much beyond historically-changing ideas about how “girls” and “boys” should act. Intentionally or not, Cyrus took Swift’s identity politics and threw them down a constructionist rabbit hole. Continue reading →

Introducing Borealia

September 24, 2015 No Comments

By Keith Grant and Denis McKim

borealia It was a packed house in Ottawa this summer for a Canadian Historical Association session entitled, “Who Killed Pre-Confederation Canadian History?” The large turnout and energetic Q & A period seemed to belie the title’s sense of demise: the history of early “Canada” appears to be alive and kicking.

Tom Peace and Robert Englebert, the organizers of that session, have rightly drawn attention to the relative underrepresentation of Pre-Confederation history at the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, and wonder if this signals a wider crisis in the field. However, David Zylberberg has recently questioned this narrative of decline, observing that other measures—such as dissertations, faculty hires, or prestigious book prizes—suggest an enduring interest in early Canadian history. We might add, anecdotally, that for better or for worse, historians who work on New France, Indigenous peoples, or the British Empire often hang their academic hats at more specialized conferences or journals. Early Canadian sessions, for example, were a significant presence at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Halifax, June 2014), and at the American Society for Environmental History (Washington, March 2015). Or recall the lively pieces by Jeffers Lennox (on the geography of interactions in early Nova Scotia) and Nancy Christie (on families and authority in counterrevolutionary Montreal) in recent issues of the William and Mary Quarterly. Plenty of good work on early Canada is being done; it’s just that a good deal of it is being done in contexts that aren’t overtly Canadian. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Seventy: First Nations, Calgary Stampede, and the 1923 Raid on City Hall

September 23, 2015 2 Comments

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By Sean Graham

Perhaps best known for barrel racing, cowboy boots, and more pancakes than any human should ever consume, the Calgary Stampede is the biggest event in the city each summer. It’s so important locally that after the floods in 2013 that left the grounds under water, officials scrambled to ensure it opened on time only three weeks later. Rodeos have held a special place in the mythology of the West – we we looked at that in an episode with Mary Ellen Kelm in 2013 – and for a lot of people, the Calgary Stampede has been the central image of the imagined West.

As has been well documented, the romance of the rodeo has been clouded by gender inequality and the treatment of animals. But perhaps the biggest issue with rodeos is the treatment and representation of First Nations.

During the 2015 Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Susan Joudrey presented on a generally unknown event that sheds on the representation of First Nations at the Calgary Stampede – the 1923 Raid on City Hall. The raid was an organized event to generate publicity for the Stampede where a group of First Nations men ‘invaded’ Calgary City Hall, expelled the mayor, and set up a new municipal government. While the event certainly generated plenty of attention in the local press, it speaks to role First Nations played in Stampede and the racial environment in which the event grew.
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Reclaiming the People’s Memory

September 23, 2015 5 Comments

This essay originally appeared in the Fall 2015 edition of Canada Watch: The Politics of Evidence.

By Karen Murray

Knowing our democratic selves, our democratic possibilities, and most crucially our democratic failings steers us toward greater freedom and justice in Canada and beyond. With these thoughts in mind, I offer a personal reflection on the erosion of the people’s memory at Library and Archives Canada under the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington

When I began new research on democratic governance in 2001, 395 Wellington Street was the National Archives Canada and the National Library of Canada. It had remained as such when the latter two merged into Library and Archives Canada in 2004. Large auditoriums at the street-level housed exhibitions and public talks, allowing visitors to reflect upon different fragments of Canada’s past. On the fifth floor, there was a small café overlooking the Ottawa River. On the flagship research levels, sandwiched between the café and the downstairs exhibits, one would find numerous gifted librarians, archivists, and staff. With their assistance I gained access to materials impossible to find on my own. Down the road, I visited again and again. From across the planet, researchers took heavy advantage of the interlibrary loan program to access publications and microfilmed records. I did too. We were all part of a global democratic experience at the heart of which was Canada’s national memory.

An Institution’s Metamorphosis

Through Locked Doors at the East Side Exhibition Room

I was not prepared for 395 Wellington’s metamorphosis when I returned in the spring of 2015, after several years away. Parts of the second floor, formerly alight with activity, stood eerily dark and silent. During the now much shorter time frames when it appears, a skeletal staff triages visitors toward or away from archivist consultations—mostly away, as far as I could tell. Evidently as a matter of policy, in the first instance, the staff directs researchers toward the computers, even though it is easy to see that Library and Archive Canada’s digital interface is a cumbersome and often useless creature. In any event, there is no substance to the as-much-as-possible-full-digitization-dream for the near future or ever. In 2014, the auditor general released a scathing report. It illustrated the weaknesses of the digital system, the incompleteness of finding aids, and the languishing of uncollected and unprocessed records. Continue reading →

On Guard for Canadian Parochialism, Part Three

September 22, 2015 No Comments

By Gilberto Fernandes

Whence they left

Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Critics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s citizenship, immigration and refugee reforms argue that they are grounded on lies, exaggerations, fear mongering, and narrow-mindedness. Their criticism boils down to the fact that Conservative policymakers have not been informed by reliable data, which is lacking on Canadian emigrants. Recognizing this problem, the Asian Pacific Foundation of Canada (APFC) – one of the leading voices calling on Ottawa to develop diaspora-building policies and institutions – conducted research on Canadians living abroad and published its results in 2011. Besides confirming that the speculations of nativist politicians are largely unfounded, their report uncovered a very large section of the Canadian population that was previously hidden in the statistics. Few Canadians realize that an estimated 2.8 million of their compatriots live abroad – the equivalent of 9% of the country’s total population. Continue reading →

Back to Work: Revitalizing Labour and Working-Class History in Canada

September 21, 2015 2 Comments

By Christo Aivalis, Greg Kealey, Jeremy Milloy, and Julia Smith

North Vancouver Museum and Archives, Reference Number 8073

Earlier this month, Statistics Canada confirmed what many people had known for months: Canada is in a recession. As the economy has been shrinking, unemployment has been increasing. Meanwhile, people who are fortunate enough to be employed are increasingly working precarious, part-time positions for low pay. Canada is not alone. The global crises of capitalism over the past decade are symptomatic of our current age of inequality and instability.

Understanding these ailments and imagining possible remedies requires a solid historical analysis of class relations and capitalism. The most recent meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, however, indicates that these issues are not central to our current historical conversations. Of the approximately 102 panels on the program, the titles of only five mention work, workers, class, labour, or capitalism. This number does not necessarily reflect the important and innovative work being done on these subjects by historians; however, it raises the questions: Why are fewer historians labeling their work as labour and working-class history? Why is it important to study the history of class relations and capitalism? What can we do to foster renewed interest in these topics? Continue reading →

Whose Left? A Call for the Revival of Parliamentary Socialism in Canada

September 18, 2015 No Comments

By Lachlan MacKinnon

Canada, the United States, and the U.K. have recently witnessed a popular revitalization of left-politics that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Jeremy Corbyn, the newly elected Leader of the Labour Party in the U.K., unabashedly appeals to the intellectual traditions of “Old Labour” with a leadership campaign that includes promises to fight austerity, expand public ownership, and invest in public housing, healthcare, and transportation. Bernie Sanders, self-proclaimed democratic socialist and potential candidate for President of the United States, has gathered hundreds of thousands of supporters through promises of doubling the federal minimum wage, implementing single-payer healthcare, and increasing revenue through a more progressive tax structure. In Canada, the NDP has been leading in polls since the beginning of this election cycle – although their campaign has been markedly more centrist than that of either Sanders or Corbyn [1]. Indeed, as Leo Panitch and Colin Leys write, it would appear that nearly three decades of “constant reductions in social services, chronic unemployment, increased stress, longer hours and increased insecurity at work [has robbed] ‘market society’ of its appeal” for a growing segment of the electorate [2].

Thomas Mulcair, 2012; Photo by Matt Jiggins, Creative Commons licence

Emerging out of the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, the anti-neoliberal (if not anti-capitalist) left represents an opportunity for transformation within Canadian social democracy. Continue reading →

Can “The Donald” Trump History as a Third Party Candidate?

September 17, 2015 No Comments

By Oscar Winberg

Donald Trump, August 2015. Michael Vadon/Wikipedia Commons.

The U.S. presidential campaign is already in full swing, even though it is roughly five months before the first ballot will be cast in the primaries and caucuses that select the major party nominees, and over a year until the people will actually elect the 45^th president. This summer much of the coverage has been reserved for a candidate more familiar from reality television than electoral politics; Donald Trump. Polls show Trump leading the considerable line-up of candidates the Republican Party presents, and on account of the polls – and to the despair of political scientists – the media is considering him something of a favorite. If one disregards the polls, or looks beyond the main numbers to focus on favorability ratings and other more relevant information that does not correlate so closely with name recognition and media coverage, there is really nothing that points to Trump having any serious chance of capturing the Republican nomination. Historians might come up with spectacular political surprises from yesteryear, but the influential political science monograph The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (2008) makes it clear that Trump will not find any encouragement in recent political history.

Instead, Trump’s influence in 2016 might come as a third party candidate. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Sixty-Nine: Historica Canada and Heritage Minutes Contest

September 16, 2015 2 Comments

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By Sean Graham

I’m fairly confident that everyone in my elementary school classes could recite the ‘Burnt Toast’ Heritage Minute by memory. It seemed to air multiple times each episode during re-runs of Degrassi on the CBC. While that one stood out the most for me and my classmates, other Heritage Minutes like Laura Second (“Take me to Fitzgibbon”), the Halifax Explosion (“Come on Vince, come on!”), and Orphans (“Johnson, sir, Molly Johnson”) are seared into the memories of millions of Canadians – whether we like it or not.

The Minutes are not perfect and their limitations have been well documented. Historica Canada’s 2012 decision to revive the minutes re-ignited the debate over their content and representation of Canadian history. The new Minutes have made an effort to be more inclusive and less celebratory (during the podcast it is revealed that Historica is currently producing a minute on residential schools), but overall their style is similar to those from the 1990s.

It is that format, however, that makes Heritage Minutes really accessible in today’s media environment. The idea of running one minute commercials doesn’t make nearly as much sense today as it did 20 years ago, particularly amid stories of people cutting off cable subscriptions in greater numbers, but so much internet content is consumed in short installments. Watching a one minute video on YouTube isn’t a significant investment and the ability to embed videos into web pages adds versatility. These clips are a terrific entry point into historical discussion for students used to on-demand content.
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One Monument Too Many: Why R.B. Bennett Doesn’t Deserve a Spot on Parliament Hill

September 16, 2015 3 Comments

By: Sonya Roy and Steve Hewitt

bennettw In recent years, non-experts, with the Harper government leading the way, have advocated and pushed for a conservative rewriting of Canadian history in an effort to find “heroes”[1]. This “great man” rewriting of Canadian history focuses on White, middle-class politicians and businessmen, militarism, and monarchism and leaves out the experiences of ordinary people and related subjects such as the labour movement, social justice struggles, immigration, feminism and colonization. A perfect example of this trend is the 20 August piece in the Globe and Mail “Let’s give R.B. Bennett his due” which portrays Bennett through the lenses of “happy history” as some sort of benevolent and prescient Canadian “Daddy” Warbucks. In making this case, the authors, a collection of journalists, an ex-politician, and a former civil servant, fail to engage in any way with considerably less savoury aspects of his time in office that might help to explain why he does not have a monument on Parliament Hill and why he should not have one in the future. Continue reading →

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