Active History

Digital Libraries and National Digitization Programmes: How Does Canada Compare?

March 10, 2014 3 Comments

By Krista McCracken

Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections, accessed via DPLA

Marsh Memorial Readying Room. Photograph from Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections, accessed via DPLA

National digital library projects and national digitization initiatives have emerged across the world in recent years with varying levels of funding, support, and success. How does Canada’s national attempts at digitization and open access compare to international efforts to make material freely accessible online?

The example closest to home is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) which aims to bring together diverse collections of books, images, historical records, artwork, and audio-visual material in a single open access portal. The DPLA currently includes more than 5,700,000 items from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States.

The DPLA access portal is user friendly and there are a variety of ways to explore the collection including a timeline feature, by geographic location, by browsing a virtual bookshelf, or using a traditional search bar. Additionally, the DPLA has an open API and has encouraged developer involvement and the hacking of the millions of records in the DPLA. Some have criticized the DPLA as overlapping existing projects and expressed concern about copyright and the possibility of funding being taken away from traditional libraries. These criticisms aside the DPLA holds a tremendous amount of information has the potential to be a huge boon to researchers and the general public. Continue reading →

International Women’s Day (IWD) and Human Rights 2014

March 7, 2014 34 Comments

By Veronica Strong-Boag

Author’s note: This post was commissioned as an IWD blog by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It was initially approved and posted by the Museum on 4 March 2014. It was, however, almost immediately withdrawn as ‘Communications’ at the Museum deemed the one line comment on the current federal Conservative government unacceptable as written. The offer of a substantive footnote and illustrative example from the author brought no reply. ActiveHistory.ca has reposted this time-sensitive contribution here, to which examples of anti-women policies and a footnote have been added.

International Women’s Day on 8^th March should be a key date in the human rights calendar. Its place is hard-won. When Charlotte Bunch, a leading figure in the creation of UN Women (2010), insisted in 1990 that women’s rights are human rights in the Human Rights Quarterly and Edward Broadbent, from the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, served in 1993 as a judge in the Vienna Tribunal on Women’s Human Rights, one half of humanity’s entitlement to fair dealing remained globally contested. That struggle continues.

Although recognition that women’s rights are human rights pre-dates even writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in the western tradition, IWD emerged in 1908 with a mass women suffrage meeting organized by American socialists. By 1911 the idea had reached Europe, where again it persisted as a special interest of the left. Unlike ‘Mother’s Day,’ also first observed in 1908, which celebrated women as maternal and peace-loving, IWD initially concentrated on waged and industrial labour. Early champions such as the German socialist Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) intended to highlight tragedies such as the 1911 New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and economic oppression generally. When IWD became an official holiday in Russia after 1917 and in the new People’s Republic of China in 1949, even as both countries failed to offer equality, liberal democracies, not to mention dictatorships, shied away.

Champions of equality, however, persisted. Continue reading →

“Remembering the past is a useful step toward moving forward together”: Observing Civic Commemorations in Toronto

March 6, 2014 1 Comment

Invitation to Toronto’s semi-centennial in 1884. Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Room, “1884. Reception. VS”.

By Kaitlin Wainwright

Today marks 180 years since the former Town of York was incorporated as the City of Toronto. It was given a new name, distinguished from New York and a dozen or so other places in the province. The city’s earliest neighbourhoods were the five wards named for the patron saints of the British Isles: St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, and St. David, and for St. Lawrence, a patron saint of Canada. Subway stations and public spaces remind us of these past neighbourhoods, building layer upon layer of commemoration.

Toronto recently celebrated its 175^th anniversary as a city in 2009 with gatherings, parades, and a video designed to inspire pride in the city. Five years later, public events geared towards celebrating the establishment of the City of Toronto are calling upon us to gather where others stood before us. With a civic election looming in the fall, the media is again providing the advice that “[r]emembering the past is a useful step toward moving forward together.” But what pasts are being remembered?

I am a closeted patriot: I find points of pride in my identities and their symbols, but I also believe there is value in understanding these symbols from a critical perspective. As we often must be reminded, commemoration tells us as much about our present as it does about our past. When I consider acts of commemoration, I often wonder if the reason we wrap ourselves up in them like a security blanket is not because we see the past through a present lens, but because commemorations are about shared history and the stories that we tell about ourselves.

David Lowenthal suggests that “in celebrating symbols of their histories, societies in fact worship themselves.” When discussing commemoration, personal pronouns are used: My heritage, our past. Memory — not history — is the guiding force behind acts of commemoration. So, on Toronto’s 180th birthday, I want to ask: What symbols of Toronto’s past are we celebrating? How does Toronto’s collective memory impact its present? Continue reading →

Toronto’s Rob Ford Phenomenon and Diversity within Canada’s Evolving Suburbs

March 3, 2014 1 Comment

Image from Wikipedia Commons.

By Jay Young

An earlier version of this post originally appeared on the History News Network in late January.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford sure is in the news a lot these days. In late December, the US liberal-leaning Talking Points Memo website announced it had awarded him their annual scandal-of-the-year trophy, marking the first time this infamous recognition went to a politician outside the United States. And in January another video appeared of a seemingly drunken, incoherent Ford ranting in a fake (and, many have argued, offensive) Jamaican patois at a local fast food restaurant. Like the previous videos, Ford’s antics were once again broadcast and mocked on American late night television for a global audience. Ford, who had previously told the media that he had sworn off alcohol, admitted that he’d been drinking “a little bit” that evening.

Despite Ford’s seeming non-stop substance abuse sideshow, polling numbers show Ford’s continued support from a core of Torontonians. The city’s residents will go to the polls later this year, so we’re bound to hear much more about Ford throughout his re-election campaign.

So how did Toronto get here? Continue reading →

Introducing the ActiveHistory.ca YouTube Channel

February 28, 2014 2 Comments

Is there anything more fun/dangerous/time consuming than unintentionally falling into a YouTube rabbit hole? You start out looking for Stephen Colbert’s Daft Punk video and two hours later have somehow landed on bloopers from Seinfeld. One of my personal favourites is mid-to-late 90s professional wrestling videos, with their over the top characters and the nostalgia of being a kid and wondering if it was real. Plus, all the Royal Rumbles from that era are readily available – what a great time to be alive.

In addition to these, I’ve also fell on some pretty terrific history videos during my trips to YouTube, which made me think that perhaps we here at Active History should put together some videos. So we did and we’re pleased to announce the ActiveHistory.ca YouTube channel.
Continue reading →

Proclamation and Commemoration: The Treaty of Niagara, Royal Proclamation, and a Critical Look at “Creating Canada”

February 27, 2014 1 Comment

By Michelle Hope Rumford

The undertaking of “commemoration” encompasses actions taken in a spirit of remembrance and honor. Choosing to commemorate acknowledges the importance of an event. It allows history to live on into present contexts. In the context of the continuous formation and re-evaluation of the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian government, 2013 was marked by a series of commemorations of the 1763 Royal Proclamation. But 2014 rings in the 250th anniversary of an event whose importance ought not be overlooked: The Treaty of Niagara. In this post, I use the 1764 Treaty of Niagara to reflect on The Creating Canada symposium, one of the largest and most significant events marking the commemoration of the Royal Proclamation. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Thirty-Five: Preserving Canadian Logos

February 26, 2014 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

The Montreal Expos are just one of many logos featured on the Northern Army Preservation Society’s new site devoted to Canadian logos.

Back in October, I was in Montreal and went to what immediately became my new favourite sports store. Apart from the obligatory Canadiens gear, the store had racks of apparel featuring many teams’ retro logos and, perhaps more excitingly, the logos of several defunct sports teams. While I bought a Montreal Expos hat and Hartford Whalers shirt, the Quebec Nordiques and Vancouver Grizzlies gear was tough to walk away from.

Walking through the store served as a terrific example of how powerful logos can be. Take the Montreal Expos logo, its meaning goes well beyond representing a professional baseball team. Depending on your personal experience, the logo can remind you of great days watching games at Jarry Park or the pain of losing your favourite team. In either case, the person looking at the logo attaches their own meaning to the symbol that goes beyond the tri-colour design.
Continue reading →

From the Classroom to the Front Lines of Heritage Preservation

February 24, 2014 No Comments

By Christine McLaughlin

Plaque commemorating the designation of the Cliff Pilkey Waterfront Trail in Oshawa Ontario. Cliff Pilkey was a past UAW Local 222 President, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour, and MPP for Oshawa.
Photo Credit: Robert T. Bell

I’ve spent many years in a university classrooms studying and teaching history. In true academic fashion, I’ve published an article that critically analyzes public history production and memory in a postwar industrial city. My recent appointment to Heritage Oshawa by City Council has offered me the opportunity to translate this theoretical engagement into concrete action. This has been a challenging and rewarding experience.

The Municipal Heritage Committee is made up of citizen volunteers who advise on matters of local heritage and assist Council in carrying out its heritage conservation program. It is governed by the Ontario Heritage Act. Unlike academic work which requires a high degree of specialization, participation on a municipal heritage committee requires broad knowledge of a diverse range of subjects: architecture, engineering, planning, construction, law, local history and heritage. Making informed decisions on such a wide array of topics can create a steep learning curve; so too does this offer learning and training opportunities on a range of topics relating to heritage preservation. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Thirty-Four: Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and Underground Soldier

February 21, 2014 2 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

For as much as history may fall under the ‘Humanities,’ occasionally the humanity of the past gets lost. Writing about the past can become clinical and historians can become immune to some of history’s horrors. Facts and figures of deaths in a war, for example, are faceless and can fail to elicit a strong emotional reaction. Personalize those numbers, however, and their weight is easier to appreciate.

That is exactly what Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch does in Underground Soldier. The story follows Luka, an adolescent who has escaped from a Nazi slave labour camp during the Second World War. The conditions of Luka’s escape – by lying in a truck of dead bodies as it leaves the camp – serve as a precursor to the series of unpleasant, dangerous, and risky circumstances awaiting him.
Continue reading →

Navigating archival research roadblocks

February 19, 2014 No Comments

By Jenny Prior

A whole lot of research … Mel Starkman viewing records in the Archives of Ontario’s stacks. Photographer unknown
[ca. 1968]. Archives of Ontario photographs, RG 17-43, I0009024

So you’re hard at work, creating a World War I exhibit based on hours and hours of archival research. Or maybe you’re not. But doesn’t it sound like a fascinating and daunting task?

Just ask Stewart Boden at the Archives of Ontario. As our in-house curator of three interconnected World War I exhibits highlighting our collections, Stewart’s been on a rollercoaster ride of discovery, frustration and rewards.

We wanted to share some of the research challenges he’s encountered with this intense undertaking, as well as the ways he’s navigating through them. Continue reading →

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