Active History

How Should the Great War be Remembered? Your Chance to Weigh In with Canada’s Leading Educators, Historians, Community Leaders & Museum Curators

December 7, 2012 1 Comment

2014 marks the 100th Anniversary of the start of the First World War. It was the world’s first global conflict and it affected every level of society. Over 500 high school students from Victoria High School are remembered in the Great War Roll of Honour; the first woman officially in the Royal Canadian Navy was a ‘nursing sister’ from Bruce County, Ontario named Elizabeth Pierce; 700 men from the Newfoundland regiment were killed or injured during the First World War and children across Canada saved their pennies to buy War Savings Stamps.

Cenotaphs in tribute to these sons, daughters, men and women exist in virtually every city and town acrooss the country yet only 22 in 10 Canadians attend annual Remembrance Day events in their communities. Teachers and community groups are now seizing upon the centennial anniversary to renew interest about Canada’s role during the Great War and make the distant past more relevant for Canadian students.

Canada’s History Forum will bring together over 150 of Canada’s leading educators, students, community leaders, historians and museum curators to join with the Governor General’s History Award recipients and critically examine leading practices inside the classroom and in community commemorations. The theme of this year’s 5th national history forum is ‘How should World War I be remembered?” As the First World War fades from public memory, efforts as to how to preserve the world’s first global conflict as a vibrant part of the Canadian historical and cultural landscape will be explored. Continue reading →

Wikipedia and Warriors: Quickly Exploring Canada’s Wikipedia Past, 2003-Present

December 6, 2012 No Comments

Page views for the “History of Canada” wikipedia page. Note regular declines during school breaks!

By Ian Milligan

The 2009 Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, laid out – in the eyes of a diverse group of Canadian academics – a new vision for Canada (too many links to list, but some are here). A redefinition of Canada based upon war and conflict, with the military assuming a prominent role and the First and Second World Wars assuming center stage in the official understanding of the past. The evidence seems clear: one needs only to attend a hockey game (well, you know, at least during the last season), attend an official ceremony, read the pronouncement of the Minister of Heritage, to see that the Canadian military certainly is playing a larger role in both contemporary and historical accounts. But how do everyday Canadians respond to this alteration of their history? Is this shift reflected in the most common source of historical information, Wikipedia.com? Continue reading →

Municipal Conflicts of Interest in Canada, Old and New

December 4, 2012 11 Comments

By Daniel Ross

He was a controversial mayor from the start. An unabashed populist, he rallied support during his campaigns by promising to cut taxes and reduce waste at city hall. As a result, he won an impressive share of the popular vote. He never denied having links to the city’s business and development community—he ran a successful business himself—and his policies certainly reflected that. From early on, accusations of bending the rules shadowed his career. But it was a legal challenge from an ordinary citizen alleging a conflict of interest that led to him losing his job.

Rob Ford and William Hawrelak. Sources: City of Toronto; City of Edmonton Archives, EA-10-1600

That man’s name was William Hawrelak, mayor of Edmonton from 1951-59, 1963-65, and 1974-75. His story is remarkable, and not just because of its superficial similarities to that of recently deposed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Few Canadian politicians have managed to combine success and failure as dramatically as he did in his 30-year career in public office. But in another way, his tale, like Ford’s, is nothing new. Concern over politicians using public office for private benefit has often dogged local politics in Canada, and one result has been strict conflict of interest law.

In this post I’d like to take a look at Rob Ford’s removal from office in light of a short history of municipal conflict of interest in Canada. It turns out there is nothing unprecedented about the penalty he faces, or the populist way he and his supporters have responded to his removal. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Ten: The Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities

December 4, 2012 2 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

In the six months or so since I started this podcast, I’ve been amazed to learn how many different groups and organizations are working around the country to promote the study of history. For as much lamenting and hand-wringing that goes on every time a study is released decrying Canadians’ general lack of historical knowledge, there are thousands of people working to engage people in the stories of the past. At a time when there’s been lots of talk of cuts that could prove damaging to the discipline, it’s good to know that there’s so many people from coast-to-coast working so hard to promote Canada’s history.

In this episode of the History Slam I talk with Glenn McKnight and Bob Bell from the Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities, a local historical group from Oshawa, Ontario. We chat about the group’s projects, which include the re-creation of a WWII Victory Garden, geocaching, and their new War of 1812 project, which included a dinner featuring regency dancing and “Kentucky militia” kidnapping the Queen’s representative. After talking about the American perspective of the war in an earlier podcast, it was fun to look at it from a local perspective.

As an added bonus, we also re-assemble the Prime Minister Fantasy Draft for a short recap. We talk about the responses to the draft – good, bad, and indifferent – and announce the big winner – even though it’s been pointed out to me that perhaps nobody can be a winner in a PM Fantasy Draft.

Sean Graham is a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa where he is currently working on a project that examines the early years of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has previously studied at Nipissing University, the University of the West Indies, and the University of Regina and like any red-blooded Canadian his ultimate dream is to be a curling champion while living on a diet of beer and poutine.

Bookstores and Memory: Marking the Closure of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore

December 3, 2012 No Comments

By Adele Perry

Photo by Cory Doctorow, Oct 26 2012

Last Friday, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore opened its doors for the last time. This is an occasion for the kind of celebration and mourning that has occurred in events held in Toronto and beyond. It is also a chance to think about alternative bookstores, change, and remembrance. Continue reading →

Announcement – Far from Over: The Music and Life of Drake, 8 December in Toronto

December 1, 2012 No Comments

Click through for a PDF version of the poster.

On Saturday December 8th at 7pm, please join Accents on Eglinton and host Francesca D’Amico (York University PhD candidate in music history) for an evening with Dalton Higgins, award-winning journalist, radio and TV broadcaster, to discuss his latest book Far From Over: The Music and Life of Drake (ECW Press). Higgins and D’Amico will engage in a conversation intended to use the life and music of Drake as a lens by which to discuss and highlight how the historical meets the contemporary. The issues that will be under discussion will include: the history of urban music in Toronto in particular, and Canada at large; race and ethnicity (given that Drake is of Jewish and African American descent, born and raised largely in Toronto, and has spent the ocasional summer in Memphis, TN prior to signing with his American record label); the role of media and industry; music and technology; and the current state of Hip Hop, Canadian culture and Canadian cultural icons as exports in a global market.

Far From Over is the first biography of the platinum-selling hip-hop artist; it examines Drake’s transition from Aubrey Drake Graham, heartthrob Canadian actor on the hit show Degrassi, to Hip Hop emcee. Featuring original interviews and insights surrounding the history of Canada’s Hip Hop scene, technology, social media and the music industry, and detailing the social and cultural conditions in Toronto that helped create the Drake phenomenon, Far From Over reveals the still unfolding story of an artist whose star continues to rise.

The event will take place at Accents on Eglinton located at 1790 Eglinton Avenue West in Toronto, at the intersection of Eglinton Avenue West and Dufferin Street.

Podcast: Ian McKay and What’s Wrong With Flanders Fields

November 30, 2012 2 Comments

“Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders” (1921), by Mary Riter Hamilton. Source: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-142

This past Remembrance Day, historian Ian McKay gave a lecture titled “What’s Wrong With Flanders Fields.”

He argues that Remembrance Day in general and the poem in particular have been conscripted as part of what he calls the “right-wing militarization of Canadian society.”

McKay delivered the talk to the Queen’s University Institute for Lifelong Learning on November 11, 2012.

You can listen to a podcast of the talk here.

McKay is a professor of history at Queen’s University. He recently published Warrior Nation? Rebranding Canada in a Fearful Age (Between the Lines, 2012), co-authored with Jamie Swift.

The Burdens of McHistory

November 29, 2012 1 Comment

By Ian Mosby

Walking out of the subway into Yonge Station in Toronto recently, I was confronted with poster after poster bearing some strange, slightly off-putting questions about McDonald’s. These included, in big bold letters, messages like: “Is the meat fake?” “Are there eyeballs put in your meat?” Or, “Are McNuggets made from processed pink sludge?”

In the end, it was the presence of other posters assuring me that McDonald’s burgers and McNuggets are made of only recognizable cuts of the chicken or cow that finally tipped me off that the posters were, in fact, part of a McDonald’s ad campaign and not some kind of PETA-inspired anti-McDonald’s stunt. The question still remained, though: who thought this was a good idea? Like the recent Domino’s “Pizza Turnaround” campaign that bizarrely admitted that their food had been terrible for years (but was, supposedly, fine now), these ads seemed to remind commuters of the many reasons they’d likely developed over the years — both ridiculous and practical — not to eat at McDonald’s. What was going on here?

My search for answers eventually led me to the fascinating website yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca where, apparently, Canadians can submit questions like those plastered around Yonge Station and, within a few days, they’ll be answered by someone at McDonald’s and posted for the world to see. Initially launched this summer, the website currently contains hundreds of questions and answers that, it turns out, provide a fascinating glimpse into Canadians’ complicated relationship with their fast food and, perhaps more interestingly, McDonald’s ongoing and often failed attempts to deal with its own McHistory. Continue reading →

A Short Historical Primer on Canada’s Old Age Security Debate

November 28, 2012 6 Comments

Signing of the Dominion-Provincial Agreement on Old Age Pensions, May 18 1928. Source: Library and Archives Canada / C-013233

By Jay Young

Change to Old Age Security emerged as a controversial element of the Harper Conservatives’ last federal budget. Much speculation had been brewing in the months leading up to the budget’s introduction in March of this year, when federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced its details in the House of Commons as part of C-38, his government’s omnibus budget bill.

Starting in April 2023, the age of eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) benefits will shift from the current policy of 65 years of age to 67 years. The transition in policy will be complete by 2029. In other words, Canadians born before April 1958 — anyone aged 54 or older — will be unaffected by the change. But those born after will not enjoy the income benefits provided by Old Age Security for another two years in their life.

The recent change to OAS provides a chance to reflect on not only the history of Canada’s pension system, but also the wider historical context of the baby boom generation. Continue reading →

Citizenship: Nothing Yet Everything

November 27, 2012 No Comments

The Matsuoka family on their just-cleared berry farm in Haney, British Columbia, prior to the Second World War. The author’s mother, Ritsuko is in the back row, far right. Source: author’s personal collection.

By Pam Sugiman

This is the third in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012. The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project.

Personal memory and history

As a contributor to this series on citizenship and history in Canada, I wish to offer some reflections on citizenship and its meaning — through the eyes of a Japanese-Canadian woman of working class origins. I am a Sansei (third-generation Japanese Canadian), born and raised in the west end of Toronto. I grew up in the 1960s. My Nisei (second-generation) parents were born in British Columbia (BC), where they lived until the events of the Second World War. Following the war, and to a large extent because of the wartime events, my father spent most of his adult life as a taxi driver for the Diamond Cab Company. From the time that she arrived at Toronto’s Union Station, after a long train trip from Rosebery, BC, my mother made a living cleaning homes and taking care of children of upper-middle-class families in the affluent neighbourhoods of Rosedale and Forest Hill. Both of my Issei (first-generation) grandfathers immigrated to Canada from Japan in the late 1800s, first stopping to earn wages by doing agricultural labour in Hawaii. My mother’s mother and father’s mother both came to this country as Japanese picture brides. Prior to the war, they spent their lives in Canada raising children, cooking, maintaining the household, working on the family farm, and doing seasonal cannery work.

The author’s father, Ross Tatsuro Sugiman in London, Ontario where he was sent to perform low-wage labour, after being released from a POW camp. Source: author’s personal collection.

My reflections on citizenship and the nation are very much a product of my family’s historical experiences. And over time, these family experiences, now embedded in personal memory, have intermingled with the memories of the dozens of other Nisei women and men that I have interviewed over the past decade and a half, as an historical sociologist. Continue reading →

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