Active History

Volcanoes in European history: Exploring Environmental History Podcast

April 20, 2010 No Comments

The Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud at 06:00 UTC on 17 April 2010. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dr Jan Oosthoek has produced a podcast on the history of volcanoes in European history. The podcast can be found here or you can subscribe on iTunes here. This podcast and its supporting website are under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, so we have republished his text introducing the volcanoes podcast and the further readings lists below:

On 14 April 2010 the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted for a second time in two month after having been dormant for just under 200 years. The second eruption caused an ash plume that was ejected into the stratosphere and transported by the wind to Northwest Europe and all air traffic was shut down. As a result the eruption became a major news story. A secondary reason why the eruption became a major news story is the fact that volcanic ash clouds have not affected Europe in such an immediate way in living memory. But looking at the historical record of volcanic eruptions it becomes clear that these events have affected Europe and other parts of the world in significant ways and sometimes even altered the course of history. This extra edition of the Exploring Environmental History podcast considers a small sample of such volcanic event events, including the 536 AD dust veil event, the Black Death and the Laki eruption of 1783. Continue reading →

One year of ActiveHistory.ca

April 18, 2010 2 Comments

Photo credit: "craft john 2" by Genealogy Photos on Flicrk, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic

Photo credit: "craft john 2" by Genealogy Photos on Flickr, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic

April marks the one-year anniversary of this website. The steering committee of ActiveHistory.ca recently discussed the challenges and successes we have faced in our attempt over the past year to bridge the work of historians with a wider audience at Activism and the Academy: Struggles Against Hegemony, a two-day conference organized by the Graduate Women’s Studies Student Association at York University.

ActiveHistory.ca, originally conceived as an open space for the dissemination of short, accessible scholarly articles, has transformed to include a collective blog that focuses on topics such as history on the internet and historical perspectives on current issues, and a new book review section that features reviews of academic work by non-academics. In line with these developments, the website has continually increased its viewership; indeed, we currently receive as many as 200 views a day.

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Jane’s Walks: community history tours

April 15, 2010 1 Comment

A Jane’s Walk

Since 2007 people have come together once a year to celebrate and remember the life of Jane Jacobs by leading or participating in walking tours of their local communities. As Jacobs argued, walkability is essential for urban communities. These tours seem to be a truly fitting monument to Jacob’s legacy. The walks began in Toronto, but have since spread well beyond Jane’s adopted city, with hundreds of walks scheduled for the first weekend in May in cities around the world. Many topics are covered during these walks, but a lot of them focus either directly or indirectly on local history. The Jane’s Walks provide an opportunity for all our followers to experience firsthand a grassroots history project similar to those discussed in two recent ActiveHistory.ca posts on walking tours and street history. Continue reading →

Active History, Hunt and Stoke

April 13, 2010 No Comments

Photo credit David Rayner CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license

By David Zylberberg, PhD Candidate, York University

The United Kingdom is in the midst of an election campaign with a May 6 poll. Despite numerous suggestions that this is the ‘most important election in a generation’, the limited media coverage on this side of the Atlantic has tended to focus on which opposition leader invoked recent Canadian developments as a reason to vote for their party. There are many aspects of this election that should interest Canadians but I would like to take this opportunity to discuss one that is of particular importance to the Active History project, namely, the controversy over the Labour Party nomination in the constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central.

Following the recent retirement of long-time MP Mark Fisher, the seat became vacant. Labour Party practice is to have interested candidates apply to the central party, who then send the constituency party a three person short list to vote on. Interest was high in representing the party in one of its safer seats and many applied. The resulting short list included the prominent historian Tristram Hunt, but none of the three nominees have any connection to the region. Hunt received the nomination on April 1, after which Gary Elsby, secretary of the Constituency Labour Party in Stoke-on-Trent Central, resigned from the party and is running as an independent. Similar things have happened in recent years, notably in 2005 in the South Wales constituency of Blaenau Gwent, which had been an even safer Labour seat. At that time the central party sent a short-list of three non-local women in the hopes of improving the gender balance of MPs, the local constituency got upset and has taken to returning independent socialists at every level of government since. Continue reading →

Popular Publishing Writer’s Guild Expands Westward

April 8, 2010 2 Comments

Photo Credit: David Dennis, creative commons licensed

By Adam Crymble

Thanks to a successful workshop held in Vancouver last month, the Popular Publishing Writer’s Guild has added a new Western Canadian chapter. The guild is a support network of new scholars who are trying to engage a wider public with their research and ideas through newspapers, magazines or online.

Every five months, the group holds an internal call for participation that encourages members to draft a submission for an editor of a popular publication. The group offers feedback and encouragement when requested – though some members have submitted content directly to editors on their own.

Originally the group consisted of a handful of members who attended the first Popular Writing workshop in London, ON in the fall of 2009. That group managed to publish six articles out of eight attempts in various Canadian publications out of the first call and many of the Active History editors are part of the team. For some participants, it was their first ever popular article. Continue reading →

Street History

April 5, 2010 No Comments

Recently, I was stopped at the entrance to the Eaton Centre by a man selling a short pamphlet on Black history. I bought a copy. Flipping through the pages, the pamphlet shared short stories about the contributions of key Black individuals, the racism they experienced, and important moments where Canadian and American communities were open to racial and ethnic difference.

The promotion of this history at the entrance of the Eaton Centre fascinated me. Often the public face of history is seen in museums or government issued historical plaques; but important historical narratives also exist outside of these structures, and they often tell stories that otherwise remain obscure or hidden by more official ways of historical story telling. I call this way of sharing the past street history. Continue reading →

Public Trust at Your Local Museum

March 31, 2010 1 Comment

The ethic guidelines established by the Canadian Museum Association (CMA) maintain that museums which operate in the public trust have two main responsibilities to the public: stewardship and public service. Stewardship refers to the need for museums to acquire and preserve valuable heritage, as a means of protecting this heritage for the general public. The public service component refers to the role which museums should play in education and public engagement. The CMA suggests that museums have a responsibility to understand their collections, interpret the past, and to be facilitators of education. The CMA is not alone in the belief that museums have ethical obligations to the general public. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) code of ethics and the code of ethics and best practices established by the American Association of Museums (AAM) also highlight the obligations of museums to the general public. Continue reading →

Book Review Section Launched

March 29, 2010 No Comments

Our new book review section launches today with the publication of our first review. John Horn, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Gumboot, a community blog out of Vancouver, has reviewed Craig Heron’s Booze: A Distilled History. Please check out his fun review.

Our book reviews will have community members and involved citizens reviewing academic works. We hope this will provide a new perspective on history books not regularly found in academic journals. If you’re interested in being added to our database of reviewers (and aren’t a current graduate student or faculty member), please contact info (at) activehistory.ca.

Please check back frequently, either on the page or via Facebook/Twitter, as we plan on putting up more reviews over the next few weeks and months.

A Century of Neglect: Epidemic Tuberculosis in Native Communities

March 24, 2010 1 Comment

by Jane Whalen

The 2010 Quality of Life Index boasted that Canada’s “health care and living standards are among the highest in the world.” Ask your average Canadian and they would probably agree. Ask an Aboriginal person and you would be in for quite a shock.

Maritime Tuberculosis Association Billboard 1930s

1930s TB Association Billboard in the Maritimes

Third world conditions exist in Canada – what an outrageous claim to make about the country ranked 9^th best place to live in the entire world. When you consider the unacceptably high tuberculosis (TB) rates among the country’s Aboriginal populations, this claim is not outrageous, but instead, the cold hard truth. Recent headlines from The Globe and Mail (here and here) warn of the epidemic rates of TB in Native communities (31 times higher) and Inuit communities (186 times higher). What is most deplorable about this reality, however, is the fact that the government has been aware of this crisis for more than a century.

Why, you might ask, is this a government problem? Firstly, the government’s legislative responsibility to its ‘Indian wards’ was clearly outlined in the 1867 BNA Act (which placed Indians and Indian land under federal jurisdiction), the 1869 Gradual Enfranchisement Act (which contained a provision for government aid to sick and destitute Indians), the 1876 Indian Act and subsequent amendments (which defined who an ‘Indian’ was and their relationship with the government), and finally, the ‘medicine chest clause’ in Treaty No. 6 (which promised aid should the Indians be overtaken by any pestilence or general famine).

Secondly, and most importantly, the history of colonialism in this country has relegated Aboriginal peoples to a position as ‘citizens minus’; a position where systemic poverty, poor sanitation, and a lack of adequate medical care have allowed a 19^th century disease to wreak havoc in 21^st century Aboriginal communities.

Working in church, provincial, national, and international archives over the last 3 years, I can attest to the wealth of documentation that connects policymakers to the spread of tuberculosis in Aboriginal communities. The criminal disregard of government officials over the last century is undeniable: Continue reading →

Space and Historical Imagery: Making History Accessible

March 22, 2010 6 Comments

Have you ever wondered what your local intersection might have looked like in 1900? What about 1920? 1950? What has changed? What has stayed the same? A wonderful new site that we learned about at the Great Lake’s THAT Camp at Michigan State University was lookbackmaps, which makes historical imagery accessible to enthusiasts through a fascinating and accessible website.

Using google maps, lookbackmaps allows users to not only click on a location and see a current photograph juxtaposed against a historical one, but also to upload their own entries into the system. Right now there is a marked focus on San Francisco, where founder Jon Voss is situated, but it is spreading across the United States and hopefully soon even into Canada! It also has an iPhone application that allows you to phase the historical imagery into your screencapture – augmented reality for historians! Check out a video demo here. What a remarkable way to engage in a historical manner with your surroundings!

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