By Thomas Peace This week ActiveHistory.ca has focused our attention to the legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald. In less than a week’s time, Canada will be in the throes of one big Sir John love-in. On 11 January, this country’s first prime minister will be celebrating the 200th year since his birth in Glasgow, Scotland. Over the course of… Read more »
Members of the editorial team are excited to announce that we’re organizing a conference. This three day conference will create a forum similar to our 2008 founding symposium “Active History: A History for the Future,” where historians interested in the practice of Active History can share their research, methods, and projects with each other. Second, as a primarily web-based and… Read more »
By Carol Williams with conceptual input from Don Gill Introduction The Genocide Awareness Project Visual isolation of the fetus and the movement for fetal rights Conceiving the fetus as vulnerable to genocide Bibliography Notes Introduction In October of 2013 and 2014, the University of Lethbridge campus community was subjected to a visual spectacle staged by the Centre for Canadian Bioethical… Read more »
By Jeff Bowersox I found out about the National World War I Museum during a recent conference trip – yes, to Kansas City. I was curious to see how it would memorialise a conflict that, for most Americans, is greatly overshadowed by its successor, and decided to visit. The museum is intertwined with the Liberty Memorial, dedicated in 1926 to… Read more »
Rhonda L. Hinther It was by a mere two hours that eleven-year-old Myron Shatulsky missed seeing his beloved father, internee Matthew Shatulsky, when the train transferring Matthew and his comrades from the Kananaskis Internment Camp to Petawawa passed through Winnipeg earlier than anticipated on a July day in 1941. Myron had not seen his father since the RCMP hauled him… Read more »
By Raphaël Gani The discourse about Canadians ignoring their collective past, or not knowing their national history, is neither new (Osborne, 2003) nor limited to Canada (Wineburg, 2001). Such a view tends to be legitimized according to surveys in which people fail to identify famous events and politicians. This failure is also linked with angst about the perils of the… Read more »
By Aitana Guia On November 9, 2014, hundreds of thousands of Catalans, perhaps millions, will print their own unofficial ballots and head to improvised polling stations to cast a vote for independence that nobody else but them will consider valid. Most Catalans opposed to independence will stay at home and lament growing political polarization. The result will be a resolute… Read more »
By Jessica Dunkin In the series’ inaugural post, I gave readers a brief overview of The Home Archivist, a project in which I—a professional historian—process and arrange a collection of nineteenth-century letters. The context in which a collection was produced, what archivists refer to as provenance, is central to these practices of processing and arranging historical documents. But what of… Read more »
By Sarah Glassford, Christopher Schultz, Nathan Smith and Jonathan Weier As ActiveHistory.ca regulars know, comic book writers and artists sometimes find inspiration in history (see posts by Mosby, McCracken, and Carlton). This is certainly true of the First World War, which has offered material for interpretation in this artistic medium just as it has in poetry, fiction, or film. And… Read more »
By Christopher Schultz A kangaroo burger beckoned from the menu. It was a small taste of the exotic in London’s Mile End area, which is known primarily today as the site of Queen Mary, University of London’s main campus. After the third of four long days discussing “Perspectives on the ‘Great’ War,” an exotic burger seemed like a nice reward…. Read more »
