Active History

Remembering the Prague Spring Refugees

August 20, 2018 1 Comment

By Jan Raska

The year 1968 is synonymous with protest and social change. This August, the world marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the Prague Spring. As a result of this sudden crisis, Canada resettled close to 12,000 refugees from Czechoslovakia between September 1968 and January 1969. This movement of individuals and families in search of refuge serves as an important case study in Canada’s history of refugee resettlement. It also provides greater context for Canada’s recent refugee resettlement schemes. Between 2015 and 2017, the federal government welcomed over 40,000 refugees who fled civil war in Syria. As the public debate surrounding immigration continues to focus on annual intake, immigrant desirability, refugee resettlement, and the entry of asylum seekers, a discussion of evolving bureaucratic notions of who is a ‘desirable’ immigrant is also timely.

On the outskirts of Bratislava, a family prepares to cross the border into Berg, Austria, August 1968. (Credit: IOM)

The Soviet-led invasion spurred thousands of Czechs and Slovaks to leave their country and seek safe haven elsewhere. Many of the individuals who left due to the events of 1968 were similar to a preceding movement of Czechs and Slovaks who fled the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948. As experienced professionals and skilled workers – including politicians, diplomats, clergy, business owners, professors, and doctors – they held pro-democratic values and refused to live under a totalitarian regime. Many resettled in the West in the hopes of liberating their homeland from communism. At the height of the Cold War, when Canadians were overly vigilant against the arrival of undesirable individuals from the Eastern Bloc, federal officials were keen to admit anti-communist Czechs and Slovaks who had fled from the events of 1948. These newcomers were often celebrated by the Canadian public as ‘freedom fighters,’ but also mistrusted as potential communist sympathizers or spies.

Those who left Czechoslovakia in 1968 had fled communism as a lived reality. They too held anti-communist values, but were more concerned with their ability to continue their professions and careers outside of their homeland. While relations between the West and the Eastern Bloc improved, Canadian officials were focused on the economic potential of these newcomers rather than their personal ideologies.

But what about those Czechoslovak nationals who were travelling aboard on business or for leisure, and who decided not to return home at the time of the invasion? Since these individuals had not fled to a second country in which to claim asylum, they could not be considered refugees under 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Continue reading →

What is Open? History and Open Education Resources

August 16, 2018 2 Comments

Source: Christian Siedler, Flickr.

Sean Kheraj

For the past few months, Tom Peace and I have been writing an open education resource textbook with support from eCampus Ontario. This is a free, online textbook in Canadian history intended to complement John Belshaw’s two open textbooks, Canadian History: Pre-Confederation and Canadian History: Post-Confederation. We’ve called this textbook, Open History Seminar: Canadian History and it is a collection of primary and secondary sources for tutorials and seminars.

I started using Belshaw’s textbooks in my undergraduate Canadian history survey course in 2016. I was thoroughly pleased with it. The book reflected recent scholarship in the field, it was fully online and available in multiple formats (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, etc.), it included numerous photos, videos and other resources, and it could be easily read on a smartphone. As an open textbook, the digital versions were free and low-cost print copies were available for order on demand. The only thing missing was a complementary document reader for my tutorials.

Like many other course instructors, I like to assign a primary source reader for tutorials in my Canadian history survey course. These textbooks introduce students to critical reading of historical documents by curating the documents and accompanying them with secondary analysis and interpretations. I just needed an open textbook version to add to Belshaw’s books. When eCampus Ontario reached out to Tom and I with support to develop open education resources to complement Belshaw’s textbooks, we jumped on the opportunity and launched Open History Seminar.

Readers can already take a look at what we’re called our “beta” version of Open History Seminar: Canadian History. Continue reading →

Memory, History, Monuments, and Mennonites: Or, what Winkler, Manitoba might teach us about dealing with historical and moral complexity in public commemoration

August 15, 2018 4 Comments

By Matthew Neufeld

Lifestyle of Peace Monument, Winkler

I am against removing statues of controversial figures from our history. I think removals are misguided because they amplify rather than diminish the moral charge of public commemoration. Instead of removing monuments that might provoke emotional pain among some members of historically marginalized groups or foster moral unease in the consciences of Canadians with European ancestry, I propose that historians, communities and governments cooperate to find creative ways both to commemorate and to acknowledge the moral complexity of the past.

The role of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald in developing and implementing the Indian residential school system, which until recently was not central to historical assessments of his career, has prompted civic leaders of Victoria, BC to remove a statute of Macdonald from outside the city hall. There are strong moral and ritualistic components to removing Macdonald’s statue, as reported by the Vancouver Sun. Proponents feel that clearing away Macdonald’s image now will start to make amends for past wrongs, and so contribute to the city’s process toward reconciliation with First Nations. Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, despite receiving graduate-level training in Canadian history, expressed shame not to have learned until recently about Macdonald’s role in the residential school system. Now that the statute has been removed, the mayor is promising that a ‘cleansing, blessing and healing ceremony’ will take place on the spot. In place of Macdonald, the city will put a piece of Indigenous art. Thus, the demon of Macdonald will have been exorcised from Victoria’s civic space.

The removal of Victoria’s Macdonald statute amplifies and simplifies the moral dimension of the complicated history of the Canadian state’s interaction with Indigenous peoples at the cost of the historical. Continue reading →

What’s In a Monument? Part II: The Edward Cornwallis Monument and Reconciliation

August 14, 2018 1 Comment

“What’s in a Monument?” is based on a public lecture delivered on March 11 in the History Matters Series organized by the University of Calgary History Department and the Calgary Public Library. We recommend that you read yesterday’s post by Jewel Spangler about the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville before Part II because it provides the theoretical framework for this piece.

By Nancy Janovicek

This blog post builds on Jewel Spangler’s arguments about heritage stories and the crucial distinction between history and commemoration in Part I of “What’s in a Monument?”, which discussed the Charlottesville Riots that erupted after the attempted relocation of the Robert E. Lee Monument a year ago. Focusing on the January removal of the Edward Cornwallis monument in Halifax, I also begin from the premise that monuments “are artifacts of those who commemorate.”

Statue of Edward Cornwallis removed from Halifax Park, January 2018

The Canadian controversy echoed the US incident, but in Canada, the removal was resolved peacefully. I argue that the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) opened a space receptive to Indigenous critiques of imperialist heritage stories. But I want to be clear from the outset that it was never our intention to contrast a violent and racist US debate with a peaceful and tolerant Canadian response to contestations about interpretations of the past. We gave the public lectures on which these posts are based shortly after the verdicts were delivered in the Colten Bouchey and Tina Fontaine cases. Their violent deaths demonstrate that in our journey towards reconciliation, heeding Indigenous people’s criticisms of colonial narratives is only a first step in connecting past actions with current injustices.

The Cornwallis Monument Debate

Past Active History posts about the Cornwallis debate provide further context for this piece. Thomas Peace appealed to history educators to move beyond unproductive debates about teaching history that pit rote learning of facts against inquiry-based pedagogy. In order to use history to participate in civic debates and politics, people need to “think with history,”[1] a skill that requires both facts and process. Tom Fraser celebrated the success of the thirty-year Mi’kmaw campaign launched by Daniel Paul. These heritage projects, he argued, are remnants of an imperialist national project that insist that Canada is a British space. He called on educators and historians to take a leadership role in explaining what these commemorative projects represent to Indigenous peoples. Continue reading →

What’s in a Monument? Part I: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Memory

August 13, 2018 1 Comment

By Jewel Spangler

“What’s in a Monument?” is based on a public lecture delivered on March 11 in the History Matters Series organized by the University of Calgary History Department and the Calgary Public Library. This first post by Jewel Spangler is about the attempted removal of the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville. Tomorrow’s post by Nancy Janovicek focuses on the Edward Cornwallis monument in Halifax.

Unite the Right Rally, Charlottesville, VA. Photo by Anthony Crider (Wikimedia Commons)

Last weekend marked the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville Riots. In the run up to a white-nationalist “unite the right” rally that had been planned in that southern college town for the afternoon of August 12, 2017, skirmishes between white supremacists and counter-protestors became such a threat to public safety that Virginia’s governor ended up declaring a state of emergency and local police proclaimed the assembly illegal before it could officially begin. Clashes ultimately resulted in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer and injuries to 19 others when one of the white-supremacist ralliers intentionally rammed his car into a crowd.

While the terrifying scenes from that weekend may still be fresh in memory, one might easily forget that they were sparked by the planned relocation of a 1924 monument of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park. Both before and after the riots, defenders of Lee’s monument, including the unite-the-righters, decried the Charlottesville City Council’s re-location plan as a threat to “history” or an attack on southern “heritage.” Disturbingly, the President of the United States himself tweeted: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” . . . “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it.” “Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”

Comments like these rest on several well-documented fallacies. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 120: Decoding Monuments and Memorials

August 2, 2018 No Comments

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By Sean Graham

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Tonya Davidson of Carleton University about the meaning of monuments. We talk about monuments from a sociological perspective, the controversies around taking monuments down, and whether we should have monuments to individual people. We also visit two monuments in downtown Ottawa to talk about their designs meaning, and use in public spaces.

In addition to teaching at Carleton, Tonya also does walking tours of downtown Ottawa where she takes groups to various monuments to discuss their role as pieces of public history and sociology. She runs her tours through (De)Tours, so the next time you’re in the nation’s capital, be sure to check them out.

Continue reading →

Canada Docks and Quebec Pond

July 30, 2018 2 Comments

By Jim Clifford
[This post was originally published on the Network in Canadian History & Environment site.]

Canada Water is a small lake and wildlife refuge in the heart of Rotherhithe in South London. It is one of the few remaining parts of the once extensive Surrey Commercial Docks that covered much of the Rotherhithe Peninsula during the nineteenth century. Canada Water was Canada Dock, the centre of the timber trade in London, where timber was unloaded into the water and formed into rafts that were stored in Canada Pond and Quebec Pond (see the map below).

Map of Canada Dock, Canada Pond and Quebec Pond

London Sheet VII.99, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

British Empire Dockyards and Ports, 1909 (Public Domain)

Continue reading →

Remember/Resist/Redraw #16: Radical Bookshops in 1930s Montréal

July 27, 2018 No Comments

In the spring, the Graphic History Collective re-launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as an ongoing series.

Earlier this week, we released RRR poster #16 by Adèle Clapperton-Richard and Andrée Lévesque, a bilingual poster that looks at radical bookshops in 1930s Montréal as important spaces of activist education and organizing.

We also created a list of radical bookshops (included at the bottom of this post) in operation today in what is currently Canada, and we are encouraging people to seek them out this summer. Many radical bookshops have excellent history sections, accenting people’s history and histories of the marginalized and dispossessed that you won’t find at corporate bookstores. So, instead of (or maybe in addition to??) completing the #InMyFeelingsChallenge this summer, we are challenging you to check out your local radical bookshop.

We hope that Remember | Resist | Redraw encourages people to critically examine history in ways that can fuel our radical imaginations and support struggles for social change. Learn more about how you can support the project on our website, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Continue reading →

Fire in the Belly: A Short Reflection on the Late Stan Rogers

July 25, 2018 1 Comment

By Ann Walton

Recently, I’ve started to view Stan Rogers through a different prism.

Listen to the late folk singer’s music and you’ll discover not only a stunning songwriter, but a passionate historian whose work was inseparable from the history of his country.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s two young brothers from Hamilton toured Canada and the United States, singing songs like Northwest Passage and Fogarty’s Cove in every kind of venue imaginable. When I listen to the recordings now, it’s hard to imagine that life on the road was anything but lively gigs in theatres and bars all bursting at the seams with joyful spectators. But back then, long before Stan Rogers’ tragic death transformed him into the “voice of Canada,” and then the “legend” that he is today, he was, in every way, a working-class musician, often horrendously represented by some incompetent publicist, playing to half-empty rooms with his younger brother Garnet, and just hoping to make enough money to fill the tank.

“It wasn’t like today, where there is some little room in nearly every town,” Garnet Rogers explains in his wonderful memoir, Night Drive: Travels with my Brother (2016). The folk revival of another decade was all but a memory, and there simply were no gigs. “If you presented yourself as a songwriter,” he recalls, “you were met with puzzled silence.” There were only a handful of places to play, and only rumours here and there of others, though they didn’t pay well, if anything at all. “You watched and you waited,” writes Garnet, “and you played where you could, and you tried to make it count.”[1] Night after night with their instruments, the two brothers and their bassist climbed into their van, playing shows for over a decade together.

But just why did they stick with it for so long? Why didn’t they just go back to Hamilton, and throw in the towel already? Get ‘real’ jobs and lead ‘normal’ lives? Continue reading →

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