The purpose of the wall tours described in this article is to remember the men and women asylum patients who built, lived, worked and died behind the last remaining structures that still exist on the grounds of the former Asylum for the Insane, Toronto. The tours first started with a conversation. In spring 2000, Heinz Klein, one of the organizers for the Psychiatric Survivor Pride Week events, and an activist whom I have known since 1993, asked me to give a talk about the history of people who lived in the Toronto Asylum for the upcoming annual event organized to celebrate the contributions of psychiatric survivors/consumers in our community.1 I was skeptical and said a lot of people had recently seen a play based on my research which did a better job than I could of speaking about patients’ lives. Heinz then suggested I could give a talk outside by the 19th century patient built wall at the present day Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), not far from where the play had been performed in April, 2000. As we continued to talk the idea of a wall tour came up, though I can’t remember who suggested it first. Instead of a stationary talk by the wall, the idea was to give talks all along the wall about patients’ lives where they lived. The wall would be the central site of multiple talks woven together by the common theme of describing a history of patients’ life and labour on this site. And so began the wall tours with the first one held on July 14, 2000, Mad Pride Day as it is now called. To my amazement and delight, about fifty people showed up for the first wall tour, a harbinger of things to come in the following years. [READ MORE]

The table of contents for the full issue are below the cut. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the Active History theme issue, we are distributing FREE copies to our readership (quantities are limited, so we will be generally operating on a first-come-first-serve basis). Please e-mail info@activehistory.ca with your name, mailing address, and a brief two sentence rationale for why you’d like to receive the issue. We would then be happy to send it to you free of charge. For information on Left History or to express interest in subscribing, please e-mail lefthist@yorku.ca.

LEFT HISTORY 15.1 Table of Contents

WHAT IS ACTIVE HISTORY?

Jim Clifford, “What is Active History?”
Tom Peace, “The Call of Passive History.”
Joy Parr, “The Terms of Engagement: Elements from the Genealogy of Active History.”
Victoria Freeman, “What is Active History?”

REFLECTIONS ON ACTIVE HISTORY

Stuart Henderson, “Disappointment, Nihilism, and Engagement: Some Thoughts on Active History.”
Craig Heron, “Workers of the World, Give Me a Call!”
Karen Dearlove, “Community History, Active Historians and Activism.”
Tim Groves, “Historical Plaques: Images from the Missing Plaques Project.”

ARTICLES

Nick Witham, “Kolko and the Functions of Revisionist Historiography during the Reagan Era.”
Ian Hesketh, “Weapons of Another Kind: Henry Thomas Buckle and the Case of Thomas Pooley.”
Wendy Cheng, Laura Barraclough, and Laura Pulido, “Radicalising Teaching and Tourism: A People’s Guide as Active and Activist History.”

ACTIVE HISTORY LOOKING FORWARD

Geoffrey Reaume, “Psychiatric Patient Built Wall Tours at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, 2000 – 2010.”
Joel T. Helfrich, “On Being an Active Historian and the Usefulness of History: The Case of the Ongoing Struggle for dzi? nchaa si’an (Mount Graham).”

REVIEW ESSAYS

Bryan D. Palmer, “The Democratic Revolutionary: Reviving Lenin.”
Michelle A. Hamilton, “Canadians and their Pasts.”

PLUS TWENTY-FOUR BOOK REVIEWS.

The following upcoming events may be of interest to our readers (click on ‘continue reading’ below for full descriptions):

1)  TODAY (Sept 25)!  Unveiling of Memorial Plaques at CAMH in Toronto – 1 p.m.

2)  When the landlords became tenants: The 1828 Council at Fort York with the Mississauga – Sept 27, 7:30 p.m.

3)  Thought Exchange (History Matters) – Sept 28, 7 p.m.

4)  Approaching the Past: The Past through Place – Sept 30, 7 p.m.

5) CFP: History 2.0: Active History Roundtable on new media

6) This week in the Active History blogosphere!

If you have an announcement that you would like included in this weekly dispatch, please e-mail info@activehistory.ca.

1) This afternoon nine plaques will be unvieled to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the patient-built wall at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.  The plaques will be unvieled at 1 p.m. at the corner of Queen St. West and Shaw street in Toronto.  York University’s Y-File has more information.

2)  Fort York is hosting a public lecture by historian Donald Smith on the nineteenth century Mississauga.  The talk will focus on a council held at Fort York between the chiefs at Credit River, Bay of Quite and Rice Lake in 1828 which set the context for the next 200 years of negotiations between the Mississauga and Canadian governments.  Chief Bryan LaForme, Carolyn King and Margaret Sault from the Mississauga of the New Credit will respond to Dr. Smith’s talk.  The talk costs $10 and will be held at Fort York on Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m.

3)  Toronto Public Library is running an historical lecture series this fall – THOUGHT EXCHANGE (History Matters). The series aims to develop dialogue and exchange between active Toronto historians and the broader Toronto community through a series of lively, relevant talks and discussion. The next talk is: ‘I’ll drink to that: Booze in Hogtown’ by historian, and ActiveHistory.ca editorial board member, Craig Heron.  September 28, 7 pm, Anette Street Branch, 145 Annette Street.  (416-393-7692)

4)  Julia Roberts will be leading the next Approaching the Past workshop.  Professor Roberts will discuss using places, such as taverns, as entry points for teaching the past.  The event will be held at Montgomery’s Inn on September 30th at 7 p.m. For more information visit Approaching the Past or e-mail approachingthepast@gmail.com.

5) The co-coordinators for the Active History/Histoire Engagée CHA Working Group are calling for papers for a proposed round table for the CHA Annual Meeting to be held in May of 2011 in Fredericton, New Brunswick.  For more information visit the full announcement on ActiveHistory.ca

6)  This week in the AH blogosphere:

-     AH: Tom Peace: Hands-on History: Are the archaeologists leading the way to a new mode of public engagement?

-     AH: Stuart Henderson: History of Yorkville audio version

-    AH: Jamie Trepanier: History on Stage: Performance Art and Commemoration of the Winnipeg General Strike

-    HE: Luc-Nicole Labrie: Horse racing in Quebec and the Quebec Turf Club, 1789-1887.

Jane Jacobs

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.

A Jane's Walk - Photo Credit jbcurio Flickr Creative Commons Licence

Over the past few years I’ve been on two walks. One in the Don Valley and the other along the Humber River.  Both focused on the history of the rivers and their interactions with the city that grew up around them.  The Don tour was lead by a friend of mine, Jennifer Bonnell, while the second was led by a heritage activist and community historian.  Both tours were great, but very different.  Jennifer’s walk demonstrated her expansive knowledge of the valley discovered  by researching her PhD dissertation, while the Humber walk showed just how much a person can know about a region of the city after living in it for decades.  Contrasting the two walks reminds me of some of the core values discussed at the Active History conference concerning academics engaging with the community and at the same time listening to community members who have developed their own expansive knowledge of the past.  The dissemination of history can and should come from the bottom up just as often as it comes from the top down.

Geoffrey Reaume

This year’s massive list of Toronto walks  includes an amazing wealth of historical tours led by an array of university historians, political leaders, and community members.  These include the now famous, CAMH: Toronto Asylum Boundary Walls tour led by Active Historian and York Professor, Geoffrey Reaume and a tour of the Black Creek co-organised by our very own Tom Peace.  Another friend of Active History, community activist Tim Groves, is leading the tour of the The Ward: A History of Poor People and Immigrants in Toronto.  The list of historically themed walks goes well beyond the Active History network.  It includes tours led by local historical society members of the Thomson Pioneer Settlement and Queen Street East: The history, the people, the politics.  Aspiring politician Karen Sun will engage her community during the Garrison Creek: Exploring It’s Natural and Cultural History tour and member of a residents association will lead a tour called: A Parkdale Village: A Sense of History and Community.  All of these tours provide an important reminder that many people continue to value history, even if a lot of us fail the annual history pop quiz about important people and dates in Canadian history. The open model allows just about anyone to develop a Jane’s Walk and it is clear that a lot of people want to engage with their community by leading or following a local history tour.

Beyond the walks on May 1st and 2nd, the Jane Walk’s website also has an audio tour of Jane’s Annex.  This walking tour allows people to learn about Jane Jacob’s contributions to Toronto and the history of the fight to stop the Allen Expressway from dissecting the Annex Neighbourhood.  It has some great interviews with people who knew Jane back in the late 1960s and some recordings of interviews she did during the Expressway campaign.

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Help us put Words on the Wall

The Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto (PSAT) is giving out bricks to serve as the basis for a work of art.  Artists and groups are welcome to use the medium of their choice. Works will be displayed and sold as part of a silent auction to help raise funds for historic plaques to commemorate the history of the patient-built wall at the Queen Street Site of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Words on the Wall will be held on April 21, 2010 at the Gladstone Hotel in conjunction with This is Not a Reading  Series. There will be a wall tour led by historian Geoffrey Reaume, followed by a relaunch of the 2 nd  edition of his book, Remembrance of Patients Past (University of Toronto Press). We will end the evening with a silent auction of the bricks donated by artists.

To request a brick or for more information, please email psychsurvivorarchives@gmail.com or phone 416-661-9975 or 416-809-1013.
For more information about PSAT visit www.psychatricsurvivorarchives.com
For more information about This Is Not A Reading Series visit www.tinars.ca

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: APRIL 7, 2010

The title of the forum was “Hands On History: Keeping History Relevant”. It was a round table discussion with guests Geoffrey Reaume, Victoria Freeman, Craig Heron and the members of Active History (activehistory.ca.) Some of the questions discussed were: What is the role of activists in the historical discipline? How does this affect questions of objectivity and presentism? What new methodologies are being developed in active history? What projects are being developed in the field? And please feel free to bring your own questions, concerns, and ideas about your project. As usual there will be a reception at the Underground following the discussion where some snacks will be provided.

The file is available here for download, and is ideal for those of you with long commutes, fun-filled workouts, or simply an enduring interest in Active History.

It is split into two parts due to size restrictions.

Active History Roundtable PART ONE

Active History Roundtable PART TWO

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Workman Arts Presents:
“in SANITY”, The Story Behind the Wall
@ Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Saturday, October 3^rd 2009 from 7pm – 7am
@ the Workman Theatre, CAMH, 1001 Queen St. W., Toronto, ON M6J 1H4

The Story Behind the Wall is a mixed-media and cross-disciplinary art-making project taken on by artists of the Workman Arts Project of Ontario.  Six artists chose six former patients from the Toronto Hospital for the Insane as depicted in the book Remembrance of Patients Past – Patient life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870-1940 by Geoffrey Reaume. Their goal was to create figurative sculptures to creatively and expressively tell the stories of these individual patients.

Geoffrey Reaume’s careful research though the Archives of Ontario was an attempt to understand the patients as people first rather than a diagnostic label.  Working from Geoffrey’s place of respect, the six artists from the Workman Arts Project chose six patients from his book and further investigated these individuals by relating to them as people, artists, and, as people who have experience with mental health as well as the confines of the Psychiatric System and the prejudice of society.

Inspired by a conceptual installation at the Museum Het Dolhuys in Amsterdam, Workman Arts will take this unique opportunity to transform the CAMH space, which has housed the Workman Arts office and Workman Theatre for 20 years and will be demolished later this year as part of the CAMH site redevelopment.

The Workman Arts Project of Ontario Inc. (WA) facilitates aspiring, emerging and established artists with mental illness and addiction issues to develop and refine their art form through its arts training programs, public performance/exhibit opportunities and partnering with other art organizations. As well, WA promotes a greater public understanding of mental illness and addiction through the creation, presentation and discussion of artistic media.

For more information please contact:
Project Administrator: Lisa Kennedy @ 416-583-4339 or lisa_kennedy@workmanarts.com
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is a signature event produced by the City of Toronto.

Workman Arts ? 651 Dufferin St. ? Toronto, ON ? M6K 2B2 ? p: 416 583.4339 ? f: 416 583.4354 www.workmanarts.com

A Proud partner with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

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