History

A Small Spark, a Big Flame: Two Wildcat Vignettes from the Summer of ’66

March 23, 2012

By Ian Milligan Today’s Air Canada wildcat strikes, which led to widespread delays and cancellations at Toronto’s Pearson and Montreal’s Dorval airports, surprised many Canadians. That it could all begin with a seemingly minor issue – the suspension of a number of workers who sarcastically applauded Labour Minister Lisa Raitt as she debarked from a flight [...]

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Visualizing the Past

February 20, 2012

I have recently been trying to figure out good ways of representing large amounts of historical information in a way that makes sense to everybody who might stumble across my work! I think that a good graphic has the ability to draw readers into what we do, letting us convey the scope, joy, or horror [...]

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Eating Like Our Great-Grandmothers: Food Rules and the Uses of Food History

November 24, 2011

by Ian Mosby This month’s publication of a colourfully illustrated, revised edition of Michael Pollan’s 2009 bestseller, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, once again has me thinking about the role of historians in contemporary debates about the health and environmental impacts of our current industrial food system. As a historian of food and nutrition, I [...]

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A Town Called Asbestos: a NiCHE EHTV series by Jessica van Horssen

October 28, 2011

Over the next few Fridays, ActiveHistory.ca is re-posting a five part series of YouTube videos created for the Network in Canadian Environment & History’s EHTV. This week EHTV presents the first part of a fascinating history of Quebec asbestos by Dr. Jessica Van Horssen. For more than one hundred years, Quebecers have mined this unique [...]

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Historians, Global Warming, and the Mapping of Humanity’s Future.

September 14, 2011

In this post Dagomar Degroot explores problems in the understanding of the relationship between society and climate in models of the future and descriptions of the past, before considering how historical climatologists can help forge more accurate visions of humanity on a warmer planet.

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What Do You Want to Know (about history)? Wolfram Alpha and the Computational Knowledge Engine.

August 22, 2011

Wolfram Alpha lets users interact with over 10 trillion pieces of information curated by a large research team. You just type in what you want to know, the engine tries to figure out what you’re asking it, and you’re presented with a remarkable array of information (as well as ways to refine your subsequent searches). This has tremendous historical applications, both for teaching and for historical research.

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May 12th Public Lecture: “Understanding Slavery Past and Present”

May 5, 2011

A reminder to our readers that you are all invited to the final lecture in the Mississauga Library System’s ‘History Minds’ series, co-hosted with ActiveHistory.ca. This talk will be on Thursday, May 12th at 7:30PM in Classroom 3 at the Mississauga Central Library (see below the cut for directions). “Understanding Slavery Past and Present” With [...]

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Using Word Clouds to Quickly See the Political Past

April 11, 2011

This is a demonstration by Ian Milligan of how word clouds can be used to visually display textual documents, with possible applications in the educational field, media field, and elsewhere. It also has lots of pretty pictures.

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April 14th Public Lecture: “From a Pastoral Wetland to an Industrial Wasteland, and Back Again? An Environmental History of the Lower Lea River Valley, the Site of the 2012 London Olympics.”

April 8, 2011

A reminder to our readers that you are all invited to the second lecture in the Mississauga Library System’s ‘History Minds’ series, co-hosted with ActiveHistory.ca. The second talk will be on Thursday, April 14th at 7:30PM in Classroom 3 at the Mississauga Central Library (see below the cut for directions). “From a Pastoral Wetland to [...]

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Movie Review: “Swedes and Scots and Sadists…Oh My”

March 30, 2011

This past weekend I watched two movies that were seemingly more different than any two movies could be. They did have things in common though. Both films were intriguing and entertaining in their own way and at their heart is a similar theme: reclaiming and uncovering the “true” past.

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