By Colin Coates and Daniel Ross “The rise and fall of America’s largest socialist utopian experiment” -Program blurb from the 2013 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival This post, inspired by the documentary film American Commune (2013) by Rena Mundo Croshere and Nadine Mundo, takes two different looks at the history of a 1970s countercultural commune located in the southern… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Madeleine-Kloske.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham On Wednesday night there was a screening of four documentary films as part of Northern Scene in Ottawa. The evening’s feature film was Dan Sokolowski’s Degrees Northand it was preceded by three shorts: Andrew Connors’ Come Back Little Star, Daniel Janke’s Finding Milton, and Lulu Keating’s Dawson Town Melted Down. Each… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Artists-Marketplace.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham For the first four days of Northern Scene, the Panorama Room at the National Arts Centre was transformed into a marketplace featuring some of the region’s top artists. In this episode of the History Slam I talk with three of those artists about their work and the changing face of the… Read more »
By Carmella Gray-Cosgrove In November 2012, as newspapers reported, an “all-but-forgotten” painting by A.Y. Jackson, “Radium Mine” (1938), emerged from the private collection of a prolific prospector. The painting went to auction, selling for an astounding $643,500, and, fleetingly, popular news sources grazed the surface of a subterranean history that disrupts the very bedrock of Canadian identity. In the foreground… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Justice-Edit.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In August 1899, Dawson and Jim Nantack were executed in Dawson City, Yukon for the murder of two prospectors. On November 4, 2010, their remains were uncovered by a backhoe operator during construction of a sewage treatment plant. The discovery led to a renewed interest in the story of four men… Read more »
By Liza Piper In November 1948, long-time northerner L.A. Learmonth, engaged in archaeological work near Fort Ross, sent word to the RCMP detachment at Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuuttiaq) that sixteen Inuit had fallen terribly ill at Creswell Bay on Somerset Island in the summer. Nine of the sixteen had died. At the time of writing, the remaining seven were still seriously… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Dorset-Seen.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Last Friday night in Ottawa, buses traversed the city as part of an art gallery crawl. The unofficial launch of Northern Scene, Swarm allowed art fans to view 15 different exhibits around the national capital region, with the event being capped off by a series of performances followed by a fashion… Read more »
By Ken Coates and Bill Morrison Things change – but rarely as fast and comprehensively as in the Canadian North. As late as the 1950s, most Indigenous people in the territorial and provincial North lived off the land, traveling seasonally to fish, hunt, trap and gather. The hand of Ottawa had just begun to be felt, gently in the case… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/northernscene_tom_mcsorley1-edit1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham As we kick off Northern History Week, we thought it would be fun to go back and look at some of the earliest films depicting life in northern Canada. In this episode of the History Slam podcast, I chat with Tom McSorley of the Canadian Film Institute about one of the… Read more »
ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to announce two exciting initiatives at Heritage Toronto, a charitable arms-length agency of the City of Toronto that promotes the city’s rich architectural, cultural, archaeological and natural heritage. Heritage Toronto Awards – Call for Nominations The Heritage Toronto Awards celebrate outstanding contributions in the promotion and conservation of Toronto’s history and heritage landmarks by professionals and volunteers…. Read more »
