Category Archives: Canadian history

2010 G8/G20 Summit: Upcoming Actions and Events

The G8 and G20 Summits are fast approaching.  G8 leaders will be meeting in Huntsville, Ontario at Deerhurst Resort on June 25, 2010; the G20 will be meeting in Toronto at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on June 26 and 27. At a cursory glance, the G8, or Group of Eight, extends back to the 1973 oil crisis; originally called… Read more »

Collection Access: the Toronto District School Board Artifact Loan Program

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) recently announced plans to increase access to the private art and artifact collection held by the School Board.  The collection is estimated to be worth millions of dollars, has been unavailable to the general public for years, and includes items from numerous noteworthy Canadians. The School Board plans on increasing access to their collection… Read more »

History Variations

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by Lani Russwurm The internet has the potential to enrich and increase our interactions with the past simply through making historical sources widely available and by making the tools to produce and disseminate history accessible to anyone. This means the historian’s role is becoming less that of a gatekeeper of the past as traditional print-based published histories increasingly co-exist with… Read more »

A Class Project for the People

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As an undergraduate history student, I wrote a lot of essays and exams meant only for my professor’s eyes. Despite the tremendous effort that went into crafting these works, they now exist only as PDFs on my personal computer where I secretly hope some future historian will find them and be fascinated by my analysis of the Chanak Affair or… Read more »

Walking History: Jane’s Walk in Toronto and Vancouver

68 cities recently took part in Jane’s Walk, an annual weekend of free walking tours honouring the vision of urbanist Jane Jacobs.  Ordinary people, Jacobs argued, can learn about and improve their surroundings by observing their daily environments at street level.  These walks also bring out the histories of place through members of the local community – walk leaders and… Read more »

How far have we come? From Yellow Peril to the “Colour of Canada”

by Laura Madokoro CBC radio recently announced that “the face of Canada is changing colour.” With all the news about global warming and melting ice cap, such a headline might make you think that something horrific had happened to the Canadian environment. You would be mistaken. Au contraire, the news was about the latest Canadian census results that reveal a… Read more »

May Day in Hamilton, Ontario

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The first of May, celebrated in many nations across the world as Labour Day or International Workers Day, has a long tradition of worker’s activism and protest.  This year was no different, as protestors around the world rallied to send various messages to governments. May Day is not officially recognized as Labour Day in northern North America, despite its North… Read more »

Endangered Places: Lansdowne Park

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In June 2010 Ottawa City Council will decide the fate of Lansdowne Park, a significant area of public space in Ottawa’s Glebe community, a portion of which is marked for proposed commercial redevelopment. Over the past year, public consultations have been a platform for concerned citizens in the Glebe, and in other areas of Ottawa, to express their concerns over… Read more »

Remembering and Commemorating a Complicated Past

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In this post, I look at controversies surrounding a statue of Nellie McClung, due to her early-20th century support of eugenics.