In a reflection of the city itself, the racial, religious and ethnic dynamic of public housing had changed dramatically over the preceding decade. And for all the discussion among consultants, MTHA administrators, Community Relations Workers, and tenants themselves, Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority managers and employees seemed oblivious to initiatives that might specifically address that transformation and how it was impacting the lives of tenants.
key impediments made the implementation of a sound social service strategy impossible. First, and to their great credit, CRWs dreamed big on program implementation. But many (not all) harbored questionable, socially conservative assessments of tenants and their problems. That is, the socially conservative basis of their analysis of tenant lives and what programs were needed was often flawed.
Rather than accept John Norton’s self-fashioning at face value, I explore the incongruities, counterclaims, and complexities that make it appear much more likely that Norton was an early-modern trans-Atlantic shapeshifter, stretching the truth at best, and completely fabricating his own reality at worst.
Active History is on its annual August hiatus. In honour of syllabus-writing season, we are reposting a selection of teaching-related articles from the past year. Today’s repost features Melissa J. Nelson and Natasha Henry-Dixon’s article of 22 February 2024. While you’re here, we also invite you complete our survey. This is the final instalment in a three-part series on the… Read more »
By Jacob Richard On December 2, 1920, The Globe reported in its ‘News of the Day’ that Joseph Buchie, an “Indian convict” in the Port Arthur Jail, had cleverly “locked his warder in his cell, released two others, cooked a breakfast and walked out.”[1] Buchie must have felt elated when he walked free of the prison doors; the full breakfast… Read more »
Jim Clifford and Stéphane Castonguay will lead a walking tour on Sunday June 16 at 7pm starting at Victoria Square in Montreal. Towers of Grain: Feeding Edwardian Britain Silo number 1, built in 1902 in the Port of Montreal, linked the burgeoning wheat farms on the Prairies with the urban markets in the United Kingdom. New industrial-scale flour mills were… Read more »
Paul W. Bennett History matters more than most of us recognize unless and until it directly affects us. Yet it shapes in subtle and unconscious ways how provinces and communities are perceived in the past and present, and how they confront the future. That applies especially in the case of Atlantic Canada, lying “Down East” and, until the past fifty… Read more »
Doing publicly engaged research isn’t easy, but it was central to Parr’s scholarship and philosophy.
Greer positions the absence of context, connections between collections, and supports that reflect the nuance of archival research as LAC being “determined to hide the results of their past efforts from the eyes of researchers”. In actuality, what is unfolding is a predictable outcome of an impossible situation and the absence of an adequate number of trained professionals to provide anything better.
In fairness to LAC, I recognize that their problems are rooted in chronic underfunding. That and a succession of governments measuring their success with inappropriate metrics. While wishing that management had made different choices under the pressure of inadequate financing, I also wish they were not forced to choose between outreach and basic archival services.
