By Erin Gallagher-Cohoon This post has been cross-posted with CovidChroniclers.com I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the 20 graduate students who shared their stories with me. Wherever you end up, may you never lose your passion, curiosity, and empathy. I see you. I acknowledge you. Two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about surviving grad school during… Read more »
Excerpt of A World Without Martha: A Memoir of Sisters, Disability, and Difference By Victoria Freeman For so many years, my knowledge of my sister had been defined more through her absence than her presence, through the shape of the void she left in my life. I had been able to approach who she was only through echoes and shadows,… Read more »
By Victoria Freeman Birds make me think about freedom. They can go where they want and don’t have to talk about it. It’s a gift in itself because it’s something that doesn’t come overnight. You have to work on it. If you have it, it’s just there, like a light. These words, from a person who lived for 20 years… Read more »
Meredith J. Batt Contrary to popular belief, archivists are not solitary, isolated, introverted creatures, hidden away from view in a basement surrounded by dusty books and papers. In fact, our work often requires us to be front facing and social. We help students, researchers, journalists, lawyers, and tourists find the information they are looking for. We sometimes give tours and… Read more »
By Victoria Freeman In 1960, my twenty-month-old sister Martha was admitted to the Rideau Regional Centre, an institution for people with developmental disabilities located on the outskirts of Smiths Falls, Ontario. For the next thirteen years she would live in this isolated and overcrowded complex of 50 buildings that at its peak housed 2,600 inmates. I use the word ‘inmate’… Read more »
Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw A week or two into our respective COVID-19 isolations at home in Alberta and Ontario, we (colleagues Amy and Sarah) each received, by mail, fresh from the printer, our copies of our new edited collection about female Canadians’ and Newfoundlanders’ experiences of the Second World War. The title – a last minute substitution at the… Read more »
By Lindsay Gibson and Catherine Duquette Historical significance raises one of the most fundamental and unavoidable questions for understanding history; which events, people, and developments from the past should be studied and remembered?[i] The past is everything that ever happened to everyone everywhere, but it is impossible to study or remember everything that occurred. History is comprised of narratives about… Read more »
Of course, the real interest in the piece, as in the book manuscript I had just completed, wasn’t what happened in 1911 but what happened at the next election in 1917, namely, the most racially polarizing campaign in Canadian history.
Will Langford Congress 2020 is cancelled. But before the conference is forgotten, let’s ponder the anti-racism Congress that never was. At last year’s gathering, in a brazen act of racial profiling, a participant harassed political scientist Shelby McPhee and falsely accused the Black graduate student of theft. Following an investigation, the perpetrator was issued a ban for violating the Congress… Read more »
Isabel Campbell In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, blogs, webinars, and posts with expert advice about remote interviewing in oral history have blossomed. For example, three experts at Baylor University in the United States put together a webinar which is available on YouTube.[i] It is particularly aimed at Americans; Canadians will quickly realize that our legal environment is… Read more »
