By Erin Isaac I first reached out to Dr. Amy Scott (University of New Brunswick) about visiting her in Cape Breton in February 2020, after attending a public lecture she gave at New Brunswick’s Provincial Archives. In her talk, Dr. Scott told us about the things her team was learning about 18th-century disease, injury, and lifeways from the grave goods… Read more »
ActiveHistory.ca is slowing down our publication schedule this summer, but we’ll be back with more new posts in September. In the meantime, we’re featuring posts from our archive. Thanks as always to our writers and readers! The following post was originally featured on December 22, 2022. As the film Oppenheimer hits the big screen and renews discussion of Canada’s role… Read more »
Kathryn Hughes In 1989, the popular Canadian women’s health magazine Healthsharing published an article entitled “Shots in the Dark: The Risk of Infant Vaccination”. Echoing the anti-vaccine movement of this period (the title borrows from the 1985 influential anti-vaccine text DTP: A Shot in the Dark), the article discussed the risk of the DPT-P vaccine, quoted personal stories from mothers… Read more »
Franca Iacovetta & Cynthia Wright, with thanks to A.F. Moritz …the new Toronto comrades engulfed you, a happy flood, and carried you like a spirit in its pinnace, its canoe, on a shining spate, a spring rill of refreshing flame through a magic land to that evening’s party. When the pandemic came, we were planning a symposium to mark the… Read more »
Jennifer Bate Indigenous peoples have used their deep-rooted understanding of the land and wildlife to feed their families and communities for generations. However, by the end of the 19th century, First Nations communities in Northwestern Ontario found their traditional way of life threatened by encroaching settlement and new government-imposed hunting legislation. Although early game laws contained clauses exempting First Nations… Read more »
Margaret Ross Late one evening in January 1923, police descended on Millie Jones’s bawdy house at 757 Mercer Street in Windsor, Ontario. She was forty-eight years old, and ran the house with her husband, George.[1] The couple was Black, and they employed two other Black women. The entire group was arrested, including two clients who were being entertained at the… Read more »
Patrick Lacroix On March 11, author and former vice-regal consort John Ralston Saul called attention to the 175th anniversary of the formation of the LaFontaine-Baldwin government, which cemented in practice the principle of responsible government. Saul has expressed hope of a national commemoration of this moment—a hope unlikely to be met. Ours is not, in 2023, a country in search… Read more »
By Juliana Springer Enerals Griffin was about 41 years old when he arrived in Ancaster Township (present-day Hamilton, ON) where he purchased a house set upon 50 acres of land. With land and water routes along the Niagara Peninsula and Lake Ontario, Ancaster was a prime location for those fleeing slavery and persecution in the United States in the mid-19th… Read more »
By Samuel Pratt Betty and Melvin Simpson of Amherstburg, ON opened a small history museum in 1975. They “had a dream to illuminate the history of Black people in a dignified manner,” wanting to promote their town’s extensive involvement in the history of Black Canadians. Known as the North American Black Historical Museum, the museum was built in the former… Read more »
By Raghd Abou Jarboua In 1849, Reverend William King with the support of the Presbyterian Church established a Black refugee community by the name of the Elgin Settlement, also dubbed the Buxton Settlement, just south of Chatham-Kent, Ontario. The settlement’s objective was to promote “social and moral improvement of the coloured people in Canada”[1]. In commemorations of the Elgin Settlement’s… Read more »
