Megan Davies and David Reville recently presented an engaging talk on the ways in which mental health deinstitutionalization impacted psychiatric survivors and the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto. In front of a packed audience at the Parkdale library, “Locating Parkdale’s Mad History: Back Wards to Back Streets, 1980-2010” examined the motivations behind deinstitutionalization and showed how community members are remembering the… Read more »
Over the past five years I have spent many Friday afternoons with Francis and the Club at L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill. Daybreak is a community that focuses on sharing life with people with different gifts and abilities; at its heart are men and women with intellectual disabilities. On Friday afternoons at the Club, a program for retirees, we often gather around the television screen to look at old community photographs. The members of the Club tell me stories about their past experiences, and I annotate the images in a digital database with the names of the people in the picture and the stories associated with them.
The history curriculum in UK schools is to be overhauled with the help of Simon Schama, an announcement made five months after the controversy sparked by the alleged invitation extended to Niall Ferguson. The concerns remain the same: that history is disappearing through falling demand, at least in state schools; that where it is taught, the topic-based approach of the… Read more »
Torontonians go to the polls today to vote in the city’s municipal election. Transportation, and plans for transit in particular, has been a prominent theme during the long election race. Much of the debate has focused on whether the city should stick with Transit City (a plan already started that will criss-cross the metropolis with numerous light rail lines) or… Read more »
Formally launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia — the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” — has become the first (and often only) stop in Internet fact-finding. With well over ten million articles to date, Wikipedia has evaded overt corporate influence through a non-profit structure and currently ranks among the top ten most visited sites on… Read more »
by Laura Madokoro Recently, the Canadian Immigration Minister travelled around the world to consult with foreign governments on global migration issues. Jason Kenney’s meetings with his Australian counterparts drew special media interest given Australia’s well-known “tough stance” on would-be asylum seekers. Kenney made it clear that Canada and Australia would be working together on human smuggling issues in particular. He… Read more »
by Jamie Trepanier Playwright Danny Schur is convinced that the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 has more than enough compelling storylines for a major musical production, and that its message is one that is still relevant today. “The story has all of the elements of high drama: societal unrest, government suppression of rights, aftermath of war, dramatic death in the… Read more »
The Government of Canada has declared 2010 to be the Year of the British Home Child. Earlier this month, Canada Post released a commemorative stamp to honour this recognition. The stamp, designed by Debbie Adams of Adams+Associates Design Consultants, contains three images: the SS Sardinian, on which home children migrated from Britain to Canada; a photograph of a home child… Read more »
HISTORY 2.0: HISTORIANS AND THE NEW MEDIA The co-coordinators for the Active History/Histoire Engagée CHA Working Group are calling for papers for a proposed round table for the CHA Annual Meeting to be held in May of 2011 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Our proposed round table, will, we hope, trigger wider discussion about the current opportunities and challenges that new… Read more »
