Category Archives: Doing History

Reconsidering the Digital Historian Project

In 2014, the Digital Historian Project began as a partnership in Experiential Learning between 3 secondary schools in Dufferin County (the Upper Grand DSB) and the Duffern County Museum and Archives (DCMA). The goal was to offer a 4-Credit semester-long intensive program taught in situ at the Museum to senior students, in which curriculum would be delivered by a History… Read more »

Reconsidering the Digital Historian Project

In 2014, the Digital Historian Project began as a partnership in Experiential Learning between 3 secondary schools in Dufferin County (the Upper Grand DSB) and the Duffern County Museum and Archives (DCMA). The goal was to offer a 4-Credit semester-long intensive program taught in situ at the Museum to senior students, in which curriculum would be delivered by a History… Read more »

Teaching Sexual Violence in History

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Sanchia deSouza, Joel Dickau, Edward Dunsworth, William Fysh, Benjamin Lukas, Kari North, Maris Rowe-Mcculloch, Lindsay C. Sidders, Hana Suckstorff, Nathaniel Thomas, Erica Toffoli, and Spirit-Rose Waite As movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp direct renewed and broadened attention to sexual violence and harassment, many sectors of society (especially workplaces) are being forced to reckon with and critically assess these forms of… Read more »

Open Pedagogy: The Time is Now

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By Thomas Peace I’ve been a rather slow convert to the open-access movement. Though ActiveHistory.ca operates under a Creative Commons Attribution, non-commercial ShareALike copyright license whereby you’re free to repost this (or any other essay you find here) so long as you provide us with attribution and do not profit, this was my sole venture into the world of open… Read more »

The Ironies of the Wired Society: The Internet and Contemporary History

By Andrew Nurse The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. ~Antonio Gramsci Over the last generation, a series of “post” and “neo” ideologies prophesied fundamental change already evolving around us: a new era was being born. This has not really… Read more »

What’s really killing Canadian History?

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By Thomas Peace Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of Jack Granatstein’s provocative polemic Who Killed Canadian History, a book that laments the perceived steep decline in Canadians’ knowledge of our past. It is rare for any book to have such staying power. Earlier this month, for example, the book was drawn upon extensively in an op-ed column for my local… Read more »

Transitions: 25 Years of Film Making & Journalism in Indigenous Communities

By James Cullingham It is clearly a difficult moment in Indigenous-settler relations in Canada. Cases in criminal courts lead to perplexing outcomes. First Nations, various governments and major natural resource companies are pitted against one another over pipeline construction. As I write, an inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women continues its work. In the cultural sphere, we are experiencing… Read more »

Neil Richards, 1949-2018: activist and historian

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By V.J. Korinek Saskatchewan lost an important community historian when William Neil Richards passed away on January 12, 2018. Neil Richards was born in Ontario and raised there, but in 1972 he came west to Saskatoon, and the University of Saskatchewan, where he accepted a position in the University’s Murray Library. He formally retired from the University’s Archives and Special… Read more »

Fifth Annual (?) Year in Review (100 Years Later)

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By Aaron Boyes and Sean Graham Four years ago, we had an idea for a post that came from our frustration with year end columns definitively declaring winners and losers for the previous twelve months while also predicting what the year’s ultimate legacy would be. As historians, though, we felt that these columns could not be written in the moment,… Read more »

Reflections on Learning: Conversations in the Car, the Bus, the Boardwalk/Debaajmihtaadoak daabaaning, bemwidgeway daabaaning, sihgaakoh maasechguning: wii waamjigaadek daa kenjihgewin

Nunda ezhibiigaadegin d’goh biigaadehknown ezhi debaahdedek nungwa manda neebing Mnidoo Mnising Neebing gah Bizh’ezhiwaybuck zhaazhi  gonda behbaandih kenjih’gehjik. This essay is part of an ongoing series reflecting on this summer’s Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI). By Clara MacCallum Fraser with Kelly King & Nicole Latulippe Is it possible to convey the depth of embodied learning through the written word?… Read more »