Musically the thing about Brian Wilson is that it’s not all about Pet Sounds and Smile. A lot of Beach Boys tracks are equally impressive. Ballads such The Warmth Of The Sun and In My Room are a template for vocal harmonies achieved by groups such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and The Eagles. David Crosby and Jerry Garcia were Beach Boys defenders even when the cool kids thought they were unhip. Neil Young once shared a house with Dennis Wilson. Songs like I Get Around (Keith Richards’ personal favourite), Good Vibrations and Sail On Sailor rock like mad. Often overlooked albums like Smiley Smile (sort of an unplugged version of Smile), Friends, Sunflower, Surf’s Up, Holland, The Beach Boys Love You and Carl And The Passions – So Tough contain many gems.
By Owen Griffiths and Andrew Nurse Another baseball season upon us so it seems like a good time to revisit some of the best baseball books ever written. No sport is as connected to — or immersed in — history as baseball and no sport can boast as powerful a lineup of literary figures. From Ring Lardner, Roger Angell, and… Read more »
Gary Genosko American poet Allen Ginsberg’s Canadian itinerary of readings throughout 1969 brought him to a number of major urban centres, including Montreal and Vancouver. For instance, at the end of October and beginning of November in Montréal, Ginsberg read at Sir George Williams University, where he was introduced by poet George Bowering; he then read at McGill University in… 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 February 22, 2018. Since then, Drew Hayden Taylor has released Cottagers and Indians in print and directed… Read more »
By Andrew Nurse The art of Yousuf Karsh is at once alluring and telling. The large-scale exhibition “The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” captured both aspects of his work even while I suspect this was not its intention. The exhibition was a collaborative product of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at… Read more »
Henry Jacob When artists exist outside of the canon, their names sometimes remain unknown. However, even if their personal identities fade, they may create objects that encourage future generations to better understand the time in which they lived. Occasionally, their artwork can also empower later viewers to reflect upon the collective identity of their own era. The object of this… Read more »
Dale M. McCartney In 2014, Jonathan MacQuarrie told Active History readers that video games were increasingly teaching people about history in exciting and sometimes worrisome ways. In the years since, there has been an explosion of games that not only depict the past, but trade on historical accuracy as part of their appeal. They promise an extraordinary verisimilitude, allowing players… Read more »
Alvin Finkel When people desire a more bellicose response to an international conflict, they often accuse their opponents of failing to recognize the lessons of “Munich.” We are hearing that from some Canadian conservatives with regards to Canada’s response to the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The assumption in their use of “Munich” is that the leaders of… Read more »
Jessica Di Laurenzio It is impossible to study early Canadian history without understanding the fur trade, and impossible to study the fur trade without coming across the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Some of the most useful and interesting records are the journals that kept daily accounts of post activities. Among the entries that jotted down the weather, visitors… Read more »
It is this gap, between official imaginings of community, and how the past informs the communities in which we actually live, that the Hidden Histories of Southwestern Ontario project seeks to bridge.
