Category Archives: History and Policy

Understanding the Tools We Have and Rethinking the Tools We Need in Ontario’s Heritage Industry

Three men standing in front of a large, brown stone historic home. They are standing around a sign that says "The Brown Homestead 1317 Pelham Road."

By educating the public about heritage designation, incorporating heritage into urban planning, and connecting with our wider communities, we can cultivate a brighter future for Ontario’s heritage industry.

“Encouraging the Behaviour We Want to Encourage”: Faded Promises of Security in Toronto Public Housing

Colour photo of a city street corner with a police car marked "Metro Police" in the midground. Labeled "City of Toronto Archives, Series 1465, File 169, Item 144."

In what seemed to some MTHA workers a bizarre self-fulfilling prophecy of failure on the matter, MTHA also took it upon itself to modify the behaviour of all residents. Toward that end, it hired the criminologist and security “expert” Clifford D. Shearing to write a pilot study on how to solve MTHA security problems.

A Perception of Learned Helplessness: The Jane-Finch Neighborhood Versus Pessimism and Conflict at Toronto Public Housing

Colour photograph of a city landscape from high above. A lake is visible on the horizon.

In correspondence with North York Mayor Mel Lastman, Sheila Mascoll accused the mayor of the sort of neglect of and insensitivity toward Jane-Finch that had cast an unreasonable racist pall on a neighborhood where thousands lived, worked, and played.

Soundbite Histories

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Daniel R. Meister It’s part of the craft of writing: a “killer quote” that powerfully demonstrates the point the author is trying to make. Taken from a primary source, it can become the most quoted part of the secondary piece in which it appears. And when loosed from its moorings to the publication that contextualizes it, the quote is carried… Read more »

Canada’s Sex Work Legislation Must Change

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Black and white photo of a person speaking into a megaphone.

Sex workers’ lives are directly at risk because of C-36.

Spotting the Difference: Comparing Canadian Sex Work Legislation from 1985 and 2014

Black and white photo of two women looking at a book with bookshelves behind them.

The countless number of sex workers, organizations, and newspaper articles all argued the same underlying premise as they had with Bill C-49: that the government’s legislation endangers sex workers.

Canada’s Sex Work Legislation Hasn’t Changed

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It is unsurprising that the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform launched a constitutional challenge to the PCEPA in 2021- brought to the Ontario Superior Court between October 2 and 7, 2022.On September 18, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court released its decision in CASWLR v. Attorney General (Canada), deciding to uphold the PCEPA.

Role and Responsibility of Historians in Fighting Denialism

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One problem is that those engaging in Indian Residential School denialism understand the important role that truth-telling about the past has on social change. If establishing the truth is, as the TRC contended, the precondition for healing, justice, and reconciliation, then denialists seek to deliberately divert attention away from the truths about the horrors of Indian Residential Schools.

Consultant Woes, Community Relations Worker Doubts, and Bureaucratic Stasis at Toronto Public Housing in the late 1980s

Aerial image of an urban landscape.

In a reflection of the city itself, the racial, religious and ethnic dynamic of public housing had changed dramatically over the preceding decade. And for all the discussion among consultants, MTHA administrators, Community Relations Workers, and tenants themselves, Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority managers and employees seemed oblivious to initiatives that might specifically address that transformation and how it was impacting the lives of tenants.