By Krista McCracken The past decade has fundamentally changed how archives provide access to historical records. Many archives now provide digital access to collections, have digitization on demand services, and have started to prioritize collections for digitization. Much of this digitization has been driven by funding bodies and a desire to increase accessibility to collections. But how has the digitization… Read more »
By Zoe Todd What does it mean to be a child of Empire? I’m not quite sure, but the complex roots of my ancestors stretch across small prairie towns and all the way back to Ireland, Scotland and England. I am Metis: an offspring of the fur trade and all of its complexities, paradoxes and rich histories. Today I study… Read more »
By Daniel Ross Every Torontonian has a story about Yonge Street. For nearly a century it was the city’s unquestioned commercial and entertainment hub, the place to go for everything from window-shopping and people-watching to a Saturday night out on the town. Even in today’s diverse, dispersed Toronto it remains our most iconic street. Love it or hate it, like… Read more »
By Ian Milligan For many students, it’s back to school season. For me, that means it is time to think about some of the resources and tools that are out there. If you want to research a topic, it’s worth keeping in mind some great repositories online. The big one online is the Internet Archive – which is not just old websites…. Read more »
Digital History isn’t for everyone. In Canada, according to the 2010 Canadian Internet Use Survey, one-fifth of all households remain without access to the internet in the home.
By Sean Kheraj If there was a weekly prize for active historians in Canada, Ian Mosby would have been last week’s winner. Canadian national news media (including print, radio, television, and web) prominently featured Dr. Mosby’s recently published Histoire Sociale/Social History article, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952.” This paper… Read more »
By Ian Milligan In 1963, despite community opposition, New York City’s Pennsylvania Station was torn down. It was an age of modernism, old being wiped away for new. Afterwards, some of the sails went out of that movement: there was renewed interest in architectural preservation, added hesitation when it came to the wholesale destruction of our past. Last week, a… Read more »
By Paul W. Bennett The Internet is finally beginning to penetrate historical practice. At the recent North American Society for Sports History (NASSH) Conference, held May 24-26, 2013 at Saint Mary’s University, Douglas Booth and Gary Osmond provided a fascinating primer on the impact digital history is starting to exert on a field like the study of international sports history. … Read more »
By Jonathan McQuarrie Recently, I spent some time with Daniel Sidorick’s fantastic monograph Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (Ithica, 2009). Among the timely observations made by the work is the vital point that a managerial effort to enforce efficiency through the threat of outsourcing is hardly new. At the turn of… Read more »
We’re proud to announce that ActiveHistory.ca has been blogging about why history matters for more than four years! Ever since our first anniversary back in 2010, we have celebrated the achievements of the past year, and this year is no exception. Our body of contributors and guest writers has grown larger and more diverse, while the number of posts featured on… Read more »
