by Lisa Rumiel On Tuesday, September 14th the Toronto Public Library (TPL) will kick off its 6 part History Matters lecture series. As you might have guessed from the title, the idea for the series was inspired by what’s been going on over the past couple years with the folks at Active History – both at the blog and the… Read more »
A brief trip through Toronto’s 20th century past can show us two things: firstly, that police violence and arbitrary use of power has a long history in Toronto. More importantly, however, we see that citizen action can spur meaningful regulatory change. We can do something.
This post re-caps the inaugural event in the Approaching the Past workshop series, which is co-sponsored by ActiveHistory.ca. It discusses what we did at the workshop, and hopefully helps people learn some teaching tips.
Colborne Street is the historic downtown of Brantford and by many accounts this stretch of buildings represents the longest stretch of pre-Confederation buildings remaining Canada, but Tuesday June 8th was a dark day for history, heritage and the city of Brantford.
The use of new digital media in conjunction with conventional print publication is one of the many important contributions that Joy Parr’s recent Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953-2003 (2010, UBC Press) makes to our understanding of the past. The book examines how Canadians living in environments affected by megaprojects built after the Second World War responded to… Read more »
The G8 and G20 Summits are fast approaching. G8 leaders will be meeting in Huntsville, Ontario at Deerhurst Resort on June 25, 2010; the G20 will be meeting in Toronto at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on June 26 and 27. At a cursory glance, the G8, or Group of Eight, extends back to the 1973 oil crisis; originally called… Read more »
by Lani Russwurm The internet has the potential to enrich and increase our interactions with the past simply through making historical sources widely available and by making the tools to produce and disseminate history accessible to anyone. This means the historian’s role is becoming less that of a gatekeeper of the past as traditional print-based published histories increasingly co-exist with… Read more »
68 cities recently took part in Jane’s Walk, an annual weekend of free walking tours honouring the vision of urbanist Jane Jacobs. Ordinary people, Jacobs argued, can learn about and improve their surroundings by observing their daily environments at street level. These walks also bring out the histories of place through members of the local community – walk leaders and… Read more »
In June 2010 Ottawa City Council will decide the fate of Lansdowne Park, a significant area of public space in Ottawa’s Glebe community, a portion of which is marked for proposed commercial redevelopment. Over the past year, public consultations have been a platform for concerned citizens in the Glebe, and in other areas of Ottawa, to express their concerns over… Read more »
In this post, I look at controversies surrounding a statue of Nellie McClung, due to her early-20th century support of eugenics.
