Category Archives: Public History

The Local Spaces of National Museums

      2 Comments on The Local Spaces of National Museums

by Carly Ciufo Thomas is right: Community is a tricky concept. I want to talk about finding community at the national level. It’s neither quite as small as a family unit nor as large as some broader cosmopolitan imagining of shared humanity, but it is nevertheless a crucial element of museum building in the twenty-first century. Community is an especially… Read more »

Community, Family, & the Hidden History of Southwestern Ontario

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.

Historia Nostra: Getting Living History Right at Plimoth Patuxet OR Plimoth Patuxet vs. Jamestown Settlement, a comparison

This post is part of a monthly series introducing new videos in Erin Isaac’s Historia Nostra public history project. Of all the living history museums in the United States, Jamestown Settlement in Virginia and Plimoth Patuxet in Massachusetts are arguably the most famous. Understandably, these museums are very frequently compared. Both were built in the 1970s. Both recreate early Anglo-American colonial… Read more »

Introducing Historia Nostra: Episode 1

      No Comments on Introducing Historia Nostra: Episode 1

How is history taught at heritage sites and museums in North America? What can the history of museums and heritage sites tell us about how they operate today? And how do other resources, like historically-based films, allow us to access history at home? These are all questions explored on Historia Nostra, a new YouTube channel about North American history. Historia… Read more »

Listening to the Voices from the Past: An invitation for a private, nuanced, remote Remembrance Day

By Samantha Cutrara What do we mark for remembrance and how do we understand service to this country? These questions may seem straightforward on a day like Remembrance Day, but this day can also invite us to critically examine the concepts of commemoration and service, and provide nuance to the stories of military glory and heroics often featured on this… Read more »

Spooky Sources to Teach, and Challenge, Canadian history

By Samantha Cutrara I like a good theme, and what better theme is there than Halloween? With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, I wanted to use it to have  “spooky” conversations for my Source Saturday video series on YouTube (also available as a podcast). Source Saturday is a new video & podcast series where I talk with historians,… Read more »

Remember/Resist/Redraw #25: “We won’t be quiet until we get the Special Diet!”

Earlier this month, the Graphic History Collective released Remember/Resist/Redraw #25. The poster looks at the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty’s successful 2009 struggle to increase access to the Special Diet benefit, an additional $250 for those living on social assistance to purchase food. With art by Rocky Dobey and an essay by John Clarke, the poster highlights the power of poor… Read more »

The Museum Sector is in Crisis

      No Comments on The Museum Sector is in Crisis

by Armando Perla Soon after the killing of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, museums joined institutions around the world making public statements of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Most of the statements from museums were not backed up by a track record of anti-racist work; many were, in fact, covering up a culture of human rights… Read more »

Remember/Resist/Redraw #24: 30 Years Since the Siege of Kanehsatà:ke

Earlier this month, to mark the 30th anniversary of the so-called “Oka Crisis,” the Graphic History Collective released Remember/Resist/Redraw poster #24 by Ellen Gabriel and Sean Carleton. The poster depicts the start of the police siege of Kanehsatà:ke on 11 July 1990 from a Mohawk perspective and makes clear that the fight against colonial land fraud in the community continues… Read more »

K’jipuktuk to Halifax and back: Decolonization in the Council Chamber

What the committee’s work does, the report suggests, is carefully and responsibly “harmonize commemoration with publicly-held values, and in particular to resolve situations in which sites of commemoration may have become actively offensive to those values.”