Coming to the 2013 National Council on Public History Annual Meeting in Ottawa this spring? Enter to win our video contest! Prizes are from NCPH and Canada’s History. Create a 1-2 minute video introducing yourself and your audience (our theme this year is “Knowing your Public(s)—The Significance of Audiences in Public History”), post your video to Youtube and email us… Read more »
By Kaitlin Wainwright At December’s public consultations on the new Museum of Canadian History, Sean Kheraj, an assistant professor of history at York University, made a comment that stuck with me: by commemorating moments in history we actually learn as much about our present as our past. In trying to see the past through a contemporary lens, we blur history… Read more »
By Ian Milligan The 2009 Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, laid out – in the eyes of a diverse group of Canadian academics – a new vision for Canada (too many links to list, but some are here). A redefinition of Canada based upon war and conflict, with the military assuming a prominent role and the First… Read more »
By Ian Mosby Walking out of the subway into Yonge Station in Toronto recently, I was confronted with poster after poster bearing some strange, slightly off-putting questions about McDonald’s. These included, in big bold letters, messages like: “Is the meat fake?” “Are there eyeballs put in your meat?” Or, “Are McNuggets made from processed pink sludge?” In the end, it… Read more »
By Efram Sera-Shriar Imagine yourself as a nineteenth-century naturalist living in Britain. You are working on a project that seeks to examine differences (both cultural and physical) between the various peoples of the world. You want to collect information from distant locations scattered throughout the globe, but you are unable to travel abroad because of vocational and familial obligations at… Read more »
By Kevin Colton We’re a visual species, we humans. History is often learned best when its words are accompanied with charts and maps, diagrams and photos. I love looking at these pictures to get different perspectives about the events they document. I’m a software developer rather than an historian, but I think the simulation software I’ve developed can provide another… Read more »
By Jay Young The passing of Sam “the Record Man” Sniderman at the age of 92 filled the airwaves, newspaper pages, and conversations on the street in Toronto this past week. Sniderman owned the largest chain of record stores in Canada and ardently promoted the Canadian music industry. Many people expressed warm memories of the entrepreneur and his flagship shop… Read more »
By Alan MacEachern Once in a while, historians come up with an idea, do some research, analyze it, write that up, and find we have something resembling a book. Or maybe it turns out to be an article. Or a blog post. In those cases, we attach our name to it and send it out into the world. But what… Read more »
By Ian Milligan When professional historians think of heritage plaques, some have knee-jerk reactions (“dead white man history!”) while others may see it as an engaging way to bring people into contact with the past in places they might otherwise not. On a leisurely stroll through the city, I enjoy checking out the few plaques that I pass: learning about… Read more »
By Ryan O’Connor One of the defining countercultural phenomena of the 1970s was the back-to-the-land movement. During this period, tens – maybe hundreds – of thousands of North Americans abandoned their urban dwellings for a rural lifestyle. This movement, which eschewed the postwar consumer culture, brought thousands of people “from away” to Prince Edward Island. Some stayed a few weeks;… Read more »
