Tag Archives: agriculture
Co-operative Agriculture – What’s Old is News
By Sean Graham Co-operative Agriculture | RSS.com Catharine Wilson joins me to talk about the history of co-operative work bees in rural Canada. Communal events to complete big projects in short amount of time, work bees are representative of rural Canadian culture and are the subject of Catharine’s new book Being Neighbours: Cooperative Work and Rural Culture, 1830-1960. We chat… Read more »
History Slam 204: Cultivating Community
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/History-Slam-204.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Each year, fall fairs fill schedules in communities across the country. While in recent years, plenty of attention has been given to the increasingly absurd food items that are sold, the fairs have retained some of their agricultural roots. Held in the fall to celebrate the harvest, fairs in the late… Read more »
Climate Resilience, Past and Present: Rural Communities and Food Systems
This is the eighth post in the series Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology, and Climate History Network. By Emma Moesswilde This summer, the raspberry crop at Daisy Chain Farm was much smaller than usual. The variable winter weather meant that abnormal freeze-thaw cycles caused the raspberry canes to lose their resistance… Read more »
History Slam Episode 157: Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/History-Slam-157.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Full disclosure: I love the Prairies. I used to live in Regina and always found the Prairies an extremely powerful space. As Saskatchewan license plates say, it is the “Land of the Living Skies” and, for as much as people love the vistas offered by mountains, I’ll take a day on… Read more »
Welcome to Canada: A Story from the First Year of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program
Edward Dunsworth It started as the most mundane of requests. One evening in late September, after a long day’s work, a light bulb flickered out in the dormitory that housed Carlton Robinson[i] and twelve other Jamaican men for the duration of their contract work on a farm in Vanessa, Ontario, about 65 kilometers southwest of Hamilton. For unclear reasons, it… Read more »
Not so Accidental: Farmworkers, Car Crashes, and Capitalist Agriculture
By Edward Dunsworth Early last month, near the southern Italian city of Foggia, sixteen migrant farmworkers from various African countries were killed in two separate car accidents. In both cases, vans taking migrants back to camp after work collided with trucks carrying tomatoes from the very fields they had spent the day toiling in. The tragedy brought international media scrutiny… Read more »
Saskatchewan Farmland: A Bargain?
By Merle Massie Last week, the Saskatchewan government (led by Brad Wall and the Saskatchewan Party) reset a course direction that had veered off target. That course redirection affects who – along with what – is allowed to purchase Saskatchewan farmland. A Canadian citizen? Come on down. A Canadian-owned corporation engaged in the business of farming? Saskatchewan agriculture is open… Read more »
A Quarter Millennia of Local Food
By David Zylberberg It is currently spring in Ontario, plants are blooming and many people are expectantly awaiting the cherries, strawberries or tomatoes. Yesterday a pamphlet arrived in my mailbox advertising the home-delivery of seasonal organic produce, which emphasized the virtues of it being locally grown. At the same time, I see others suggesting that eating local food is morally… Read more »
Canada’s Farming Roots: Agricultural Fairs and Education
By Krista McCracken One of my favourite rural Canadian moments occurred when I was a child attending the International Plowing Match. I was standing with my parents in front of a pen that held two young calves, when a young girl yelled “Look at the sheep, Mom!” The girl was at least eight years old and apparently didn’t know the… Read more »
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