Jazmine Aldrich Anyone who has been conducting historical research (or attempting to do so) over the past two years, has likely faced challenges ranging from closed facilities to limited hours due to COVID-19. Archives, museums, historical societies, libraries and all manner of cultural heritage institutions have felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as the fog lifts and some… Read more »
Krista McCracken It’s nearing the end of Pride Month. As a non-binary, queer scholar who offers workshops on gender and queer identities, June is a busy month. Throughout the month I’ve received a number of requests for reading recommendations about teaching about gender, history, and pride in Canada. In light of those requests I’ve created a list of ten books,… Read more »
Krista McCracken The Shingwauk Residential School operated in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario from 1874 to 1970. In 1971, Algoma University College – today known as Algoma University – moved onto the Shingwauk Site. Since 2010, I’ve been part of the staff at the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) that seeks to promote sharing, healing, and learning in relation to the… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/History-Slam-209.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In 1968, American architect R. Buckminster Fuller visited London, Ontario. Known for his geodesic domes, Fuller spent his time in the city meeting with students, artists, and industrial planners at Western. For years, Fuller’s visit has been part of the city’s lore, a moment in time where the city attracted praise… Read more »
Jon Benson From its early embrace as a recreational activity upon its arrival in the 1800s to hosting a world champion at a race downtown in the 1990s to a community of folks working diligently to build up and maintain an infrastructure making commuting here safe and enjoyable for everyone year-round, Winnipeg has a long history with the bicycle. But… Read more »
This post by Lilian Radovac and Simon Vickers is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series here. Alternative Toronto is a DIY digital archive and exhibition space that documents the history of alternative communities in the Greater Toronto Area from 1980 to 1999. As archive director and volunteer coordinator for Alternative… Read more »
This post, by David Sheinin, is a response to Krista McCracken’s Anti-Racism and Archival Description Work, published on June 7, 2021. Krista McCracken makes excellent, compelling points in “Anti-Racism and Archival Description Work.” In addition to supporting what they outlined in their post, I offer two cases drawn from my own research that demonstrate the importance of the racist archival… Read more »
by Krista McCracken In May as part of the Archives Association of Ontario conference I was able to participate in a workshop on Anti-Oppressive Description and Re-Description Workshop. Facilitated by Aaron Hope, Catherine Falls, Renee Saucier, and Danielle Robichaud, this workshop discussed records which contain racist, sexist or other discriminatory content and potential ways archivists can call out problematic materials… Read more »
(This post by Katrin Kleemann is published as part of a collaboration with Environmental History Now) Do you remember when the only thing keeping you from conducting research in an archive in a different city or country was simply a lack of money? It turns out, those were the good old days! In memory of the pre-pandemic world, when historians… Read more »
Donald Wright Archive stories are stories about, well, archives, the things that we find in them, and the things that we know we will never find. They are also invitations to reflect on how and why archival evidence – from a routinely-generated source to a single photograph – was created and what it can and can’t tell us about the… Read more »
