Shannon Stettner As a child, on Friday nights just before 9:00 pm, I’d tuck myself under a living room end table. If I was quiet and hidden, I could usually get away with watching at least part of Dallas. I was equal parts enthralled and scandalized. The epic “Who shot JR?” storyline was my first memorable introduction to crime and,… Read more »
By Alisha Stranges and Elspeth H. Brown 231 Mutual St., Toronto, former site of Club Toronto and the Pussy Palace bathhouse events. Illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba. LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown), 2023. When we began the Pussy Palace Oral History Project, we faced a familiar problem in queer oral history. Conventional interviews privilege chronology and plot. They… Read more »
Alisha Stranges and Elspeth H. Brown Leanne Powers, digital illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba for The Pussy Palace Oral History Project, LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory. 2025. “Suddenly, I heard nothing outside, and that was when the police were walking through that area. I heard a knock at the door, and I put myself in front of the person who was… Read more »
By Alisha Stranges and Elspeth H. Brown T’Hayla Ferguson, digital illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba for The Pussy Palace Oral History Project, LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory. 2025. “I think the intention was to make women’s sexuality and women’s play just normal. Not such a sideshow. We want to have a place to go and get naked and fuck and play,… Read more »
By educating the public about heritage designation, incorporating heritage into urban planning, and connecting with our wider communities, we can cultivate a brighter future for Ontario’s heritage industry.
by Krista Barclay This International Museum Day (May 18th) is an opportune moment to reflect on the essential community-building, research, and education work that happens at local museums. A closer look at Ontario’s Community Museum Operating Grant (CMOG) program can tell us a lot about how the provincial government approaches the many kinds of communities that make up Ontario. Community… Read more »
To launch the exhibit The Human Cost of Food, part of the new Active History on Display initiative, we invited award-winning public historian Gilberto Fernandes, whose public history project City Builders was a major inspiration to the exhibit, to provide commentary. By Gilberto Fernandes Time is of the essence out in the fields. When to seed, water, feed, harvest or… Read more »
Tifanie Valade This is the fifth entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here. While history classes are often viewed as a neutral, apolitical venue for the transmission of “facts” about the past, history education is in fact a value-laden enterprise that seeks to construct and communicate overarching national narratives and national identities. Such narratives often… Read more »
This is the third entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here. Harrison Dressler “ALL THE EVIDENCE DEMANDED,” read an article published in the Toronto Globe on February 2, 1917. Written by two former students—R.F. Henderson and Byron G. Derbyshire—the article alerted the Canadian public about an investigation into the Ontario School for the Blind (OSB),… Read more »
![Colonel John Graves Simcoe, [ca. 1881], by George Theodore Berthon. Government of Ontario Art Collection, 694156.](https://i0.wp.com/activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/694156-770.jpg?resize=176%2C176&ssl=1)
ActiveHistory.ca is slowing down our publication schedule this summer, but we’ll be back with more new posts in September. In the meantime, we’re featuring posts from our archive. Thanks as always to our writers and readers! The following post was originally featured on July 18, 2017 As Canadians mark Simcoe Day and the August long weekend, Elliot Worsfold’s post on… Read more »
