Category Archives: History and Everyday Life

Drones in Environmental Humanities Research

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(Editor’s note: This post is published in partnership with NiCHE – Network in Canadian History & Environment) Mica Jorgenson “Okay Dimitrijs, now go somewhere cool.” Charlotte is wearing a heavy set of white VR glasses, standing in the sunshine on a University of Stavanger football pitch in Southern Norway. Dimitrijs is flying the drone. We are a mixed group of… Read more »

Collecting – and Curating – Eclectic Canadiana

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Close-up photograph of a brown piece of wood. There is a brass plate affixed with these words embossed on it: “From the teak of H.M.S. Ganges, the last sailing ship to serve as a seagoing flagship.”

Forrest Pass Collecting made me a historian. A few months ago, in the course of my work as a curator at Library and Archives Canada, I came across a letter from Francis Parkman to Dominion Archivist Douglas Brymner and it made me smile, because my first “acquisition” as a child philatelist had been a stamp commemorating “Francis Parkman – American… Read more »

Language, history and British automobiles: where schoolwork and hobby connect

A silver-beige car with chrome grille parked on a black road. There are trees visible behind the vehicle.

Ian McCallum As a PhD student, I work with all aspects of the Munsee language, an Indigenous language spoken in southwestern Ontario. This involves research, teaching, documentation and the creation of resources. As a student, I study best practice in language learning and revitalization methods that can support community-based initiatives. As both a researcher and a student, language work can… Read more »

A Historian’s Collection, or Understanding my obsession with royal commemoratives

China cups and saucers with royal portraits on them.

Gillian Leitch I have always collected things.  I think it is a part of what has made me a good researcher, the desire to see and have many examples of something that interests me and from which I can create a larger narrative. Certainly, as a historian I have collected documents, information and knowledge about my research interests of immigration,… Read more »

Making Private Property in Rural Britain and Canada

Robin Ganev Recently the government of Saskatchewan strengthened existing trespassing law to the benefit of farmers and to the detriment of Indigenous people. The new laws took effect on Jan. 1, 2022. Under previous legislation, land owners had an obligation to put up posting if they wanted to limit access to their land. Now it is the responsibility of “trespassers”… Read more »

The Shifting Boundaries of Colonial Land Taking: The Continuity of Settler Land Theft and Indigenous Resistance in Kahnawà:ke  

photo of an protest camp

Daniel Rück Non-Indigenous people who encounter Indigenous #LandBack protests are often surprised or taken aback. They may be angry about being inconvenienced on their commute and may even resort to racist stereotypes to explain what is happening. They might ask themselves questions like: Why are Indigenous people so upset? Why are they choosing to occupy land or block a road… Read more »

Visiting and Recognizing the Past: Toronto’s 1919-1920 Smallpox Outbreak

Alt text: A crowd dressed in hats and coats fills a city street. There are banners with the following text: “Stop the slaughter of the innocents! Protest against compulsory vaccination” and “Compulsory vaccination German born – down with compulsion!!”

Sara Wilmshurst A few years ago, on this very site, I published an article about combatting vaccine resistance with historical education. Surely, I thought, if people understood how devastating preventable diseases could be, everyone would be eager to roll up a sleeve and be jabbed. Such is the pain of living through historic times. At least I learned something. Like… Read more »

Food First, Then Archives: Precarity and Community Memory

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 »

The Real Estate State and Housing Insecurity: An Interview with Samuel Stein

Max Mishler’s interview with with Samuel Stein, author of the book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (Verso, 2019), is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series, including a post contextualizing this interview, here. Max Mishler: Hi Sam. Thanks so much for taking the time to think with us… Read more »

The Real Estate State and Housing Insecurity in the Time of Covid-19

This post by Max Mishler is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series here. Toronto, ON, is the beating heart of Canadian finance capitalism. Global investment banks, mining companies, and consultancy firms dominate the downtown corridor and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The city is also home to several professional sports… Read more »