Precedents for Today’s ‘Big Tent’ Liberalism: British Columbia’s First Woman MLA, Mary Ellen Spear Smith (1863-1933)

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By Veronica Strong-Boag

In the age of their first avowedly feminist prime minister, Canadians confront another adventure in ‘big tent liberalism.’ His father tried it, for a time, with labour and social democrats,[1] but its history dates to the 19th century with Liberal-Laborism and Liberal-Feminism, or Lib-Lab and Lib-Fem apostles of inclusion. Such experiments have been especially likely when traditional governing parties, as with the Canadian and Ontario Liberals or the American Democratic Party today, face crises of credibility. The suffragist Mary Ellen Smith, who gave her maiden speech as BC’s first and Canada’s third female legislator, a century ago in March 1918, supplies a useful reminder of the limits of such liaisons.[2] Old political elites do not readily surrender privilege.

Ottawa Journal (Dec. 22, 1920)

‘Our Mary Ellen,’ as she was known on the hustings, was an ambitious emigrant from UK mining communities. The subject of my forthcoming biography, she raises provocative questions about political choices. Beginnings in Devon and Cornwall, maturation in Britain’s northeast as a daughter of a Methodist mining family, primary school teaching, marriage to a widowed miner with a new daughter, and further motherhood with three, and then a Canadian-born, sons, did not forecast public fame. Arrival in Nanaimo, a coal mining town on the age of empire, in 1892 to join her coal-hewer father, brother, and mother formed part of a family strategy to restore the health of her husband, Ralph Smith, coal miner and occasional Methodist preacher, and to find opportunities for him and their expanding brood seemingly denied even ‘aristocrats of labour’ in Britain after the disastrous 1892 coal field strike.[3]

Their new home was a vibrant centre of conflict over just whom would control the benefits of staples capitalism. In the 1890s and 1900s, Nanaimo offered a vibrant working-class and women’s culture, which included support for female enfranchisement and hostility to Asians in the creation of a white outpost of empire.The immigrants’ original embrace of Methodism, cooperatives, and the Liberal-Labour politics of Thomas Burt, long-serving British MP (1874-1918) and representative of the Northumberland Miners’ Association immunized them against BC’s emerging socialist politics and fostered faith in big tent politics sometimes promised by Canadian, like British, liberalism.[4] Continue reading →

Piecing Together a Pandemic: Unearthing Elusive, Eclectic & Authentic Stories of the Flu

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This is the fourth in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project.

By Ellen Scheinberg

As I was working on a family archival project for a client this month, I learned about the passing of his great uncle, Alfred Benjamin Geldzaeler, from influenza in late October 2018. Alfred, or “Alfie” as he was affectionately referred to by family and friends, was born in Toronto in 1901. He was the youngest of Mark and Jetty’s six progeny.

Alfred Benjamin Geldzaeler in his cadet uniform at Central Tech High School, ca. 1912. OJA, item #1232.

The couple were Austrian Jewish immigrants who settled in Toronto with their respective families during the late 19th century. Mark was a Hebrew scholar who served as a teacher and caretaker for Holy Blossom Synagogue on Bond Street. For many years, the family resided behind the synagogue.

When Alfred, the darling of the family, perished at the age of 17, the family was devastated. Alfred was buried according to Jewish law and interred in the Pape Avenue Cemetery, the city’s oldest Jewish cemetery.

Pape Cemetery monument for Alfred Geldzaeler. The date on the monument is Oct. 27, 1919. Since monuments are unveiled a year after death, it’s possible they inscribed the unveiling date rather than the date of death by mistake.

Alfred was one of 50,000 Canadians whose lives were prematurely snuffed out by the virulent Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. Continue reading →

Commemorating the Forgotten Plague through the Classroom

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This is the third in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project.

By Mike Clare

The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19 had a profound impact on Canadian culture and public policy. But is it worth acknowledging?

As an approach to teaching the Canadian experience, the Spanish Flu Pandemic could be a poster child for historical thinking skills. Yet in provincial curricula, the Flu can seem like our long-lost Uncle Sparky who we avoid talking about. The Spanish Flu is neither addressed as a specific example nor as a big idea. Is this a kind of historical amnesia? Or is it just an awkward subject that no one quite remembers or understands.

Public Health Notice, Glenbow Museum, Reference No. NA-4548-5

Every year, the flu comes back in various forms. It’s back with us once again in 2018, as a kind of annual event that we scarcely give a thought to. But the flu is never quite the same each time it returns. It evolves and mutates. This year’s Flu is known as H3N2. It is related to other strains of the virus that we have heard mentioned in passing: Avian, Hong Kong, Swine. When it swept across the country in 1918, it was known as the H1N1 virus. That evolved into the most devastating plague the world has ever known. H1N1 is directly related to H3N2.

In 1918, H1N1 swept across the country and 50,000 Canadians died in just over 18 months. One in six Canadian households was affected by the Flu. One in ten mothers lost their baby during its first trimester because of the Flu, and families were upended and destroyed. The Spanish Flu killed fifty-million people worldwide (although some recent studies estimate mortality as high as 100 million). This Flu killed more Canadians in 12 months than four years of the Great War. And yet Canadian history textbooks give the Pandemic, at best, a passing mentioned in a paragraph amid multiple chapters concentrating on the war years.  And now H1N1 is back in an annual, albeit shape-shifting, form.

How should we acknowledge and commemorate that pandemic experience of 100 years ago, this paradoxically devastating and all but forgotten seismic event? Continue reading →

What is Forgotten? Influenza’s Reverberations in Post-War Canada

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This is the second in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project.

By Esyllt Jones

For all the times scholars of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic have referred to its “forgotten” aspect, in homage to Alfred Crosby’s 1989 title for the influential book that a decade earlier had been published as Epidemic and Peace (a name change suggestive of the changing tides of historical preoccupation), two or more recent decades of sustained interest in the pandemic have challenged and complicated the narrative of forgetting.

Staff at the main branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce during the Spanish flu epidemic in Calgary in 1918. (Glenbow Museum. Period photo NA-964-22)

As research on the disease in Canada has demonstrated for some time, influenza’s survivors did not forget the disease. Historians may have for a time. National narratives neglected and elided it. But for so many families and communities, influenza lingered in the life histories and memories of mothers, lovers, grandmothers, brothers, and fathers of flu victims. This was the reality of a disease so widespread and so lethal. Remembrance occurred not through public symbolism or because of fear of further outbreaks, but because influenza was woven into lives. Continue reading →

Going Viral: Spreading the 100th Anniversary of the Spanish Flu Pandemic one story at a time

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This is the first in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project.

By Neil Orford

Over the past few years, anniversaries seem a dime a dozen. In 2017 alone, we’ve marked #Canada150, the centenary of the taking of Vimy Ridge, and the 35th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; in 2018 we look forward to marking one hundred years following the end of the First World War; and, no doubt, in 2019, the signing of the Paris 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

As these anniversaries began to roll along, Blake Heathcote and I became concerned. Although the war and the constitution matter to Canadians, we heard little about marking another significant event that reshaped Canadian lives in the late-1910s: The Spanish Flu. When it was over, influenza had claimed as many as 50,000 Canadians and over 20 million people globally. When framed around the conflict in Europe, it is clear the event had similar implications. And yet, as we enter into 2018, there is relative silence about the subject.

Five women are standing in front of a brick building, possibly a hospital, wearing surgical masks during the Spanish ‘Flu outbreak in Brisbane, 1919. (State Library of Queensland)

Over the past two years, Blake and I began to act on our concern. As we thought about the influence of the Spanish Flu, and began to discuss the subject with friends and colleagues, it became clear that everyone, it seems, has a Flu story.

On the surface, many of these stories are just recitations of how badly one was affected by a case of the Flu last year, or how a good friend was struck down for several months and required time off work. Yet many more stories are contained in the deeper reaches of personal narrative, often stretching back to a great aunt who lost a sister after World War One, or a recollection about seeing an picture in a high school textbook and wondering what it might be like to wear such a mask for days on end.

Challenge yourself, though, what do you really know about the Pandemic?  Continue reading →

Wisdom in Place: Learning through Relationships/Bwaakawin tek: ezhi kenjihgaadek pii d’nik kendaagut pii enaan’gonding

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Nunda ezhibiigaadegin d’goh biigaadehknown ezhi debaahdedek nungwa manda neebing Mnidoo Mnising Neebing gah Bizh’ezhiwaybuck zhaazhi  gonda behbaandih kenjih’gehjik.

This essay is part of an ongoing series reflecting on this summer’s Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI).

By Katrina Srigley

The snow is falling on Nbisiing Anishinaabeg territory now. We have just eased into Little Spirit Moon, a time for reflection and storytelling. It has been three months since my visit to Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island) and I am finally finishing this blog. It is my first.[1]

Outside University of Nipissing

At times like these, Elder John Sawyer often reminds me that things get done when they are supposed to be done — not before and not after— I take some comfort from this direction as the frenetic pace of the semester eases.

Despite the time that has passed and the icy temperatures outside, it is not difficult to imagine the beautiful August day when Nicole L. and I pulled away from North Bay, heading toward Mnidoo Mnising along the northern shore of Lake Nipissing. Craggy outcroppings of granite, stands of pine, spruce and birch, the expanse of Lake Nipissing, framed the first part of our journey. This place is now home for lots of reasons: my family and friends, of course, but also Nbisiing Anishinaabeg, because, as I will explore here, learning through wisdom in place —land, animals, spirit, people, water—makes resurgent relationships possible.[2] Continue reading →

The Seven (Trump)ets of the Apocalypse: Hawaii’s Nuclear Blunder and the Continuity of the Cold War

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By Andrew Sopko

On the 13th of January residents of Hawaii were provided with a shocking and terrible reminder of the nuclear anxieties that dominated much of the world throughout the Cold War. By error, the State Government sent a push notification that warned of an incoming ballistic missile strike.

Responses varied wildly. One reddit user said that they rapidly resigned themselves to their fate and stayed in bed with their wife. Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to save his children a man pried open a sewer cover, and lifted them inside. Thirty-eight minutes after the initial notification had gone out, the government finally managed to inform a frightened public that it had all been a mistake. There was no danger.

Conversations that cropped up on social media in the wake of this ‘attack’ often bore an eerily familiar tone, echoing similar discussions about civil defence in its heyday during the Cold War. This historical connection provides a disturbing reminder that the threat posed by the massive nuclear stockpiles that have been amassed by nation states remains ever present. While nuclear anxieties had all but vanished from public discourse following the Soviet Union’s collapse, a nuclear sword of Damocles has remained dangling above our heads. This unfortunate reality, alongside some of the major headlines of the past four years, shows that the Cold War has left the world with a long and powerful hangover. Continue reading →

Thirty Years since Morgentaler: A New Frontier?

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Shannon Stettner and Katrina Ackerman

January 28, 2018 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Morgentaler decision that declared Canada’s 1969 abortion law unconstitutional. For thirty years, the country has been without a federal law governing abortion. In place of a federal law, provincial regulations and the individual provincial colleges of physicians and surgeons have governed access to abortion. Such regulations have varied dramatically between the provinces and territories, resulting in an uneven patchwork of abortion services across the country.

The 1988 Morgentaler decision was the culmination of twenty years of Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s relentless struggle to provide Canadian women with equitable and safe access to abortion services. Morgentaler built on the energy of women and professional organizations that had been arguing for decades that the criminalization of abortion was ineffective and merely harmed women who put their lives at risk to terminate their pregnancies. Morgentaler, with the support of pan-Canadian abortion rights activists, opened freestanding abortion clinics in Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. He opened the Toronto clinic to purposefully contravene the abortion law and launch a legal challenge.

Following a 1983 raid of the clinic by Toronto police, Dr. Morgentaler, Dr. Robert Scott, and Dr. Leslie Frank Smoling were charged with illegally providing abortions. In 1984, a jury acquitted the doctors, but the Ontario government appealed that decision. When the Ontario Court of Appeals ordered a retrial, Morgentaler appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. Continue reading →

The Police Records of a Bath Raid Found-In: Excluded from Bill C-66

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Tom Hooper

For more than 25 years, Ron Rosenes* has been an activist on issues related to HIV/AIDS. In 2007, he was given the Canadian AIDS Society Leadership Award. In 2012, Carleton University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He is a member of the Order of Canada.

Despite this impressive resume of advocacy, the Toronto Police Service has a file on him. In the late evening of February 5th, 1981, he was sitting alone in his room at the Romans II Health and Recreation Spa, one of the city’s gay bathhouses. 200 police raided the Romans and three other similar establishments, arresting 306 men, Rosenes included. He fought the charges in court, but was guilty of being found in a common bawdy house.

This is a historical injustice. In 2016, Toronto’s Chief of Police issued a statement of regret for the raids. In November 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a formal apology to the LGBTQ2+ community in the House of Commons. He stated that discrimination “was quickly codified in criminal offenses like ‘buggery,’ ‘gross indecency’, and bawdy house provisions. Bathhouses were raided, people were entrapped by police.” On the same day as Trudeau’s apology, the government introduced Bill C-66, which would create a legislative process to expunge the records of certain Criminal Code convictions that have been defined as “historically unjust.” Continue reading →

Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War

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By Eric Story

What happened to Canadian veterans after the Great War? In the minds of many, shell shock and physical disfigurement loom large. These two images of veterans have attracted so much attention in both academic writings and cultural representations that they have become representative of the entire population of returning ex-servicemen.[1] However, a group of researchers at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS) are challenging these pre-conceived notions, and have found, unsurprisingly, that the Canadian veteran experience is more complicated and diverse than many have assumed.

In the coming weeks, Active History will feature a series of four blog posts written by these researchers––specifically in regard to how disabled Canadian ex-service people of the Great War engaged the pension system. For all veterans, pension eligibility rested on the principle of “attributability.” Veterans had to prove that their post-war disability was the direct result of an injury incurred while on active service. Initially, they would file an application for a pension and subsequently undergo a medical examination to assess their disability claims. The Board of Pension Commissioners––later renamed the Canadian Pension Commission––would consult this medical report, in tandem with their service records, and rule if the applicant was eligible for a pension.[2]

Canadian veterans undergoing health inspections upon demobilization in 1919. Those found ill were held back until they were healthy. Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection, CWM 19940003-473.

 

Continue reading →