Active History

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

January 25, 2018 No Comments

By Andrew Sopko

On the 13^th 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?

January 24, 2018 2 Comments

The Supreme Court of Canada Building in the winter of 2012. CC BY-SA 3.0

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

January 23, 2018 2 Comments

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 5^th, 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

January 23, 2018 No Comments

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 →

Call For Submissions – Beyond the Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History

January 22, 2018 15 Comments

Students in a classroom making notes and studying reference books in class. Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont, 1961. Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN Number
4301875.

Being a historian is as much about being an educator as a researcher. And yet, most academic historians receive little to no training in pedagogy. Though there are many history education resources aimed k-12 teachers, there is substantially less for those interested in critically engaging with history education at the post-secondary level. During their tenure, THEN/HiER and the Historical Thinking Project created spaces for conversations around history education. However, in the years since the conclusion of both projects, these conversations have gone largely silent.

With this in mind, Active History invites submissions to a new monthly series of indefinite length focused on best practices for teaching Canadian history at the post-secondary level. While Active History has hosted blog posts over the past few years focused on this topic, this new series seeks to provide a framework for new contributions and renewed dialogue.

We seek submissions that expand perspectives, deepen insights, and challenge assumptions about history education. Contributions focusing on the use of digital history, collaboration, experiential/active learning, problem-based learning, public history, and new approaches to Canadian history, as well as those that privilege Indigenous and Black-Canadian histories, histories of abilities, are particularly welcomed.

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that Active History represents the diversity of our community, we would also especially welcome papers by and from female, non-binary, Indigenous, POC, queer*, and other minority scholars and communities, as well as early-career, precariously employed, and emerging scholars.

Submissions can be in the form of a blog post between 600 to 1,500 words in length, but alternative formats (including videos, graphics, podcasts, and online exhibitions) are also welcomed. Posts should be written in accessible, engaging style and avoid the use of jargon.

Starting in March 2018, this ongoing series will be edited by Andrea Eidinger and Krista McCracken. Inquiries, proposals, and submissions can be sent to either Andrea Eidinger and Krista McCracken via unwrittenhistories [at]gmail[dot]com.

The Endurance of Settler Colonialism: Senator Lynn Beyak and her “Letters of Support”

January 19, 2018 No Comments

By Samuel Derksen and Eric Story

Senator Lynn Beyak is embroiled in yet another scandal. Her controversial stance on the legacy of Indian Residential Schools has returned to the public’s attention after Indigenous journalist Robert Jago published a short piece in The Walrus about the over one hundred “Letters of Support” the senator received following her March 2017 speech in the Senate, which were subsequently published on her website. Among other highly dubious claims, in her speech she praised residential schools for their “remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales”––all of which stand in sharp contrast to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. After refusing to apologize for these remarks, she was forcibly removed from the Senate’s Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. And just a week ago, she was ousted from the Conservative caucus after rebuffing calls to remove the more racially-charged letters from her website.

Map of the Illinois Country in 1778, one example of a location where colonial discourses developed

Senator Beyak’s published “Letters of Support” represent an archive of Indigenous stereotypes that enable discussion and reflection about the history of settler colonialism in Canada and North America more broadly. The ignorant and racist sentiments expressed in the “Letters of Support” do not exist in a vacuum; in fact, their origins can be traced to the earliest points of contact in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The names of the authors of these letters could easily be substituted by that of a French trader in the 1750s or an Indian Agent in the 1920s. The discourses have not changed all that much. Continue reading →

Reconsidering Stephen Harper’s Historiography

January 18, 2018 3 Comments

By Andrew Nurse

Few Prime Ministers have been as interested in history as Stephen Harper. A wag might now say, few Prime Ministers have known so little about it. What is clear, as panels at the CHA, a special Labour/Le Travail forum, and a spate of other critical articles have demonstrated, historians had little time for Harper’s — or, more accurately, the Harper government’s — historiography, the commemorative practices of his government, the lessons they drew from history, or their sense of the national narrative and what it said about community and nation.

Stephen Harper in the Murdoch Mysteries episode “Confederate Treasure.” From Murdoch Mysteries Wiki under CC Creative Commons Share alike license.

Indeed, Stephen Harper’s historiography seems like a long turn in the wrong direction. The de-funding of the international Canadian Studies program, Parliamentary inquiries into Canadian history, re-branding museums, and a range of other developments stand testimony to the long-term effect that the federal Conservative government sought to have how on Canadians thought about their past both as narrative and with regard to their place in that story. Some of its more grandiose intentions have been scrapped (the Mother Canada commemorative statue, for example), while others have been downgraded or redirected, but all of this begs a question: what legacy did Harper, or more accurately his government, leave on Canadian historical practices? What is the legacy of Harper’s historiography? Continue reading →

The religious roots of Quebec secularism

January 15, 2018 No Comments

Croix du Mont-Royal, 1960s. Archives de la Ville de Montréal, VM6 D1903.7-4

Laurent Carbonneau

Quebec and secularism are tightly bound together in the Canadian political imagination. From the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation to the Parti Québécois’ abortive 2014 Charter of Values and last year’s Bill 62 (passed into law by a Liberal government), the implementation of a secular vision of Quebec society has been an important political debate over the last decade. Quebec politicians on the left and right, sovereigntist and federalist alike, see religious neutrality as a key element of the province’s political culture.

The Anglophone media and politicians in the rest of Canada have had an uneasy relationship with Quebec’s efforts to legislate public secularism. On the one hand, there is (most of the time) a healthy respect for Quebec’s national institutions and autonomy, and for the concept of religious neutrality and secularism. On the other, however, there is legitimate concern for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Quebec who wish to continue to wear religious garb in public.

Quebec politicians and commentators communicating the desire for secularism to Anglophone audiences almost inevitably point to the Quiet Revolution as a justification for Quebec’s efforts. Current PQ leader Jean-François Lisée, then a Minister in Pauline Marois’ short-lived PQ government, wrote in the New York Times in the midst of the Charter of Values debate that, “[t]he charter is actually just the next logical step along the path of secularization. Until 1960, when its authority began to dip, the Roman Catholic Church held much sway in Quebec.”

This story, or one much like it, is the story Quebecers tell themselves about their own history. It adequately summarizes the feelings of many Quebecers towards the Church: an ogre standing athwart our history, stealing children and ruining families, until it was slain in a social shift whose crowning moment was the 1960 provincial election. Accompanied, of course, by the ascendancy of an activist and secular social democracy, a new political consensus whose substance would dominate Quebec politics for a generation, and whose symbolism endures. The notion of a clean break with the clerical past, along with its values and trappings, is central to the political self-conception of Quebec today. The term Grande noirceur, used to refer to the era from the 1930s to the 1950s when Maurice Duplessis was premier, is a good indicator of how Quebecers think of their pre-Quiet Revolution past.

I don’t think, however, that the popular view of a relatively clean break between clerical and secular eras of Quebec’s social development is strictly accurate. Continue reading →

Tim Hortons, Ontario’s Minimum Wage, and the Need for Demand-Side Economics

January 11, 2018 No Comments

'Wages' written in concrete supporting community services, government, business, and other economic factors.

By Christo Aivalis

On January 1^st of this year, the Ontario government instituted a minimum wage increase to fourteen dollars an hour, with a pledge to increase it to fifteen dollars by January 2019. While 60% of Ontarians support the increase, numerous businesses have retaliated against their workers by retracting things like benefits and paid breaks. Many examples have come from the franchised fast-food sector, specifically Tim Hortons, where numerous branches—most of which are not owned directly by Tim Hortons itself, but by individual investors—have engaged in actions against their workers meant to cover costs of the new minimum wage. This has led to severe backlash on social media, with many people saying that Tim Hortons’ desire to be seen as an integral part of Canadian culture clashes with what Ontario’s premier called the bullying of low-wage workers.

But the issue goes beyond Tim Hortons’ public relations nightmare and the associated online anger. This story is important because even though much of the media coverage has focused on how the policy would hurt ‘mom and pop’ businesses, we are now seeing just how vindictive many employers are, and how their workers—almost exclusively un-unionized—can have their benefits taken away so autocratically. Beyond this, the bigger picture may be that the popularity of the minimum wage increase, when combined with a disdain for high-profile employer retaliations, might well increase public support for a form of demand-side economics in lieu of the supply-side economics that has dominated western society since at least the mid-1970s Continue reading →

New Brunswick History Curriculum: Language Rights and Place-based History Education

January 10, 2018 2 Comments

As part of our History curriculum series, and as a complement to December’s post on collaborative curricula, Cynthia Wallace-Casey discusses New Brunswick’s unique diverse, regional, and bilingual approach to History and Social Studies curricula.

In New Brunswick there exists two distinct narratives for provincial identities. Image credits: Author (left); Université de Moncton (right)

As the only officially bilingual province in Canada, New Brunswick holds a unique position regarding history education and collaborative curriculum development. In this province, it is as if we stand between two linguistic divides—with one foot firmly planted in English-speaking Canada, and the other confidently placed within a French-speaking world. This is because, unlike other provinces and territories in Canada, New Brunswick maintains two distinct education systems that are separate and equal. This distinction is not just a privilege, but a right: a right that is firmly embedded within our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As indicated in section 16.1 of the 1982 Constitutional Act of Canada:

(1) The English linguistic community and the French linguistic community in New Brunswick have equality of status and equal rights and privileges, including the right to distinct educational institutions and such distinct cultural institutions as are necessary for the preservation and promotion of those communities.

(2) The role of the legislature and government of New Brunswick to preserve and promote the status, rights and privileges referred to subsection (1) is affirmed.

In this sense, education and cultural identity operate hand-in-hand. For each linguistic group, school is not simply about “making the grade,” it is about preserving and promoting social responsibility to two linguistic communities.

How such dynamics play out within New Brunswick’s social studies curriculum, is through respect for regionalism and diversity. Regionalism, in that New Brunswick joins with like-minded provinces to share curriculum resources; and diversity, in that the province’s two curriculum narratives reflect distinctions within New Brunswick’s linguistic communities. This is further supported by the pedagogy involved with Peter Seixas’ six concepts of Historical Thinking. Continue reading →

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