Active History

From Memorials to Instagram: Twenty-first Century Commemoration of the First World War

November 10, 2016 1 Comment

Claire L. Halstead

Author’s Photo

This summer, on August 26, 2016, a new First World War memorial was unveiled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Titled The Last Steps, the memorial takes the shape of an arch and stands on the city’s harbour front; a gangplank purposefully leads the observer’s eye up the pier, through the arch, and right out to sea. Footprints (cast from an authentic soldier’s boot) burnt into the wooden pier conjure up impressions of souls from long ago. In this, Nancy Keating, the Nova Scotia artist who designed the memorial, succeeds in imparting on the observer the haunting emotion the memorial is intended to convey. The memorial stands as a testament to the last steps soldiers took in Halifax before departing for the Great War.[1]

The Last Steps memorial is just one of thousands of local and national memorials and acts of remembrance happening around the world between 2014 and 2018 to mark the centenary of the First World War. Making a new addition to the Halifax boardwalk, the memorial provides an opportunity to ponder the creation of sites of memory and twenty-first century centenary commemoration of the First World War, as it happens. This is an opportunity to observe how centenary commemorations take place; not only their modes and the messages contained within them, but the spaces, both physical and virtual, where they are placed. Continue reading →

(Re)naming and (De)colonizing the (I?)ndigenous People(s) of North America – Part II

November 8, 2016 1 Comment

By Kathryn Labelle, Brittany Luby, and Alison Norman

Editors note: This is the second in an two part series on the politics and practices of naming Indigenous peoples. [Click here to read part 1]

The term “Indigenous” is not new to Canadians. “Indigenous peoples” was used by anthropologists and ethnographers in the 19^th century to describe a people united by culture, traditions, and kinship; who have a common language and beliefs; and generally are politically organized. By the 1970s and 80s, the term began to be used specifically to describe groups affected by colonization, and it was a self-descriptor. Indigenous peoples from around the world began working together to demand recognition at the United Nations, and in 1982, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations was established. They began drafting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. UNDRIP sets out the collective and individual rights of Indigenous peoples around the world, as well as their rights to culture, language, health, and identity. Canada only recently committed to fully implementing UNDRIP, and exactly how it will do so remains to be seen. Nonetheless, it is clear that the use of the term by international activists has influenced activists and academics in Canada. The term “Indigenous” is trending in Canada right now. Continue reading →

(Re)naming and (De)colonizing the (I?)ndigenous People(s) of North America – Part I

November 7, 2016 3 Comments

By Brittany Luby, Kathryn Labelle, and Alison Norman

Editors note: This is the first in a two part series on the politics and practice of naming Indigenous peoples.

Over the years, Canadians have attempted to find a better word for “Indian.” We’ve experimented with “Native American.” We settled with “Aboriginal.” And now we’re flirting with “Indigenous.” Will we find a match?

Imagine each word with its own online dating profile. Indian’s profile might read “historically inaccurate, but legal.” Indigenous might write “trying to change the world one word at a time.”

Colonialism has created a need for a group term for North Americans – a word that means “the people who occupied this continent before European displacement,” a word that means “the people who violently resist, adapt, and continue to survive under colonial regimes in North America. And yet, regular changes to Canadian lexicon suggest that there is an underlying problem – a problem that a new combination of vowels and consonants cannot fix. For generations, Canadian scholars have been seeking a politically-correct label, a sensitive label, for a people who exist in the colonial imagination.[1] Continue reading →

“Colonization Road” and Challenging Settler Colonialism in Canada

November 3, 2016 3 Comments

By Anne Janhunen

Last week I attended the world premiere of Colonization Road at the imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival. Directed by Michelle St. John, the film follows Anishinaabe comedian and activist Ryan McMahon as he delves into the history of Indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism in Canada. Examining physical markers of this history such as Colonization Road in Fort Frances, Ontario, McMahon asks, “what do we mean when we talk about colonization?” Drawing on the experiences and expertise of a wide range of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, activists, and community leaders, the film details the many facets of historical and ongoing colonization and the nature of settler colonialism as a structure. In this piece, I want to reflect on the ways in which I hope this film sparks further discussion among historians, educators, heritage organizations, and the wider public.

The majority of early twentieth century material – tourist pamphlets, school curricula, and local histories – I analyse in my dissertation reflect the colonial narrative in microcosm. This story usually starts with French explorers and fur traders and eventually centres on hardy settlers making seemingly unoccupied land productive. Indigenous people are usually peripheral to this story or entirely absent from it. How they ended up on reserves remains a mystery. How much of this narrative has changed in the past hundred years? Continue reading →

The Burden of Precedent: Reflections on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution

November 1, 2016 No Comments

By Laura Madokoro

This month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, which was violently suppressed by Soviet forces, leading to the flight of thousands of people to neighbouring countries, including war-weary Austria. It’s also been sixty years since countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia responded to both the Soviet violence and the migration of people by resettling thousands of refugees. Canada took in almost 37,000 people in an event that continues to be celebrated as evidence of the country’s extraordinary compassion.

As we reflect on the events of sixty years ago, against the backdrop of the ongoing violence in Syria and Iraq, the destruction of the migrant camp in Calais, France and the continued efforts to address the needs of thousands of people who have fled violence in the Middle East, not to mention ongoing displacement in Africa and southeast Asia, it bears contemplating how the events of sixty years ago shaped the current landscape in which refugee assistance and resettlement takes place. There is a particular urgency to this task because Canada’s response to the refugees of the Hungarian Revolution has been cited again and again as evidence of the country’s humanitarian character. Yet the policymakers of 1956 never expected that their commitment to resettling refugees at what was arguably one of the tensest moments in the cold war would lead to future, if intermittent, resettlement efforts. Little did officials know that in committing to refugee resettlement as a way of relieving the situation in Austria and condemning Soviet violence, that they would be transforming the landscape in which advocates would demand comparable action for events in other places in the decades that followed. Continue reading →

The Upside Down of 1980s Culture, Gender and the Paranormal: An Historical Analysis of the Netflix Series Stranger Things

October 31, 2016 1 Comment

By Beth A. Robertson

It would seem the 1980s have come back with a vengeance, whether judging from the work of a growing number of historians investigating the decade, or pop culture.[1] My personal favourite of such popular reincarnations is the acclaimed Netflix original Stranger Things. The series unabashedly borrows from the 1980s to achieve its unique aesthetic, drawing on themes and plot lines familiar to anyone who’s watched A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Firestarter (1984), The Goonies (1985) or Stand By Me (1986). This is in addition to a brilliant typography that will genuinely thrill Stephen King readers.

Stranger Things is more than simply a salute to 1980s film and fiction, however. It also seems to capture memories of the eclipsing Cold War and the anxieties it unleashed, as well as the cultural conservatism, militarism and sexual discrimination of the era. The series references the controversial revelations of long-term CIA-funded experiments with LSD on non-consenting individuals in both Canada and the US.[2] It signals at the growing fears over U.S. military intensification under the Reagan administration, as well as government secrecy and surveillance in that period that seemed to mark “a return to the Cold War after the years of the détente.”[3] Combined with the homophobia of the villains in the series, as well as the conspicuously queer-like character “Eleven”, it also suggests the ongoing sexual policing in the 1980s, and the different ways people were forced to navigate their way around it, and sometimes outright resist.[4] When Eleven’s newfound friends dress her up as a “girl” before she goes out in public (reminiscent of a similar scene in Steven Spielberg’s E.T.), it serves as one of many moments when this theme rises to the surface. Here it becomes clear that the source of Eleven’s ‘strangeness’ is not merely the fact that she can throw moving vehicles in the air like miniature toys, but because she does not conform to normative conceptions of appropriate girlhood. Continue reading →

Video in the Classroom: Exploring the CBC Digital Archives

October 27, 2016 2 Comments

Andrea Eidinger

Anyone who has searched the internet for videos to use while teaching Canadian history has run into one big problem: the overwhelming dominance of American media online. Adding “Canadian” or “Canada” to your Google search doesn’t necessarily solve this problem. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t great Canadian videos, soundbites, and films available. You just have to know where to look for them! This post is going to focus on my favourite place for Canadian audio-visual material: the CBC.

What is It?

All of the images in this post are screnncaptures used with permission from the CBC.

All of the images in this post are screenshots used with permission from the CBC.

Whether you love it or hate it, the CBC is one of Canada’s most prominent national institutions. Founded officially in 1936, it is the oldest network of broadcasting stations in Canada. When most of us think about the CBC, we think about Peter Mansbridge and The National, Rick Mercer and the Mercer Report, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. But it has also stood witness to the history of Canada for more than 70 years.While many broadcasting corporations keep their archives private, the CBC has gone the opposite route by opening up select portions of its archives to the public and to educators.

The public version of the CBC Television and Radio Archives is called the CBC Digital Archives.[1] According to their Facebook page, the archive contains more than 6,500 clips (video and audio) dating back to 1927. These clips cover just about every topic you could possibly imagine. Don’t discount the use of these websites for Pre-Confederation classes! CBC Digital Archives can be great for teaching students about historical perceptions of past events. It is completely free to use, though you will have to sit through ads to watch your selected clip. The website also contains coordinating lesson plans for many of these clips.

How Does it Work?

CBC Digital Archives is an absolute treasure-trove of information. However, like treasure-troves, it is often difficult to find exactly what you need. So how do you find the clip you want? Continue reading →

Confronting the Secret Path and the Legacy of Residential Schools

October 26, 2016 6 Comments

Sean Carleton

Despite growing up near St. Paul’s Indian Residential School in North Vancouver, I did not learn about residential schools as a child. I did not learn about Chanie Wenjack (misnamed “Charlie” by his teachers), a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy who ran away from the Cecilia Jeffery Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario in October 1966. It was not until I moved to Ontario and started teaching in a classroom at Trent University dedicated to Wenjack’s memory that I, as a settler, first heard his harrowing story: he died of exposure while trying to walk the 600 kilometers from the school to his home in Ogoki Post in northern Ontario. It seems fitting, then, that this past Sunday, October 23 (the 50th anniversary of his death) I attended a packed event in Trent’s Wenjack Theatre to watch CBC’s livestream of The Secret Path, Gord Downie’s new multimedia project about Chanie Wenjack.

Like many people, I had high hopes for the solo record, graphic novel, and short animated film that comprise the project. As a historian of education and as someone with a family member navigating the ongoing legacy of residential schools, I was excited that Downie was using his star power to raise awareness about the legacy of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. After reviewing the project, however, I share Hayden King’s concerns about Downie’s use of Wenjack and the history of residential schools to offer a narrow and settler-curated vision of reconciliation. In this review, I offer a critical analysis of the strengths and limitations of The Secret Path to promote further dialogue about popular representations of residential school history and their role in reconciliation. Continue reading →

Pop-Up Museums as a Vehicle for Community Building

October 25, 2016 1 Comment

Meredith Leonard

aMUSE: Fashion pop-up exhibit held in November 2013 at Mahtay Café and Lounge in downtown St. Catharines.

Since 2012 the St. Catherines Museum & Welland Canals Centre has engaged in pop-up style programing as a vehicle through which to reach out to an under-served population in our community – millennials[1]

While doing quite well with tourists, older adults and young families, has difficulty attracting and engaging new generations of visitors and supporters. This challenge isn’t unique to the St. Catherines Museum or even museums in Canada – in the United States, studies by the National Endowment for the Arts identified young adult audiences as being regularly under-served by traditional museums. Many museums around the world have been working to address this problem by developing specialized programming aimed at engaging younger audiences.[2]

Staff at the St. Catharines Museum grappled with our own unique set of challenges in creating programming for millennial audiences. The physical location of the Museum is a major challenge; located beyond the City’s core and not accessible via public transit, getting young adults out to the site can be difficult – especially when many are unaware that a museum even exists in the City. In order to raise our profile, dispel the perception of the “dusty, old, irrelevant museum” and reach new audiences, museum staff concluded we would have to take the Museum and its collection into the community.

Inspired by pop-up shops, flash mobs, music festivals and other social museum experiences, such as Friday Night Live at the ROM and the Nature Nocturne at the Canadian Museum of Nature, the St. Catharines Museum set out to inject the community with artifacts and stories through aMUSE, our curated “pop-up museum experience”. Continue reading →

“The water power of Niagara should be as free as the air:” The Past, Present, and Future, of Democratic Energy Control in Ontario

October 20, 2016 1 Comment

Christo Aivalis

Ontario power station below the falls, 1908. Public domain image.

The politics of energy are omnipresent in historical and contemporary Canadian society. Who owns energy, how it is produced, and who benefits from its production and distribution has been central to the rise and fall of governments. In some cases, as with Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program (NEP), the regional tensions it inflamed are still evident to this day.

Perhaps the most interesting and current debate around energy hails from Ontario, where the provincial Liberal government—without seeking a mandate in the 2014 election—has begun the process of privatizing Hydro One, which has been in public control for more than a century. And while the majority of opposition has come from the left and organized labour, the advent of a public energy system in Ontario predates nearly all of Canada’s major unions and leftist parties.

Surprisingly given our modern ideological landscape, a public hydro system in Ontario was created in 1906 by James P. Whitney’s Conservatives (the title quote is attributed to him), who fought successfully against Liberal George W. Ross’ rejection of public energy control, which was driven by a distrust of public ownership as well as Ross’ pecuniary conflicts—which included being an executive of a company involved with energy production, as well as bestowing energy contracts as political favours.

The rationale for a publically-controlled energy system from Whitney’s perspective was quite forward-thinking. Ontario in the early 1900s was on the verge of mass industrialization, and electrical power was the lifeblood of such a system. To have electricity owned privately—either by foreign interests, domineering monopolies, or a patchwork of petty capitalists—served neither the public interest nor the needs of an increasingly capitalized and urban province. Whether for the worker, farmer, consumer, municipality, or industrialist, affordable, accessible, and consistent power networks were imperative. Continue reading →

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