How Did the Urban Reformers Change Toronto?

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17806-59656By Daniel Ross

For more than four decades, John Sewell has been a constant presence in Toronto civic life, where he has somehow managed to combine relentless criticism of the status quo with a long record of public service. He first drew attention as a community organizer in the late 1960s, before going on to have a career in city politics, including a two-year stint as mayor. Since leaving politics he has become something of a public intellectual, with two well-received books on urban planning, The Shape of the City (1993) and The Shape of the Suburbs (2009). Applauded for his principled stands on civil liberties issues, he has also been criticized as uncompromising, combative, and—a charge he would probably agree with—anti-suburban.

Sewell was just one of a group of progressive community organizers and citizen urbanists who made the jump into municipal politics in late 1960s and early 1970s Toronto. Spurred on by a surge in neighbourhood activism, they found common ground on an agenda of limiting private redevelopment, expanding public services, and increasing citizen participation in government. This was echoed by developments in other Canadian cities—the rise of the Montréal Citizens Movement, for example—prompting talk of a nation-wide “urban reform” or “municipal reform” movement. Sewell’s latest book, How We Changed Toronto (Lorimer, 2015), is an attempt to come to grips with his own role in the reform moment in Toronto. Continue reading →

The Contemporary relevance of the Historical Treaties to Treaty Indian peoples

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On the day after the Trudeau government revealed its five-point plan for a renewed relationship with First Nations, ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to announce the publication of Leon Crane Bear’s “The Contemporary relevance of the Historical Treaties to Treaty Indian peoples”

By Leon Crane Bear

In June of 1969, the federal government announced its Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy (hereafter, the White Paper), which proposed to end discrimination against Indians and to assimilate them into the Canadian body politic. The White Paper recommended the abolishment of all legal recognition of registered Indians within federal legislation including the legal status of Indians, repeal the Indian Act, and the end of treaties. In 1970, in response to the White Paper, the Chiefs of the Indian Association of Alberta (hereafter, the IAA) produced a counter document titled Citizens Plus: the Red Paper (hereafter, the Red Paper). This essay explores the frictional dynamics of the White Paper and Red Paper including their respective intent and outcomes. The radical difference in intent and vision between these two documents may be understood today as a major catalyst for a changed relationship between the two parties. That is, the issues of assimilation and the legal recognition of treaties were central to national discussion over 45 years ago and, because these issues are not settled, these issues are largely relevant today. Historical treaties are important to First Nations people as embodied in the content of the Red Paper, and treaty Indians, like myself, continue to see the treaties as significant to our contemporary relationship with the state.

The Red Paper was an act of resistance by the IAA that was predicated on two key points: first, the Red Paper emphasized the treaty connection between First Nations people and the federal government; second, the Red Paper articulated a model of “self-governance” that reinforced an Indigenous perspective.[1] Moreover, the Red Paper was generated by mutual cooperation between Indigenous leaders and members of Indigenous communities in Alberta. The key concepts of treaties and “self-sufficiency” were evident in both documents. This essay determines the essence of those differences by arguing that the differences in views, in the political significance, as well as the emergence of Indigenous community opposition with regard to the legal status of Indians, treaties, and lands is worth understanding for contemporary citizens. This comparative analysis shows that in 1970, the IAA regarded the historical treaties as sacred agreements and yet, as I imply, treaties have never lost relevance for treaty Indian people in contemporary Alberta. [Read More]

Leon Crane Bear is Siksika (Blackfoot) and is a treaty Indian. Siksika is in Southern Alberta, and is part of five First Nation’s who signed Treaty 7 in 1877. He recently received, in October 2015, his Master of Arts degree from the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta.

Editors Note: This is the penultimate essay published as part of our papers section. A new “Features” section will begin in early-2016. This section will share many commonalities with the former Papers Section (including hosting all of the papers we’ve published over the years) while accommodating additional resources such as our series and theme weeks.

History Slam Episode Seventy-Five: Paper Cadavers

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By Sean Graham

Paper CadaversBetween 1960 and 1996, the Guatemalan Civil War pitted the government against leftist rebel groups. Both during and after the war, there were accusations that government forces committed human rights violations against civilians. The government denied these allegations and claimed that there was no documentation to substantiate any of the claims. That was until a cache of documents from the National Police was found in an abandoned headquarters in 2005. That launched a massive effort to preserve and archive the documents. Despite official efforts to destroy the material and threats of physical violence, a group of volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure that it was possible to figure out what happened during the war.

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Kirsten Weld of Harvard University about her book Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatamala. We chat about the uncovering of the archives, the process of reclaiming the material, and the contested nature of building memory.
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“If ye break faith – we shall not sleep?”

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By Mary Chaktsiris and Stephanie Bangarth

We leave you our deaths: give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.” – Archibald MacLeish, ‘The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak’ (1941)

On March 18, 1931, A.W. Neil, MP for Comox-Alberni in British Columbia, introduced a motion in the House of Commons to have Armistice Day observed on November 11 and “on no other date.” Another MP, C.W. Dickie of Nanaimo, also speaking on behalf of veterans, moved an amendment changing the name from “Armistice” to “Remembrance” Day. This term, Dickie felt, better “implies that we wish to remember and perpetuate.” Parliament swiftly adopted these resolutions and Canada held its first ‘Remembrance Day’ on November 11, 1931. The hour of annual remembrance was fixed at 11 a.m. on 11 November, the time and date of the Armistice in Europe.

Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / ecopy, R112-4004-8-E, Remembrance Day Ceremonies, Ottawa, 1962.

Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / ecopy, R112-4004-8-E, Remembrance Day Ceremonies, Ottawa, 1962.

Canadians first started to collect around military cenotaphs in 1902 at the end of the Boer War when the nation indulged in a great, patriotic burst of memorial-building. Monuments to Canada’s first foreign war were erected in city parks and town squares from Victoria to Halifax. Over the next decade, huge crowds would gather around them. By 1918 the trauma and slaughter of the First World War meant that new memorials would be built, but this time they were mostly sombre creations designed simply to honour the dead as opposed to marking military success. In the decades that followed through the Second World War, the Korean War, and Afghanistan, Canadians have gathered faithfully around such memorials each November 11 to remember.

But what is it that we are remembering? And who and what are we leaving out? In many ways we have been confined by a very narrow definition of remembrance. This narrowing represents a lost opportunity to think more deeply about war and its effects, to reflect on the causes of war making, and to search for ways to understand war, death, and sacrifice as meaningful in our modern lives. Continue reading →

Canadian Girls In Training: 100 Years With A Purpose

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by Krista McCracken

Canadian Girls in Training group in South River, Ontario. Public domain image.

Canadian Girls in Training group in South River, Ontario, circa 1954. Public domain image.

Last week 50 women gathered at a church along the North Shore of Lake Huron to celebrate their shared memories, reminisce over local connections, and reflect on the national Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT) movement.  This year marks the 100th anniversary of CGIT.  I volunteered during the local anniversary celebration and learned about what CGIT meant for this particular group of women.

The celebration was filled with moments of laughter and the type of storytelling you would expect from a group of close friends – hair catching on fire during a candlelight service, pie being spilt on tea guests, and reflections on lasting bonds of friendship.  CGIT was also praised as providing leadership on social issues, providing opportunities for girls to take on leadership roles, and as a place to develop confidence and the ability to speak your mind.

CGIT was established in 1915 by the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the major protestant denominations in Canada as a means of promoting Christian living in girls aged 12-17. The CGIT movement was started by four young Canadian women: Winnifred Thomas, Olive Ziegler, Una Saunders, and Constance Body.

As World War One continued overseas Thomas, Ziegler, Saunders, and Body looked at the lack of leadership roles available to young women at home and the need to provide service opportunities for girls. Continue reading →

Further Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance: Reflections on In Flanders Fields: 100 Years

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By Christopher Schultz

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
– John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” Dec 1915

My high school had an award-winning music program. I know this, in part, because I was the only one of my friends not in one of its many bands and ensembles, having given up the clarinet owing to complications arising from an acute case of brace-face. School fundraising went almost exclusively toward an event so important it was capitalized: Band Trip. This was a national competition; ours were among the best musicians in the country. Music featured prominently in school and public life, from assemblies and sports, to city concerts. Those of us with harp-strings across our teeth rather than our fingers, with grunge rather than jazz in our ears, were appreciative listeners and admirers. We bought tickets, ate chocolate bars and ordered Florida oranges to finance their cross-country treks.

We did our bit. Being out of pocket these small sums was rewarded by the tales my friends returned with—the stories of drunken chaperones, who made out with whom, which unfortunate attendee missed curfew, hot tub hijinks—as much as the hardware adorning the school trophy cases. It was easy to swell with pride, an orchestra of emotion. Continue reading →

The University of Victoria History Department’s Refugee Campaign

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Over the past few days the History Department at the University of Victoria has been circulating the following opportunity and challenge among historians in Canada. We have reprinted it here for the interest of our readers and as a great illustration of what we envision as Active History. 

 

Dear Fellow Historians,

No group can better appreciate the historical significance of the current refugee crisis in the Middle East and its implications than historians. We know that this is a crisis unprecedented in our lifetimes and of a proportion rarely seen in world history.

I am sure that many of you, like a group of us at UVic, watched the growing crisis over the past summer and fall with horror and a feeling of helplessness. Recently we decided that we did not have to sit idle as the crisis deepens, and we would like to invite you to join us.

As a group of faculty, staff and students in our History Department we decided to take on the responsibility to sponsor and host a Syrian refugee family. We would like to invite you to join us and, if you can, either 1) make a contribution towards our project or 2) consider organizing among your colleagues and communities to sponsor a refugee family or, 3) both!

Through this process we have learned that we are not really helpless — that we as individuals and as a group of historians can make a real difference in the lives of suffering people, today. Now. We have also learned that these acts of generosity are bringing us closer as a community of scholars.

We invite you to join us in sponsoring a refugee family. Please go to our website where you can learn more about this project and make a donation. Through the Intercultural Association we can offer tax receipts. We are working to raise $50,000 and are half-way there.

This week one of our emeritus faculty has offered to double new contributions up to a ceiling of $5,000 so your donation will mean twice as much.

Our website: http://www.historyrefugee.org/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HistoryRefugeeCommittee/

We also have the option of a gift card which will allow you to make a donation in lieu of another kind of gift to a family member or friend who perhaps has less need of your support.

Should you wish to start a group to sponsor refugees or bring a group of your colleagues/students together to support this initiative, we would be very happy to share what we have learned about the process and how we have proceeded.

Please join us in making the new year a much brighter one for a desperate family, and then, hopefully, another and another. Together we can light a candle, and in time, a bonfire, against the darkness.

With thanks and best wishes…

John Lutz, chair
On behalf of the UVic Department of History

When Blue Meets Green: A NiCHE series

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Tina Adcock, an editor of the Otter blog at the Network in Canadian & Environmental history website, organized a series of posts on the intersections between environmental and labour history for the month of November. John-Henry Harter opened the series with his post “When Blue Meets Green: The Intersection of Workers and Environmentalists”. This was followed by Mark McLaughlin’s “Seeing the Forest (Workers) for the Trees: Environmental and Labour History in New Brunswick’s Forests” and “Workers as Commodities: The Case of Asbestos, Quebec” from Jessica van Horssen. The final post from Willeen Keough is being published today: “If a sealer talks about conservation, does anybody hear?” I also contributed a post titled “‘Two chemical works behind him, and a soap factory in front’: Living and Working in London’s Industrial Marshlands,” which, I am republishing below.

The series asks us to rethink the simplistic rhetoric that sets workers against environmentalist. This is particularly relevant in a week where Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall is in Paris to defend oil workers instead of collaborate in reaching a strong agreement to prevent catastrophic climate change. This is effective rhetoric for a popular conservative premier who does not want to simply campaign on the behalf of big oil companies and he is correct that real action on climate change will be difficult for workers in the coal and oil industries (though the global price of oil likely has a bigger influence on the second group). It is not clear that a shift away from fossil fuels will significantly damage the wider economy over the long term and the economic cost of inaction are becoming increasingly clear.

Environmental history helps break down the simplistic workers vs environment narratives. Workers were often exposed to the same toxins that damaged the wider ecosystem and environmental destruction has hampered economic growth in the longer term. Shovel ready environmental remediation projects have  provided a lot of jobs for unemployed workers in the past and given the stubbornly low price of oil, it is possible that green energy and other retrofitting projects will provide crucial jobs to help offset the layoffs in the oil patch.

Two chemical works behind him, and a soap factory in front”: Living and Working in London’s Industrial Marshlands

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The Future of Loyalist Studies

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As part of our partnership with the new early Canadian history blog Borealia, we’ll be posting highlights from that website here every Saturday in November.

By Christopher F. Minty

benjamin-west-john-eardley-wilmot-1812-yale-center-for-british-art-paul-mellon-collection“Intractable issues vex loyalist studies.” These were the words Ruma Chopra used in an essay, published in History Compass, in 2013. She’s right. As of mid-2015, loyalist studies has come to an important juncture, and the paths historians, researchers, and students go down in choosing their approaches to loyalist studies, within the next decade or so, will affect scholarship for well over a generation.[1]

To be sure, in recent years loyalist studies has made considerable strides. Scholarship by Chopra, Maya Jasanoff, Judith Van Buskirk, Phillip Papas, Keith Mason, Christopher Sparshott, and the writers and editors of The Loyal Atlantic and Loyalism and the Formation of the British World, among others, have pushed loyalist studies forward into new, exciting areas. Above all, they have placed it within an Atlantic framework and questioned what it meant to be a “loyalist.”

This scholarship, in turn, is being driven forward by a number of graduate students and junior faculty. The likes of Kimberly Nath (Delaware), Pete Walker (Columbia), Sophie Jones (Liverpool), Christina Carrick (BU), Justin Clement (UC, Davis), Rachel Hermann (Southampton), and Don Johnson (North Dakota State), among others, are bringing new methodologies and outlooks to loyalist studies or aspects of it. But with this upturn in scholarship, where are we to go from here? [Read More]

“Trustees of the Future” and the Echoes of History

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By Calyssa Erb

Prime Minister Robert Borden speaking in 1915 – from Wikicommons

Prime Minister Robert Borden speaking in 1915 – from Wikicommons

On 23 October 1916, two years into the Great War, Prime Minister Robert Borden spoke to Canadians with the goal of inspiring more citizens to get involved in the war effort. Nearly a century later on 22 October 2014, following the shooting at Canada’s National War Memorial in Ottawa and fears of another attack on Canadian soil, Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the nation to encourage unity and resilience in the Canadian people by drawing upon the previous century’s rhetoric of dedication and Canadian spirit. The proximity of the dates on which each speech was made – although ninety-eight years apart – draws them closer together temporally to emphasize the parallels in prime ministerial discourse during times of heightened national anxiety. The similarities in context and rhetoric bridge the temporal distance between the speeches, connecting the past and present. In very different eras these two Conservative Prime Ministers saw fit to assert narratives of a unified Canadian identity and of Canada’s place on the global stage, when faced with moments of national crisis. The similarities are made all the more significant by Harper’s clear determination to reshape Canada’s image from its late-20th century “peacekeeping” ideal to a “warrior nation” one instead. Continue reading →