Active History

X-Rays and the Discriminatory Science of Migration

November 17, 2015 No Comments

By Laura Madokoro

The postwar era is often celebrated as a great time of liberalization in Canada, as far as immigration rules are concerned. What is often ignored is how hard people, including Chinese Canadians, fought to obtain equality of treatment, and how the federal government was incredibly reluctant to proceed with large-scale change until the 1960s. Indeed, under the guise of reforms, the government began to rely on science and technology to limit migration from China, even as it brought an end to the exclusion era.

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Excitement, Suspicion, Protest: A Brief History of Military Science in Canada

November 16, 2015 2 Comments

By Matthew S. Wiseman

The bombings in Paris and Beirut this past week are a powerful illustration of how civilians are too often caught in the violent crossfire unleashed by global unrest. How does one prepare a civilian populace for such potential devastation? Is it even possible?

Between 1948 and 1954, officials in Ottawa attempted to design and implement a self-help civil defence (CD) model to prepare citizens for the escalating nuclear threat. Their plans altered quickly in 1952 when the United States successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, at which point the radioactive severity of a potential nuclear attack forced a major critique of Canada’s CD policy. Officials replaced the self-help model with a calculated evacuation policy, in which specific cities would receive food provisions, shelter, and care for nuclear refuges in the event of an attack. In 1959 CD plans were adjusted for a third time, when officials realized that nuclear fallout would not be geographically confined. Since it no longer made sense for CD planners to target select locations for potential aid, planning in Ottawa turned toward developing a comprehensive strategy of national survival. Continue reading →

Technoscience in Canada: An Active History Theme Week

November 16, 2015 2 Comments

Edited by Beth A. Robertson with Dorotea Gucciardo

Telephone exchange, c.1950

Climate scientist Simon Donner was quoted in Wired, lamenting the politicization of science under the recently felled Conservative government. Individuals like Donner hoped that the change in government would mean “a new beginning for science” in Canada. Important to this discussion is not only a conception of Canada’s future, but also its past. Embedded within such hopeful aspirations is the assumption that science in Canada, as well as the technological infrastructure accompanying it, was once largely unfettered by socio-political or philosophical bias, and therefore could be so once more. Yet, has science or technology ever been free from politics? This week’s theme week dedicated to “Technoscience in Canada” aims to probe just this question.

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Unrest, Violence, and the Search for Social Order in British North America and Canada, 1749-1876

November 14, 2015 No Comments

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 Elizabeth Mancke

Benjamin Sulte, Histoire de Jos. Montferrand, L’athlète de Canadien (Montreal: Beauchemin et Fils), 73; detail (Public Domain).

From the mid-eighteenth century to the early Confederation era, British North Americans and then Canadians confronted a wide range of phenomena that could engender disorder: imperial wars, rebellions, the arrival of immigrants, epidemics, political unrest, and relations with First Nations. All, directly or indirectly, presented challenges to maintaining social and political order. In response, British North Americans and then Canadians engaged in protracted discussions about the definition of order and experimented with strategies to confront and limit disorder when it broke out. These discussions and processes reinforced the pervasive belief, held by both Canadians and outsiders, that Canada developed historically distinct relations shaped by notions of “peace, order, and good government,” or, in the terms of this project, themes such as unrest, violence, and the search for order. Processes of negotiating order and disorder, however, varied dramatically across British North America. But despite distinct political, social, and cultural dynamics, the colonies shared enough practices and temperaments that something recognizably Canadian emerged as part of the national identity. Yet very little inter-colonial analysis has been done to comprehend what British North Americans understood by “peace, order, and good government.” Rather, scholars who study incidents of unrest and violence in Canadian history more often employ comparisons to events in Europe or the United States, often with the effect of highlighting the distinctiveness of British North American developments.

A group of approximately 25 historians is undertaking a SSHRC-funded project to re-examine “Unrest, Violence, and the Search for Social Order in British North America and Canada, 1749-1876.” Explicitly designed to encourage inter-colonial comparisons, this project attempts to analyze how unrest varied across colonial societies, and how provincial leaders sought accommodations to maintain or regain control when discord threatened. In this endeavour, we have set ourselves a challenge: to think critically about the ways in which political and social order were defined and refined in British North America and into the early years of Confederation. The provinces were not monolithic in ethnic, religious, or social composition, and British North Americans disagreed on what constituted political and social order. The current understanding of those processes has been overwhelmingly couched in evolutionist values of a positive and logical progression to achieve superior forms of political and social order. The positivist and nationalistic ideals that have dominated the historical scholarship of this period – often expressed as “colony-to-nation” – merit re-examination. [Continue Reading]

Monica, Bill, History, and Sex

November 13, 2015 No Comments

By Marc Stein

Twenty years ago this month, U.S. Democratic President Bill Clinton began having sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. More than two years later, during testimony in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones, Clinton denied that he was having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Several months later, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr reported to the U.S. Congress that Clinton had committed perjury and obstruction of justice in his testimony about Lewinsky and related actions in the Jones litigation. The U.S. House of Representatives, controlled by the Republican Party, impeached Clinton in December 1998. In January and February 1999, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate tried Clinton, but the president was acquitted when the Senate failed to meet the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote for conviction.

This essay was originally written in 2000 for “Historians and Their Audiences: Mobilizing History for the Millenium,” a conference sponsored by the York University History Department. My goal was to address the privileging of traditional political historians over historians of sexuality in mainstream public discussions about the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, but I also wanted to use my presentation to consider the place of humor, satire, and parody in the work of historians. If the opening parody of both The McLaughlin Group (a long-running public affairs television program) and historical scholarship in sexuality studies seems excessively reliant on inside jokes that only historians of sexuality of a certain generation might understand, my hope was (and is) that this, too, might contribute to new ways of thinking about historians and their audiences.

For the most part, I have avoided editing or revising the essay, wanting it to stand as a reflection of my thinking about these issues in 2000, but some of the parodied names have been changed to protect the innocent and prevent further litigation.

*****

Welcome to this edition of the McLaughlinstein Group, hosted by me, Marc McLaughlinstein. Today’s topic: Monica, Bill, Sex, and History. Our regular guests, Doris Kearns Johnson, Michael Wilentz, and Sean Beschloss, were unable to join us today, so instead our program will feature widely acclaimed historians Mary Contrary Daly, Carroll Rosen-Smithberg, John-Boy Howard, George Chancy, Lilliana Faderwoman, and Steve Edgwick.

Question: Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Seventy-Three: The League of Nations

November 12, 2015 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

God: Woodrow Wilson, what happened to your Fourteen Points?
Wilson: Don’t worry God, we didn’t follow your Ten Commandments either

I first saw this cartoon when I was in the eleventh grade and I still keep a copy of it with me. There was something about it that I really liked – I’m sure it had something to do with my fascination with the League of Nations. That fascination was born out of the cursory manner in which we studied the League in school. It was treated as a side note, something that existed but was ineffectual and, therefore, not worth studying over events like the Great Depression and the Second World War. In short, it was the William Henry Harrison of international organizations.

The principal reason for why the League is viewed in this way is because in its ultimate goal – that of preventing another war following the Great War – it did not succeed. The significance of this failure cannot be overlooked, particularly as we observed Remembrance Day yesterday, but it does not make the League unworthy of study nor does it diminish some of its important achievements. It was, after all, more than just a precursor to the United Nations.

As we live in an increasingly global environment, there is a renewed interest in the history of international organizations. As Columbia University professor Susan Pedersen, author of the new book The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire, notes in today’s episode, the League of Nations archives have had to expand in recent years to accommodate the increased number of researchers consulting the files. She says that a majority of these researchers are graduate students, a clear sign that the League and other international organizations strike a chord and are considered important in providing context to modern concerns.
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History for a Sustainable Future

November 12, 2015 No Comments

Swedish Riksdagshuset. Wikipedia Commons.

By Dolly Jørgensen, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden

(based on an address given on October 14, 2015, and originally posted here)

Today I had the opportunity to speak before a group of parliamentary representatives and researchers on the topic of the environmental humanities at Riksdagen, the Swedish parliament. The event, put on by the Sällskapet Riksdagsledamöter och Forskare (RIFO), featured presentations by four Swedish researchers: an environmental scientist, an environmental philosopher, a professor of gender studies, and me as the environmental historian. The description of the event stressed the Anthropocene as a new era and asked us to consider what humanities research could contribute to new modes of thinking. My talk was titled “History for a Sustainable Future” — a title I unabashedly borrowed from fellow environmental historian Michael Egan who has a book series at MIT Press with that name. I wanted to stress the role that history needs to play in environmental policymaking and the real ways that knowledge of the past helps us understand our present, which is how we can get to a better future.

Here is the text I shared with the audience: Continue reading →

New Archives of Ontario Online Exhibit: Ontario’s WWI Hospital Overseas

November 11, 2015 No Comments

By Mackenzie Warner

Ontario Military Hospital ward, [ca. 1916-1917]
Ontario Military Hospital photographs, F 4386, Archives of Ontario, I0007454

One hundred years ago – November 1915 – Canada had passed the one year mark in the Great War that would continue for another three long years. In Orpington, England, a hospital commissioned by the Government of Ontario was under construction, and applications were flowing in from Ontario doctors and nurses who hoped to serve at their new military hospital overseas.

Earlier that year, Ontario Minister of Education, R. A. Pyne, had sent a telegram to Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden stating that “the Government of Ontario has decided to offer to establish and maintain a hospital of 1,000 beds in England for Canadians.” The government paid $2 million for the construction of the Ontario Military Hospital, which officially opened in Orpington on February 19, 1916. The hospital was staffed solely by Ontario medical professionals, who treated over 25,000 soldiers there between 1916 and 1919.

In 1917, the hospital was renamed the 16^th Canadian General Hospital. The original facility was torn down in the 1960s and replaced by the Orpington General Hospital, which now honours its heritage by featuring a Canada Wing and Ontario Ward.

The Archives of Ontario is commemorating the centenary of this unique Ontario Government contribution to the WWI effort by highlighting the Ontario Military Hospital in its new online exhibit. This exhibit is being launched for Remembrance Day and features the story of Dr. L. Bruce Robertson, a surgeon from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, who pioneered blood transfusions for wounded soldiers while serving in the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

To view the exhibit, please visit http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/Robertson/index.aspx.

This past summer, Mackenzie Warner was a Project & Communications Assistant at the Archives of Ontario.

ActiveHistory.ca is featuring this post as part of “Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca”, a multi-year series of regular posts about the history and centennial of the First World War.

World War One: A Fight for Freedom?

November 11, 2015 10 Comments

By Geoff Read

If one looks at Veterans’ Affairs’ website one will find a page dedicated to the National War Memorial. The opening paragraph of the text on the page reads,

RoyalVisitNationalWarMemorial The National War Memorial, also known as “The Response,” is a cenotaph symbolizing the sacrifice of all Canadian Armed Forces personnel who have served Canada in time of war in the cause of peace and freedom–past, present and future. The memorial is the site of the national Remembrance Day Ceremony on November 11.

This National War Memorial began life in the interwar years as a tribute to the fallen of World War One. His Majesty King George V, the website informs us, unveiled it on 21 May 1939, with the words, “One sees at a glance the answer made by Canada when the world’s peace was broken and freedom threatened in the fateful years of the Great War.”

That Canada stood in defense of freedom is thus central both to George V’s 1939 message, and to that offered by Veterans Affairs in 2015. Further, the assertion that the cenotaph symbolizes all Canadians who have sacrificed “in the cause of peace and freedom—past, present, and future,” serves to legitimate not just Canadian participation in World War One, but all Canadian military actions since then. Accordingly, it behooves us to think critically about the notion that the over 66,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who died in the Great War sacrificed themselves for the cause of freedom.

First, who were Canadians and Newfoundlanders fighting alongside? Continue reading →

Tomorrow: Sunny’: The Rise and Fall of Solar Heating in 1970s Canada, part 3

November 10, 2015 No Comments

By Hank Trim

In the third part of this four part series on solar energy we will continue to examine an integral part of energy history: computer simulation. Faced with the combined uncertainty of a unstable oil market and a desire for new solar technologies, the government searched for and a means of managing these risks. In this situation, computer models provided policy makers with a foundation, albeit a shaky one, for their decisions.

The Meadowvale Solar Home in the winter of 1977. This experimental home was built to test the application of solar heating technology in Canada. While a success, it provided heat far less efficiently than the WATSUN model calculated and experienced many more technical problems than the model projected.
Picture Provided by: B. E. Sibbett and H. Jung, Performance of the Meadowvale Solar System (Ottawa: Division of Building Research, National Research Council, 1981)

Two engineers, K.G.T Hollands and J.F. Orgill from the University of Waterloo devised the computer simulations that determined Canada’s plans. The work of these two engineers highlights the diverse support that solar technology and environmentalists’ calls for alternative development received in the 1970s. The two were members of the Canadian Solar Energy Society, which formed in 1975 to support solar development. Intrigued by solar technology’s bright future, this group of scientists, engineers, and business people studied the technology, shared information, and generated interest in solar and other renewables. The society had a substantial impact on solar development. It counted a number of ministers among its supporters and attracted a stream of government analysts and advisors to its annual meetings and workshops throughout the 1970s. Continue reading →

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