Active History

Reclaiming spaces at Canada’s History Forum and the 2015 Governor General’s History Awards

October 26, 2015 2 Comments

by Stacey Devlin

Nellie McClung from the monument on Parliament Hill, showing historic newspaper headlines from the Persons Case. Photo: “Les Girls” – The Famous Five 10, Douglas Sprott, CC BY NC 2.0.

Humanity has an incurable habit of imposing meaning onto our surroundings. We transform every place we encounter into a landscape of the imagination, tinged by interpretation and experience, and populated by locations like “hometown,” “favourite fishing spot,” “sacred site,” and “mother country.” The tourism industry has long taken advantage of this to construct narratives which inspire travel, but place has also featured prominently in our interactions with the past.

Commemorations often focus on place – declaring not only that an event occurred, but that it occurred here. But who determines what places are important, why they are significant, or how they can be used? How can space be reclaimed for marginalized voices to share interpretations of what those spaces mean to them?

During this year’s Canada’s History Forum and the Governor General’s History Awards, held in Ottawa a little over a week ago, I had the opportunity to hear about some of Canada’s most exciting historical projects – and many of them use place as a vehicle for sharing those less-heard stories. From Parliament Hill to our dusty attics, people are turning to locations both familiar and rarely seen to share alternative perspectives of the past.

Sitting with the Famous Five

The first example of such “reclaimed” spaces that I encountered at the History Forum was the Famous Five monument. Focusing on the achievements of women, this year’s Forum began with a reception to mark the statue’s 15^th anniversary. The monument depicts Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Henrietta Muir Edwards after their successful campaign for women to be regarded as persons under the law. The first Famous Five monument was erected in Calgary in 1999. An identical copy was later installed on Parliament Hill – the very place that the Famous Five fought to be recognized in, and a place where their achievements can be honoured alongside those of other nation-builders. The statue’s location contributes to the story of the Famous Five and their legacy. Continue reading →

Trafalgar Days in Nova Scotia

October 23, 2015 No Comments

In case you missed it or were swept up in ‘Back to the Future Day’, Wednesday once marked Trafalgar Day in Nova Scotia. As part of our partnership with the new early Canadian history blog Borealia, we’ve reposted Keith Mercer’s recognition of the day and what it once meant.

By Keith Mercer

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Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, The Battle of Trafalgar, 1836

The Royal Canadian Navy recently named October 21 “Niobe Day,” in honour of HMCS Niobe, one of Canada’s first two warships. It was bought from the British in 1910, shortly after the Naval Service of Canada was established that spring, and served in the First World War before being seriously damaged in the Halifax Explosion in 1917.

But for an older generation of Nova Scotians – and Canadians, growing up in a more British-centred school system and society – October 21 was once called “Trafalgar Day.” As children, they learned that on this day in 1805 a British fleet commanded by Lord Nelson in HMS Victory won the Battle of Trafalgar against the combined armadas of France and Spain. The most famous naval battle in history and the most decisive military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, Trafalgar cemented Britain’s supremacy on the high seas. With the enemy decimated, Britons no longer worried about a French invasion. Of 33 enemy ships, the British captured or destroyed 18, while not losing any of their own. Unfortunately, Nelson, “Britannia’s God of War” and her most famous son and celebrity, died in the battle. He went out in the blaze of glory, during his crowning achievement.

Known for his bold fighting style and leadership, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson rose to prominence during the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797. However, he is best known for three signature victories: the Battle of the Nile in 1798, in which he led the British in the destruction of a large French fleet off Egypt; the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, which saw Nelson’s squadron capture or sink the bulk of the Danish navy; and Trafalgar in 1805.

Like Britons everywhere, Nova Scotians followed Nelson’s career closely and celebrated his triumphs, particularly Trafalgar. This allowed them to express nationalistic sentiment and to show their support for the British war effort.

At Halifax in 1805, they celebrated Trafalgar in the streets…[Read More]

A Brief History of Canadians Who Don’t Vote

October 22, 2015 1 Comment

A man voting in Ottawa, 1962. Source: Library and Archives Canada, Mikan 4316670.

by Sean Kheraj

Following Monday night’s election results, Canada may have marked a shift in the downward trend of voter turnout over the past twenty-seven years. According to early figures from Elections Canada, 68.5% of eligible voters (17,546,697 people) cast ballots. This is up considerably from the historic low turnout of 58.8% in the 2008 federal election and may mark a reversal of the trend of declining voter turnout, which began after the 1988 federal election. Toronto Star provides a full look at the breakdown of voter turnout in the 2015 election here.

Low voter turnout in Canada did not emerge as a popular concern until the recent past. The average voter turnout from 1945 to 1988 was almost 75% and showed limited variability, dropping below 70% in just two elections. Beginning with the 1993 election, the overall number of eligible voters who cast ballots began a general decline. Average voter turnout from 1993 to 2011 was about 64%.

In November 1989, the federal government appointed the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing to inquire into how Canadians elect members of the House of Commons and the financing of political parties. Volume 15 of its 23-volume report focused on voter turnout. Jon H. Pammett, one of the authors of this volume, found that the population of non-voters in Canadian federal elections changes from election to election. Continue reading →

A Review of Dan Malleck’s When Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada’s Drug Laws (UBC Press 2015)

October 21, 2015 No Comments

by Joel D. Rudewicz

UBC Press 2015, 320 pages. Casebound $95.00

Restrictions against the general public procuring powerful and often dangerous poisons, drugs, and remedies are a fairly recent development in history. A time once existed when children could smoke cigarettes, arsenic was supplied by your friendly neighbourhood pharmacist, and medication and healing were a mish-mash of druggists recommendations, physician’s advice, and longstanding home- cures. This system remained generally unchanged until medical science began to accept germ theory and cast away humourist ideas about the inner-workings of the human body. Likewise, the druggist’s profession grew out of its alchemy roots, and only with a more modern understanding of chemistry did molecular compounds and chemical interactions bring a truer knowledge of the cures and poisons pharmacists held providence over.

Dan Malleck’s study, When Good Drugs Go Bad originates in this world. He draws upon extensive newspapers, scientific journals, pharmacy records, medical association files, asylum records, and case books to interweave the dynamic social, economic, and cultural factors that began the big push towards drug regulation in Canada. On one side you had moralists who expounded temperance and the degenerating effect that drugs like alcohol, tobacco, and opium had on the individual and society as a whole. On the other, physicians and druggists who saw themselves as both an authority and steward over the health and destiny of their fellow citizens’ development.

Continue reading →

The TPP and Public Domain Content in Canada

October 18, 2015 1 Comment

By Jim Clifford

Today in Canada you can legally distribute, download and create new editions of George Orwell’s 1984, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Vita Sackville-West’s Passenger to Teheran, Georges Lefebvre’s work on the French revolution, Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, Ernest Hemingway’s many short stories and novels, and for all the fans of the staples thesis, the works of Canadian political economist, Harold Innis. Many thousands of lesser known authors also fall into the public domain each year, creating a growing source base for digital history and the digital humanities more generally. There is also a flood of audio and film recordings entering the public domain under Canada’s current rule that limits copyright to 70 years after the recording (it was 50 years until earlier this year).

This is very good for scholarship and teaching. It makes it possible for digital humanists to create innovative digital editions of the public domain material. Project Gutenberg Canada and other websites are allowed to post a growing catalog of open material that we can use to build corpora of resources for research and text mining. As professors, we take advantage of the internet and public domain material to assign free readings for students in our undergraduate classes. Material from the 19th century is safe, but the new rules will limit what we can use for teaching mid-20th century history (we can still use one chapter or 10% under fair dealing).

Four years ago Canada passed the Copyright Modernization Act through a relatively open and democratic process where experts and stakeholders testified before parliamentary committees. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) has changed all of that. In the context of secret negotiations, this emerging trade agreement threatens to force Canada to rewrite this law. Did the negotiators consult any stakeholder in the archives, libraries, publishing industry or experts in internet law?

What is truly alarming, is that it appears the trade agreement copyright clauses are retroactive. Continue reading →

Baba Wore a Burqa, and Nona wore a Niqab

October 16, 2015 11 Comments

Doukhobor women are shown breaking the prairie sod by pulling a plough themselves, Thunder Hill Colony, Manitoba (Library and Archives Canada, Creative Commons)

By Karen Dubinsky and Franca Iacovetta

Last week two high profile Canadian Muslim women, writer Sheema Khan and Zunera Ishaq (the woman at the centre of the niqab controversy) publically questioned the safety of Muslims here. Khan lived here in the aftermath of 9/11; she says it’s worse now. These admissions amount to a tragic statement about the use of the niqab as an election issue. Yet as Canadian women’s historians, we have heard it before. Intolerant Canadians, from political elites to ordinary citizens, have long attempted to impose their notions of what it means to be a Canadian on the bodies of immigrant women. Today’s veiled Muslim woman joins a long line of immigrant women whom this country has feared or pitied, but always stereotyped, for at least a century.

Consider those Doukhobor women harnessed to a plough, breaking the tough Prairie. Their photos, faces almost hidden by their babushkas, have graced Canadian history textbooks for decades. The widely shared image – reproduced as a postcard inviting everyone to get a look – struck many Canadians as the personification of a backward European peasant culture that treated its women like downtrodden beasts of burden. These women posed a striking contrast to the prevailing middle-class ideal of the Victorian woman – that morally superior angel in the home. Consider too the distinctive dress of the women who completed the portrait of Immigration Minister Clifford Sifton’s ideal Eastern European peasant “in a sheepskin coat” with “a stout wife and a half-dozen children” grudgingly welcomed to Canada. Someone needed to do the backbreaking labour to settle what was portrayed as an empty Prairie, the original First Nations inhabitants having been shoved aside to a number of reserves. Even Icelandic pioneer women, easily assimilated, one might expect, into the Nordic race, were castigated for their typical headdress: a dark knitted skullcap with tassel. Such women may now be considered Old Stock Canadians, but not so long ago, their Anglo neighbours viewed them as second-class. According to historian Sarah Carter, Anglo women’s organization in Alberta thought Ukrainian girls so deficient in the standards of proper womanhood that they too should be sent to residential schools. Continue reading →

Everything Moves Real Slow: Where is the Left?

October 15, 2015 4 Comments

By David Frank

For some years I taught an undergraduate seminar on the history of the Canadian left, and one of the things students did at the first meeting was to try to name people who represented the contemporary “left” in Canada. Last year, the answers included Jack Layton, Olivia Chow and Thomas Mulcair, an indication that at least in the student imagination the New Democratic Party is still a force on the left. In the case of Layton, who died in 2011, the student made a strong case for his continued influence after his death. They also identified Elizabeth May and David Coon, the latter being the Green Party leader in our province who was soon elected to the legislature. Two other party leaders were named, Justin Trudeau (Liberals) and Miguel Figueroa (Communists). A local anti-poverty activist was named. I can see why Rick Mercer was included, less so Peter Mansbridge! The previous offering of the course included some of the above plus David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, Ed Broadbent and Megan Leslie, Buzz Hargrove and Pam Palmeter. As you can see, it is an eclectic picture that confirms the challenge students face in identifying the face of the contemporary left. Continue reading →

Chilean Refugees: Lessons of Past and Present

October 14, 2015 No Comments

By Francis Peddie

Image from the North American Congress on Latin America Archive of Latin Americana at the New School for Social Research

The image of a dead child on a beach has brought international attention to a long-simmering crisis. The photos of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body has focused the media on the humanitarian catastrophe that is Syria. Broader awareness of the Syrian refugee situation has provoked response among European and North American citizens, with many voices calling for admission of more asylum seekers, and others opposed for reasons of security or cost. Demonstrations and lobbying have obliged government leaders and opposition politicians to define their positions and hopefully take action to open the doors to refugees —or keep them closed.

The Syrian crisis, through the tragedy of the Kurdi family, has unexpectedly become an election issue. Since the Kurdi photos, political leaders have been addressing the issue and attempting to define their positions. Two examples are Stephen Harper’s defense of Canadian refugee policy and quotas as measures protecting the security of Canadian citizens, while Justin Trudeau referenced past examples of rescue efforts, such as the airlift of Asian Ugandans carried out by his father’s government in the early 1970s. These two positions reveal the tension that has traditionally existed regarding refugees: the fear of harm to society versus the imperative to provide shelter to the vulnerable. Continue reading →

Soldier-Candidates and the 1917 Wartime Election

October 13, 2015 No Comments

By Matthew Barrett, Queen’s University

Mowat (1) At a 1923 meeting of the Great War Veterans Association (GWVA) in Ottawa, General William Antrobus Griesbach, former Member of Parliament for Edmonton West and Senator for Alberta, remarked on the expected role of the ex-soldier in Canadian political life. “I had an idea at one time,” he explained, “that after the war over half of the Canadian parliament would be men who had served in the war. I had an idea it would hardly be possible for a man to be elected to parliament who had not served his country in the war on active service.” To his disappointment, at the time of this speech, only a handful of sitting MPs had fought in the Great War. Although he cautioned against organized political action by veterans’ groups, Griesbach argued, “I say that the ex-service men should be active in politics, active on all sides.”[1]

Nearly a century later, the number of elected representatives with military experience is small; in the 41st Parliament, 13 of 308 members in the House of Commons. Canadian military personnel and veterans’ lack of success in electoral politics suggests that a military career makes for an uneasy transition into political candidacy.[2] The current federal election campaign does demonstrate, however, that veterans’ issues can emerge as key policy issues. Continue reading →

From Tragic Little Boys to Unwanted Young Men

October 9, 2015 3 Comments

By Veronica Strong-Boag

Canadians are easily sentimental about babies and toddlers. Look at the ready adoption of global infants or September 2015’s outpouring of grief for the three-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi. Once victims of poverty, exploitation, and conflict reach adolescence and beyond, however, sympathy frequently evaporates.

Refugees are a case in point and gender consorts with age to matter. Girls and women suffer recurring abuse and stigmatization (Dauvergne, Angeles & Huang) but boys and men have a special place in the hierarchy of the demonized. Males beyond childhood are only too readily branded rapists, drug-dealers and addicts, thieves, lay-abouts, and, increasingly, terrorists. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that male teenagers and twenty somethings are somehow less worthy. The image of one drowned little boy cannot redeem his elder brothers. Continue reading →

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