A Century of Petroleum Extraction at Norman Wells

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Map of the five Sahtú communities and the Sahtú Settlement Area as defined in the Sahtú Dene and Métis Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement (1993). Map by Dave Blaine, NAIT.

[Editor’s note: We have slightly altered the original text because our website does not yet support Dene orthographies. For a .pdf version of this post in which Dene words and place names are displayed correctly, click here.]

Petroleum Histories Project Team

Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories is the site of the first oil and gas operation in the Canadian North and one of the earliest in the country. The Norman Wells oil field has almost continuously produced oil since 1920, making it also one of Canada’s longest operating petroleum production sites.

The conventional history of Norman Wells focuses on the prospectors and geologists who claim to have discovered the oil and the engineers and corporation that developed the installation at Norman Wells. It is a history that draws on the records of colonial archives and is measured in barrels of oil, profits for shareholders, and royalties for the federal government.

Sahtú Dene and Métis have been little more than a footnote in conventional histories of Norman Wells, if we are mentioned at all. Our people and our stories are absent from corporate and state archives; we have been overlooked and erased.

Courtesy of NWT Archives/©Imperial Oil Limited/N-1979-049: 0002.

The history of Norman Wells looks quite different when it is told from our perspective, the perspective of Sahtú Dene and Métis. Our experiences and knowledge are rooted in the land and preserved through story. In this post, we centre the voices and perspectives of our people. Industry and government narratives have been left for the footnotes. Continue reading →

Thinking Historically About Disability at the Ontario School for the Blind, 1903-1917

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This is the third entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here.

Harrison Dressler

“ALL THE EVIDENCE DEMANDED,” read an article published in the Toronto Globe on February 2, 1917. Written by two former students—R.F. Henderson and Byron G. Derbyshire—the article alerted the Canadian public about an investigation into the Ontario School for the Blind (OSB), then as now, a residential school for blind people located in Brantford, Ontario. Roughly one year prior, Derbyshire had organized a counter-offensive against the OSB, collecting signatures from forty-two students before sending three letters to the Department of Education, documenting allegations of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Commissioner Norman B. Gash entered the OSB in May 1916, where he soon accumulated over one-thousand pages of first-person testimony: evidence that no longer exists, either lost, forgotten, or destroyed. On February 12, 1917, Commissioner Gash delivered the resulting report to the Department of Education. But the protesters’ allegations of sexual abuse were conspicuously absent, and their complaints of malnutrition were seriously downplayed.

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Disability Activism – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

I talk with Dustin Galer, author of Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist. We talk about Beryl Potter’s entry into activism, how the 1970s public debates influenced her campaigns, and the financial challenges faced by disability activists. We also chat about Beryl Potter’s personality and public encounters, her television program, and how many of the challenges she fought against persist in 2023. For further context, be sure to visit some of the activist organizations that continue to push for disability rights and accessibility.

Historical Headline of the Week

Rhianna Schmiunk and Michelle Ghoussoub, “Air Canada Makes Changes After Passengers with Disabilities Share ‘Dehumanizing’ Experiences.’ CBC News, November 9, 2023.

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Food Insecurity in the North – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

I’m joined by Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay, authors of Plundering the North: A History of Settler Colonialism, Corporate Welfare, and Food Insecurity. We discuss the geographic parameters of the ‘North,’ the challenges faced by northern communities, and the origins of food insecurity. We also chat about the colonial structures that have created the problem, how communities are trying to challenge these systems, and the resulting political and economic implications.

Historical Headline of the Week

“U.N. Reviews High Food Insecurity Rates in Canada’s Northern Territories,” APTN News, August 31, 2023.

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National Queer and Trans+ Community History Conference

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The National Queer and Trans+ Community History Conference will take place at MacEwan University May 3-4, 2024 in Edmonton, Alberta.

The conference is designed to bring together 2SLGBTQ+ community members, non-profit organizations, heritage professionals, historians, academics, emerging scholars, and students who have an interest in documenting, preserving, and celebrating diverse and intersectional queer and trans+ histories in Canada.

We welcome submissions for presentation proposals from 2SLGBTQ+ community and grassroots organizers, non-profit organizations, researchers and students, heritage and archivist professionals, and government or policy makers working on any aspect of queer and trans+ histories in Canada.

The National Queer and Trans+ Community History Conference is supported by MacEwan University, MacEwan Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Egale Canada, The ArQuives, The LGBT Purge Fund, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, The Chair in Transgender Studies, ActiveHistory.ca, National Trust for Canada, Edmonton Queer History Project, and Stollery Charitable Foundation.

For further information please see the link to the Call for Presentations

https://www.edmontonqueerhistoryproject.ca/news-events

Voices from the Rental Crisis

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I think it is about time that our City Council and our Provincial Government did something about all these evictions that are going on, and all these terrible rent increases… I think we should have some action from the people we elected to give us some protection and a right to live in some security and dignity, instead of being kicked around like so many of us are.

–single father Victor* in a letter to Vancouver City Council, January 1974.

Daniel Ross

We bring our world with us into the archives. I’ve been reminded of this over the last week, as I commute across Vancouver to spend my days reading letters from tenants like Victor. This city is ground zero for Canada’s housing crisis, with the highest rents, lowest vacancy rate, and smallest proportion of affordable units in the country. My daily trip to the municipal archives brings home the profound housing inequalities that define the Canadian city in 2023, uncomfortably juxtaposing new condo towers with emergency housing in tents and beige portables, and luxury SUVs with people experiencing homelessness and distress. I take those images and that discomfort with me to the research room.

Voices from the past remind me that crises of housing affordability and access are not bugs but a feature of Canada’s profit-oriented rental housing market. Or, as housing researcher Ricardo Tranjan put it in the Walrus this year, for tenants “Canada’s ‘housing crisis’ is a permanent state of affairs”. Victor was just one of thousands of Vancouver renters who in the late 1960s and 1970s spoke out against evictions without cause, excessive rent increases, and their lack of a political voice. Continue reading →

Chaotic ’35 Campaign – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

I talk with David MacKenzie, author of King and Chaos: The 1935 Canadian General Election. We talk about the value of studying elections in history, the economic conditions leading into the election, and the fractured political environment at the time. We also discuss the leadership of R.B. Bennett, William Lyon Mackenzie King, J.S. Woodsworth, and William Aberhart, how foreign policy influenced the campaign, and the election’s legacy.

Historical Headline of the Week

Michael Gates, “History Hunter: Martha Black – Yukon Lady Parliamentarian,” Yukon News, April 16, 2023.

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Entering The Jagged Landscape of History: Can We Teach Our Students to Apply Historical Thinking Skills?

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Paul McGuire

This is the second entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here.

Researchers continue to write about the value and importance of teaching Historical Thinking Concepts (HTC). There is a near consensus on the importance of moving from a transmission approach to teaching history to one that focuses on inquiry.  This ongoing discussion has been shaped by the works of several researchers including Sam Wineburg who wrote, “the essence of achieving mature historical thought rests precisely on our ability to navigate the jagged landscape of history, to traverse the terrain that lies between the poles of familiarity with and distance from the past.” (Wineburg, 1999, p. 490)

Wineburg’s challenge to history teachers, written over twenty years ago, is to take students on a journey to a foreign land – his jagged landscape of history. While the research supports this aspirational goal, is it possible to do this in the classroom? There is no question that teaching historical thinking concepts offer a new way to engage students in the study of history, but no one really writes about how to do this.

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Quebec Tuition Fees: A Personal Reflection

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This article is cross-posted with Borealia: Early Canadian History, where it was published on 23 October 2023.

E.A. Heaman

I am very sorry to see Quebec raising the fees on students not from Quebec. A long time ago I was one of those out-of-province students. I grew up in British Columbia and had never been east when I transferred from UVic to McGill University in the fall of 1985, thanks to a Pierre-Trudeau-era program that gave money to Quebec students to study outside Quebec and to non-Quebec students to study in Quebec. I moved to Montreal and completed a BA in history, followed by an MA. Then I left Montreal, just as François Legault says such students do. I completed a PhD in history at the University of Toronto, focusing on nineteenth-century Canada and lending fairly equal attention to Anglophone and Francophone history and sources. That bilingual interest and capacity was a strength that opened many doors. I turned down offers of postdoctoral fellowships and spent the next four years at Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London, writing a commissioned history of an English teaching hospital. But I felt I had unfinished business in Canada: there were things I needed to better understand. So I refused permanency in England and returned to Canada on the tenure track, first at Queen’s University, and then McGill, where I was invited to take up a Canada Research Chair in early Canadian history. It’s worth taking a long view in assessing the return on education. Continue reading →

Open Access Week and Publishing in the Open

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(Editor’s note: Today marks the start of International Open Access Week 2023. Four years ago we published this post by editor Krista McCracken, explaining why open access is a core value of their work as a historian, educator, and archivist. “Where we publish matters,” argues McCracken, particularly when we work with communities or for non-academic audiences. That commitment to access has been part of the Active History project since its inception, and no one has done more to put it into action than Krista. This fall, after a decade with the editorial collective, Krista is stepping down from their role as editor. We will miss you Krista!!!)

Krista McCracken

This week is International Open Access Week. This global, community-driven week is designed to promote discussions about open access and to inspire broader participation in open access publishing. It is celebrated by institutions, organizations, and individuals all around the world.

Open access to information – free, immediate, online to scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results – has the power to reshape scholarly conversations and create new communities of research.

Since its establishment, posts on Active History have been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License. In October 2018, we adopted a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, allowing for further use of Active History content in a range of settings. Our ebooks series has also been openly licensed with the goal of making them accessible as possible.

Both Tom Peace and Sean Kheraj have written Active History posts about the impacts of open pedagogy and open educational resources on historical practice and teaching Canadian History. If you’re unfamiliar with the philosophies behind open access and the potential benefits for teaching and research, Peace and Kheraj’s posts provide a good introduction.

What does open scholarly publishing look like in Canada? Continue reading →