Moral Goodness and Venereal Disease: Sexual Health Education in Ontario

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By Krista McCracken

Pure Girl Is Waiting Somewhere Poster. 1922. American Social Health Association

Pure Girl Is Waiting Somewhere Poster. 1922. American Social Health Association

The Ontario government recently announced significant changes to the health and physical education curriculum in Ontario schools. This revision includes updating the outdated sexual health education curriculum that hasn’t been changed since 1998. The previous curriculum was designed in an era before text messages, smart phones, and the social media.

Very similar to the curriculum changes proposed in 2010 the recent updated sexual education program includes instruction on consent, the risks of posting sexual material online, sexting, gender identity, and mental health. Copies of the complete revised elementary and secondary health physical education curriculum can be found here and here. The Ontario government has also released parent guides which highlight the changes to the sexual health instruction. So far these changes have been protested, praised, and dissected. Since its introduction Ontario’s sexual health instruction has often been a point of controversy and has repeatedly been revised to reflect a changing society and changing conceptions of relationships, sexuality, and morals.

Sexual health education in Ontario has a long standing history and has been incorporated into classroom instruction long before it was formalized in written curriculum documents. The movement to support the creation of sexual health education programs began in the early 1900s, often with organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union promoting social hygiene. The earliest forms of sexual health education emphasized the dangers of sexual activity and was strongly linked to concepts of goodness and sin. Continue reading →

Film Friday: Tilco Striker

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Active History is pleased to present our first Film Friday. If you have created a film about history and are interested in screening it on our site, drop us a line.

By Matthew Hayes

Inimage the middle of winter in 1965, women workers at a plastics factory in Peterborough, Ontario went on strike. The Tilco strikers were fighting against unacceptable treatment – harassment and pitifully low wages – from management. I originally made this short film as an entry to OPSEU Local 365’s contest celebrating Trent University’s 50th anniversary. The contest called for creative entries that highlighted the role of organized labour. The film is based on Joan Sangster’s 2004 article “”We No Longer Respect the Law”: The Tilco Strike, Labour Injunctions, and the State”, from Labour/Le Travail. Continue reading →

The Home Archivist – Dust, Mold, and Adhesives, Part II

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Home-Archivist-300x170 2By Jessica Dunkin

In the last post, I introduced readers of the Home Archivist to two institutions committed to the preservation of Canada’s documentary heritage, Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) Preservation Centre and the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), and two professionals at work in the field of paper conservation, Doris St-Jacques and Greg Hill. I also provided readers with a list of safety equipment and tools that paper conservators use to process historical documents. In part two, we will explore how conservation professionals put those tools to use when they encounter paper documents affected by dust, mold, soot, adhesives, and other accretions.

Greg and Jess 127737-0006

Conservator Greg Hill and Author Jessica Dunkin at the Canadian Conservation Institute {Photo Credit: © Government of Canada, Canadian Conservation Institute, CCI 127737-0006}

A quick disclaimer, these posts are not intended as an instruction manual for the home conservator, but rather to increase public awareness of heritage conservation and to demonstrate the technical skill required to perform conservation treatments on paper. LAC and CCI have specialized facilities designed for the conservation and preservation of a wide range of archival materials. No home laboratory, however well equipped, can stand in for these kinds of facilities. Nor can a blog post replace the training and technical expertise of a professional conservator, especially when dealing with potentially hazardous substances like mold and animal accretions or performing delicate work like tear repair. To locate a conservator in Canada, please contact the Canadian Association of Professional Conservators (CAPC).

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Before turning our attention to treatment options for the MacKendrick letters, I want to pause briefly to consider three guiding principles in the field of heritage conservation. Recognizing that historically some treatment practices and materials have been damaging to documents and artifacts, and that current practices may also prove to be harmful, conservators should only perform treatments that are reversible. They should also adhere to the principle of minimal intervention, which, to borrow from the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation, “means to do as much as necessary and as little as possible.” The objective here is to preserve the document for future users without compromising the integrity of the original. For paper documents, some cleaning, typically surface cleaning, is advisable to improve readability. It may also be necessary to remove substances such as dust, soot, and adhesives that hasten deterioration. Continue reading →

An American Legion in the CEF? Crossing Borders during “Canada’s” First World War

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By Chris Dickon

Canadian Cross of Sacrifice at Arlington National Cemetery

Canadian Cross of Sacrifice at Arlington National Cemetery

On the American Armistice Day, November 11, 1927, the United States and Canada came together at Arlington Cemetery outside of Washington DC to dedicate a monument to Americans who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), Canada’s First World War army. The representatives that day remarked upon a feature of their shared history that was not well understood and appreciated at the time, or since.

In a government memo a month earlier, perhaps in preparation for the November 11th event, Canadian officials estimated that 40,000 Americans had enlisted in the CEF, Continue reading →

Willkommen im Anthropozän (Welcome to the Anthropocene)

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By Jim Clifford

UASC Container Ship (created by Roel Hemkes. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

I recently visited the special Willkommen im Anthropozän exhibition at the science and technology Deutsches Museum in Munich and was very impressed by the museum’s efforts to convey the history and science of the anthropocene in a complex but accessible manner. The anthropocene thesis, introduced about fifteen years ago, argues that humans are transforming the global environment at an unprecedented scale. The Deutsches Museum exhibition is the first major effort to explore the anthropocene in a museum. The English digital companion website hosted by the Rachel Carson Center introduces the concept broadly:

Crumbling skyscrapers, crushed soda cans, and worn-out car tires: concrete, aluminum, and plastic are the physical traces of our time. It is a time in which humans intervene in nature, and thus change and shape it. A world has developed in which humans and their needs play a dominant role in the ecological system. The human influence is so great that man-made changes are becoming visible in the geological record and there is talk that a new geological era has arrived: welcome to the Anthropocene. [About the exhibition]

Proponents, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, argue we’ve left the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago, and started a new geological epoch. There is no scientific consensus in the field of geology and the anthropocene is not yet formally recognized as an epoch, but their is little doubt humans are changing the world in which we live. The global environment has significantly altered during the past few centuries, from climate change and mass deforestation to artificial fertilizers, global supply networks and rapid urbanization. These transformations are not universally negative or apocalyptic, but even the more benign result in a new dynamic between humans and the other lifeforms with which we share the planet.  For this reason, the anthropocene is developing into a major field of study and is starting to gain some traction in the media (see this radio documentary produced for The Current on CBC Radio and a cover story from The Economist, both from 2011).  These media stories along with the success of the first month the Deutsches exhibition suggests the anthropocene is transitioning from an academic to a public discussion.

Continue reading →

Review of Testimonies and Secrets: The Story of a Nova Scotia Family 1844-1977, by Robert M. Mennel

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By Christine Moreland

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”.  Can we then ever really understand who ‘they’ were and how they lived? In Testimonies and Secrets: the Story of a Nova Scotia Family 1844-1977, Robert M. Mennel invites the reader to explore the themes of family, work and community life in a very foreign place: Crousetown, Nova Scotia.

cover35273-medium

University of Toronto Press, 2013
336 pages, Paperback $26.26.

Mennel pulls together diary entries, letters, oral history and historical texts into a narrative that connects three generations of the Crouse/Eikle family. In 1998, the author discovered a dusty collection of papers that revealed the private thoughts and recollections of John Will Crouse, his daughter Elvie Eikle and her son Harold. Mennel’s interpretation of the family papers focuses on personal relationships between family members, while also considering the influence of global conflicts, social change and the industrial modernization of the period. Overall, the book leaves the impression of an amazing sense of change that occurs through three generations, even as other aspects of daily life endure.Both grandfather and grandson struggled with marriage, community relations and religion. Continue reading →

Who Killed Canadian Studies?

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By Colin Coates

The world of Canadian Studies, which according to the International Council for Canadian Studies includes some 7,000 scholars in 70 countries, is facing difficult times. Strangely enough, one of its chief opponents seems to be our own government. Since the 1970s successive Liberal and Progressive Conservative federal governments, along with various provincial governments, have supported the principle that targeted funding can enhance the profile of Canadian issues in academic institutions abroad. Most of the time, those governments respected the values of academic freedom, believing that scholars could research and teach about the country without attempting to control what they did. But recently, the current Canadian government has decided that it will no longer support such work. Continue reading →

Spoils of the War of 1812: Part II: British Honour

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By Alan Corbiere

This post is the second part of a series of essays by Alan Corbiere focusing on Anishinaabeg participation in the War of 1812. 

 

This deputation included Tecumseh's son and sister

This deputation included Tecumseh’s son and sister

The Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potowatomi) have always revered the island of Michilimackinac. So much so that at the conclusion of the War of 1812, the Odawa tried to keep it in their possession. The Odawa suggested that the British negotiators offer the Americans a greater quantity of Anishinaabe land on the mainland in order to keep Michilimackinac in the possession of the Anishinaabeg with trading access allowed to the British. We know that this did not happen, but was it possible?

This is the second in a series of posts that explore this question. Last month I examined Michilimackinac’s importance for Anishinaabe peoples. Today’s post addresses British policy as explained to the Anishinaabeg in Council. Next month, in the final installment in the series, I will focus on Anishinaabe reactions to the news that Great Britain and USA had entered into a peace treaty.

Prior to the War of 1812 General Brock understood that there were not enough British forces to defend the Canadas. He knew that the only chance to defend the colonies was to enlist the aid of the Native peoples, including the Western Confederacy and the Six Nations. Continue reading →

The Anti-Terror Act: Government and Mobility in History

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By Bret Edwards

imageLast month, the Canadian government introduced the Anti-Terror Act, following recent incidents in Ottawa and Quebec that have elevated fears about “violent jihadism” in Canada and its links to global organizations. There has been a lot of discussion about how new proposed powers of online surveillance in the Act will allow security objectives to trump freedom of expression. Yet less has been said about its other parts that relate to regulating mobility and the additional threat they pose to civil liberties. If it passes, the Act will allow federal authorities to get a court order to restrict the movements of people thought to likely carry out future terrorism and will also relax the legal threshold to prevent citizens suspected of being terrorists from boarding a plane.

These sections of the Act highlight how, in times of perceived crisis, government seeks to control mobility within and across its borders in order to protect society and its dominant values and beliefs. Far from isolated, it is only the latest example of a much longer national history of government regulating movement during periods of anxiety like the current one. And in its scope, it risks repeating instances in the past where authorities overreached in attempting to counter perceived threats to security or prevailing norms. Continue reading →

Turmoil and Meddling at the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK

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Since the new year began, just six-and-a-half weeks ago, considerable changes have been made to the direction of the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK. Earlier in the month, the High Commission, which collaborates with this UK charity, added four new members to the board, signalling that problems were afoot. Last week, another four members of the board resigned as a faction of the board (bolstered by the new members) motioned (successfully) towards the removal of Rachel Killick, an emeritus professor of Canadian and French studies. These board members are well known to Canadian academics: historian Margaret MacMillan, Canada 2020 advisor Diana Carney, and UK-based Canadian Studies professors Steve Hewitt and Susan Hodgett. The details of the trouble at the Foundation for Canadian Studies can be found on The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and Christopher Moore’s History News. In an effort to better understand this situation, below we repost the notice that Steve Hewitt distributed on Facebook explaining his decision to leave the board:

Dear friends (especially those working on Canada in the UK.)

Last June I became a trustee on the board for the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK. Continue reading →