Active History

Here We Come A-Picketing! Christmas Carols, Class Conflict, and the Eaton’s Strike, 1984-85

December 18, 2014 1 Comment

By Sean Carleton and Julia Smith

By mid-December, the holiday shopping season is usually in full swing for Canadian retailers. Thirty years ago, however, several Eaton’s department stores in southern Ontario were experiencing a different type of holiday hustle and bustle: Eaton’s workers were on strike.

Hoping that unionization would improve their wages and working conditions, many of the department stores’ mostly female workers had joined the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU); but management’s refusal to negotiate left them with few options but to withdraw their labour power. On 30 November 1984 RWDSU members at six Eaton’s locations went on strike. In doing so, they embarked on a significant struggle to win a collective agreement in a sector known for poor pay and precarity, all while enduring one of the coldest winters in Canadian history. Continue reading →

Did You Know the American World War I Museum is in Kansas City?

December 16, 2014 1 Comment

By Jeff Bowersox

The Liberty Memorial, Kansas MI

I found out about the National World War I Museum during a recent conference trip – yes, to Kansas City. I was curious to see how it would memorialise a conflict that, for most Americans, is greatly overshadowed by its successor, and decided to visit. The museum is intertwined with the Liberty Memorial, dedicated in 1926 to honor the sacrifices of those who fought for their country. The museum aims to go beyond reverence, according to its mission statement to “inspire thought, dialogue and learning to make the experience of the World War I era meaningful and relevant for present and future generations.” It certainly succeeds in engaging visitors through clear stories and thought-provoking artifacts. It’s worth visiting, and an excellent teaching resource.

There are many things to be said about the genuinely interesting exhibits, innovative multimedia resources, and friendly and knowledgeable staff. I will limit myself to a few observations relating to the museum’s grand narrative, since it raises questions about the purpose of a national museum and the relationship between commemoration and scholarship. Put another way, what story is considered meaningful, and for whom is it relevant. Continue reading →

Heroin as treatment? The calculations of a new ‘junk’ equation

December 15, 2014 1 Comment

By Lucas Richert

[This post was first published on Alternet.org]

“I have learned the junk equation,” wrote William Burroughs in his semi-autobiographical 1953 book, Junkie. “Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increase enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.”

According to Burroughs, the beatnik, spoken word performer, and author of such other novels as Naked Lunch and Queer, heroin was a way of life for habitual users and addicts. It was not simply a drug that enhanced the quality of one’s everyday experiences, nor was it a means to be a more productive individual. Rather, junk was an end in itself. Burroughs, for his part, used methadone treatment to deal with his junk addiction.

Heroin has had a long and troubled history. Continue reading →

Putin’s Lessons from History

December 10, 2014 5 Comments

By Andriy Zayarnyuk

Vladimir Putin answered journalists’ questions on the situation in Ukraine (Source: http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6763)

Now that Vladimir Putin has acknowledged his responsibility for invading Ukraine in February 2013, finding out about his worldview is no longer a matter of mere curiosity. Putin’s statements of the last decade demonstrate that his thinking about Ukraine and Russia is deeply mired in history. Already in 2005, reminding the upper chamber of the Russian parliament of “how contemporary Russian history was born,” he called the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” [1] The remarks that followed made it perfectly clear that “geopolitical” was not a slip of the tongue. He did not mean the imploding system of social security, post-Soviet economic decline, and people’s misery, reflected in plunging life expectancy. He meant exactly what he said: that the disappearance of the Soviet state’s borders was a disaster for the Russian nation per se.

Why was the disappearance of this particular border a disaster? According to Putin, it left “tens of millions of our fellow citizens and compatriots outside of the borders of the Russian territory.” [2] Apparently, he imagines that the Soviet Union was an exclusively Russian state. If the founding fathers and subsequent rulers of the USSR heard this statement, they would be spinning in their graves. The whole point of signing the Union treaty in 1922 was to create a federation of free and equal socialist nations, ending Russian oppression of other nationalities on the territories of the former Russian Empire. Continue reading →

Couillard, Cartier and Confederation: Old Ideas, New Voices

December 9, 2014 No Comments

By Jared Milne

Philippe Couillard speaking at the opening day of NYC Climate Week in New York, on September 22, 2014.” The photo was taken by Tina Fineberg of the Climate Group and licensed under Creative Commons.

2014 was a year of change in Quebec, as Philippe Couillard led the provincial Liberals to victory over the Parti Quebecois (PQ) government of Pauline Marois. Since taking power Couillard and his Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, Jean-Marc Fournier, have played up Quebec’s “distinct society.” In a speech at the Canada 2020 conference, Fournier claimed that the “distinct society” clause that had scuttled the Meech Lake Accord was a “fait accompli” even as Quebec contributed to Canada’s efforts to deal with issues like climate change. When questioned about this, Couillard was careful to say that he would only pursue constitutional negotiations if Quebec was approached on the issue and that his primary focus as Premier would be on the economy. Though, in their comments and speeches, Couillard and Fournier have repeatedly spoken about the need to recognize Quebec’s distinctiveness in Confederation, they’ve also talked about the benefits to Quebec of being part of Canada, and the positive role Quebec can play in the country. In these sentiments, Quebec’s Liberal Party evokes ideas that took their root in the debates over Canada’s Confederation.

Couillard’s and Fournier’s words and actions are quite similar to those of George-Étienne Cartier, Quebec’s leading Father of Confederation. Cartier’s own words and actions during the original Confederation debates in 1864 had a powerful influence not only on how the British North America Act as a whole was shaped, but also how it recognized subtle but important differences between Quebec and the other Canadian provinces. 2014 is the 200^th anniversary of Cartier’s birth, and the 150^th anniversary of the Confederation debates in Quebec City. This makes it an ideal time to study Cartier’s influence on Confederation, and on modern Quebec federalism. Continue reading →

The Nation-State is not what we think it is: Teaching Canadian History from a non-national perspective

December 8, 2014 1 Comment

By Thomas Peace

At the beginning of November I was asked to join a panel entitled “No One is International” as part of Huron College’s Centre for Global Studies‘s symposium “Critically Engaging: Global Awareness in the Academy.” As I considered the panel’s title, and the broader purpose for the conference (to critically engage with the meaning of “internationalization” for the college), I decided to frame my reflections around a central question related to my work as a historian of Canada: What does it mean to teach Canadian history (that is, the history of the nation-state) from a non-national perspective? Continue reading →

The Moral Distance of the Past: History, Tragedy, and Ethics at Grand-Pré

December 4, 2014 1 Comment

By Andrew Nurse

I admit it. The first time I saw the Evangeline “memorial” (if imaginary people can have memories) at Grand-Pré, I was impressed. It was beautiful. Located in the Nova Scotia Annapolis Valley near New Minas where my son’s soccer team was playing in a tournament, it made for what seemed like a natural stop for what had turned into a family vacation.

Grand-Pré was, of course, a site of Acadian settlement destroyed — along most other Acadian communities in Nova Scotia — by the Expulsion of 1755. The site has its own history, some of which has been related by Ian McKay and Robin Bates’ In the Province of History. The Annapolis Valley was an early and important site of historically-oriented tourism as middle-class Americans flocked north after the publication of Longfellow’s Evangeline in search of a picturesque, almost mystic and tragic land.

Today it is an important stop for tourists visiting the region and it is easy to see why. The manicured lawns, stone church, and striking statue lend it an almost spiritual quality, something that might not be accidental. Initially, the federal government was not all that keen on commemorating the Deportation but today Grand-Pré has become a UNESCO sanctioned World Heritage Site.

It is easy to see this site as another example of the antimodernist invented traditions placed in the service of consumer capitalism. But, that would not be wrong. There is something deeply disturbing about tourism at Grand-Pré. But, I will argue in this post, there is something else we should be considering when we look at sites like Grand-Pré that commemorate, mark, memorialize — whatever language we seek to use — deeply tragic historical events. That is: the way in which sites like Grand-Pré work to establish an ethical or moral distance between the past and the present. There are both troubling and important implications to this moral distance. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Fifty-Six: Franca Iacovetta and the 2014 Berkshire Conference

December 3, 2014 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

For four days this past May the University of Toronto hosted the 2014 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. The ‘Big Berks,’ as it’s known, is considered by many to be the biggest women’s history conference in the world and this was the first time it had ever been held outside of the United States. In the lead up to the conference, we featured a series of posts examining the conference’s growth and significance to the historical profession. And since the conference, we’ve had three podcast episodes recorded during the conference.

The Berks was the largest conference I have ever attended – events took place all over the University of Toronto’s downtown campus – and just thinking about the logistics of organizing such an event makes my head spin. The task of putting the whole thing together was undertaken by Franca Iacovetta, whose team worked for three years in organizing the conference.

In this episode of the History Slam I talk with Franca Iacovetta about the Berks and her role as chair of the conference. We chat about the process of organizing the conference, the place of inclusivity in the event, and how women’s history has evolved over time. We also look at how younger scholars have been welcomed into the event and try to get to the bottom of the weird clown posters at the University of Toronto.

Continue reading →

MacChe? Kingston prepares for the Macdonald Bicentennial

December 2, 2014 1 Comment

Karen Dubinsky

John A. Macdonald, LAC.

I live in downtown Kingston, Ontario. Two doors away from me are two sweet old white ladies. They live in John A. Macdonald’s boyhood home where, according to one of the two plaques outside, he spent his “character forming” years. When I first moved to this street I noticed that during relevant occasions (Macdonald’s birthday and Canada Day), the current inhabitants put John A. dolls in their window, artfully lit so that they were visible from the street.

Next year this country, and especially my town, is preparing to celebrate the bicentennial of John A. Macdonald’s birth. Because I teach at Queen’s University and have an affiliation with the history department, I have been receiving fundraising requests from people in my town who are working hard to prepare celebrations for this event. Their funding request letters assure me that every living Canadian prime minister also encourages me to join in the festivities to honour Macdonald’s legacy. I suppose this is meant to convey that there is a range of political opinion here.

But even if everyone from former Liberal Prime Ministers to former Conservative Prime Ministers think of Macdonald as a stand-up guy, that leaves quite a few of us who don’t. Continue reading →

Hashtag Heritage: Social Media, Advertising and Remembrance Day

December 1, 2014 1 Comment

By Angela Duffett

A rather curious promoted tweet from the Bank of Montreal appeared recently on my Twitter feed: “Join Canadians for a #DayofSocialSilence to honour those in service.” Not really grasping the connection between BMO, Remembrance Day, and staying off of social media for the day, I clicked the tweet to see what kind of response it was attracting. I continued to check in on #dayofsocialsilence occasionally in the days leading up to Remembrance Day and the hashtag didn’t really take off, nor did the original promoted tweets garner much of a response. On facebook, there was a bit more activity around the promotion, some of which was pretty hostile. Being asked by a bank to stay away from social media for twenty-four hours is not going over too well with many people.

The relationship between social media and Remembrance Day is an interesting one. Many people use social media to share stories of remembrance: photos of family members who served in various conflicts, photos from visits to memorials and battlefield sites, and opinions on war and its legacies. Given the utility of social media in sharing stories about war, it seems particularly odd that BMO would encourage us to stay away from it for an entire day in the service of remembrance. By trying to invent a new tradition that circumvents the way many people have already chosen to mark Remembrance Day, BMO’s #dayofsocialsilence comes off as particularly bizarre.

Despite the unpopularity of this particular example, BMO’s campaign reminded me that there is a long history of brands using Remembrance Day to capitalize on public sentiment surrounding war and memory. Continue reading →

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