Active History

History Slam Episode Fifty-Seven: Unlikely Diplomats: The Canadian Brigade in Germany 1951-1964

January 14, 2015 1 Comment

By Sean Graham

On December 4, 2014, the Canadian War Museum and UBC Press book launch as part of their joint Canadian Military Series. The series features a wide range of military historians and their examinations of this country’s military history. The books launched on this night discussed consumerism on the home front during the Second World War, the evolution of Canada’s Army in the second half of the 20th century, African Canadians serving in the American Civil War, and the Canadian Brigade in Germany.

In the latter, Isabel Campbell examines how the Canadian army and their families served a key diplomatic role while serving in Germany through the 1950s and early 1960s. Living in Ottawa – and being constantly surrounded by diplomats (Hi Norwegian Embassy curling team!) – makes the idea of soldiers and their families as diplomatic tools rather intriguing as it goes against the common conception of diplomats as career civil servants who get dedicated street parking spaces and inexplicable police escorts.

Canada’s German mission is also notable because of its significant domestic legacy. It is not uncommon to meet someone in this country who has spent a portion of their life living in Germany. As a result, the culture and values fostered by the Canadian brigade and their families has been brought back with returning members and has played a role in shaping Canadian life through the second half of the 20th century.

In her book, Campbell explores the brigade in a new and unique way. Capitalizing on newly declassified documents, she examines the diplomatic roles spouses and children played while accompanying soldiers while also re-assessing the notion that Canadian officials were fully united with their NATO allies in Germany.
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Let’s talk about something other than Ebola

January 13, 2015 1 Comment

Or, the perils of teaching the history of disease amid global health crises

Casey Hurrell

Wikipedia Commons

This semester, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching a senior undergrad seminar, focusing on the history of disease from the time of Hippocrates to the present. Every week, in front of twenty-two energetic and curious undergrads, I wholeheartedly attempt to steer conversations away from the ongoing Ebola crisis. This is particularly challenging, as my newshound students are generally well-informed and frequently raise points of discussion that I would happily entertain in a different context.

When my students want to talk about Ebola, I resist the urge to turn our history seminar into a forum for debate about trendy health issues. I find myself thinking: let’s talk about something that matters, and let’s give it a historical context. Rather than focusing our attention on a scourge that is exceedingly unlikely to ever affect your daily lives, let’s talk about some equally harrowing disease that you all think is a relic of the past, but most certainly is not. Let’s talk about tuberculosis, and the place that diseases occupy in the historical record.

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A Patchwork of Care: Midwifery in Canada

January 12, 2015 2 Comments

By Krista McCracken

Midwife poster created by British wartime artist during WWI. Imperial War Museum.

The rise and fall of midwifery as an accepted profession is directly linked to the medicalization of birth, feminism, and social conditions. The history of midwifery in Canada is similar to the rise and fall of midwifery in the United States and Europe. For years women gave birth at home surrounded by female relatives and neighbours, with the birth being presided over by a female midwife. The establishment of the medical profession, rise of science in health care, and lack of professional midwife organizations all contributed to the marginalization of midwifery by the mid 1900s. Birth became a medical intervention that took place in a depersonalized hospital room directed by a physician.

The medicalization of birth coincided with the decline in usage of midwives. In many provinces midwifery became ‘alegal;’ midwifery services weren’t illegal but they weren’t regulated or accepted as part of the provincial health care system. In Canada this meant that midwife services were not covered under provincial health insurance and women looking to use a midwife had to pay out of pocket.

Despite financial barriers and perceptions by the medical community of midwives being ‘untrained’ and ‘unhygienic’, various government bodies have sanctioned midwifery to some degree since the early 1900s. In 1919, Alberta’s Department of Public Health began including nursing services which offered midwifery care for women living in remote areas. Similar legislation and training programs were developed across Canada. The Department of Health and Welfare (now Health Canada) began in 1939 to actively recruit midwives to serve in the north and remote areas. Many of these early government approved midwives were nurse-midwives who were responding to community needs long before midwifery became a legal profession in many provinces. [1] Continue reading →

Epilogue: Critical Indigenous Reflections on Sir John A. Macdonald

January 11, 2015 1 Comment

Last month Karen Dubinsky published a post with us on Kingston’s preparations for commemorating the 200th anniversary of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth. In that post she mentioned a symposium on “Critical Indigenous Reflections on Sir John A. Macdonald” that was held in November at Queen’s University. Much of that symposium was recorded and has now been placed on YouTube. The full line up includes a talk by artist David Garneau (who will be in Kingston today) and a book launch of Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks as well as panels on Metis relations, artistic interventions, government policy and re-imagining Canada. As an epilogue to our series on Canada’s first prime minister, we’ve embedded the first of these videos (Garneau’s talk) as an entry point into this useful resource. Continue reading →

Old Tomorrow’s Bicentennial: Don’t Think Motivation, Think Law

January 9, 2015 2 Comments

By James Daschuk

Ok, first things first: I do not hate John A. Macdonald. At the risk of maddening some colleagues out there, I am wary of trying to contort huge historical events and consequences into how they apply to a single individual’s psychological makeup, political vision or personal ambition. As a self-professed environmental historian, I have even joked with my students that human agency is overrated in history. Still no matter what side of the Macdonald “wedge” you are on, there is no denying his influence. He is, as Richard Gwyn wrote, “The Man Who Made Us.”

Rather than looking at what drove Macdonald’s political ambitions during the Confederation era, I will consider the impact of the decade he spent as both Prime Minister and Superintendent General of Indian affairs from 1878 to 1888. J.R. Miller recently reminded us that he was the longest serving Minister of Indian Affairs in Canadian history, and “For good or ill, Macdonald was an architect of Canadian Indian Policy. The foundation that he and his government laid would last largely unaltered until the middle of the twentieth century.”[1]

Treaties are the legal basis for white settlement in the west. Continue reading →

Birthing a Dominion

January 8, 2015 No Comments

By Christa Zeller Thomas

“[Confederation …] will make us historical.”
John A. Macdonald

“History is not the province of the ladies.”
John Adams

Confederation: The Much-Fathered Youngster

Did Canada’s Confederation women give birth to the new dominion in 1867?

Sir John A. didn’t have women in mind when he made his statement (above) about entering history. He was mainly referring to himself.

And yet, when one thinks about the homeland (patria, female), it is often as a female figure – the mother country – and the nation itself (la nation in French and gendered female also in many other languages) is delivered by someone (also female?) capable of giving birth. So presumably women have a role to play.

And yet,…

Canada is counting down now to a big anniversary, the country’s 150^th birthday, fast approaching on July 1, 2017.

Whom and what will we remember as we commemorate and celebrate this anniversary? Continue reading →

John A. Macdonald’s Aryan Canada: Aboriginal Genocide and Chinese Exclusion

January 7, 2015 3 Comments

By Timothy J. Stanley

Racisms are central to the creation of Canada through European dominance over the vast territories of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. A case in point is provided by John Alexander Macdonald and his enactment of Asian exclusion and the genocide of the people of the southern plains.[1]

Macdonald not only excluded the Chinese, he personally introduced biological racism as a defining characteristic of Canadianness. Continue reading →

Old Chieftain or Old Charlatan? Assessing Sir John’s Complex Legacy through Political Cartoons

January 6, 2015 8 Comments

By Thomas Peace

This week ActiveHistory.ca has focused our attention to the legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald. In less than a week’s time, Canada will be in the throes of one big Sir John love-in. On 11 January, this country’s first prime minister will be celebrating the 200th year since his birth in Glasgow, Scotland. Over the course of this week, we’ll bring you essays on Sir John’s legacy regarding Indigenous peoples, immigration and the broader politics of his time. In doing so, we aim to present and assess Sir John in all his complexity. Neither then, nor now, has Canada’s first prime minister been universally celebrated and loved.

John_A_Macdonald_Daguerreotype Continue reading →

New Directions in Active History: Institutions, Communication, and Technologies

January 5, 2015 1 Comment

Members of the editorial team are excited to announce that we’re organizing a conference. This three day conference will create a forum similar to our 2008 founding symposium “Active History: A History for the Future,” where historians interested in the practice of Active History can share their research, methods, and projects with each other. Second, as a primarily web-based and volunteer-run project, we also intend to use this conference to explore new directions for ActiveHistory.ca. With 20,000 unique visitors a month, ActiveHistory.ca is one of the best known history-related websites in Canada. Over the past five years, we’ve published nearly 1,000 blog posts, peer reviewed papers, book reviews, and podcasts. It is time to revisit the project’s goals and look towards what the next five years will bring.

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A Toast to Jay Young

December 23, 2014 3 Comments

Jay’s exit is our loss, but the Archives’ gain

ActiveHistory.ca is on a hiatus for the winter break, with a return to daily posts in early January. We’d like to leave you with an oldie but a goodie by Jay Young, Toronto’s subway historian and one of the founding members of the site.

This winter Jay left ActiveHistory.ca for a new job doing public outreach with the Archives of Ontario. Those who have contributed or worked with our site know that Jay played a critical role: greeting new contributors, working with them, and essentially making the site possible. His absence will be keenly felt by all of us, who had our days enlivened by the ability to work with Jay on a daily basis.

We’d like to publicly give Jay a toast (with a historically-informed Gin and Tonic, perhaps) – for the years with us, and to the exciting work that lies ahead at the Archives of Ontario. You’ll be missed, Jay! Continue reading →

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