Active History

The Abortion Caravan and RCMP Surveillance

May 19, 2015 1 Comment

York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, ASC04612.

By Christabelle Sethna

Very few Canadians know that the RCMP conducted surveillance of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus (VWC) and its Abortion Caravan.[1] This discovery is just one outcome of research undertaken with Dr. Steve Hewitt. We worked with hundreds of pages of declassified RCMP files, using surveillance reports (many of which are redacted) as well as appended open source material. The 1969 Criminal Code reforms coincided with the emergence of women’s liberation groups like the VWC. These groups, made up mainly of young, white women, were part of the 1960s New Left ferment that included opposition to the Vietnam War and support for women’s rights, the student movement, Black Power and Red Power and anti-imperialism.[2] Continue reading →

Who built Toronto’s St Lawrence Neighbourhood?

May 15, 2015 1 Comment

(adapted from an earlier post on torontoplanninghistorian.com)

By Richard White

1974 conceptual sketch of St Lawrence. City of Toronto

The first known depiction of St Lawrence Neighbourhood – a conceptual sketch included in the City Housing Department report “St. Lawrence: A New Neighbourhood for Toronto”, 22 May 1974.

Earlier this month, it was Jane’s Walk time again in Toronto, and thousands were out this past touring various urban locales under the guidance of local experts. It is a remarkable success story, this concept, and a fitting legacy for someone who conceived one of the most influential books of the twentieth century on the basis of what she observed walking about the city.

Among the options this year was a tour led by former city councillor and now Liberal Member of Parliament Adam Vaughan titled “Lessons from a Great Neighbourhood” that began in the celebrated St Lawrence Neighbourhood, an area that, the promotional blurb tells us, “was built in the 1970s by some of our City’s greatest visionaries including Jane Jacobs”. This assertion prompted an eye-roll, from me at least – an eye-roll I have done before and am likely to do again. Jane Jacobs did not build St Lawrence Neighbourhood anymore than Frank Lloyd Wright designed my suburban childhood home. Continue reading →

OpenTextbooks in Canadian History: Part II

May 14, 2015 No Comments

By John Belshaw

There are three reasons why anyone teaching or studying introductory history ought to be excited – or at least curious – about OpenTextbooks. First and foremost – and most likely to appeal to us cheapskate Canucks – is that they are free to use, order, assign, etc.

By “free,” I mean, um, free. There is no charge to use them. They don’t come cheaper in a bundle , there’s no special password that you’ll have to buy, no account info you have to submit, there’s no clock ticking in the background and there’s no best-before date. They’re free. Free of charge. Anytime, anywhere. I just looked at one on my smartphone. I paid for the electricity, yes, okay, that’s true. You got me there.

It’s the two extraordinary things one can do with OpenTextbooks, however, that make them most appealing. Continue reading →

Preserving Canada’s Sporting Past with the Jackie MacDonald Scrapbooks

May 13, 2015 5 Comments

By Adrienne Coffey and Danielle Manning

Jackie MacDonald scrapbooks (F 4662), Volume 1. Archives of Ontario

Jackie MacDonald is an athlete who gives Canadians good reason to be proud of their sports heritage. She has competed in a multitude of sports, first attracting attention as the star player on a Toronto city league basketball team that won two Junior National Championships. She has also participated in competitive swimming and diving, followed by a prestigious career in shot put and discus during the 1950s, when she represented Canada in international events, including the 1954 Commonwealth Games, the 1955 Pan American Games, the 1956 Olympics, the 1957 World Youth Games, and the 1958 Commonwealth Games. Jackie ranked first in the Western Hemisphere and second in the Commonwealth for shot put in 1954 and 1955. By 1956, she was ranked 26th in the world.

Her athletic achievements between 1947 and 1958, as well as those of her fellow athletes, are documented in a series of scrapbooks (Fonds 4662), which Jackie donated to the Archives of Ontario in 2012. These scrapbooks tell a compelling story of the history of amateur sport in Canada—particularly the challenges and accomplishments of female athletes at this time. Jackie is now over 80 years old and is still active, setting records with the Ottawa Bicycle Club. Her story is one of passion and inspiration. With 2015 being the “Year of Sport” in Canada, and with the upcoming Pan Am / Parapan Am Games coming to Toronto this summer, Archivist Adrienne Coffey and Outreach Officer Danielle Manning from the Archives of Ontario connected with Jackie to find out more about her personal experiences as an amateur Canadian athlete and as a donor of archival records. Continue reading →

The Second Battle of Ypres and the Creation of a YMCA Hero

May 12, 2015 2 Comments

By Jonathan Weier

Weier, Second Ypres and YMCA Hero - image 1 Among the approximately 2000 members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force killed at the Second Battle of Ypres in late April and early May 1915 was the only Canadian YMCA worker killed in combat during the First World War. YMCA Honourary Captain Oscar Irwin, attached to the 10th Battalion of the CEF, was killed when he joined the battalion as it set out to retake St. Julien from the Germans in the early morning of April 23rd.^[1] Irwin appears frequently in the YMCA’s commemoration of its First World War service, as the heroic embodiment of the YMCA’s masculine ideals, its message of service, and as a symbol of Christian sacrifice. Irwin’s example, both in life and in death, provided a venue by which the YMCA and its workers could address the tensions and challenges faced by many men involved in non-combatant service during the First World War. Continue reading →

The Abortion Caravan and Anti-Vietnam War Activism

May 11, 2015 2 Comments

York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, ASC04612.

[Editors Note: This is the second of a series of five posts on the Abortion Caravan that will be running this month.]

By Shannon Stettner

Often when we study activism surrounding an issue like abortion, we do so in isolation, paying little attention to the multiple protest identities of activists. While I hadn’t anticipated writing an article on connecting abortion rights to anti-war activism, my interviews with Abortion Caravan participants revealed particularly strong claims of attachment to or identification with opposition to the Vietnam War that demanded further exploration. Some of the Caravaners came to Canada with draft-resister relatives from the United States, while others lived in communal housing with draft resisters and deserters. The majority settled in Vancouver and Toronto, the two cities in which most of the Caravaners lived. Many women recalled their commitment to anti-war activities, including helping to smuggle deserters over the border into Canada and attending and organizing demonstrations and forums for peace. This post explores these linkages, drawing connections between the tactics used by activists in the pro-choice and anti-war movements as well as their competing interests.[1]
Continue reading →

The Women Are Coming; The Abortion Caravan of 1970

May 11, 2015 2 Comments

York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, ASC04612.

[Editors Note: This is the first of a series of five posts on the Abortion Caravan that will be running this month.]

By Christabelle Sethna and Shannon Stettner

On April 27, 1970, members of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus (VWC) set off on a journey to Ottawa in an “Abortion Caravan” to protest the new abortion law. Under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the Liberal government passed an Omnibus Bill in 1969 that reformed the Criminal Code, decriminalizing contraception and legalizing consensual homosexual sex as well as abortion. Legal abortion was now possible only when a doctor referred a pregnant woman to a Therapeutic Abortion Committee (TAC) made up of three to five doctors in an accredited hospital. The TAC determined on a case-by-case basis whether or not the abortion was necessary to save the life or health of a pregnant woman. Although intended to prevent illegal abortion and its potential negative health consequences for women, the new law was unevenly applied and created backlogs and delays. Nascent women’s liberation groups like the VWC denounced it as restrictive to women in general and unfair to poor women in particular and began organizing around repealing the abortion law. The Ottawa Citizen quoted VWC member Dawn Carrell Hemingway as saying: “The only way we can get abortion removed from the Criminal Code is not by letters to the government or pressure through channels. The only way is if large numbers of women come together and do something. Numbers and actions are more important than presenting briefs.”[1] Continue reading →

Review of Bruno Ramirez’s Inside the Historical Film

May 8, 2015 No Comments

By C.S. Ogden

What stake does historical research have in fictionalized cinematic productions? Does film offer another medium to convey this research effectively to new audiences? What role can the academic historian take within such endeavours? In his latest book Inside the Historical Film, Bruno Ramirez, a history professor and screenwriter at Université de Montréal, considers these issues by investigating the relationship between historical research and cinematic narratives.

McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014
238 pages, Paperback $29.95.

Acknowledging both the attraction to and the scepticism of historical film by historians, Ramirez traces the study of historical film. He does not focus solely on how various films have portrayed historical events. He also asks how fiction has been employed for these kinds of narrations: is it used primarily to increase a film’s commercial viability or does it have the potential to augment an audience’s understanding of the past? The manner in which historians and filmmakers engage with these notions inform the book’s chapters.

Ramirez explores the development and professionalization of the scholarly study of history and film during the twentieth century. He acknowledges the importance of film’s visual and technical components and more could be added here about the visuality of film but he is careful not to stray from the book’s major theme. He notes that the appeal and challenge of film is through its combination of the visual and the dramaturgical. The result is that the “filmic image, in other words, speaks through its own language” (33). Continue reading →

OpenTextbooks in Canadian History: Part I

May 7, 2015 1 Comment

By John Belshaw

I had this ‘eureka’ moment in the barber’s chair. Well, I thought, if a book is like a railway line, heading in one direction from west to east, then an e-book is more like a mine elevator, heading from the surface into the depths, from top to bottom or, perhaps, from north to south. If that’s the case, then an OpenTextbook is like a hive. It is living, fluid, with junctions that run up, down, outward in several horizons but also in three dimensions. It offers options rather than a singular pathway, complexity rather than guiderails, a little more risk but the possibility of greater rewards.

Moving from metaphor to practicality, the OpenTextbook is just plain different from conventional textbooks. For starters, it’s smart. It can evolve. Instead of waiting for the (inevitable) umpteenth edition, you (the prof) can refine and effectively create the newest edition. What if your textbook could be made to look more like something from Harry Potter, with moving images on the page? What if it could function differently?

What if it was available for free? Continue reading →

Labour rights, Socio-Economic Rights, and the Limitations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

May 6, 2015 No Comments

by Christo Aivalis

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canadian workers have the right to strike as per Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This builds on a 2007 ruling that bestowed the right to bargain collectively. Both reversed a 1987 Supreme Court ruling, and two similar cases (‘the labour trilogy,’) which excluded those rights. But still absent from the Charter are rights to basic economic security, and this omission is not an oversight.

Rather, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s vision for the Charter was to serve as a locus for a liberal and secular patriotism based in a collective understanding of what human rights did and did not entail. This combined with a failure of the New Democratic Party and organized labour to fight for social, economic, and labour rights, giving us a limited conception of rights that continues to shape our national philosophy, guide our approach to policy, and limit the validity and promise of our democracy.

For Trudeau, the Charter was to forge a societal recognition that rights should not politicized, because they “are the common heritage of all Canadians.” In contrast to the 1867 constitution, which lacked an educational message about what Canada was and aspired to, the Charter would also constitute a pedagogical tool and “enlightened basis for patriotism.” But Trudeau was clear that this collective patriotism would not include workers and poor Canadians, even as it included numerous minorities. The workers and poor were omitted “because economic rights do not simply restrain others in order to protect the individual in the exercise of his freedoms, but instead seek to impose obligations on the state or others for the positive benefit of the individual.”[1] Continue reading →

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