Active History

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

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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 →

Podcast: Sochi and Beyond: Russia’s Anti-Gay Legislation, Human Rights, and the Practice of History

November 28, 2014 No Comments

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Russia’s so-termed anti-gay propaganda law, passed in 2013 by the Russian parliament, raised an array of issues relating to the status and rights of LGBT people in Russia, the lack of specific protections in the Olympic Charter relating to sexual orientation, and expected negative impacts of this law on scholarship in history, the humanities and social sciences. The roundtable brought together the perspectives of Erica Fraser, historian of Russia and Eastern Europe; Michael Dawson, historian of sport and popular culture; Lyle Dick, past-president of the CHA and practitioner of LGBT history; and CHA President Dominique Marshall, a specialist on Canada’s transnational history. The panel was chaired by Yves Frenette, Chair of Advocacy for the Canadian Historical Association. It considered the historical background to Russia’s anti-gay law and its justifications in “traditional values,” the status of LGBT human rights in the context of the Olympic movement, the particular challenges confronting researchers of LGBT history in Russia in light of Canadian experience, and the position of the Canadian Historical Association on the Russian law in terms of its core mandate and practice of defending the human rights of historians. Continue reading →

Podcast: Nos Glorieuses: 100 Years of Women’s Hockey in Quebec

November 28, 2014 No Comments

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Activehistory.ca is pleased to present a recording of Lynda Baril’s talk ‘Nos Glorieuses’: 100 Years of Women’s Hockey in Quebec. The talk was delivered as part of the Ottawa Historical Association Lecture Series on September 16, 2014.

The Principality of Outer Baldonia: A Nova Scotia Micronation

November 27, 2014 1 Comment

By Lachlan Mackinnon

Last year, I was contacted by Phillip Hayward of Southern Cross University to write an article on a “micronation” that had been established on an island off the south shore of Nova Scotia in 1949. Micronations, generally defined as territories declared independent by persons or groups despite the unlikelihood of receiving any official form of recognition, have cropped up around the world since the 1960s. Having been unfamiliar with the concept, I was excited to explore the history of “The Principality of Outer Baldonia.” The process of researching this little-known story of Nova Scotia’s past brought me to southern Nova Scotia to talk about local history, explore the story through material held at two small museums, and learn about the fishing and tourist economy of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia – the closest shore-side community to the now-defunct micronation.

The story of Outer Baldonia begins in the 1930s, when the Acadian fishing community of Wedgeport became home to the then-largest international sports tuna fishing tournament. American businessman and sports writer Michael Lerner organized the first tournament in 1935, after traveling to Nova Scotia to fish tuna and partake in the marketed tourist experience. The tournament grew; American and Canadian elites frequented the area for its reputation for angling. Attendees, in different years, included FDR, Amelia Earhart and Chicago mobster Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo. It was not until the mid-1940s that Russell Arundel, an American businessman and the person responsible for the establishment of Outer Baldonia, arrived in Wedgeport. [1]

In 1948, Arundel purchased “Outer Bald Tusket Island” from local fishermen Élie Cottreau and Ida Doucette for $750. The three-acre island had only been used until that point as the location for a small fishing camp. Arundel’s interest in Outer Bald Tusket Island was the result of its proximity to the tuna fishing shoals; he intended to build a small structure that could be used to escape seasickness or to take a short lunch without traveling back to Wedgeport. In 1953, Arundel related to Esquire Magazine, “Back in Washington, the deed in my pocket and a drink in my hand, the Principality of Outer Baldonia began to take shape.” [2] Continue reading →

The Home Archivist – Getting My Hands Dirty

November 26, 2014 1 Comment

Home-Archivist-300x170 2 By Jessica Dunkin

In the last Home Archivist post, I described how I came to be in possession of a box of nineteenth-century letters. In this post, I open the box again for the first time.

When the MacKendrick letters arrived at my house in early August, they were quickly shuttled into the basement and I assumed that they would stay there for a few weeks, if not a few months. An unexpected illness, however, found me home alone for the last two and a half weeks of the summer. Not feeling well enough to tackle more pressing tasks, I decided to have a look at the letters. Those of you that follow me on Twitter will know that it proved to be an enchanting experience.

After gathering together the necessary supplies (folders, archival boxes, pencils, camera, etc.), I relocated the dusty, smoke-scarred box from the basement to the dining room table, the largest work surface in the house. I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about how I would set about working with the letters. In the end, my approach was simple. I opened the box and began to remove the contents, placing each bundle on the table. I took pictures of each layer, so that I would have a record of the box’s organization. Even before I started thinking more seriously about archival practice, I knew that the original order of a collection is important, not least because it is suggestive of how the collection’s creator, in this case Amelia or John MacKendrick, imagined the documents and their connection to one another. Continue reading →

Yes, We CAN Think Historically with a Video Game Console

November 25, 2014 1 Comment

By Jonathan McQuarrie

#gamergate inflicted a well-deserved black eye for video game culture. Whatever the movement may have been (and there are many facets to it), one of the core consequences became a rash of threats against prominent critic Anita Sarkeesian, who rightly pointed to the many harmful and tiresome ways in which video games portrayed women in her series ‘Tropes versus Women’ and through her website Feminist Frequency. On the website Play the Past, which encourages historical thinking about video games, Trevor Owens argued for the value of collecting the various memes, chat logs, and terms that emerged from the debate. As he rightly notes, the entire moment will provide future historians with insight into the early 21^st century culture of technology, as ugly as that culture can be.

I begin with the #gamergate controversy because it generated one of the widest discussions of ‘gamer’ culture since the debates on video games and violence. The discussion spilled well beyond the typical confines of video game journalism, producing several (rather bewildered) discussions from wider publications—in my view, Tabatha Southey wrote the best (and funniest) of these. I wish to acknowledge that significant problems with video games and their representation of women, sexual orientation, and people of colour remain, and that I, as a white, heterosexual male, am not qualified to adjudicate whether or not these issues are being ‘solved.’ For instance, the cold, detached, alpha male protagonist remains a staple of many popular online games, which can contribute to the frequently hostile online environment.

However, this post is motivated by a desire to share how video games, now as much as ever, also encourage players to engage with the past. I am writing with an assumption that many readers of ActiveHistory.ca are not active game players, but that they are aware that many of their students, friends, and, dare I suggest, colleagues engage with history through video games. I also wish to impress that I am not part of the emerging field of Game Studies, so this post is the perspective of a layperson into what is a rapidly growing academic field. Through the various links and references in this post, I want to provide a few reference points for people who teach or think about history, but who are not necessarily prepared to invest the time and money into what can be a rather distracting (if delightful) hobby. Continue reading →

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