‘It’s history, like it or not’: the Significance of Sudbury’s Superstack

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By: Mike Commito and Kaleigh Bradley

Standing at a height of 1,250 feet, the Sudbury Superstack is the second tallest chimney in the world and runner-up to the CN Tower for the tallest structure in Canada. Until 1987, Sudbury Ontario had the dubious honour of having the world’s tallest smokestack. Today, the Stack is seen by some as a marker for Sudbury’s rich mining heritage but for others, it is also part of a much larger history of health and environmental problems.

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“Sudbury and the Beast.” Courtesy of local photographer Greta Clarke.

Since the nineteenth century, Sudbury’s landscape was ravaged by the effects of the mining industry; over the years the vegetation disappeared with acid rain, and farmers found themselves unable to grow crops in the highly acidic soil. The International Nickel Company (INCO) built the Superstack in 1972 to disperse sulphur dioxide (SO2) and other pollutants away from the area, thereby addressing health and environmental concerns. The Stack’s construction coincided with a community regreening movement, which has reversed some of the environmental damage. The Superstack reduced local emission rates in recent years, but one could argue that INCO simply passed the buck, and the dispersion of SO2 became somebody else’s problem. Moreover, the Sudbury area continues to have higher rates of asthma and lung cancer than other parts of Ontario. For better or for worse, the Superstack has been a landmark along the Sudbury skyline for over forty years. And when Vale (formerly INCO) recently proposed demolishing the Superstack in the local media, we watched as an interesting public debate about the significance, history, and future of the stack ensued.

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Ignorance of History as a Site of Memory

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By Raphaël Gani

Gani1

Do you know who this is?

The discourse about Canadians ignoring their collective past, or not knowing their national history, is neither new (Osborne, 2003) nor limited to Canada (Wineburg, 2001). Such a view tends to be legitimized according to surveys in which people fail to identify famous events and politicians. This failure is also linked with angst about the perils of the nation and questions of citizenship. It is used to justify million-dollar investments and educational reforms.

However, there are other ways to look at peoples’ perception of the past. I will elaborate on these elements to support my main argument: discourse on historical ignorance can, itself, be considered a site of memory. Continue reading →

Jean Baptiste Assiginack: The Starling aka Blackbird

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By Alan Corbiere

This post marks the third in a series of essays – posted the second Wednesday of each month – by Alan Corbiere focusing on Anishinaabeg participation in the War of 1812. 

Assiginack, Artist Unknown, c. 1845

Assiginack, Artist Unknown, c. 1845

On the morning of October 5, 1861, 96 year old Odaawaa Chief Jean Baptiste Assiginack of the Biipiigwenh (Sparrowhawk) clan rose from his slumber and got dressed. J.B. Assiginack, frame bent with age, did not fully fill out the blue admiral attire he had been given for services during the War of 1812. Regardless, Assiginack shined up his black top boots, pressed his blue cloth tail coat, shined the coat’s gilt buttons, and straightened the gold epaulettes. Putting on his undergarments, socks, pants, shirt, he then put on his boots followed by his blue coat. He buttoned the coat and then took the crimson sash and fastened it around his waist. Next he grabbed the silver medal he received the previous year from the Prince of Wales and affixed it to his breast. Holding the King George III medal he received for services during the War of 1812, and taking it by the blue ribbon, he pulled it too over his head and wore it around his neck. Lastly he took the black cocked hat, adjusted the plume of blue and white feathers, and then placed it upon his head. He then proceeded to the dock at Manitowaning Bay and awaited the arrival of the treaty commissioners. Continue reading →

1864 vs. 1914: A Commemorative Showdown

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By Sarah Glassford

1864

As I sat by the window of a popular coffee shop in downtown Charlottetown on a warm afternoon in September 2014, two student actors from the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) appeared on the street corner opposite, heading toward nearby Province House, seat of the provincial legislature.  He wore a three-piece suit and top hat; she sported a shirtwaist, hoop skirt, elaborate hat, and shawl.  This is a common sight near Province House during the summer tourist season,[i] but it struck me as noteworthy because I happened to be brainstorming thoughts for a post on Prince Edward Island (PEI) and the First World War centenary.  The sight of 1860s-style citizens promenading down the street in 2014 reminded me that all commemoration takes place in a crowded landscape of competing commemorations, even when the subject is as globally game-changing as the First World War.

PEI, Canada’s smallest province, has been celebrating 2014 in grand style all year long, but not because of anything to do with the First World War centenary.  Instead, the island is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, when the then-colony of PEI hosted the first serious discussions of a confederation of British North American colonies – a union that eventually became the Dominion of Canada.  Continue reading →

Podcast – Robert Rutherdale on the Local Responses of WWI

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ActiveHistory.ca is happy to feature the inaugural talk of the Fall 2014 History Matters lecture series: historian Robert Rutherdale’s “Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to Canada’s Great War.”

Rutherdale delivered the talk at the Toronto Public Library’s North York Central Branch. He explores issues such as the demonization of enemy aliens, wartime philanthropy, and state authority and citizenship – all while asking what the study of the “local” can add to our understanding of the First World War and historical research in general.

ActiveHistory.ca is featuring this podcast as part of  “Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca”, a multi-year series of regular posts about the history and centennial of the First World War.

 

Podcast – Canadian Historians and the Media

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On Wednesday May 28, 2014 as part of the Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Activehistory.ca sponsored a roundtable discussion on the presence of Canadian historians in the media. The session was chaired by Ian Milligan of the University of Waterloo and featured Ian Mosby (McMaster University), Maureen Lux (Brock University), Sean Kheraj (York University), Mark Brosens (TVO), and James Cullingham (Seneca College/Tamarack Productions).

Activehistory.ca is pleased to present a recording of the roundtable.

Why I’ll wait to visit the Canadian Museum of Human Rights

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aboutthemuseum-610.jpgBy B. Trofanenko

On September 20, 2014, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) opened its doors to the world. Considering the CMHR a “great national project,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper remarked how the museum will stand for “freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law” and as a “monument to Canada’s embrace of humanity’s highest ideals.”  The opening of any museum is cause for celebration. It not only affirms the permanency and monumentality of a physical structure – in this case an imposing spiral building of glass, limestone, steel and concrete – but it also advances the museum’s historic intellectual traditions of democratic, universal, and public education as well as contributing to urban revitalization and economic improvement.

Like other museums, the CMHR will use the framework of human rights to provide the public with opportunities to learn about contemporary political, social, and cultural issues facing Canadians. According to its own mandate for research, exhibition and education, the museum will seek to “enhance the public’s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection, dialogue, and action.” As an ‘ideas’ museum, the CMHR is less tied to collections of objects (the few included in the museum are on loan from other institutions) and more focused on the desire to ‘teach’ moral lessons and to advance, as noted in their mission statement, the “understanding of the history of and continuing global struggle to define human rights including Canada’s important role in that journey.” This provides opportunity for the museum to invite discussions about human rights issues, including past injustices and current-day violence and oppression, that realize the tension between defining human rights on a local, national, and global scale.

Notwithstanding such noble aspirations, success could be difficult to achieve in the short term. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Fifty-Five: Celebrating Canada Part 2

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By Sean Graham

Last Wednesday we posted the first part of our first ever two part episode in which I talked with Matthew Hayday, Marc-André Gagnon, and Robert Talbot about the Celebrating Canada workshop. Then on Friday we posted a recording of the roundtable discussion that kicked off the workshop.

In this episode of the History Slam, I chat with various participants in the workshop about their contributions to the Celebrating Canada project. I start by talking with Lee Blanding, Sessional Lecturer at Langara College, about issues of multiculturalism during centennial celebrations. I then chat with Anne Trepanier of Carleton University about the contested terrain and conflicting celebrations that occur on the final Monday before the 25th each May. This is followed by my conversation with CDCI’s Gillian Leitch in which we discuss representations of British identity during parades in Montreal. Marcel Martel of York University and Joel Belliveau of Laurentian University stop by to talk about the evolution of Empire Day. I then chat with Peter Stevens of York University about the changing meaning of Thanksgiving in Canada. The episode concludes with Cristina Ogden and the 2005 Alberta Centennial celebrations.

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A Historian on Catalan Independence

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Supporters of independence, 2012. Photo by Pere prlpz. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Supporters of independence, 2012. Photo by Pere prlpz. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

By Aitana Guia

On November 9, 2014, hundreds of thousands of Catalans, perhaps millions, will print their own unofficial ballots and head to improvised polling stations to cast a vote for independence that nobody else but them will consider valid. Most Catalans opposed to independence will stay at home and lament growing political polarization. The result will be a resolute vote in favour of independence.

The Spanish government opposes a vote and argues that the best way to defend democratic rights and freedoms is to abide by the provisions of the 1978 Constitution. This Constitution, as a compromised product of the Transition to democracy, aimed at creating stability and thus requires absolute majority in the Spanish parliament to reform it. Even if all Catalan politicians were in favour of it, and they are not, they would never have enough parliamentary support to do it.

Pro-independence politicians and activists conveniently forget that all four Catalan provinces approved with high percentages of the popular vote the 1978 Constitution in a referendum and argue that democracy today demands acknowledging the right to self-determination for Catalonia, something completely outside of the scope of the Spanish constitution. They use the Spanish government’s immobility as a sign that Spain is today, as it has been for the last 300 years in their nationalist view, all about control by force and claim they are the only ones fighting for democratic rights and freedoms.

Catalan nationalism prides itself as a historically rooted, culturally vibrant, progressive movement. Continue reading →

Crowdsourcing Old Maps Online

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"The Hudson's Bay Territories and Vancouver's Island; with an exposition of the chartered rights, conduct and policy of the Hudson's Bay Corporation"

“The Hudson’s Bay Territories and Vancouver’s Island; with an exposition of the chartered rights, conduct and policy of the Hudson’s Bay Corporation”

A little under a year ago the British Library released over a million images on Flickr Commons “for anyone to use, remix and repurpose”. This huge collection of historical images was “plucked from the pages” of digitized 17th, 18th and 19th century books automatically using the “Mechanical Curator,” created by the British Library Labs project. The library hoped that people on the internet would help them sort through the images and cluster them into useful categories and that is exactly what has been happening. At this point volunteers have identified more than 3000 maps in amongst the million images: “Maps, found by the community from the Mechanical Curator Collection“. With these maps identified, the British Library then fed them into another of their crowdsourced projects, where members of the community used an online tool to georeference historical maps. If you find a number of points on a historical map and on a modern map, the computer can then “pin” the maps over a modern digital map or a Google Earth digital globe. Depending on the quality of the original surveying and cartography and the care taken by the georeferencers, some maps lineup better than others and most suffer from some level of distortion when flat maps are stretched over a digital globe. Even with these problems, it is a really powerful tool to see historical maps layered over modern maps. In recent months people have worked to georeference most of the 3000 maps, adding to the existing collection crowd georeferenced maps shared by the British Library in recent years. Continue reading →