Thinking about Thalidomide in Transnational History: Canada and South Africa

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Contergan_packageBy Christine Chisholm

What was the global impact of thalidomide? On September 24th, the Department of History, the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies/Disability Studies, and the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University came together to host two speakers to Ottawa as part of a day-long meeting on the transnational history of the infamous drug thalidomide. Developed by the German company Chemie Grünenthal GmbH, the drug was officially marketed from the mid-1950s to the early to mid-1960s under dozens of brand names. Dr. Susanne Klausen, medical historian and organizer of the event, pointed out in her introduction that thalidomide was a “drug in search of a disease.” However, while pharmaceuticals marketed the drug as a cure for many symptoms, it has gained its notorious reputation because of its use as a remedy for morning sickness in pregnant women. Although the drug was advertised as being “completely safe,” it caused severe birth defects – including deformed and/or absent organs, phocomelia, and several other life threatening deformities – in children whose pregnant mothers had taken the drug during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Alexandra Niblock was the first speaker of the day. Continue reading →

Towards an Active History

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By Thomas Peace

Over the past couple of weeks, the Active History editorial collective has begun the initial planning for a stand-alone conference to be held in late 2015 or 2016. Agreed that there was a need for a conference, we set about to determine the conference’s overall purpose and goals. What quickly became apparent was that we had slightly divergent views about the meaning and practice of Active History. As our conversation continued (and moved toward fruitful resolution), it occurred to me that these varied perspectives might be of interest to the broader readership of ActiveHistory.ca and, through the comments section, provide a good opportunity to hear about your thoughts: What is Active History? Continue reading →

Coal-Power with low Emissions: Is Boundary Dam a new Energy Paradigm

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By Dr. David Zylberberg

Energy sources are interchangeable for many purposes. Pre-industrial people burned various woods, peat, coal, dung and straw for cooking and basic manufacturing. In such societies, fuels varied between communities depending upon local availability and cost in either money or labour. Pre-industrial people cooked with whatever fuel required the least of their effort.

Energy has never been free or unlimited as the availability of each energy source faces its own limitations. Wood, dung and straw growth are all limited by annual photosynthesis and the need to use land for growing food. Societies that rely upon these energy sources are often characterized as organic economies and had limited carrying capacities for human populations. One such example is England in 1600, when it had a population of 4.15 million but was self-sufficient in food, energy and raw materials. Most of the population lived in villages, where their houses were relatively small and made of wood. Brick was rarely used as the fuel to bake bricks made them prohibitively expensive. Although the country was self-sufficient in food and most people had enough, we generally teach that population growth in the preceding century increased poverty as the region was pushing its carrying capacity for humans. Sixteenth-century England had a fair bit of manufacturing compared to other parts of the world but this mostly involved hand-spun wool cloth. E.A. Wrigley famously captured the organic limitations on metal use when he observed that if all of England were turned over to growing wood for smelting iron, it could only produce 1.25 million tons of bar iron a year.

Since 1600, economic and population growth has been intimately tied to increasing energy consumption. Much of this has involved finding energy sources that don’t rely upon photosynthesis or directly compete with agricultural land use. The adoption of coal as a household and manufacturing fuel was uneven. If population grew beyond those 1600 levels in areas without access to coal or peat, they could not produce sufficient fuel for all households to cook. I have previously written about the limitations of local food sources for the English population as it rose over 6 million after 1763. In the same years that English and other Europeans were becoming shorter, rising fuel costs priced an ever-larger portion of them out of cooking their own food. Instead, such households came to rely upon purchased bread or cooking as little as once a year and eating stale biscuits for the rest of the time. Even in areas of relative fuel abundance, heating homes when not cooking was an unimaginable luxury for most 18th and 19th century Europeans. In short, compared to organic economies our mineral-fuelled world currently has many more people, who are better fed, live in larger, warmer homes and use previously unimaginable materials. Continue reading →

“We Meant War Not Murder”: A Punk Rock History of Klatsassin and the Tsilhqot’in War of 1864

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By Sean Carleton

Vancouver punk band The Rebel Spell are touring across Canada this fall to promote their new record, Last Run. Released in late September, Last Run showcases the band’s song-writing skills and passion for social justice. What is most interesting for ActiveHistory.ca readers, however, is the fact that The Rebel Spell have included a song on their album about a historical event: the little-known Tsilhqot’in War in the colony of British Columbia in 1864. The song “The Tsilhqot’in War” commemorates the 150th anniversary of a significant moment in Canada’s colonial history that does not generally receive a lot of popular attention (see the Further Reading section below for some notable exceptions).

The Tsilhqot’in War was a conflict between Indigenous peoples of the Tsilhqot’in Nation in the interior plateau of the colony of British Columbia and a crew of construction workers building a road from Bute Inlet to the goldfields in the Cariboo. In the early 1860s, politician Alfred Waddington sponsored the building of an alternative route to the Cariboo goldfields to compete with the established Fraser Canyon road. Construction on the alternative route began in 1862 without proper consultation of the Indigenous peoples whose territories the road would travel. In that same year, a devastating smallpox epidemic, introduced by settlers, spread throughout the Pacific Northwest killing many Tsilhqot’in peoples. Continue reading →

The Home Archivist – The Grand Seduction

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Home ArchivistBy Jessica Dunkin

In the series’ inaugural post, I gave readers a brief overview of The Home Archivist, a project in which I—a professional historian—process and arrange a collection of nineteenth-century letters. The context in which a collection was produced, what archivists refer to as provenance, is central to these practices of processing and arranging historical documents. But what of the context in which the archivist themself encounters a collection? In this second post, I describe the circumstances of my introduction to the letters and the world I inhabit as I work with them. Whenever I open the box or think about the letters, I am connecting with the MacKendricks, the cottage at Windermere, and the canoeing encampments that brought us all together.

In late March 2014, I found myself kneeling on the carpeted floor of a bright sitting room in Milford, Connecticut, the Long Island Sound visible through the side window. In front of me was a dusty cardboard box that had spent much of the last century squirreled away in basements and attics, a repository for family letters. A first glance revealed deep discolouration, gouges on two sides of the box, and two labels on the top flaps. The box’s owners and my hosts, Bob and Marge MacKendrick, explained that the stains were from the fire that tore through the family home in Galt, Ontario, many years ago. There is no explanation for the gouges. They were likely sustained during one of the box’s many moves. The labels, meanwhile, indicate that The Robert Simpson Company sent Mrs. J.A. MacKendrick (Amelia) an item on September 24, 1918, and that the express charges for the shipping were pre-paid.

My relationship with this box of letters began in August 2013 at the Muskoka Boat and Heritage Centre (Gravenhurst, Ontario) when I was introduced to the MacKendricks. Continue reading →

World War One in Winnipeg – Conscription

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By Jim Blanchard

It is well known that the adoption of conscription in Canada during the First World War was very unpopular in Quebec. Although many Quebecois volunteered to serve in the army in the first years of the war, large numbers of French Canadians disagreed with sending troops overseas when the country did not seem to be threatened.

What is less known is the fact that Canadians in the rest of the country also opposed conscription.  Winnipeg was no exception and there was a good deal of resistance in the city. Continue reading →

How Should We Measure Climate Change? What the Past Can Tell Us

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Protests during Climate Summit 2014. Photo by Jane Marchant.

Protests during Climate Summit 2014. Photo by Jane Marchant.

By Dagomar Degroot

Last month, world leaders met at UN Headquarters in New York City for Climate Summit 2014. As protests raged across the globe, diplomats established the framework for a major climate change agreement next year. The aim will be to limit anthropogenic warming to no more than 2 °C, a threshold established by scientists and policymakers, beyond which climate change is increasingly dangerous and unpredictable.

Just days after the 2014 summit, policy expert David Victor and influential astrophysicist Charles Kennel published an article in Nature that called on governments to “ditch the 2 °C warming goal.” Kennel and Victor argue that the rise in average global temperatures has stalled since 1998, as warming is increasingly absorbed by the world’s oceans. Variations in global temperature therefore do not directly reflect climate change, and governments should adopt other benchmarks for action. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, they contend, more accurately reveal the relentless advance of climate change. In any case, limiting the rise in global temperatures to just 2 °C would impose unrealistic costs on national economies.

Not surprisingly, responses to Victor and Kennel have been swift and comprehensive. For example, physicist and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf argues that short-term temperature variability does not undermine the case for a 2 °C limit, especially when there is scant evidence for a “pause” in global warming. He explains how scientists and policymakers selected the limit, and cites studies synthesized by the IPCC, which conclude that holding the rise in planetary temperatures to 2 °C would cost no more than 0.06% of the world’s annual GDP. Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, claims that Victor and Kennel have confused the roles that should be pursued by scientists in international climate change negotiations. Like Rahmstorf, he maintains that the 2 °C limit is neither misplaced nor unachievable. As a climate change advisor to the British government, he explains that, “the UK, almost overnight, conjured up over £350b to bail out the banks and stimulate the economy – but it has earmarked just £3.8b for its Green investment bank!” Physicist Joe Romm argues that a new study, which finds that scientists may have underestimated the extent of global warming, only strengthens the case for a 2 °C limit. To their credit, Victor and Kennel provide a lengthy response in the New York Times to these and other critiques.

Continue reading →

Video – Eroding Democracy: Canada’s Public Science Policy in a New Regime of Governance

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On Tuesday May 27, 2014 as part of Congress 2014, a panel discussed the current government’s science policy, access to information, the ability of government scientists to communicate freely with each other, the public, and the media. This cross-disciplinary panel was jointly hosted by the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians, Canadian Population Society, Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, Canadian Society for the Study of Education, and the Canadian Sociological Association.

Panelists included Dr. Janet Friskney, Past-President of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, Dr. James Turk, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and author and artist Franke James.

Activehistory.ca is pleased to present a video of the session.

Best Practices for Writing History on the Web

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Tablet Reading. Source: Pabak Sarkar, Flickr Commons

Tablet Reading. Source: Pabak Sarkar, Flickr Commons

By Sean Kheraj

As more of our reading moves from print to screens, learning how to write on the Web will become an increasingly important part of history writing skills. Just as we teach fundamental research and writing skills for print essays, we will likely begin to teach digital writing skills for the Web. Writing for the Web will also become an important component of teaching public history (as it has already).

These are some of the assumptions that have informed my current course on the history of Toronto at York University. I have asked students to write a Web essay for their Fall semester assignment, using WordPress on a course site that I set up at DevelopmentofToronto.com. This is not a unique or revolutionary idea. I have known several colleagues who have had students write Web essays and I have had students write optional Web assignments in the past. This is the first time that I will be asking all students in the class to write Web essays. As such, it is an opportunity to think about how to teach specific Web-based history writing skills.

I chose WordPress for a number of technical reasons, but mainly because I have been writing and editing history on the Web in WordPress for several years now at SeanKheraj.com, ActiveHistory.ca, and NiCHE-Canada.org. In my experience, I have identified a number of key skills for history writing on the Web. However, I am still looking for more ideas to generate a good list of best practices (please post in the comments). Here are some best practices that I have developed over the course of my own experience writing history on the Web: Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Fifty-Three: What to Wear to the Birth of a Nation

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

What-to-Wear_WEB_featuredThe story has been told thousands of time in the same way: the Fathers of Confederation met in Charlottetown and Quebec in 1864 and laid the groundwork for Confederation. These were men of vision who, according the video shown at the PEI legislature, had few major disagreements and passed the time in congenial discussions while crafting the framework for the new nation. From George Brown to George-Étienne Cartier to John A. Macdonald, Canada was born out of the minds of the men who convened in 1864. Or at least that is the interpretation presented to grade-school kids across the country.

But why stick to that narrative? This doesn’t necessarily mean we have to denigrate the Fathers of Confederation (based on the over-the-top interpretation of the aforementioned video, such a task would be impossible), but we can at least look at the years and events leading to Confederation from a different perspective – although this one may be historically problematic.

Through the summer Prince Edward Island held a variety of celebratory events commemorating the 15oth anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference. The celebrations ranged from musical acts to visual art to culinary displays and went beyond merely telling the story of what happened in 1864. In a lot of ways it was really a celebration of the province as a whole and its place within Canada.

One aspect of the celebration that did re-visit the Charlottetown Conference, however, was the theatrical production ‘What to Wear to the Birth of a Nation.’ Written and performed by Laurie Campbell and Rebecca Parent, the show looked at the Conference from the perspective of the women who were on hand in Charlottetown. From their perceptions of a new nation to the daily realities of summer in PEI, the show examines these women’s presence and sheds light on the contributions that have not made it into the traditional narrative of the nation’s birth.
Continue reading →