The Power-Politics of Pulp and Paper: Health, Environment and Work in Pictou County

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"Pictou" by Phil Holmes. Licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5.

“Pictou” by Phil Holmes. Licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5.

Lachlan MacKinnon

In recent months, concerns surrounding pollution at the Northern Pulp mill in Abercrombie, Nova Scotia have prompted extensive local debate and filled the pages of provincial newspapers with columns and op-ed pieces. Controversy erupted in June, after Northern Pulp announced that the mill was shutting down operations to deal with a wastewater leak. Pictou Landing First Nation chief Andrea Paul and the band council immediately announced a blockade of the site’s access road; for Paul, the effluent leak was only the latest issue in a series of disputes relating to the disposal of waste in the area of Boat Harbour adjacent to First Nations lands. She told a gathering of protesters at the blockade, “In 1991, ’95, ’97 and 2008 we were promised they would clean up Boat Harbour . . . If we back down now, we’ll be in the same situation we were in before.”

Although the blockade ended and the plant was soon reopened after the provincial government agreed to introduce a bill “enacting into law timelines for the cessation of the use of the Boat Harbour Effluent Treatment Facility,” by August another environmental issue had emerged. It was revealed on 1 August that a study completed in October 2013 found that emissions from Northern Pulp “contained nearly twice the particulate matter allowed under provincial regulations.” Within days of the announcement, a protest group comprised of more than 100 people gathered in the nearby town of Pictou to demand a clean up of the mill and outline concerns over public health. Resident Wendy Kearley told a CBC news reporter that she has not been able to leave her home without a respirator in several years. Nova Scotia Minister of Health and Wellness Leo Glavine downplayed the health effects of the particulate matter; “We only have anecdotal information,” he told reporters, “we have nothing really substantial from the scientific community or medical community to indicate that we have a problem that needs to be addressed right at this moment.” Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Fifty-One: The History of Women in Science and Engineering

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By Sean Graham

This is the second episode in our series of podcasts recorded at the 2014 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. The conference was held May 22-25 at the University of Toronto.

The 2014 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians that was held in Toronto was a remarkable event for a variety of reason, not least of which was the incredible scope of the research presented. While the conference broadly dealt with women’s history, there were plenty of sub-fields on display. From the history of sexuality to health to class, the conference was a terrific display of the tremendous diversity within the historical profession.

As someone who never had extensive exposure to women’s history, one of the most interesting panels I attended during the conference was the one discussing the history of women in science and engineering. Of particular interest were the stories of early pioneers in these fields and the struggles not only to thrive in a competitive environment, but also to overcome the culture that attempted to restrict their access to professional opportunities. These women were not only talented scientists and engineers, but also leaders in the women’s movement and opened doors for future generations. Their stories are full of sacrifice and struggle.
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Over the Top: The Archives of Ontario’s WWI Onsite Exhibit

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Exhibit 1By Timothy Humphries

Before 2009, the Archives of Ontario had been housed in five different locations. Remarkably, not one of them provided an exhibit space. This became a must-have when a sixth location was sought in 2006. Now onsite exhibits can be created regularly to showcase the Archives’ many rich and varied collections. This requires investing significant amounts of time and thought into the design of each new exhibit. Because when it comes to creating an exhibit, there are no instructions, no templates, no cheat sheets – nothing but a blank canvas awaiting an imprint from the myriad possibilities that the imagination can conceive. This was the case for the World War I exhibit, particularly since it was the first exhibit of archival materials to be curated in-house. Continue reading →

Why Should We Care About the Erebus (or Terror)?

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by Tina Adcock

On the morning of Tuesday, September 9th, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced some unexpected and astounding news: that the wreckage of one of Sir John Franklin’s ships, either the Erebus or the Terror, had been located via sonar on the bottom of Queen Maud Gulf, which lies southwest of King William Island in Nunavut. In 1845, Franklin, a captain of the Royal Navy, led a crew of 128 in search of the Northwest Passage. All later died in circumstances that remain unclear to this day, despite many British, American, and Canadian searches over the last century and a half for evidence regarding the expedition’s fate. Locating one of the ships was a major triumph for the latest band of searchers, a coalition of public and private agencies led by Parks Canada that had travelled north on a near-yearly basis since 2008.

The Prime Minister declared this “a great historic event… a really important day in mapping together the history of our country.” So-called historic events provide good opportunities for historians to observe how our fellow citizens react to the history in question. I study northern exploration, and so I was more than a little interested in the reception of this particular news. Here I’d like to trace and explain one of the principal responses that emerged on conventional and social media websites that day.

My attention was caught by those who saw the announcement, and shrugged. “Who cares?” they said, in tweets and comments underneath articles. This sentiment was apparent even among groups who might be expected to care, for reasons of profession or location. Some historians and archaeologists, for example, were not particularly enthusiastic about the news:

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Picking Up the Pieces: A Community-School Alternative to First Nations Education Renewal

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By Paul W. Bennett and Jonathan Anuik

The proposed First National Education Act has “had a great fall,” much like Humpty Dumpty in the popular children’s fable. The latest deal, announced with great fanfare by Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo and Prime Minister Stephen Harper on February 7, 2014 may have sweetened the financial offer, but it did not hold.

When Atleo was toppled in early May, Ottawa’s plan for bureaucratic reform, embodied in Bill C-33, was abandoned, leaving the pact shattered into pieces. Putting it all together again, will require a completely different approach and a more responsive model of self-governance building from the First Nations up, not the top down.

Our research paper, “Picking Up the Pieces,” for the new Northern Policy Institute based in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, demonstrates why the proposed structural education reform missed the mark. More money in the form of increased capital funding might have brought modest gains to on-reserve schooling, but replacing one bureaucracy with another rarely changes the state of education or improves the quality of student learning at the school or community level. Continue reading →

Then and Now: Youth Labour and Tobacco Cultivation

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Human Rights Watch Tobacco WorkersBy Jonathan McQuarrie

Tobacco is in the news again. Outlets from the New York Times to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have reported how children–primarily Hispanic and as young as twelve–work in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The news reports drew on extensive research conducted by the organization Human Rights Watch, released as Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in United States Tobacco Farming. (See the full report here). As Human Rights Watch noted, these young workers toiled daily for twelve or more hours in all weather conditions and were subject to all the hazards of tobacco labour, including back pain from harvesting, risk of injury from the sharp tobacco knives, and exposure to the pesticides sprayed on fields.

One of the greatest risks from working in the tobacco fields comes from the plant itself. The Human Rights Watch report indicated that a staggering 97 of the 133 children interviewed reported feeling nauseous, dizzy, short of breath, or demonstrating some other symptom of nicotine poisoning. Recovery from Green Tobacco Sickness, the name given to the broad range of symptoms that comes from working with tobacco, can take from one to three days, but many of the youth interviewed indicated that they were able to rest for only a couple hours before resuming work. The affliction is contracted through exposure of the skin to the nicotine secreting from the leaves. Some farm owners provide workers minimal protection from this exposure, usually in the form of rubber gloves or garbage bags. However, according to Human Rights Watch, most children had to rely on their families to provide them with this rudimentary equipment, further cutting into the minimum wages that they earned. When Samantha Bee of the satirical Daily Show interviewed three youth tobacco workers and found that they generally had to bring their own garbage bags, she noted, with a sigh, “You’re making it very hard for me to ironically support child tobacco labour.”

As someone who researches the early (pre-World War II) development of tobacco cultivation in Canada, Green Tobacco Sickness largely eludes my archives.

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Anishnaabeg in the War of 1812: More than Tecumseh and his Indians

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By Alan Corbiere

This post marks the first in a series of essays – posted the second Wednesday of each month – by Alan Corbiere focusing on Anishinaabeg participation in the War of 1812. A modified version of these posts originally appeared in the July 2012 edition of the Ojibway Cultural Foundation newsletter.

Two Ottawa Chiefs come down from Michilimackinac to visit the President (LAC C14384)

Two Ottawa Chiefs come down from Michilimackinac to visit the President (LAC C14384)

It is well known that the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potowatomi, Mississauga, Algonquin, and Nipissing) fought during the War of 1812, the majority siding with the British, although some sided with the Americans. It is also well known that Shawnee Chief Tecumseh was a dynamic and charismatic leader who worked to form a confederacy of Nations to resist American expansionism. The War of 1812 is synonymous with the names Tecumseh, General Brock and Laura Secord. If any other “Indians” are mentioned, it is likely Tecumseh’s brother the Prophet (another Shawnee), Roundhead (A Wyandot), or John Norton (a Scotchman with Cherokee blood and adopted by Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant). Many would be hard pressed to name ten Anishinaabe warriors who fought in 1812. We know that our ancestors fought during this war, and that some died in battle. The majority of the Canadian population, as well as our own people, however, likely cannot name many Anishinaabe chiefs or warriors who fought, which is a shame because the sheer numbers of Anishinaabeg that participated should warrant more attention. Continue reading →

Fall 2014 History Matters lecture series: Canada’s First World War

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thought exchangeActiveHistory.ca, Heritage Toronto and the Toronto Public Library are pleased to announce the Fall 2014 History Matters lecture series.

This season’s series focuses on the theme of “Canada’s First World War.” The talks pay specific attention to local responses and how we remember the conflict.

The series is also 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.

“Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to Canada’s Great War”
Robert Rutherdale
Historian Robert Rutherdale (Algoma University) draws from his 2004 book to look at how people and communities experienced World War I at home, from farmers in Alberta and shopkeepers in Ontario, to civic workers in Quebec. Rutherdale looks at many of the big debates in social and cultural history, including demonization of enemy aliens, gendered fields of wartime philanthropy and state authority and citizenship.
Thursday October 30th, 2014
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
North York Central Library Concourse

“Remembering For Peace: Canada’s Great War Centenary”
Jamie Swift
Canada’s famous war memorial at Vimy Ridge features the statue “Breaking of the Sword.” How has this dramatic message of peace been eclipsed by a glorious, birth-of-a-nation war story? How can we commemorate the tragedy of World War I by emphasizing peace? With Jamie Swift, journalist and co-author of Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety.
Wednesday November 5th, 2014
6:30pm – 7:30pm
Bloor/Gladstone Branch

“The Toronto Anti-Greek Riot of 1918: War, Intolerance and Identity”
Chris Grafos
The August 1918 anti-Greek riot, led by returning war veterans, was one of the largest instances of violence in Toronto’s history. This presentation by Chris Grafos (York University) charts the lasting legacy and broader consequences of intolerance towards Canada’s immigrants.
Wednesday November 19th, 2014
6:30pm – 8:00pm
Danforth/Coxwell Branch

“1914-2014, Toronto Remembers the Great War”
Jonathan Vance
Author of Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War, Professor Jonathan Vance (University of Western Ontario), considers the challenges of remembering this catastrophic event, and how those challenges have changed as the centenary approaches. When we are encouraged to remember the First World War, what exactly are we being encouraged to remember?
Thursday November 27th, 2014
6:30pm – 8:00pm
Runnymede Branch Program Room

The History Matters lecture series, part of the TPL’s Thought Exchange programming, has been connecting the work of historians with the the public since the 2010. Recordings of previous History Matters lectures can be found on the Activehistory.ca YouTube channel.

Techno-Feeling in the Classroom: Technology, Empathy and Learning

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Beth A. Robertson

Technology forms us as much as we, in turn, form technology. This is not a new idea by any means, as many scholars, from Donna Haraway to Don Ihde, have argued much the same. More than apparatuses that are used benignly to perform certain functions, technology infuses our social order, our sense of self, and how we learn. However much we might ponder this conception of technology in theory, does knowing this shape our approach to the classroom?  As I currently scramble to finalize details for teaching this Fall, I am struck by how computing technologies in particular have become ubiquitous in the modern university classroom. Whether online platforms, an array of applications or social networks, teaching at the university level requires a regular engagement with digital technologies of some form. The process by which we have arrived here has not necessarily been smooth and is still a matter of discussion—much as recent Active History posts by Sean Kheraj and Gregory Kennedy demonstrate.

Last year, I designed a reflection assignment around the use of Google Maps for a course on transnational sexualities. It was and is still my desire that this will not only develop student’s writing and research skills (although that is definitely one benefit). I also hope that students will use the assignment to rethink their own understandings of sex and intimacy in light of the experiences of others, living in different places and at different times. In other words, I integrated Google Maps into an assignment intended to foster a sense of empathy among my students on a global scale. The astute and creative reflections I received from my students while teaching this course convinced me that the assignment was (and I hope will continue to be) a success. In retrospect, I think the assignment performed another function as well. Reading the thoughts of my students about how they were ingesting the material of the course, alongside their perspective of various urban environments they ‘explored’ through Google Maps, at times made me reconsider my own thinking, or see a particular theory in a different light. Obviously Google Maps was not the only factor that encouraged my students to think critically about global processes and its consequences upon historical and contemporary patterns of sexuality. It does, however, seem apparent that the technology at least helped stimulate a way of thinking among my students, which, in turn, influenced how and what I taught. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Fifty: Growing Up Consumers

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

Whenever I go back to my parents’ house, I am confronted with a pile of stuff from my childhood that they want me to go through. From clothes to toys to sports equipment, there’s a lot of things that I had growing up that I no longer need or want. And from what I gather, this is not a unique situation as well have things from our childhoods that collect in basements and attics.

These items are remnants of our roles as childhood consumers. Growing up we all encounter a world in which we are expected to take our roles as consumers – the frequent studies showing how much advertising children are exposed to on a daily basis speaks to this. And that pressure on young people to becoming active consumers has been an important part of the study of consumerism in recent years.

In this episode of the History Slam, I chat with Katharine Rollwagen of Vancouver Island University about her research on childhood consumerism. We talk about marketing towards kids during the Depression, the impact of the Baby Boom, and the methodology of studying consumerism. This is the final episode in our series recorded at this year’s Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting in St. Catharine’s, Ontario.

Sean Graham is a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa where he is currently working on a project that examines the early years of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has previously studied at Nipissing University, the University of the West Indies, and the University of Regina and like any red-blooded Canadian his ultimate dream is to be a curling champion while living on a diet of beer and poutine.