Active History

A Climate Migration Primer

January 23, 2014 2 Comments

By Merle Massie

So, I’m writing a book.

What follows, for your January darn-it’s-cold-and-I’m-ready-for-something-kind-of-fun reading pleasure, is a primer (briefing notes) about the book. Given the growing recognition that Mother Nature remains strong and rather angry about human-induced climate change – kudos to everyone who spent Christmas with no power – I’m writing about human migration.

Drawing lessons from families who pulled up stakes and moved during the Great Trek from one biome (prairie south) to another (boreal north) due to drastic climate and economic problems during the Great Depression and Dirty Thirties, this book is based on history but with an eye to practical suggestions for the future. Imagine me having a conversation with my Grandpa and Grandma: what should I do to be prepared? Some of the following five lessons may or may not apply to your situation. It depends if you have a horse. Lessons may be tongue-in-cheek or serious. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.

The underlying premise of the book is that climate change is happening and is worsening, and that Canada (in particular, Canada’s middle north and north) has been pinpointed as a place to which climate migrants from around the world may flee.

So, let’s get started, shall we? Continue reading →

Podcast – “After the Savage War: Reporting on Battles in Afghanistan and at Home” by Murray Brewster

January 22, 2014 No Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Ottawa Historical Association welcomed journalist Murray Brewster on November 5, 2013.

ActiveHistory is happy to feature his talk, “After the Savage War: Reporting on Battles in Afghanistan and at Home.”

Brewster has been a journalist for almost three decades with organizations such as The Canadian Press. His talk is based on his recent book, The Savage War: The Untold Battles of Afghanistan (John Wiley & Sons; 2011).

Canadians and their Pasts on the Road to Confederation

January 20, 2014 1 Comment

By Thomas Peace

cdns and pasts

2014 has begun and it looks like another banner year for historical commemoration. The government of Canada has been clear: we’re now on the road to commemorating Confederation. But as the new year begins, the metaphorical road we’re headed down better resembles the roads at the time of Confederation than anything we’re familiar with today (Montreal and Saskatoon excluded). There’s a rocky ride ahead! The past and its uses remain contested ground as Canada’s history and heritage landscape continues to undergo significant, and potentially lasting, change. However, rather than more of the same, the publication of the large-scale survey Canadians and Their Pasts and Canadian Heritage’s recently launched ‘Have your Say’ questionnaire promise that in 2014 the debates of the past few years may take on new dynamics. Continue reading →

Closing libraries, foreclosing research

January 17, 2014 2 Comments

By Will Knight

In 2007, Stephen Bocking, professor of environmental studies at Trent University, asked me to conduct some research on British Columbia’s aquaculture industry. The plan included a visit to British Columbia to consult the collection at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) library at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.

As a budding historian of Canadian fisheries, I was excited to visit this site. Established in 1908, the station was the third biological research station in Canada and the first on the west coast. Its library—in existence since the station’s inception—proved to be a treasure trove.

A darkened room with close-packed shelves, the library looked like a working scientist’s lumber-room overflowing with material. It was a particularly rich repository of grey literature: scientific reports and studies printed and distributed in limited quantities, and which are usually difficult to track down. These were squeezed onto shelves and, in truth, made me despair that I could navigate this daunting terrain.

Over the course of several days work and with the help of the librarian, however, I found material that supported Stephen’s research project, which led to his publication of new analysis. I was also side-tracked by shelf-reading, a problem familiar to most researchers. You begin wandering along a shelf, randomly pulling out books and reports, leafing through them without any discernible purpose. This is how I found, for example, Stella and Edgar Worthington’s Inland Waters of Africa (1933), an untapped source for a yet-to-be written history of English colonial fisheries administration. Continue reading →

Judging the Past

January 16, 2014 3 Comments

By Andrew Nurse

One of the basic rules of historical scholarship is to avoid “anachronistic judgments.” In simple terms, this means the following: the people who lived in the past, lived different lives with different values and different obligations then do we in the present. Therefore, it would be wrong to judge them by standards that are outside the context of their lives, about which they might have known nothing, and which fails to grapple with the dynamics of the culture in which they actually lived. No less an authority than E.P Thompson warns precisely against quick and easy judgements ranged against the past in opening pages of The Making of the English Working Class.

“I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. But they lived through times of social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experiences; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain condemned in their own lives, as casualties.”

Yet, as Thompson recognized, historical writing is replete with judgement. Continue reading →

Reconstructing the Future: Understanding Toronto’s Wild Weather of 2013

January 15, 2014 1 Comment

A picture of a fallen tree blocking a road in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood.

Destruction in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, December 23rd, 2013. Photo credit: Dagomar Degroot.

By Dagomar Degroot

In Toronto, 2013 was a year of storms. The media storm kindled by the mayor’s chicanery was twice interrupted by meteorological storms that threatened lives and property on an unprecedented scale. On July 8^th more than 100 mm of rain inundated the city in a matter of hours, triggering flash floods that caused more than $1 billion in property damage. Three days before Christmas, winter storm Gemini unleashed more freezing rain than was ever recorded in Toronto. Some 300,000 customers – representing perhaps one million people – lost power as temperatures plummeted below -10° C. This time the city’s infrastructure succumbed to the force of frozen water, and those desperate for heat too often turned to candles, generators, and other sources of deadly carbon monoxide. I am climate historian living in Toronto. Experiencing these storms helped me better understand how climate change, weather and society influence each other in the past, present, and future.

Climate historians or “historical climatologists” reconstruct past weather and climate using some combination of computer simulations, evidence from the natural world, and documentary sources. The field is interdisciplinary, and many of its scientists stop at these climate reconstructions. However, most of its historians also explore relationships between climate change, weather, and human history. As I have described in previous Active History articles, I am one of those historians. My research explores the social influence of the “Little Ice Age,” a roughly 1° C cooling of global temperatures between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. I hope that such research will give us insight into relationships between climate change and society in a warmer future. Continue reading →

Video: Trudeau 2.0: Pierre’s Legacy and Justin’s Future

January 14, 2014 No Comments

Many Canadians view Pierre Elliott Trudeau as a Canadian hero, perhaps the most charismatic Prime Minister the nation has ever seen. Yet others are far more critical of Trudeau’s leadership and legacies. This ambivalence has led to popular opinion polls naming Pierre one of the greatest and worst Canadian of all time. Justin, Pierre’s 41-year-old son and current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, is no less of a polarizing figure than his father. A media darling, Justin’s youthful energy and charm have worked both for and against him in assessments of his political capital and potential.

This panel of Canadian historians explores the past, present, and future of the Trudeau dynasty. It was hosted by Roxanne Panchasi.

Panelists
Elise Chenier is a specialist in the history of sexuality and gender in twentieth century Canada and the United States. She recently launched the Trudeaumania Project, a social media campaign which aims to collect memorabilia related to Pierre Trudeau’s time in power.

Nicolas Kenny is a Canadian historian whose research focuses on the cultural history of cities. He is a regular commentator on federal and provincial politics for ICI Radio-Canada, the CBC’s French-language radio and television services in British Columbia.

Allen Seager studies Canadian Labour history, with a special interest in the history of the coal industry, mining communities in Western Canada, and the Canadian railway.

This roundtable is part of the SFU History Department’s “Heroes and Villains: Rethinking Good and Evil in History” series. The next talk will take place January 23, 2014, when Emily O’Brien will explore the good, the bad and the ugly of the Renaissance era of papal history and how this era represented a turning point for the Western Church.

Going Local: ‘Stronger than Steel’ and Progressive Locality

January 13, 2014 No Comments

Sydney, Nova Scotia. Wikimedia Commons. Photographer: Abebenjoe

By Lachlan MacKinnon

On Labour Day Weekend, Sydney, Nova Scotia celebrated the opening of the Open Hearth Park on the remediated site of the former steel plant with a series of musical performances, a gourmet street fair, and a procession of former steelworkers through the park. The celebration, titled “Stronger than Steel,” revealed some of the ways that the experiences of deindustrialization have been reflected in Sydney and how the industrial past has been commemorated. Some of the language surrounding the event, however, indicated a re-branding effort was underway; Keith MacDonald, CEO of the Cape Breton Partnership for economic development, promised that “the . . . event will showcase Sydney as a great and green place to live, work, and do business.” The name itself, “Stronger than Steel,” indicates a community that has survived the loss of its major industry – albeit with significant hardship in the form of lost jobs and outmigration. Promotional material describing the event did an excellent job of showcasing the new park, reflecting upon the role of the steel plant on local culture, and looking ahead to a brighter future. While much of this material focuses on “turning brown into green,” it is also important to remember that the economic and political ramifications of industrial loss have not been similarly consigned to the past – they continue to influence daily life in the city, and are represented throughout local culture and commemorative activities. Continue reading →

Cold Comfort: Firewood, Ice Storms, and Hypothermia in Canada

January 9, 2014 3 Comments

By Josh MacFadyen

The following piece was recently originally posted on The Otter ~ La Loutre

Many Canadians had a brush with homelessness, or at least heat-lessness, over the holidays. Over half a million customers across Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick spent Christmas in the cold and dark, and ten days after the 2013 ice storm homes were still coming online. With the region currently experiencing snow storms and extreme cold temperature warnings, Canadians may be thinking about the fragility of urban energy systems and our level of preparedness for extreme weather events. (At least we seem to be intrigued by travel delays, frost quakes, ice mayors, historic frozen negatives, boiling squirt gun experiments, and of course Frozen, as well as more serious local relief efforts such as Coldest night of the year and “In from the Cold” campaigns.)

The ice storm was deemed the largest in Toronto history, but since it follows only fifteen years after a similar ice storm in Quebec and Eastern Ontario these may not be isolated 100-year events. Extreme weather events appear to be on the increase, and 2013 was a banner year. Debates over the Toronto’s preparedness and resilience are ongoing. Anthony Haines, CEO of Toronto Hydro, promised there will be discussions regarding future improvements and “there is no doubt, learning is to be had.” Winter storms can be especially risky when cold weather and power outages overlap, and historically, extreme cold has been far more lethal than floods and heat waves.

I suggest that the kind of learning “to be had” includes a broad understanding of our historical relationships with extreme weather and urban energy supplies, including food and heat. Climatologists will be working to identify the frequency of these weather events, but historical climate data also allow historians to create detailed risk-maps of extreme cold weather events in Canada over time. Historical research in energy, transportation, and urban planning may then show us how Canadians adapted to these challenges over time. Continue reading →

January 11th is Sir John A. Day

January 8, 2014 1 Comment

Design by Emma Jenkin

By Kaitlin Wainwright

In 2001, the federal government officially declared January 11th to be Sir John A. Macdonald Day, in honour of Canada’s first prime minister and a Father of Confederation. While it’s not an official holiday (shame, we could all use one of those in the cold winter months), it is a “heritage day” along with National Flag of Canada Day (February 15) and the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster (December 11). Sir John A. Macdonald is seen by many as the man who built this country from east to west, using the railway as the tie that binds. He rightly deserves the attention he has received within the Canadian historical narrative and this will no doubt be paid a mari usque ad mare (from sea to sea) during the bicentennial of his birth in 2015.

Some, myself included, are jumping on the bandwagon a bit early. In Toronto, a period costume event is being held on January 10, and a Canadian history pub trivia night is on at the Duke of York on January 11. I am co-organizing the latter event, and am quite excited to see organizations such as Canada’s History, Historica Canada, and Penguin support the effort to shed some light on our shared and inherited past. Although Sir John A. Macdonald’s birthday has been an official day in Canada for 12 years, there seems to be not much done about it – or, really, any other important days in Canada’s history. The pub trivia night will be a chance to do what Sir John A. loved to do – drink – and to revel in some of the peculiar pieces of Canada’s past.

As a public historian, I have a complicated relationship with commemoration. On the one hand, anniversaries can often distill complex histories into dichotomies and brief moments with little context. On the other hand, if we can’t remember the past on the day in which it happened, when can we? Continue reading →

Last »