Active History

Commodities, Culture and the Science of Food

January 30, 2014 2 Comments

[This post is part of Foodscapes of Plenty and Want – a theme week at ActiveHistoy.ca that features podcasts exploring a number of topics related to the interconnected histories of food, health, and the environment in Canada. For more information and a schedule for the week, see the introductory post here.]

As it travels from field to table, food transforms – and is transformed by – a whole range of social, cultural, economic, environmental, scientific, and political relationships. Your morning bowl of Corn Pops, for instance, is more than just a surprisingly sugar-laden meal (12 grams of sugar per 30 gram serving!) but is the product of a complex international system defined by a whole array of agricultural subsidies, trade agreements, nutritional policies, massive marketing budgets, and the whims of distracted shoppers who meant to pick up something healthier but thought that it was a good sale and, really, deserve a treat once and a while!

Each of the talks below assess some of the complex ways in which the science, politics, and economics of Canada’s globalized food system have transformed our relationship with food and agriculture. Whether it was the battles over Canadians’ right to a (spreadable!) substitute to butter, the role of Nova Scotia apples in redefining our bodies and international markets alike, or the underappreciated role that fertilizer has played in transforming our bodies and landscapes, each talk provides a window into the way we can use food to understand larger historical processes.

Caroline Lieffers, “‘A Wholesome Article of Food’: Rhetoric of Health and Nation in Canada’s Margarine Debates, 1917-1924?

To listen to Caroline’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

As Caroline Lieffers shows in her talk, the seemingly mundane food product, margarine, provides a lively and useful site for understanding Canadian politics and society during the 1910s and 1920s. In 1886, the federal government outlawed the manufacture, importation, and sale of margarine in Canada. The product remained illegal until 1948, albeit with the exception of a brief hiatus between 1917 and 1924. Lieffers therefore explores the often overheated rhetoric employed by both sides of the debate during this seven-year period, which saw an intense propaganda war as butter and margarine supporters attempted to influence an uncertain legislative situation. She shows that, as a flexible concept with natural rhetorical weight, health emerged as a key battle cry: both sides recast their financial and political interests into this seemingly inviolable project of personal and national wellbeing. Indeed, as evolving models of food production and human nutrition intersected with an unstable economy and Canada’s new place in global affairs, the notion of “health” extended from the individual to the collective body.

Caroline Lieffers

Concern for Canadians’ welfare, Lieffers suggests, encompassed concepts as varied as adulteration and hygiene, calories and vitamins, ethnicity and civilization, economics and industry, nationalism and war. She therefore uses these issues to demonstrate how food embodied the larger social trends and tensions of its time: margarine was freighted with, among other things, Canadians’ confusion around food science, attitudes toward race and otherness, the reality of women’s political influence, and the emerging roles of both industry and government in dictating food choices. Moreover, as both sides appealed to the sacred importance of health, they also sought to control its definition and their respective products’ contribution to it. Margarine’s history, Lieffers argues, reminds us that health is a negotiated rather than absolute ideal.

James Murton, “Following the Body Through the Early Global Food Chain, from Nova Scotia to Britain.”

To listen to James’ talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

Around the turn of the last century, nutrition science increasingly pictured the body as something which could be made healthy through the ingestion, not of food, but of a proper set of nutrients. In doing so it remade a 19^th century conception of the body as something “porous and open” to its environment, wherein a healthy body was one in sync with its environment. In his talk “Following the Body Through the Early Global Food Chain, from Nova Scotia to Britain,” James Murton follows the body through the global food system, riding on the back of an early global food – Nova Scotian apples. Murton argues that conceiving of food as a set of nutrients able to nourish any body made the consumption of faraway foods thinkable. But what, he asks, were the effects on human and environmental health of the severing of relationships between food, bodies and environments? Apples (and fruit generally), he convincingly shows, are an especially interesting case, because unlike earlier global food commodities (sugar, salt cod, wheat), they were meant to arrive in homes and be consumed in an unprocessed form, to appear as if they had just come off the tree. As Murton argues, achieving this goal required an increasingly intense application of industrial technology and state management, in a process that changed the relationships around this particular food in both producing and consuming places. He therefore asks: how did the establishment of global food change the forces acting on the body? How did it change the way the body was constructed?

Joshua MacFadyen, “‘The Chemistry of Food’: An Environmental History of Biotechnology and Synthetic Fertilizers in Canada, 1891-1940.”

To listen to Joshua’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

Joshua MacFadyen

Joshua MacFadyen’s talk, “‘The Chemistry of Food’: An Environmental History of Biotechnology and Synthetic Fertilizers in Canada, 1891-1940,” focuses on the work of the Dominion Experimental Farm and the dominion chemist Frank T. Shutt as a means of exploring the often untold and underappreciated history of synthetic fertilizers in Canada. Between the time of Shutt’s graduation from Chemistry at University of Toronto and his retirement in 1933, MacFadyen argues, German scientists had isolated the nitrogen fixing properties of legumes (1888), produced synthetic ammonia (1909), and developed the industrial nitrogen fixing processes (1931) that produced the intensive and petrochemical-based agriculture of the twentieth century. Some historians argue that over 3 billion people owe their existence to these technologies. Less determinist approaches try to understand why any farmer would adopt these expensive soil treatments.

As MacFadyen’s talk shows, at first Shutt was wary of “commercial plant food,” and he hoped that the Experimental Farm could help farmers become independent of expensive inputs by adopting a scientifically balanced mixed agriculture. However, the interwar period witnessed more revolutionary changes in food production and the birth of what Deborah Fitzgerald has called “The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture.” By the end of his career, Shutt had joined the revolution and, as MacFadyen argues, the Experimental Farm developed a “nitrogen lab,” appeared in industrial journals like the plainly titled “Better Crops with Plant Foods,” and advised farmers to incorporate synthetic fertilizers in lieu of locally available, organic options. By analyzing these developments, MacFadyen offers a new perspective on the agricultural revolution that transformed both Canadian farms and their diets.

Food and the Public’s Health

January 29, 2014 1 Comment

While there is perhaps nothing more satisfying that eating a couple (okay, six) freshly baked cookies right out of the oven or a steaming poutine purchased at 1:30am on the streets of Montreal, most of us are also acutely aware that many dangers also lurk in our favourite foods. Breathless warnings of a national “obesity epidemic” alone might be enough to make us regret eating that entire poutine or those six cookies, but what about the risk of salmonella, e-coli, listeriosis, Mad Cow disease or hepatitis A lurking in everything from that salad you had for lunch (to make up for the late-night poutine) to that sad looking ham sandwich you foolishly picked up from the conference table at work yesterday? And what role should the state play in ensuring our access to safe and healthy foods?

These kinds of questions are, of course, not new and – as the two talks below attest – need to be understood in relation to larger historical changes in the relationship between “Food and the Public’s Health.” How, for instance, can we understand obesity as a contemporary public health problem without understanding how rates of obesity have changed over the past century? And what can we learn from the successful efforts to eradicate bovine tuberculosis in the early twentieth century, particularly in light of contemporary efforts to combat something like Mad Cow disease? The two talks provided below provide some important answers to these questions while giving us some valuable insights into the relationship between the past and present of public health.

Kris Inwood, Lindsey Amèrica-Simms, and Andrew Ross, “The Change in BMI Among Canadian Men, 1914-1945”

To listen to this talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

Andrew Ross (left) and Kris Inwood (right).

In their talk, Kris Inwood, Lindsey Amèrica-Simms and Andrew Ross attempt to understand the historical origins of what is often (controversially) called the modern “obesity epidemic.” In particular, they examine the Body Mass Index (BMI) for 40,000 Canadian male soldiers measured between 1914-1918 and 10000 soldiers measured between 1939-1945 in order to identify the broad contours of BMI change in Canada over time. In particular, they ask: Did our current trend towards higher and higher levels of obesity begin before the Second World War, or is it an entirely postwar phenomenon?

In order to do so, they establish for each period the relationship between age and BMI, and then investigate possible shifts in the relationship for more specific groups defined in terms of occupation and location. Their goal, they suggest, is to establish the change in BMI and the extent to which it may be attributed to a changing experience of particular (a) ages, (b) occupations, (c) regions, (d) urban vs rural, and (e) the extremes of very high and very low BMI. And in doing so they provide some important context for the current debate about the sources of long run obesity increase and, therefore, the policy choices that need to be made to address the problem of obesity more generally.

Lisa Cox, “The Historical Roots of Foodborne Illnesses: Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication in Canada, 1895-1960.”

To listen to Lisa’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

Lisa Cox

Outbreaks of diseases such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (Mad Cow disease), swine flu and avian influenza (bird flu) over the past couple of decades have focused a glaring spotlight on the relationship between the environments where we produce our food and the problem of foodborne illnesses. As Lisa Cox’s talk shows, these outbreaks are not simply a unique product of our modern global food system – they also have deep historical roots.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Cox suggests, death lurked in the cups of thousands of Canadian children. Bovine tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), a strain of tuberculosis transmissible from cattle to humans, infected thousands of children through milk tainted with deadly bacteria. As Cox shows, the quest to eliminate this threat involved treating milk itself through a vigorous campaign to introduce pasteurization to the country. While this in itself was a long and arduous process, Cox points out that a larger transformation was taking place simultaneously on the nation’s farms. Beginning in 1895, the Canadian government began an active campaign to rid the nation’s herds of bovine tuberculosis. It would take several decades and millions of dollars to achieve and Cox explores how this was accomplished. She argues that the eradication of bovine tuberculosis was as much a bureaucratic achievement as it was a scientific one. The science of bovine tuberculosis, although scientifically researched throughout this period, was fairly well established by the late nineteenth century. It was thus the bureaucracy of disease control, which would undergo significant transformations until its ultimate form that saw the eradication of bovine tuberculosis.

Transforming Indigenous Foodways

January 28, 2014 2 Comments

As Indigenous peoples and historians have long argued, food has been a key – and a particularly devastating – tool of Canadian colonialism. This has taken a number of forms, including the use of hunger and malnutrition to open up the Canadian prairies to European settlement; the banning of indigenous fishing practices to protect the interest of European fishermen and canneries; or, in the recent past, the use of hungry Indigenous residential school pupils as experimental subjects in a series of nutrition experiments during the 1940s and 1950s. In all cases, however, the alienation of indigenous peoples from their traditional sources of food and traditional food cultures has been one of the primary effects – if not the ultimate goal – of successive government policies both before and after confederation.

The two talks included below provide some key insights into just a few of the ways in which settler-colonialism has transformed Indigenous foodways. In particular, they explore the poisoning of waters, animals, and garden produce through hydroelectric development after 1945 in the Treaty 3 region as well as the much earlier transformation of indigenous gardening practices following the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the Canadian subarctic starting in the seventeenth century. As both talks make clear, we cannot understand the health struggles facing contemporary First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples without understanding the impacts that colonialism and colonial policies have had on traditional foodways and food culture.

Brittany Luby, “‘No More Beaver Soup’: An Examination of the Relationship between Water Development, “Wild” Food and Anishinaabe Parenting Practices, 1900-1975.”

To listen to Brittany’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

Brittany Luby

In her talk, Brittany Luby examines the unintended impacts of industrial development on Anishinaabe foodways and infant feeding practices in the Treaty #3 area in Northern Ontario and south-eastern Manitoba. In the early postwar period, a number of industrial and hydroelectric developments along the Winnipeg and English rivers forced women to transform their own and their children’s diets in response to the rise of methyl mercury (a spin-off effect of dam development) in the local environment. In the words of one elder, “There’s no more beaver soup,” a dish believed to promote quality breast milk, because of “that pollution.” Instead, this elder’s children turned to infant formula to prevent the transmission of methyl mercury from mother to child. Luby addresses these difficult and important questions: how did hydroelectric development change parenting practices? What happens when breast-milk becomes poison?

Beverly Soloway, “‘mus co shee’: Indigenous Plant Foods and Horticultural Imperialism in the Canadian Sub-Arctic.”

To listen to Beverly’s talk, click here (or by right clicking and selecting ‘save file as’)

Beverly Soloway

In Beverly Soloway’s talk, she explores the ways in which by the seventeenth-century arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the far north and the introduction of a British planted-food model disrupted (and, in many cases, subsequently eradicated) Indigenous plant foodways of the Cree (Mushkegowuck) peoples of the Canadian sub-arctic. The consequence of this horticultural imperialism, Soloway argues, continues into the present day. Canadians living in the sub-arctic have minimal knowledge of food gathering and are dependent on limited local gardening or imported grocery store vegetables. This lack of fresh produce, Soloway suggests, has affected the diet and nutrition of those living in the Canadian north. In addition to exploring food gathering and gardening history in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Soloway also discusses the dearth of present day knowledge of Mushkegowuck plant foods and how re-discovering lost knowledge can contribute to the health and well-being of people living in the Canadian far north.

Rural Foodscapes and the Taste of Modernity

January 27, 2014 2 Comments

If Canadians were asked to describe the cuisine or foodways of rural Canada, it is unlikely that terms like modern or cosmopolitan or adventurous would be high on the list. Rural is often used as a stand-in for a static vision of the traditional, the conservative, and the simple when it comes to food and eating. But, as the first set of podcasts “Rural Foodscapes and the Taste of Modernity” suggest, the diets and foodways of rural inhabitants were every bit as interesting and subject to changing social, cultural, scientific, and gastronomic trends as their urban counterparts.

Rebecca Beausaert, Catherine Anne Wilson, and Nathalie Cooke [Photo: Fraser Telford]

The three talks included below approach rural life and foodways through a range of different lenses, including barn raising bees, household advice manuals, and ‘exotic’ foreign food fairs in rural Ontario. All of the individual talks, however, are connected by a common theme of the ways in which food was used as a means of defining what constituted “the good life”, in all its myriad meanings, in rural Ontario during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not only was food used as a means to show one’s education and worldliness, but to make important connections within close-knit rural communities. Rural Ontarians, these talks all show, were thoroughly modern and, like their urban counterparts, used food to navigate the terrain of a rapidly changing world.

Rebecca Beausaert, “The World on a Plate: Food and Fictive Travel in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Rural and Small-Town Ontario.”

To listen to Rebecca’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’).

As Rebecca Beausaert shows in her talk, residents of rural and small-town Ontario faced a barrage of criticism from politicians and social critics who viewed their societies as anti-modern, culturally-backward, and technologically deprived around the turn of the century. While some communities were indeed struggling, others were thriving. The small towns of Tillsonburg and Ingersoll, for instance, located in Oxford County approximately 200 kilometres southwest of Toronto were, in many ways, the direct opposite of what outsiders considered “dour small-town life” to be. Both male and female residents enjoyed active social lives with a diverse range of leisure options available to them. Increasingly, a number of these amusements were incorporating trendy “around-the-world” themes and features. Travel clubs, garden parties, and fundraising fairs, in particular, became choice venues for mimicking cultural practices, such as preparing “traditional” grub.

As Beausaert shows, food often played the starring role at these events as participants strove to display a more “cosmopolitan ethos” through the consumption of what they perceived to be exotic and atypical cuisine. Eating potato cakes, pretzels, and watermelons, for example, allowed participants to briefly “travel imaginatively” to Ireland, Germany, and the American south. Building on recent studies of colonialism and consumption, Beausaert shows how rural and small-town Ontarians enjoyed incorporating so-called “ethnic foods” into their leisure activities as a way to debunk the myth that they belonged to close-minded societies devoid of cultural enlightenment. Examining the avenues through which ideas for “fictive travelling” were communicated to rural citizens also suggests that links between city and country were actually much stronger than previously assumed. Indeed, by the turn of the century, rural and small-town Ontarians had become eager appropriators of urban, middle-class cultures, and food was one of the more popular ways to embody notions of cosmopolitanism.

Nathalie Cooke, “Domestic Science, Hygiene and Food Safety in the Works of Catherine Parr Traill and Adelaide Hoodless.”

To listen to Nathalie’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’).

Dairy products have been the source of heated controversy during Canada’s history that included rumblings about whether Canadians would be better to spread butter or margarine on their bread, or to have access to cheese made from unpasteurized milk. We are currently witnessing heightened food sensitivities — particularly to dairy products, as well as to nuts and gluten — that prompt us to revisit the nutritional value of these products in addition to ways in which they can be rendered safer for human consumption. In significant ways, Nathalie Cooke shows in her talk, these kinds of present-day analyses follow in the footsteps of work of earlier Canadian food advocates whose research into food safety transformed not only Canadian dietary regulations but also ways in which Canadians were educated to think about and prepare food in our own homes.

Cooke’s talk therefore focuses on the period of culinary consolidation in Canada, bookended by the work of two formidable pioneers of food safety in Canada: Catharine Parr Traill and Adelaide Hoodless. By focusing on the substantial portion of Traill’s oeuvre devoted to exploring ways to safely prepare and preserve food despite adverse circumstances in the New World – as well as the role of Adelaide Hoodless, whose research into liquid milk specifically, and campaign to usher into Canada an era of domestic hygiene in Canadian homes and domestic science education in its schools more generally – Cooke points to some of the ways in which these culinary pioneers significantly directed Canadian food practice and policy to the present day.

Catherine Anne Wilson, “‘Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?’ Harvest Meals and Foodscapes of Plenty in Rural Ontario.”

To listen to Catherine’s talk, click here (or save by right-clicking and selecting ‘save file as’).

And, finally, Catherine Anne Wilson’s lively talk explores the role of food provided by the host family at reciprocal work bees (barn raisings, threshing bees, quilting bees, etc.) in nineteenth and twentieth century Ontario. “Plentiful and sumptuous” meals, she argues, were an expected and important way to attract workers to the event, to keep them stimulated and energized at their work throughout the day, and to pay them back for their labours. The offering up of abundant, tasty, appropriate food not only kept workers satisfied, but also was a performance valued for its ability to entertain guests, express the host’s status in the neighbourhood, showcase the talents of farm women, and create long lasting memories. Pie, for example was a very social food being easily divided and varied enough in its filling to suit every taste. It was also telling of a woman’s ability in the kitchen and figured largely in stories and jokes about food at work bees. Wilson therefore makes extensive use of a range of sources including farm diaries, cookbooks, and reminiscences to demonstrate the changing nature of these meals. The timing, preparations, settings, menus, service, competitions and complaints, Wilson persuasively argues, help us to understand the importance of harvest meals in rural hospitality.

Theme Week: Foodscapes of Plenty and Want

January 27, 2014 1 Comment

Food history is, in many ways, perfectly suited to the goals of the active historian. In part, this is because food touches nearly every aspect of our lives. We need it to survive and to maintain our health. Our identities are often profoundly wrapped up in what kinds of foods we eat – or, in the case of many major religious traditions, what we don’t eat. For most of us, food is also a key source of pleasure, pain, and anxiety. And, perhaps most importantly, it is often through food traditions that many of us connect with our family histories and ethnic identities.

Simply put, the history of how and why we eat what we eat has the capacity to speak to a surprisingly wide range of contemporary interests and concerns.

Just as importantly, though, food has the capacity to connect a wide range of historical interests and specializations that don’t always communicate well with each other. The history of a single food like – say, McCain Superfries – touches on the history of Canadian capitalism, identity, health, economics, politics, environments, culture, technology, and much more. In other words: we can use these frozen, deep fried potatoes to have serious, important discussions about a whole range of issues.

It was with this in mind that Catherine Carstairs (University of Guelph), Kristin Burnett (Lakehead University), and myself (Ian Mosby, University of Guelph) organized the conference Foodscapes of Plenty and Want: Historical Perspectives on Food, Health and the Environment in Canada – Paysages d’abondance et de manque: Perspectives historiques sur la nourriture, la santé et l’environnement au Canada in the summer of 2013. Our original idea was to develop a direct line of communication between the history of health and medicine and the field of environmental history using food as a point of connection. But as it turned out, we managed to bring together historians (and even some non-historians) from an impressive range of specializations including rural history, economic history, English literature, and indigenous history – all of whom were able to speak to their common interest in the history of food, health, and the environment.

This week we are showcasing short summaries and podcasts of the talks presented at the Foodscapes of Plenty and Want workshop. The podcasts will cover a wide range of themes, including:

Monday: Rural Foodscapes and the Taste of Modernity
Tuesday: Transforming Indigenous Foodways
Wednesday: Food and the Public’s Health
Thursday: Commodities, Culture and the Science of Food
Friday: The Social Politics of Nutrition

These talks offer something for both historians and non-historians. For the latter group, these individual 20 minute talks offer an accessible glimpse into the ongoing work of a range of different historians of food, health, and the environment that can be listened to on transit or in the car or going for a short walk in the snow. For historians, moreover, they offer a preview of some of the fantastic work that is being done in Canada right now and that will be featured in an upcoming special issue of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History / Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la médecine. Our hope, though, is that these podcasts will provide both historians and the public with both some useful food for thought (sorry!) and some tools for thinking about interdisciplinary scholarship.

Love it or hate it: Stephen Harper’s Government is not Fascist

January 24, 2014 34 Comments

By Valerie Deacon

No matter which way you spin it, Stephen Harper’s government is not fascist and making comparisons between the current Canadian government and fascism in the 1930s is both disingenuous and dangerous. This Huffington Post article about the government’s decision to close major scientific and environmental libraries and destroy much of the data contained therein was weakened by the rather ludicrous claim that the Harper government might be akin to the fascist regimes of the 1930s. The article noted that:

“Many scientists have compared the war on environmental science to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Hutchings muses, “you look at the rise of certain political parties in the 1930s and have to ask how could that happen and how did they adopt such extreme ideologies so quickly, and how could that happen in a democracy today?”

These questions are still very important to ask, because fascism most certainly is still a danger. And the decisions that Harper’s government are making – particularly with regard to science and the environment – are also dangerous. But the dangers are not the same. As I have written elsewhere on Active History, the overuse of the term “fascist” to identify our political enemies actually has the unintended effect of blinding us to the true dangers they represent. In our current political climate, the real danger comes when movements or political parties of the extreme right legitimize their ideology to the point where it seems anodyne to a large section of the population. This leads to electoral victories and then to the manipulation of civil society that has the potential to be irreparable. But perhaps that is a post for another day. Today I want to dig a little deeper into why the Canadian Conservatives are not fascists, as much as we might disagree with their ideology, actions, or governance. Continue reading →

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 →

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