An Unsettling Prairie History: A Review of James Daschuk’s Clearing the Plains

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By Kevin Plummer

“Those Reserve Indians are in a deplorable state of destitution, they receive from the Indian Department just enough food to keep soul and body together, they are all but naked, many of them barefooted,” Lawrence Clarke wrote in 1880 of near-starvation Cree around Fort Carlton. “Should sickness break out among them in their present weakly state,” the long-time Hudson’s Bay Company employee concluded, “the fatality would be dreadful” (Daschuk, 114).

Sickness did break out, with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases decimating a reserve population made vulnerable to disease by years of famine and inadequate government rations. The loss of life was immense, James Daschuk recounts in Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, and amounted to a “state-sponsored attack on indigenous communities” whose effects “haunt us as a nation still” (186). Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Thirty-Two: Historical Anecdotes

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By Sean Graham

With December finally upon us, we’ve entered the season of cocktail parties. From seeing friends to office gatherings, the end of the year brings with it more social occasions than any other time on the calendar. One of the things that I often struggle with at these events is trying to describe my research in a way that is appealing in these settings. As a result, I often rely on anecdotes – whether of historic events or funny archive stories – in talking with people about what it’s like to study history.

In this episode of the History Slam – with Aaron Boyes as co-host – we talk about some of our favourite historical anecdotes. In addition, we welcome James Morgan, Madeleine Kloske, and Sean Nicklin, who provide some entertaining tales. And as a special bonus, the podcast features its first ever musical interlude.

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On Scottish Independence – a Metis perspective

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Old Kings building, University of Aberdeen

By Zoe Todd
What does it mean to be a child of Empire? I’m not quite sure, but the complex roots of my ancestors stretch across small prairie towns and all the way back to Ireland, Scotland and England. I am Metis: an offspring of the fur trade and all of its complexities, paradoxes and rich histories. Today I study Indigenous issues from the cozy offices of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and the irony of coming back to the United Kingdom — the former colonial Empire — to study Indigenous realities in my own country is not lost on me.

Whatever drew me back here to the place where the contemporary experience of suffering of Canada’s Indigenous people began, I’m here now. And I am watching the Scottish Independence debate with great interest. Continue reading →

Lessons from History: Santayana vs. Vonnegut

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana, 1905

I hear variations of this quote all the time. Often in praise of what I do for a living: “You’re a historian, well great, cause if we don’t know history, we’re doomed to repeat it!” In the face of this good will, I never take the opportunity to explain why I much prefer Kurt Vonnegut version: “I’ve got news for Mr. Santayana: we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive.”  (Bluebeard, 1987)

MunichAgreement_

Neville Chamberlain holding the paper containing the resolution to commit to peaceful methods signed by both Hitler and himself on his return from Munich. He is showing the piece of paper to a crowd at Heston Aerodrome on 30 September 1938. (Photo and text from Wikipedia)

It is the end of term and I’m hopelessly behind on any number of deadlines (I’ll get those book reviews done in December!). On a personal level, I guess I’ve forgotten all those past Novembers and repeated my pattern of not being quite organized enough. As a result, I’m repurposing these quotes and the question I posed to my 20th Century Europe students during our class discussion about Appeasement on Friday for this blog post. Appeasement, of course, is one of the “key” lessons from history. We need to avoid repeating the horrible mistakes made by Chamberlain and Halifax. Just this week, Fox News and their ilk have proclaimed the nuclear agreement with Iran the worst error since 1938. This, of course, is just the most recent example of people endlessly using Appeasement to advocate aggressive foreign policies (George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher). But, are they learning the right lessons from this historical example? Can history really be boiled down to a slogan? Are there laws of human behavior that repeat themselves in every situation? Isn’t the real lesson of history that is it messy, confusing, contradictory and not susceptible to simple theorizing? Continue reading →

Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965-1973 (Including Podcast)

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By Jessica Squires

In addition to this article, ActiveHistory.ca is happy to present a recording of Jessica Squires’s talk as part of the Ottawa Historical Association lecture series. The talk was given on October 8 and was titled “Building Sanctuary: The Building SanctuaryMovement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965-1973.”

Anyone who I talk to about it, and who later describes my project to someone else, tends to say it is about draft dodgers.  The topic of Canadian support for resisters becomes the topic of the war resisters themselves. This may seem like a minor distinction, but I think it says a lot about the strength of the idea of Canada as a haven for war resisters. So strong is that idea that the importance of Canadian popular support for American war resisters is easily overlooked, because part of the story is that Canada has always been such a haven. There is an assumption that the support would have been automatic, homogeneous, and unproblematic from all levels of society, and so no movement to support resisters should have been necessary.
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History in the Shadow of War: The Spadina Museum’s Conversation on War and Myth-Making

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war and mythmaking imageBy Jonathan Scotland

Canadians, it seems, are increasingly interested in war. Our polymer currency has replaced peacekeeping imagery with the Vimy memorial. 2005 was the ‘Year of the Veteran’ and 2013 is the ‘Year of the Korean War Veteran.’ Highways, buildings, and other civic infrastructure have been proudly re-named in honour of the country’s fallen. Battles are widely celebrated as crucibles for our country’s founding. Even Remembrance Day — increasingly Remembrance Week — appears to be undergoing poppy-creep, with the red symbol worn earlier every year. Why this increased fascination with our military past? Is it a response to our recent mission in Afghanistan, or does it reflect something else, perhaps even a growing militarization of society?

Last week, historians Jonathan Vance and Ian McKay put these questions to the test. Their talks, part of Toronto’s Spadina Museum conversation series, were thought provoking. The evening, entitled “War and Myth-Making,” consisted of consecutive half-hour presentations, followed by discussion considering how Canadians mythologize war. Continue reading →

Ten Books to Contextualize Health and Environmental Issues in Canadian Aboriginal History

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By Stacy Nation-Knapper, Andrew Watson, and Sean Kheraj

aboriginalnursing

First Nations nurse administers shot at Nipissing Indian Agency, ca. 1930-60. Source: Library and Archives Canada, 06275.2.

Last year, Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, published a special series called, “Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues”. Each episode focused on a different contemporary environmental issue and featured interviews and discussions with historians whose research explains the context and background. Following up on that project, we are publishing six articles with ActiveHistory.ca that provide annotated lists of ten books and articles that contextualize each of the environmental issues from the podcast series.

Our second episode in the series focused on issues of health and the environment in the history of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. We recorded a round table interview with several leading scholars of Canadian Aboriginal history and covered a wide range of topics, some which fell within the context of the crisis at Attawapiskat First Nation from 2011 and the subsequent political conflict on the eve of #IdleNoMore.

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Do Historians Believe the Kingdom is United? History Curriculums and National History

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By David Zylberberg

Benedict Anderson famously wrote that nations are Imagined Communities brought together by a vision of common identity. The ways in which history is taught and understood play an important role in fostering national commonality. Many current countries do not have that sense of common identity. Such countries are held together by chance, inertia, military force or the cost-benefit analysis of referendum voters. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is one such country since most Scottish or English people do not see themselves as part of the same nation.

Scotland and England have shared a monarch since 1603 and have been formally united since the Act of Union in 1707. At that point, the Scottish Parliament ceased to exist and representatives were sent to Westminster. In 1999, the Scottish Parliament was resurrected with jurisdiction over some regional services. Currently, the Scottish National Party forms a majority government and it has promised a referendum on secession for 2014.

Scotland has been integral to the United Kingdom of Great Britain since its inception. Moreover, English was the most common language of Scotland prior to that and most Scots have always lived in the Lowlands. The northern portion of the island also underwent similar social and cultural developments to southern regions throughout the last half millennia. Due to their many similarities and shared political heritage, it would not be difficult to construct a coherent national history that incorporated the island’s shared social, cultural, political and economic developments. Yet this does not usually happen. Continue reading →

Commemorating war and the environment through non-human species

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Canadian Mounted Rifles, ca. 1914-1918, Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-12402

Canadian Mounted Rifles, ca. 1914-1918, Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-12402

By Kaitlin Wainwright

In November 2012, the Canadian government unveiled three plaques and a bronze statue of a dog in Ottawa’s Confederation Park, adjacent to the South African War Memorial. These were the first commemorative efforts in Canada in 75 years that foregrounded the role of animals in war.

The environment is, at best, an emerging theme in Canadian military history narratives. One might argue that this is because major Canadian conflicts in recent memory have been fought on the soil of others and the effects of war on the environment have been less visible than the effects of war on individuals.[1] The stories of animals in combat provide an opportunity to bridge this long-existing gap in the larger narrative of warfare. Continue reading →

History Slam Podcast Episode Thirty-One: Don Cummer, Brothers At War, and Historical Fiction

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By Sean Graham

Front cover of Don Cummer's Brothers At War

Front cover of Don Cummer’s Brothers At War

I can understand if there are people who scoff at the thought of another book on the War of 1812. Given the onslaught of commemoration of the war over the past two years, I’ve definitely sensed some fatigue on the part of some historians. From the television commercials to museum exhibitions to two episodes of the History Slam podcast, the War of 1812 has been almost inescapable lately. As a result, some people might view Brothers At War by Don Cummer as yet another work of commemoration. Those people would be greatly mistaken, however, and missing out on a terrific book.

Brothers At War is not a history of the War of 1812, but rather a historical fiction set in Upper Canada during the months leading to war. The story follows adolescent best friends Jacob and Eli as they deal with bullies and bad teachers, but under the surface something greater is brewing. With the story being set against the coming of war, the fact that Eli is an American immigrant and his father has refused to take the oath of allegiance to the King adds tension to the story. It is not a book about the War, but rather a book whose characters are affected by the War.
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