Active History

History Slam Episode Twenty-Eight: Sabine Wieber and Death Masks

September 5, 2013 No Comments

By Sean Graham

As the summer comes to an end, my reading list has recently included Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie and Will Schwalbe’s The End of Your Life Book Club while this PBS Frontline episode on facing death has found its way into my viewing schedule (all of which I would highly recommend). I’ve always found death and the end-of-life process rather interesting and while I understand that some would find such an interest morbid, I’m fascinated with the way in which we ignore death – or at least treat it as an abstract concept – in modern society. Despite the fact that we will all reach the end of our lives, we have a tendency to avoid discussion on the subject and, in my experience, treat is as an unspoken reality of life.

I’ve often thought that one of the reasons I’m interested in history is my fascination with death. As I’ve written before, a vast majority of historical figures suffer from the unfortunate medical condition of being deceased. The ramification for historians is that we are left to examine anything they left behind for glimpses into their lives. In doing so, we are essentially carrying on conversations (albeit one-sided conversations) with the dead. While physically these people may be gone, the work of the historian keeps their voices alive.
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Into the Secret Archive: An Interview with the Authors of Secret Service

September 3, 2013 1 Comment

By Daniel Ross

Discussed in this post: Reg Whitaker, Gregory S. Kealey and Andrew Parnaby, Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America (University of Toronto Press, 2012).

Beginning before Confederation—but especially since the mid-twentieth century—political policing has been something of a growth industry in Canada. As a landmark new book on the subject makes clear, over the past century the federal state has devoted considerable resources to spying on its populace in an effort to find and contain “the enemy within”. Its targets have been a varied, but mostly left-leaning, bunch, ranging from Fenians to Quebec nationalists, labour organizers to gays and lesbians. By the late 1970s, the RCMP security service had files on 800,000 individuals, among a population of just over 23 million. An enormous secret archive, and a potential treasure trove for historians.

In a previous post I discussed how security services on both sides of the Canada-US border spied on countercultural communes like Tennessee’s The Farm in the 1960s and 1970s. Some interesting information about the Canadian side of that story came to light through a series of access to information requests I made for files about “hippies”. That experience got me thinking: why aren’t more historians—and especially graduate students—working with the files of CSIS and the RCMP? I asked the authors of Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America about the researching and writing of their book. Their answers highlight both the possibilities and problems of digging into the secret archive. Continue reading →

Ten Books to Contextualize Idle No More

August 29, 2013 1 Comment

ActiveHistory.ca is on a two-week hiatus, but we’ll be back with new content in early September. During the hiatus, we’re featuring some of our favourite and most popular blog posts from this site over the past year. Thanks as always to our writers and readers!

The following post was originally featured on January 4 2013.

By Andrew Watson and Thomas Peace

After reading comment after uninformed comment, both online and in the media, ActiveHistory.ca decided to compile a short list of books written by historians that address the issues being discussed by the Idle No More movement. Click on a link below to read a brief summary of the book.

Peggy Blair, Lament for a First Nation
Jarvis Browlie, A Fatherly Eye
Shelagh Grant, Arctic Justice
Cole Harris, Making Native Space
Douglas Harris, Fish, Law and Colonialism
J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant
Jocelyn Thorpe, Temagami’s Tangled Wild
Treaty Seven Elders and Tribal Council, The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7
William C. Wicken, Mi’kmaq Treaties on Trial
Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations

In addition to these books, we would also like to direct your attention to the Canada in the Making‘s section on “Aboriginals: Treaties & Relations.” This website provides an overview of the relationship between European empires, the Canadian state and First Nation peoples from the late-fifteenth century to the present. It includes links to online copies of many foundational – and constitutional – documents underpinning Canada’s relationship with First Nation peoples. Continue reading →

The Raccoons

August 28, 2013 1 Comment

Image used under fair use terms. Copyright of Skywriter Media & Entertainment Groups. http://skywritermedia.com/the-raccoons/

The following post was originally featured on August 30 2012.

By Daniel Macfarlane

The Raccoons “Run with us – we got everything you need!” Does that line from a certain theme song jog any memories for Canadians between the ages of about 20 to 40? What about Ralph, Melissa, Cedric? If not those names, then surely Bert or Cyril Sneer?

The theme song, and the aforementioned characters, are from The Raccoons. This cartoon staring the eponymous anthropomorphized scavengers appeared on CBC for over a decade between 1980-91. This piece of Canadiana started as four specials, and then became a syndicated half-hour series. Cyril Sneer (an aardvark, by the way) was the corporate tree-cutting, money-grubbing villain who served as the foil to main protagonist, the bumbling but lovable Bert and the rest of his crew in Evergreen Forest (apparently somewhere in B.C.).

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The Need for Speedy History in the Post-War Canadian North

August 27, 2013 No Comments

495px-Spring_in_the_Canadian_Arctic

The following post was originally featured on April 29 2013.

By Ken Coates and Bill Morrison

Things change – but rarely as fast and comprehensively as in the Canadian North. As late as the 1950s, most Indigenous people in the territorial and provincial North lived off the land, traveling seasonally to fish, hunt, trap and gather. The hand of Ottawa had just begun to be felt, gently in the case of Mother’s Allowance, firmly with removing children to residential schools, and more aggressively with the relocation of indigenous people to government-built reserve communities. Continue reading →

Municipal Conflicts of Interest in Canada, Old and New

August 26, 2013 1 Comment

The following post was originally featured on December 4 2012.

By Daniel Ross

He was a controversial mayor from the start. An unabashed populist, he rallied support during his campaigns by promising to cut taxes and reduce waste at city hall. As a result, he won an impressive share of the popular vote. He never denied having links to the city’s business and development community—he ran a successful business himself—and his policies certainly reflected that. From early on, accusations of bending the rules shadowed his career. But it was a legal challenge from an ordinary citizen alleging a conflict of interest that led to him losing his job.

Rob Ford and William Hawrelak. Sources: City of Toronto; City of Edmonton Archives, EA-10-1600

That man’s name was William Hawrelak, mayor of Edmonton from 1951-59, 1963-65, and 1974-75. His story is remarkable, and not just because of its superficial similarities to that of recently deposed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Few Canadian politicians have managed to combine success and failure as dramatically as he did in his 30-year career in public office. But in another way, his tale, like Ford’s, is nothing new. Concern over politicians using public office for private benefit has often dogged local politics in Canada, and one result has been strict conflict of interest law.

In this post I’d like to take a look at Rob Ford’s removal from office in light of a short history of municipal conflict of interest in Canada. It turns out there is nothing unprecedented about the penalty he faces, or the populist way he and his supporters have responded to his removal. Continue reading →

Time for a Change: Historical Perspective on the Washington Redskins Name and Logo Controversy

August 23, 2013 2 Comments

Washington Redskins logo. Source: Wikipedia.

The following post was originally featured on April 10 2013.

By Mike Commito

Baseball season has just begun and NHL hockey is entering its final push before the playoffs begin at the end of the month. However, in recent months the attention has remained on the NFL’s Washington Redskins. Not because of their valiant post-season effort that ended with a horrific knee injury to their talented and budding young quarterback, but because of the team’s name and logo. The controversy over the team’s racist name and emblem is not new and is part of a much longer narrative of how professional sports teams have appropriated Aboriginal imagery and how First Nations have been depicted in derogatory or racist ways.

The National Congress of American Indians estimates that fewer than 1,000 schools (secondary and collegiate) still use derogatory Aboriginal imagery and logos in their sports programs. While this figure represents an overall decrease of about two-thirds in the past fifty years, this number is still far too high. Moreover, many of these relics that still exist are most visibly seen at the professional level where they continue to perpetuate the misrepresentation of Aboriginal peoples. Continue reading →

Tap Dancing and Murder – in a Grade Seven Classroom

August 22, 2013 No Comments

The following post was originally featured on June 20 2013.

By Merle Massie

“My tap dancing just isn’t good enough,” she wrote. She: my daughter’s high school English teacher. Tap dancing: teaching (to pubescent, smartmouth, intelligent, tired kids at the end of June in rural Saskatchewan). “I remember a staff meeting conversation from some point where you were willing to come in and talk with students.” What’s the topic, Mrs. J? Reconstructing Past Lives.

Excellent. That is EXACTLY what historians do, right? So I set off to find out if I could tap dance for teenagers. Just for a couple of hours. After all, I tap dance for University students on a regular basis. How hard can it be?

Amid recent media controversy about the conservative federal government looking to choreograph the tap dancing of Canadian history (see here and here), I was curious to find out just what a typical Canadian grade seven student already knew. Continue reading →

Speak, Recipe: Reading Cookbooks as Life Stories

August 21, 2013 1 Comment

The following post was originally featured on August 23 2012. It was also published in modified form as “Cookbook culture; A personal history in grease stains and pencil marks” in the Globe and Mail on September 29 2012.

By Ian Mosby

As a historian of food and nutrition, I’ve amassed a substantial collection of cookbooks, old and new, over the years. But one cookbook I often find myself coming back to amidst the hundred plus dusty volumes cluttering my office is a 1930 edition of the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Meals Tested, Tasted and Approved: Favorite Recipes and Menus From Our Kitchens to Yours. I purchased it for $12 from a Toronto vintage shop and consider it one of my favourite purchases to date.

On the surface, at least, the cookbook seems unremarkable. Good Housekeeping cookbooks from the period are common enough, and like many others in my collection it’s well worn and smells vaguely of mildew and decades-old flour. Its spine is broken and held together with clear tape. Its pages are stuffed with dozens of handwritten recipes on cards as well as a number of others cut from newspapers and magazines. These include a fading recipe for Dandelion Wine written in pencil on a piece of scrap paper and a Campbell’s Soup can label with a recipe for Oven Glazed Chicken. In other words, it’s a cookbook like hundreds of others that could be found in kitchen cupboards in households across the country, and my personal collection includes its own fair share of similarly well-worn, well-loved volumes.

But what makes this particular cookbook remarkable – to me at least – is the inscription in the front cover left by its original owner, Jean Stephenson.[1] Continue reading →

A building by any other name: The politics of renaming and commemoration

August 20, 2013 1 Comment

Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa. Photo: “Ottawa Canada May 2010 – Sussex Drive East 21” by Douglas Sprott. Flickr Creative Commons.

The following post was originally featured on April 2 2013.

By Kaitlin Wainwright

Recently, I was lamenting the challenges historians face in the form of changing names of various government organizations in Canada: The Canada Food Board, the Health League of Canada, and Board of Broadcast Governors are now the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Canadian Public Health Association, and the CRTC respectively. Researching the past often means paying attention to changes in name and in meaning. It is almost like stepping into a foreign country.

Renaming government organizations and buildings to fulfill a change in mandate – be it political or administrative – is not a new trend, though the current government seems to be doing more of it with less resistance from Canadians. The Toronto Star recently published an article discussing the Government of Canada’s decision to rename various government offices in Ontario and Quebec as part of the efforts to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812. Continue reading →

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