Active History

Discover Montreal’s Lost Neighborhood of Griffintown

April 16, 2013 1 Comment

The corner of William and Murray, where Mary Gallagher supposedly appears

By Mireille Mayrand-Fiset

The evening of June 26th, 2012. A group is standing solemnly at the corner of William and Murray Streets, in what remains of Griffintown, one of Montreal’s most notorious working class neighborhoods. Some are chatting and laughing, others, more serious, are eagerly pointing their cameras, seemingly waiting for something to happen on this warm summer night.

This is the famous Griffintown Ghostwatch, a gathering of ghost enthusiasts and former Griffintown residents who meet every seven years to witness the apparition of the headless ghost of Mary Gallagher.

Mary Gallagher, a prostitute, was the victim of a gruesome murder. On the evening of June 27th, 1879, Susan Kennedy decapitated Gallagher with an ax. She had been driven to rage by jealousy after Gallagher received more attention from a client than her. As legend has it, the ghost of Mary Gallagher now comes back every seven years to look for her head, haunting the streets of Griffintown.

The story doesn’t tell if the group truly encountered the headless ghost. But a question is worth asking: If Mary Gallagher were to appear that evening in 2012, 133 years after she was murdered, would she have recognized the Griffintown where she once lived? Continue reading →

Yahoo! Commits Crimes against History – A Call to Wake Up!

April 15, 2013 4 Comments

By Ian Milligan
(previously posted in two parts on ianmilligan.ca)

Yahoo! succeeded in destroying the most amount of history in the shortest amount of time, certainly on purpose, in known memory. Millions of files, user accounts, all gone.
– Archive.Org (click through for the GeoCities archive)

As if it was a bad April Fools joke, April 1st 2013 saw the end of Yahoo! Messages. It was a pretty sudden end to a long-running, fifteen-year-old site and collection of threads and discussions. Notice arrived a month earlier, on March 1st, when they announced that the website would shut down in a month. The reason: “to help focus our efforts on core Yahoo! product experiences.”

Fifteen years of history, destroyed. Fifteen years of largely non-commercialized voices of everyday people, discussing issues as varied as business, the Internet, government, hobbies, science, education, and so forth.

Again: the possible loss of fifteen years of history. Primary sources. Deleted. Why? Storage costs are falling. Digital preservation is a recognized field. Just removed from the web, without consideration for the future legacy of products, of our conversations, of our archives.

One day, I think historians will be pretty damn grateful for the Archive Team.

Well, it was saved. Archive Team, as they have many times before, stepped up to the plate and helped to preserve Yahoo! Messages. It was a tough-fought battle: Yahoo! limited the rate by which things could be downloaded, there was little time. Thanks to virtual machines, hundreds of people loaned bandwidth and time to the project, saving this piece of history. Thanks, also, to the engaged board editor over at the History of Science and Technology, who helped post a call for action when it looked like Yahoo! messages wasn’t going to be preserved.

Wake up, historians. Continue reading →

James Marsh Retires from The Canadian Encyclopedia

April 12, 2013 1 Comment

This post originally appeared March 29 2013 on the TCE Blog by the Canadian Encyclopedia

By James Marsh

Speaking at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto at the launch of the Junior Encyclopedia of Canada in September 1990.

I really had the best job in the country, as editor of Canada’s national encyclopedia.

It was kismet for a boy whose irritated mother sarcastically called him “know it all!” As a kid in West End Toronto, I was obsessed with the only two books in our house, a one-volume encyclopedia and a small pocket dictionary my father carried with him in the war. I memorized maps and capitals and painters’ names from the encyclopedia—30 years out of date as it turned out. My father, who claimed to have memorized the whole dictionary, would rouse me from sleep in the middle of the night and make me query him on definitions (I had to be diplomatic about wrong answers as he was an agitated man when drunk and accused of error).

Another happenstance struck when a misguided teacher in high school determined to punish me by sentencing me to the school library to hand copy articles from Encyclopedia Britannica. Bliss. Continue reading →

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

April 10, 2013 14 Comments

Washington Redskins logo. Source: Wikipedia.

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 →

Lount and Matthews Commemoration Salon

April 9, 2013 No Comments

A 19th-century artist’s rendering of the public hangings of Lount and Matthews, Toronto, April 12, 1838 (public domain).

by Ashok Charles and Randall White

This coming Friday, April 12, 2013 will mark the 175th anniversary of the hanging of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews in what is now downtown Toronto, for their roles in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.

The rebellion was a reaction to the unresponsiveness of the colonial oligarchy of the day to demands for democratic reform (or what the appointed lieutenant governor called “soiling the empire by the introduction of democracy”). The events in Upper Canada or present-day Ontario paralleled a more aggressive rising in predominantly French-speaking Lower Canada, or present-day Quebec.

Government forces were able to suppress the Upper Canada Rebellion. But popular objections to the autocratic rule of the “Family Compact” oligarchy remained. The authorities saw the public execution of Lount and Matthews as a warning and a deterrent to further acts of dissent. The large crowd which assembled on the morning of the hanging was testament to the public stature of Lount and Matthews. One report claimed that a petition seeking clemency for the men bore 30,000 signatures. Continue reading →

Historical Maps of Toronto – a collection of maps to amuse, delight and inform

April 8, 2013 8 Comments

By Nathan Ng

I recently launched Historical Maps of Toronto, featuring simple and free access to a selection of notable maps of my fair city.

If you’ve ever wondered what ‘Muddy York’ looked like 200 years ago, and then wanted to trace the city’s development over the following century, this collection ought to pique your interest.

Jim Clifford from ActiveHistory.ca asked me to take a step back and explain why I invested the time and effort to put it all together. What made it so important to share these dusty old maps?

The Simple Answer

The maps deserve our attention. They allow us to imagine the past in vivid detail — and they also provide us with valuable insight into the mind-set of the map-makers themselves. My hope is that, particularly for those of us who aren’t historians or academics, the site will provide a useful and convenient entry point for discovery and further investigation into our city’s humble beginnings and subsequent evolution.

Continue reading →

Concert tonight: “What is Toronto?”

April 5, 2013 No Comments

How might historical themes be translated into musical composition? A group of musicians will engage with this question tonight as part of “What is Toronto?” This concert will explore the iconic events, places, and unique qualities that define perceptions of Canada’s largest city, both past and present.

The event is organized by Spectrum, a group of Canadian composers who create and present a contemporary hybrid of jazz and classical music. They strive to create innovative, genre-defying themed concerts which explore intersections between subcultures in Canada.

The performance will feature a pre-concert chat with Artistic Associate and composer Matt Roberts, who conceived the concert, Artistic Director and composer Ben Dietschi, and Jay Young, a historian of Toronto and co-editor of ActiveHistory.ca. Before each piece, Jay will discuss the inspiration of each piece with its composer and how they went about turning fragments and myths of the past into sound.

The concert will be held tonight at The Al Green Theatre, starting at 7:30pm. For more information on the concert, click here.

“Leveraging the Synergies” or a return to the past?: The decision to do away with CIDA

April 4, 2013 No Comments

Monument to Canadian Aid Workers. Photograph: Mike Gifford. Wikipedia Commons.

By Jill Campbell-Miller

On March 21^st, the Canadian government released the 2013 federal budget and in a paragraph did away with the 45-year-old Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The budget announced that CIDA would be amalgamated with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) to become the newly-renamed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. The budget justified the decision by stating that “The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development will leverage the synergies resulting from the amalgamation to maximize the effectiveness of resources available to deliver development and humanitarian assistance.”^[i] Despite its significance, however, the announcement failed to make it into the text of finance minister Jim Flaherty’s budget speech.

This decision is consistent with the direction of the Harper government’s official development assistance (ODA) policy, and is informed by its previous decision in 2006 to merge foreign affairs and trade. That change, in their words, “enhanced policy coherence across our foreign and trade objectives …. There are similar opportunities for synergies with our development assistance.”^[ii] The government sees the absorption of CIDA into DFAIT as a natural progression to bring Canadian foreign, trade, and development policy into line, with the final objective being to strengthen its business orientation.

Aid has always been a political football – a convenient way to express political decisions in a feel-good way. The current government has made no apologies for their approach. It draws from a conservative philosophy that sees the private sector as a potential resource for innovation in development. It also stems from a very concrete interest in promoting Canadian business interests in the developing world, particularly in Latin America. In November 2012, the House of Commons released a report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, “Driving Inclusive Economic Growth: The Role of the Private Sector in International Development.” In March the minister for CIDA, Julian Fantino, and the World Economic Forum co-hosted a conference entitled “Maximizing the Value of Extractives for Development.” Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Sixteen: Inclusive Histories and Katrina Srigley

April 3, 2013 No Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

During the CHA Annual Meeting last year in Waterloo, I went to the book launch for Finding a Way to the Heart: Feminist Writings on Aboriginal and Women’s History in Canada, during which Sylvia Van Kirk addressed the crowd. The one thing that really stuck me was how passionately she spoke of an inclusive history, one that featured the contributions of everyone. This was interesting to me because there is a perception – at least among many of the men who I knew in undergrad (my experience in a women’s history course didn’t exactly challenge that perception) – that women’s history isn’t a welcoming place to men. Unfair as it was, that mindset was common.

In this episode of the History Slam I talk with Katrina Srigley of Nipissing University about the state of women’s history, the legacy of Sylvia Van Kirk, and her own work on women during the Depression. Given my limited background in women’s and gender history, it was really interesting to sit down and discuss the issues and learn about growth of the discipline. We also touch on the perception of women’s history being hostile to men and discuss the pedagogical challenge it presents in a classroom setting.

The interview took place in North Bay on March 22 when I was lucky enough to be back in the city as part of the History Department Lecture Series at Nipissing. It was a thrill to be there and I want to thank Professors Katrina Srigley, Derek Neal, Anne Clendinning, and Robin Gendron for making the trip possible.

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.

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

April 2, 2013 2 Comments

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

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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