Active History

A Web of History: How Digital and Social Media is Changing Heritage Awareness in Toronto

January 28, 2013 5 Comments

screen capture of Toronto in Time mobile app

By Jay Young

A common cliché of our time is to observe that the internet has made us more connected than ever. Although historians might question the accuracy of this statement, the web, social media, and smart phone apps have allowed new opportunities for engagement with historical artifacts, stories, and landmarks.

One only has to look at Canada’s largest city. Numerous initiatives in Toronto have begun to promote the city’s heritage. Here’s a look at some of these projects. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Twelve: Media Review Roundup

January 22, 2013 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

Like a lot of people, I used the break over the holidays to catch up on a couple of TV shows and movies that I had missed through the fall. I have to say that binge watching, while a lot of fun, can actually be difficult – it’s easy to lose track of where one thing starts and another one ends, you remember the over-arching themes but forget a lot of the specifics, and there is a tendency to lose track of time and then suddenly realize it’s 3AM and you have to leave for the airport in two hours.

What was fun about it though, was that there were several historical dramas to catch up with. I don’t know if there is a resurgence in the ‘historical drama,’ but I’ve definitely noticed over the past couple of years that more and more shows and movies are set in the past and revolve around historical issues. Add the fact that people like Doris Kearns Goodwin are being called in as consultants on a lot of these projects, and they can be both informative and entertaining.

In this episode of the History Slam we review three of these new dramas. First, I talk about Downton Abbey with Megan Sanderson, the biggest fan of the show who I know. Then I chat with my brother Scott about Titanic: Blood and Steel, the 12-part miniseries that the CBC aired in the fall. We end with the instant analysis (we recorded right after the movie) of Lincoln with Dave Hyde.

Spoiler Alert – while we don’t spoil anything from Season 3 of Downton Abbey, we do talk at length about the end of Titanic: Blood and Steel and a little bit about the end of Lincoln. Of course in both cases the endings are probably pretty obvious.

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.

Graphics in the Archive: History and Comics Unite!

January 21, 2013 6 Comments

By Krista McCracken

I have a love for most things history related and I thoroughly enjoy all kinds of comics. So when these two interests collide I take note. There are a number of great contemporary history themed comics such as Machiavelli and Hark! A Vagrant (check out Ian Mosby’s great post about this webcomic). The idea of using comics to illuminate the past isn’t an idea that first appeared with the advent of the webcomic genre or even the relatively recent explosion of Marvel and DC comics. Archival collections can provide an interesting glimpse into the longstanding use of comics to teach history.

Recently, I’ve been working with issues of the Indian Record from the 1940s to 1960s. The Indian Record was published ten times a year by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and acted as a newsletter for catholic missionary entities in Canada. The newsletters provide fascinating insight into missionary work in Canada, with a focus on Residential Schools and First Nation missions.

But, what really caught my eye was the prevalence of comics in the newsletter. Starting in the 1950s the Indian Record featured an ongoing comic called “The Apostle of the Hurons” which outlined the life and mission work of Saint Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649). The comic is far from what is considered politically correct by today’s standards but, when looked at through the lens of the time period, the comics provide an interesting reflection of missionary work in Canada.

Indian Record, November 1958, page 4.

Continue reading →

Photographing History and a Desire to See the Past in the Present

January 17, 2013 2 Comments

This photograph of Parliament Hill and its Centre Pavilion in the 1950s is juxtaposed against the present-day landscape. Courtesy: Dear Photograph.

By Kaitlin Wainwright

At December’s public consultations on the new Museum of Canadian History, Sean Kheraj, an assistant professor of history at York University, made a comment that stuck with me: by commemorating moments in history we actually learn as much about our present as our past. In trying to see the past through a contemporary lens, we blur history with nostalgia. Situating the past in a present context gives new meaning to both, and a greater understanding of not only how the built and social environments once were, but also what they’ve become.

The American literary icon Susan Sontag noted that “Photographs turn the past into an object of tender regard, scrambling moral distinctions and disarming historical judgments by the generalized pathos of looking at time past.”[i] Over the past year and a half, several online projects that juxtapose or integrate archival images with contemporary ones have taken root. The act of creating and viewing these photographs is inherently tied to the making and remaking of place. The act of associating an archival photograph with memory or with its present-day counterpart changes how we see place. Our memory, working with the photograph, creates a link between the past and the present. Dear Photograph is one such online project that seeks to bridge the gap between past and present, and in doing so, remakes our emotional geography. Continue reading →

Gun Control: Filling-in the Missing History in Canada

January 16, 2013 1 Comment

By Paul W. Bennett

A Review of Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun
Control in Canada
R. Blake Brown
The Osgoode Society/ University of Toronto Press
Hard Cover, 349 pages, $70.00

Guns in and around children in schools are frightening. That is why gun culture and firearms control totally dominated the news media in the wake of the horrific shooting rampage on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in, of all places, the postcard perfect town of Newtown, Connecticut.

With students, parents and families in mourning or emotionally distraught, on both sides of the border, the Canadian news media was quick to jump on the “Newtown Massacre” as the latest example of an American gun culture abhorrent to most Canadians. Sharp contrasts were drawn between the trigger-happy American republic and the reputed “peaceable kingdom” of Canada. Continue reading →

Elites, Social Networks, and the Historical Profession

January 15, 2013 8 Comments

By Mark Sholdice

My research examines the role played by small groups of people working towards common ends. In other words, I am fascinated by elites. Having spent almost ten years of my life in several universities, I am also intrigued by the role of elites in academia.

In early December I came across a study which reported that a handful of graduate political science programs dominated hiring in that field in the United States. Robert Oprisko’s research, published in preview in the Georgetown Public Policy Review, shows that just eleven programs account for over half of all tenure-track hiring by political science departments (or to put another way, the graduates of about 10% of all departments represent half of all new hires). Oprisko concludes that “there is a direct correlation between institutional prestige and candidate placement.” Yet he adds: “Of course, this is somewhat expected given that the most prestigious programs are often also the ones that have the highest numbers of students. As we move forward with this project, we will control for institution size and output.”

I wondered about how the size of these elite departments may account for their preponderance in hiring. Using the historical profession in the Canada and the United States as roughly similar to political science, I did some quick-and-dirty calculations which I’d like to share. Continue reading →

Can Ontarians Look Forward to the ‘Right to Work for Less?’

January 14, 2013 No Comments

By Christine McLaughlin

The Hudak Conservatives have unveiled plans to bring so-called “Right to Work” legislation to Ontario. Following in the footsteps of American Republicans, Ontario’s Conservatives are seeking to unravel an agreement that has maintained relative labour peace in the province for over half a century. This has been painted as a ‘progressive’ measure that will ‘modernize’ what have been branded as ‘outdated labour laws.’ According to Tim Hudak, the goal is to “modernize our labour laws to get them out of the 1940s and 1950s and to 2012 and beyond.”

It is telling that history for Hudak here begins in the 1940s. To extend any further back would reveal this as the deeply regressive measure it is, which would pivot Ontario backwards to a period of limited working rights with lower pay and fewer protections in the workplace. Continue reading →

2013 History Matters lecture series line-up announced

January 11, 2013 3 Comments

Toronto Public Library Central Library (College St. and St. George), 1923. Source: Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Room, 979-2-2.

ActiveHistory.ca and the Toronto Public Library are pleased to announce the 2013 History Matters lecture series.

This year’s series focuses on the themes of immigration, ethnicity and citizenship. The lectures are part of the TPL’s Thought Exchange programming.

“Beyond Orange and Green: Toronto’s Irish, 1870-1914”
Migration historian Dr. William Jenkins (York University) looks at the immigration patterns and political allegiances of Toronto’s Irish between 1870 and World War I, and how struggles at home and abroad had an impact on the Catholic and Protestant Irish communities in Toronto.
Thursday, January 31^st, 6:30-8 pm
Parliament Street Branch
269 Gerrard Street East
416-393-7663

“Public Spectacles of Multiculturalism: Toronto Before Trudeau”
Award-winning migration, labour and gender historian Dr. Franca Iacovetta (University of Toronto) explores the International Institute Movement’s use of public spectacle and pageantry to promote cultural pluralism in a pre-multicultural Toronto.
Thursday, February 28^th, 6:30-8 pm
Dufferin/St. Clair Branch
1625 Dufferin Street
416-393-7712

“Black Power for Black Education in Toronto, 1950s-1970s”
PhD candidate Funké Aladejebi (York University) relates the compelling story of how black organizations in Toronto used education to combat racism by making connections to “Africa” and adapting the language of Black Power to a Canadian experience.
Wednesday, March 27^th, 6:30-8 pm
Maria A. Shchuka Branch
1745 Eglinton Avenue West
416-394-1000

“And Life Goes On: Japanese Canadians, Memory, and Life after Internment”
In 1941, 22,000 Japanese Canadians mostly living in Vancouver were dispossessed, torn from their homes and shipped to internment sites. After the war, they were given a “choice” between deportation to war-devastated Japan or dispersal east of the Rockies. Historical sociologist Dr. Pamela Sugiman (Ryerson University) recounts how this community rebuilt in the face of racial hostility and after such loss.
~~Thursday, April 25^th, 6:30-8 pm~~
~~Lillian H. Smith Branch~~
~~239 College Street~~
~~416-393-7746~~
Note: Pamela Sugiman’s talk has been postponed until further notice.

History Matters started in 2010 as a venue for professional historians and graduate students to present their research to a broader audience outside the university and interact directly with their local communities. A successful series of lectures followed in 2011. These lectures are also accessible to the general public as podcasts featured here on ActiveHistory.ca.

We hope to see you there!

Kay on Treaty History: Well-meaning, wrong-headed

January 10, 2013 3 Comments

By Christopher Moore

This post was originally published on Christopher Moore’s History News

Late in 2011, before Attawapiskat and Idle No More were as newsy as they are now, CBC Radio’s Ideas presented my radio documentary “George MacMartin’s Big Canoe Trip,” an exploration of how the James Bay Treaty was made in 1905. The radio-doc draws on the diary of MacMartin, one of the men who made the treaty for the Canadian government, but also on the work of Nipissing University historian John Long, the recent author of Treaty 9: The Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905, and on the Cree understanding of what was done in 1905.

George MacMartin, seated, centre, at Fort Albany, 1905

Sara Wolch, my producer at Ideas, recently pitched the Corp on rebroadcasting the program, in light of what’s going on. I’m happy to say they got the idea. “George MacMartin’s Big Canoe Trip” will be going out on the CBC Radio One network tonight at 9:00 pm. Catch it if you can. And if you cannot, it’s permanently available from the Ideas website right here.

I’d been thinking about that program partly because of this piece, “To Understand How We Got to Attawapiskat…” by Jonathan Kay in the National Post. Continue reading →

Gun Violence in the United States: The Frontier Mentality

January 9, 2013 2 Comments

“Gun Digest 2nd Amendment Contest.” (Charles Kindel, Flickr Commons, click through for original)

By Sean Graham

On December 14, 2012, a man forced his way into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 26 people. In a scene re-played far too often, that unspeakable horror led to a fresh round of debate over the reasons for why the United States suffers from gun violence at such a disproportionate rate when compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Following the tragedy, President Obama pointed out that it is a complicated issue that needs to be examined in its entirety. The debate, however, generally consists of people on the left screaming about the need for tighter gun control, while people on the right yell about a popular culture that has desensitized the nation’s youth to violence. At some level both sides are correct: guns are too easy to get in the United States and pop culture (including the news media) does glorify violent behaviour. One aspect that has been overlooked, however, is the influence of the nation’s founding mythology in promoting gun violence. The American experience has been marked by a willingness to stand up and fight for the nation. In this context, violence is not presented as an unfortunate reality of nationhood and national defence, but rather as an expression of American strength and sovereignty. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Continue reading →

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