Water stories

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By Merle Massie

Water wells up and flows across the landscape of my memory as a cataclysmic force, ebbing and flowing through my earliest life story. Those encounters shift the flotsam of my perceptions as an environmental historian, shaping the way I think about water. And, these stories require sharing, as they differ radically from that of colleagues raised in urban environments where drinkable water flows under, around, into, and out of every home.

My family’s first farm house, purchased in the early 1970s, did not have a bathroom. Our toilets were the classic outhouse, and a metal five gallon pail with a toilet seat lid tucked strategically behind the furnace in the basement, next to a holder for the toilet paper. It was Dad’s job to haul the honey pail up the stairs every day and dump it in the bush. There was a base efficiency to that daily routine, though, that belies its yuckiness. Humans use bathrooms. Every day. What innovations –– in fertilizer, in composting, in sanitation –– would we create if each household was responsible for managing their own eliminations? Continue reading →

I AM CANADIAN! (Because of treaties with Indigenous Nations)

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By Tobold Rollo

[This post first appeared on Tobold Rollo’s website.]

As Chief Theresa Spence continues her hunger strike, her request that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Governor General meet with Chiefs to discuss treaties has many Canadians wondering what relevance treaties could possibly hold today. Anticipating this uncertainty, I wrote a pamphlet with the Mohawk scholar, Taiaiake Alfred, which was widely distributed both in the US and in Canada during recent ‘Idle No More’ events. The pamphlet laid out in clear and concise language the concrete practical and legislative steps necessary to advance the goal of reconciliation. The outline was based on the recommendations laid out in the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. This Royal Commission, the most comprehensive and expensive in Canada’s history, determined that achieving the goal of reconciliation necessarily entails the restoration of a ‘treaty relationship’.

I recall being a bit confused but mostly just ambivalent the first time I heard Indigenous peoples in Canada invoke the concept of a ‘treaty relationship’. I was twelve years old and it was the height of what would come to be known as the Oka Crisis. To me, treaties were boring relics – artifacts excavated from Canadian history – of interest to history teachers. As I grew older, I was fairly certain that treaties were irrelevant to modern Canada and to modern citizens like myself. What relevance they might hold did not seem to bear on my life in the same way as did taxes or elections. That youthful confusion and ambivalence was displaced over the years by a realization in my adult life that if Canada was to claim legitimacy as a nation as opposed to a complex colonial encampment, that legitimacy must derive from the founding treaties that made Canada possible. Accordingly, I recognized that my identity as a Canadian, as opposed to a mere occupier or colonizer, was dependent on the status of those treaties. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Continue reading →

On Holiday!

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We’re taking a week-long hiatus from posting new articles during the holidays.

Photograph | Tobogganing on Mount Royal Park slide, Montreal, QC, 1885 | VIEW-1582

Tobogganing on Mount Royal Park slide, Montreal QC, 1885. Wm. Notman & Son. Source: McCord Museum.

The team at ActiveHistory.ca wants to thank all our contributors, guest writers, and readers for making this a very successful 2012.

We wish all of you a most happy holidays and we look forward to continuing our work in 2013!

Historical Roots: Sandy, Skeletons, and Elm City

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Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy, October 25 2012. Source: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/GOESEast.php

By Jeffers Lennox

Having spent four years living in Halifax, I’ve experienced my share of Nor’easters. During my MA year, a huge snowstorm forced the university to close on the day scheduled for my first comprehensive exam.  The entire class considered this a divine gift. Having now returned to the east coast after two years in Montreal and two years in Vancouver, I expected a “storm of the century” at some point. As any environmental historian will tell you (whether you ask them or not), climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of these kinds of meteorological events. By late October, the northeast was bracing for something awful.

Superstorm Sandy, which for a brief moment was hilariously named the “frankenstorm,” devastated much of New York City, especially the Staten Island area. The human and financial costs are unimaginable and many residents are still dealing with the fallout. Sandy affected other parts of the northeast, but to varying degrees. In our part of southern Connecticut, power outages, flooding, and highway closures were common. Wandering around New Haven the day after the storm meant climbing over fallen trees, cringing at dented cars or smashed porches, and generally feeling fortunate to have come out relatively unscathed.

The storm had historical significance, and not just because it had been dubbed a storm of the century. New Haven residents came face to face with their civic history when a felled tree on the New Haven Green exposed not only its root system, but also a human skeleton. Continue reading →

Making History Look Delicious at the Royal Alberta Museum

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The author interviewing the owner of the Silver Inn

By Lauren Wheeler

I recently took a trip to a Calgary restaurant where the most iconic of Chinese-Canadian dishes originated.  The restaurant is on Centre Street at 27th Avenue North and you would likely miss it unless you looked for the sign reading “Silver Inn.” Two colleagues from the Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) also  made the trip from Edmonton to Calgary to record the interviews.  When the interviewee is the owner of the first restaurant to serve “ginger beef,” the footage has to look better than good.  It must look delicious.

Making history look good is a big part of designing a museum exhibit.  As sites of public history, museums suffer from the stereotype of stale rooms filled with artefacts hidden behind glass and a sleepy security guard ensuring nothing happens to the precious items on display.  This idea of museums persists in spite of decades of interesting and innovative exhibits and new methods designed to engage the public with museums.  Food is still prohibited in exhibits, but high-quality video of a dish or a detailed description of its ingredients can create the same Pavlovian reaction as the smells of a busy kitchen or a table set for a feast.  With this in mind, we went to Calgary in search of footage to add this dimension to the RAM’s Chop Suey on the Prairies exhibit.  Continue reading →

The Shrine That Vincent Built

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By Laura Madokoro

Source: vancitybuzz.com, accessed 14 December 2012.

Earlier this semester, I flashed a photo of rock icon Jimi Hendrix up on the screen during a class on settler colonialism. It was a bit over the top but I was trying to get my students to think of connections as well as divides, and Hendrix’s part-Cherokee heritage seemed like a good way of driving home the point. What I missed completely, from my perch as a scholar-in-transit at UBC, was that Hendrix’s story would have been much more effective in a talk about the crafting of local history. What I didn’t realize, when I used his image in class, was that Hendrix had ties to Vancouver. Thanks to the efforts of a lone individual, this history has not been forgotten. In fact, it is being recovered by hundreds of visitors who, like me, find themselves staring at the incongruous presence of a Jimi Hendrix Shrine on the edge of the Vancouver’s historic Chinatown district. Continue reading →

Hope and its Implications for Greece: A Perspective from the Diaspora

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By Christopher Grafos

I should have written this article a long time ago. Selfishly, I have remained vaguely apathetic towards Greek politics in anticipation that the negative publicity and connotations of the Greek state and people would quickly dissipate. My assumption was wrong and now I realize that as an aspiring academic, I am, and have been, derelict.

My doctoral dissertation at York University examines Greek homeland politics during the 1960s and 1970s. Inevitably, I recently became an informal expert on the Greek crisis because of my education and perceived connection with the country of my parent’s birth.  Simultaneously, I have become an audience for opinions that I have increasingly found to be quite startling and concerning. Continue reading →

Canada and the Monarchy in the 21st Century

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When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (1 Corinthians 13 King James Version)

By Greg Kennedy

The news that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant has made headlines around the world, including here in Canada.  Assuming a healthy child is produced, there will be three generations of royal heirs waiting for their turn to assume the throne after Queen Elizabeth II.

In Canada, the debate over the monarchy has generally been muted for a long time.  There seemed to be an unspoken consensus that it would be impolite to criticize the institution during the reign of such a respected lady, that the discussion would be postponed until the less loved Prince Charles became king. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Eleven: “A Struggle to Remember: Fighting for Our Families”

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

It may be surprising to learn that I don’t go to a lot of big movie premieres – all the lights and cameras aren’t really my thing. But a few weeks ago I did have the privilege of going to the premiere of a new documentary from the Workers History Museum. Entitled ‘A Struggle to Remember: Fighting for our Families,’ the film documents the movement for family leave in Canada. Beautifully put together by director Aaron Floresco, the film follows the struggle from the the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in the late 1960s to today through first-person interviews from those involved in the movement. The film is the second production in this project, as the museum has also created a traveling exhibit on the history of family leave.

In this episode of the History Slam I talk with Arthur Carkner and Rosemary Warskett about both the project and the history of family leave in Canada. Both Arthur and Rosemary were involved in the struggle for family leave and offer some terrific insights into the process. In listening to them it becomes clear that the word ‘struggle’ is apt to describe the history of family leave in this country. The film itself is available for purchase and institutions can display the exhibit for free (if you’re outside Ottawa you have to provide shipping), both of which can be obtained by contacting the Workers History Museum. You can also follow
them on Twitter at @workershistory.

In addition, this is the final podcast of 2012 so I take a minute or two to thank some of the people who have been instrumental in getting the podcast going. I’ve had a blast putting them together and want to say thank you to everyone who has listened and subscribed on iTunes.

Have a great and safe holiday!

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.

Remembering Montreal’s Cabarets

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By Mireille Mayrand-Fiset

St-Laurent Boulevard, where most of the action took place in an earlier era. Photo by author.

Montreal, Quebec’s largest and most vibrant city, is known internationally for its joie de vivre, its festive ambiance and its open-mindedness. This reputation goes back a long while: from as early as New France, Montreal was known for being a joyful, pleasurable city. In 1721, François-Xavier Charlevoix, first historian of New France, wrote in his Journal of a Voyage Made in North America By Order of the King: “The City of Montreal has a most pleasant quality; is it well situated, well established and well constructed. The beauty of its surroundings, areas and vistas instils pleasure, felt by All.”

Montreal truly discovered its own potential of excitement during the twentieth century. Between the 1920s to the late 1960s, Montreal was one of the most lively, thrilling and somewhat decadent cities in North America. St-Laurent Boulevard, a.k.a “The Main,” was the epicenter of a effervescent nightlife: cabarets, gaming houses and brothels were everywhere, welcoming, at all hours of day or night, a crowd of night birds, many of whom came from the United States or Europe.

Here’s a glimpse at one of the most exciting pages of Montreal’s history; one which largely contributed to its modern uniqueness. Continue reading →