Active History

The History Wars: Where is the Media?

November 26, 2012 3 Comments

Last week the Globe and Mail published an editorial about the video game Assassins Creed III . According to the Globe’s editors, the video game distorts the history of the American War of Independence by suggesting that native people (the protagonist, Ratonhnhaké:ton, is Mohawk) fought alongside the rebelling colonies. Both gamers and historians quickly and resoundingly condemned the Globe‘s opinion as factually flawed (see here, here, and my own letter to the editor, here, for a sample of the critiques). I don’t want to rehash these critiques here. Instead, I want to ask some more pointed questions about why the Globe decided to run this piece in the first place.

It’s not everyday that a national newspaper decides to pick on an individual business over the quality of its product. Continue reading →

The Mosaic vs. the Melting Pot? A Roundtable and Podcast

November 23, 2012 4 Comments

American Liberty stirs the Melting Pot. Source: http://chnm.gmu.edu/exploring/images/stir.jpg

By Benjamin Bryce

Over the past century, the ‘mosaic’ and the ‘melting pot’ have emerged in North America as concepts to explain Canada and the United States’ relationship with immigration and cultural pluralism. The term mosaic traces its origins to John Murray Gibbon’s 1938 book, Canadian Mosaic, while the melting pot emerged in public consciousness as the result of Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play, The Melting Pot.

The two concepts remain powerful today because they are ideas about history. They contain a belief in collective belonging, upward mobility, and citizenship. The two phrases in fact describe national ideologies that embody how many Canadians and Americans think about integration as well as cultural and linguistic pluralism.

Many Canadians view the melting pot as the opposite of the mosaic and official multiculturalism. However, as the roundtable participants discuss, the two ideologies have much in common and mask many similarities when we examine the everyday realities of cultural pluralism in North America.

In this public roundtable discussion, five historians from the United States and Canada discuss the origins and development of these national myths. Grace Delgado demonstrates the ongoing importance of the melting pot for notions of citizenship. She examines how ideas of national belonging and exclusion are currently mobilized in Arizona. Patricia Burke Wood compares the concepts of the mosaic and melting pot, tying them to today’s multiculturalism. She criticizes the simplicity of the terms while also highlighting their noble idealism.

Russell Kazal examines the inception of the Canadian and American term multiculturalism, tracing it back to ideas of inter-racialism in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Randy Widdis presents the concept of transculturalism as an alternative. David Atkinson sheds light on the origins of the American melting pot, emphasizing its importance in American nation-building. He also discusses the ways that many people, particularly Randolph Bourne, challenged the myth of the melting pot in the early twentieth century.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

To watch a video of the podcast, click here. Continue reading →

Lost Villages, Collaboration, and Capturing History

November 22, 2012 2 Comments

Downtown Aultsville. Copyright Louis Helbig (http://www.sunkenvillages.ca/)

By Daniel Macfarlane

A picture might be worth a thousand words; but great photos combined with a hundred thousand words can be even more powerful. And that’s what this post is about: the power of photography and art, doing history, and the benefits of collaboration.

The subject of my doctoral dissertation, finished almost two years, was the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project. I’ve been revising and expanding it, and it is getting close to publication as a book. I’ve published on and talked about the creation of this megaproject in multiple forums. Basically, I have a lot to say about it.

Sometimes the historian’s dream happens, and people actually want to hear what I have to say (you know, you give your canned 20-second summary of what you do … and then they want more!) Of course, that isn’t always the reaction, so if I really want to get people interested in the topic, I tell them about the Lost Villages (the communities relocated because of the flooding waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project in the 1950s) and show them some of Louis Helbig’s photography. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Nine: Prime Minister Fantasy Draft

November 21, 2012 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

When I was an MA student in Regina, I was talking to somebody about how great it would be if there could be a historical figures fantasy league. With the success of fantasy football and fantasy hockey, I figured that some sort of fantasy league could really boost the interest in history. The biggest problem was trying to figure out how points would be scored – where football and hockey players continue to score goals and touchdowns, a lot of historical figures suffer from the unfortunate medical condition of being deceased. As such, it would be hard to accumulate points. Given that one of the best parts of fantasy sports is the draft, however, we decided that we could do the draft and let the listeners decide who has the best team.

Canada has had twenty-two people serve as Prime Minister and in this podcast Aaron Boyes, Patrick Fournier, Mike Thompson, and I sit down and each draft teams of four. Our rationale for our picks is laid out in the podcast (and each of us provide a brief recap below) and now it’s up to you to determine whose team is best. You can vote in this poll or via email at historyslam@gmail.com or send your vote to me on Twitter @drseannysfever . We’ll be back in a few weeks to recap the draft and announce the winner.

Continue reading →

Environment and Citizenship in Canadian History

November 20, 2012 1 Comment

Trail Smelter, 1943

By Sean Kheraj

This is the second in a series of posts originally presented as part of a roundtable entitled “What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present,” held in Toronto on October 16th 2012. The event was organized by the People’s Citizenship Guide Project.

In 2009, many historians criticized the federal government for its publication of a new citizenship guide titled, Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship. The new guide represented a significant shift in the portrayal of Canadian history when compared to the previous guide, published in 1997. Ian McKay’s 2011 lecture at the 15th Annual New Frontiers in Graduate History conference at York University in Toronto offered one of the sharpest rebukes of the new citizenship guide in which he argued that the guide attempts to re-conceptualize Canada as a conservative, militant nation.

In addition to reconstructing Canadian history with a remarkable (and sometimes absurd) emphasis on military history and the British monarchy, Discover Canada takes a peculiar approach to its definition of citizenship, which implies that Canadian citizens have a responsibility to protect the environment. Under the section on “Citizenship Responsibilities,” the guide reads: “Every citizen has a role to play in avoiding waste and pollution while protecting Canada’s natural, cultural and architectural heritage for future generations.” The language is reminiscent of the Canada National Parks Act, which stipulates that “[t]he national parks of Canada are hereby dedicated to the people of Canada for their benefit, education and enjoyment… and the parks shall be maintained and made use of so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Discover Canada explicitly suggests that the protection of the environment is one of six responsibilities of citizenship along with “Obeying the law,” “Taking responsibility for oneself and one’s family,” “Serving on a jury,” “Voting in elections,” and “Helping others in the community.” The reason that this approach to the definition of citizenship is peculiar is that Canadian citizenship does not, in fact, include any responsibilities. Continue reading →

An Historic Voyageur in Modern Times

November 19, 2012 1 Comment

By Jay Bailey

Early in my career as a French teacher in Manitoba, I took students to the Festival du Voyageur in St. Boniface, Winnipeg. There I was fascinated by the life and times, the strength, stamina and joie-de-vivre of the voyageurs. In addition, I was intrigued by the fact that the fur trade was dependent on the vagaries of fashion in Europe, the fact that our rivers and lakes line up more or less east-west, the native invention of the birch bark canoe, the willingness of young French Canadians, and later natives and Métis, to risk their lives in the trade, and the already well-established system of, and predisposition to, trade among the First Nations of North America. I was very impressed that, lacking any one of those factors, we would likely not have a Canada from coast-to-coast. Well supported by the Manitoba curriculum, les voyageurs, which focused on some of the most colourful characters in Canadian history, became my favourite teaching unit.

Upon moving to southern Ontario, I discovered that very few French teachers there knew much about les voyageurs. In 1990, a colleague asked me to bring the experience to her school. I jumped at the chance, and by the time I retired from full-time teaching in 2006, I had given more than 100 presentations at schools in and outside my own school board.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to live the life of the voyageurs. We got up, loaded the canoe and were on the water as soon as there was light enough to see we weren’t leaving anything behind. After 1500 kilometres and 61 days in birch bark canoes, from Ottawa back to Ottawa by way of Lake Ontario, Georgian Bay and the French River, paddling eight hours a day (wimpy by comparison to the 15-18 hours a day of the voyageurs), sleeping on the ground in a bedroll at night (groundsheet, two woolen blankets, oilcloth sheet overtop if the rain or the bugs were really bad), paddling, wading, lining or portaging canoes and all our period-correct equipment, cold pea soup and bannock to eat, flint and steel to make fire, I felt qualified to say I was an authentic voyageur. Among other skills, I know what to do without matches, dry wood, toilet paper or bug spray. Continue reading →

Towards a History of the Americas: Thoughts and a Podcast

November 16, 2012 No Comments

By Benjamin Bryce

Canadians frequently draw comparisons to the United States, but they rarely extend their gaze further south. Nevertheless, in a number of areas, Canadian history has been connected to that of several other countries in the Americas. For example, the Canadian government’s policies toward aboriginal people find many analogies in other parts of the Western Hemisphere. In areas ranging from land dispossession under the auspices of nineteenth-century liberalism to assimilationist education efforts driven by a civilizing mission, Canada stands beside Chile, Peru, and Mexico almost as much as the United States. In addition, the idea that an emergent network of public schools would promote civic cohesion and ethnic homogeneity in the late-nineteenth century links Canada not only to the United States but also Argentina.

Canadians’ interest in and reaction to mass migration in the early-twentieth century integrated the country into larger North American system. Yet just as playwright Israel Zangwill coined the phrase “the melting pot” in his 1908 play, elites, politicians, and educators in Argentina and Brazil articulated very similar ideas. Zangwill’s protagonist proclaimed that “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.” It is indeed revealing that José María Ramos Mejía, a prominent Argentine intellectual and politician, made similar references to crucibles and racialized European ethnicity when he declared in 1910, “It is in the school that we can find the necessary strength to melt and amalgamate the different races that are constantly flooding the country.”
Continue reading →

The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Research, and the Public

November 14, 2012 1 Comment

The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, 34 Isabella St., Toronto. Photo by Don McLeod.

By Donald W. McLeod

Next year will be the fortieth anniversary of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA), which began as a single filing cabinet in the Toronto office of the newsmagazine Body Politic, and has grown into a dynamic organization. We presently have a volunteer board of nine members, a paid general manager, seventy volunteers (forty of whom are very active), and an annual budget of about $170,000.

Since 2009 we have been located in a heritage house at 34 Isabella Street, in the heart of downtown Toronto and the gay village. Unfortunately, the house on Isabella isn’t nearly large enough to house all of our collections, so we also rent a 2,000-square-foot storage space in a modern office building at 65 Wellesley Street, about four blocks away.

When it began, the CLGA was a “total archive,” collecting all manner of items that might be of potential interest to LGBT research. Our focus was on Canada, but we also collected internationally. We have archival accessions of the papers of individuals and organizations, a library, vertical files for ready reference, photographs, artwork, posters, moving images and audio collections, and artifacts such as banners, matchbooks, and buttons. We are particularly strong for the era of gay liberation, which in Canada dates from 1964 to the 1990s. Continue reading →

Archives and Social Justice

November 14, 2012 No Comments

Verne Harris (right) and Tim O’Grady at the 2012 Archives Society of Alberta conference. Photo courtesy of the Archives Society of Alberta.

By Tim O’Grady

In 1993 Verne Harris, a records management archivist at the South Africa State Archives Service, discovered some junior officials in the transitional Apartheid government had been told by the state’s security secretariat to destroy certain classified records in contravention of the nation’s Archives Act. After official efforts proved fruitless, Verne told a journalist, as well as the NGO Lawyers for Human Rights, and provided them with supporting documentation. Not only was this a breach of professional practice but it broke the Protection of Information Act which carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The South African government was taken to court and admitted violating the Archives Act. As a result the wide-scale destruction of public records ceased, and the saved documents became an important part of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation process.

This is a dramatic example of where archives and social justice meet, and is a fitting introduction to Verne Harris. In 2001 Verne left the National Archives of South Africa and began working for NGOs. He is currently the head of Memory Programming for the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.

I got the chance to meet Verne when he facilitated a workshop with Terry Cook and Wendy Duff called “Archives for Social Justice,” a precursor to the Archives Society of Alberta conference in April 2012. The workshop and conference gave me the opportunity to think about the implications of social justice in archives and archival practice. Continue reading →

Remembering the War of 1914

November 13, 2012 5 Comments

Vimy Ridge Memorial – Dedication Ceremony

By Jim Clifford

It is very strange to celebrate the start of a war. Nonetheless, this is exactly what we have done here in Canada over the past year. The War of 1812 spanned from June of 1812 through to February of 1815, but this did not stop our government from starting their celebrations of the “Fight for Canada” during the 200th anniversary of the first months of the war. Perhaps they felt the need to keep the schedule open to celebrate the start of another war in 2014.

Canadians commemorate the end of the First World War yearly on Remembrance Day (November 11th), and with memorials, from Vimy Ridge to village cenotaphs. These monuments and sites of remembrance generally bring a somber tone, focus on the sacrifices of war and provide limited space to celebrate the glories of victory.

I hope that any additional events and publicity will bring the same tone, but considering the fanfare for the War of 1812 and the historically dubious claims that we stood side by side and “won the fight for Canada,” I worry that we’ll face an even bigger celebration of Canada’s role in World War One. The United Kingdom government recently announced plans to spend £50,000,000 to commemorate the war starting in 1914 and the Australian government has budgeted $83,500,000. Assuming the Canadian government will spend a similar sum of money, the question remains: Which First World War will we commemorate? Continue reading →

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