Learning from the Swollen Rivers of the Past

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By Thomas Peace

I may be cursed. Everywhere I move flooding seems to follow.  Last fall, my family and I moved to White River Junction, Vermont. On an apartment hunt, my father and I arrived in the Green Mountain State immediately following Hurricane Irene.  Pulling into Rutland we were told that there were no roads open that crossed the state east to west. Every road had been washed out. Indeed, the devastation Irene caused was still a lead news story in the area when we left at the beginning of August, a year later. We arrived in Nova Scotia to some dry weather, but here too we’ve seen one of the wettest September’s on record.  One of these weather systems, associated with Tropical Storm Leslie, broke through a number of dykes around Truro, bringing significant flooding to Nova Scotia’s “Hub Town.”

There are a lot of differences between these two “weather events,” not the least of which was their scale and damage. What links them together, though, is that in both cases similar flooding had taken place in the past. Although these events are tragedies, much of the damage was predictable, though not always avoidable. Continue reading →

Exposing Nature: Aerial Photography as Witness and Memorial in Bonshaw, Prince Edward Island

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Campers near the current Stop Plan B Protest; Photo courtesy of PEI Museum and Heritage

By Dr Josh MacFadyen
[Cross-posted on The Otter]
The technologies that have helped enclose us from nature may also help expose us, exposing us to hidden and fragile ecosystems and the common efforts to protect them. Environmental historians argue that the average North American has less contact with the natural environment than any previous generation; we simply spend less of our lives in natural ecosystems. Most of us have never even seen a relatively undisturbed forest, plain, tundra, or estuary.

In places like Bonshaw, Prince Edward Island, where the Provincial Government has matched Federal “Atlantic Gateway” funds for a Trans-Canada Highway Realignment through streams and endangered stands of hemlock forest, it might seem like local residents donít know or donít care about what is at stake. Yet, even as excavators roll in, a growing community of digitally inter-connected protesters on the site has ignited a new interest in this small ecosystem and its human and non-human residents. If technology is partly to blame for our complacency and retreat from nature, can it also be part of the solution?
Continue reading →

Enterprise: Labour and Gender History through the Photographer’s lens

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By Andrew Nurse

I remember exactly where I was when the Enterprise Fawcett Foundry caught fire: the Mount Allison University gym watching the girls basketball team play the Crandall University Blue Wave. I coach the local bantam girls basketball team (go Titans!) and we coaches had decided to take our girls out to see the game: a fun thing to do, team building. Part way through the game my girls and a few of the parents who stayed along with my co-coaches started talking to each other, relaying information they received over their iPhones or Blackberries or whatever other mobile communication device they use. The Foundry was on fire and it was a big fire. At first I was left out of the discussion since I’m one of those Luddites who doesn’t own an iPhone. I needed to rely on my daughter for information. News of the fire soon overtook the game as a discussion in the stands. This might have been because the game was out of control (the hometown Mounties were winning handily) but it also might be because of the importance of the Foundry: to local employment, working-class identity, and history. Continue reading →

Ontario vs. Education

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By Ryan Kelly

A friend of mine with decades of bargaining experience once told me, “No one has ever sat down to a bargaining table and had management say: ‘Sounds good! We have enough money to cover all of that.’” There are many nuances to negotiations, many ingrained in the processes as described in the Ontario Labour Relations Act. Negotiations are as much art as they are science and, optimally, both sides should feel satisfied with the outcome. What is certain is: 1. Everything in our collective agreements has been fought for and won through good faith practices, and 2. Historically, in Canada, union activity has resulted in improved standards for all workers. This last point is richly illustrated by unionized workers’ access to improved wages, pensions, and benefits. Enter Bill 115, new Ontario legislation that strips education workers’ rights to all of the above compensations and much, much more. Continue reading →

Lobstick: Canada’s next symbol?

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“The Sentinel.” Drawing by author.

By Merle Massie

When Senator Nicole Eaton called for Canada to declare a new biopolitical symbol in the fall of 2011, she suggested replacing the ‘dentally defective rat’ –– known as beaver, or castor Canadensis –– with the perhaps more ‘stately’ polar bear. In one simple suggestion, she set off a firestorm of controversy across Canada’s social and public media landscape.

My students in the western Canadian history class at the University of Saskatchewan took a straw poll. By show of hands, who wants the beaver as the national animal symbol? Who wants the polar bear? Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Six with John Resch: The American Perspective on the War of 1812

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History Slam! Host Sean Graham with Professor John Resch.

By Sean Graham

The History Slam has gone international! In this edition I chat with John Resch of the University of New Hampshire – Manchester and get the American perspective of the War of 1812. So while people across the country commemorate the Canadian point of view of the war, Professor Resch describes how the Americans feel about the conflict. We talk about the American desire to obtain Canada, national sovereignty, and William Henry Harrison even makes a cameo! Continue reading →

The Historical Roots of Today’s Climate of Apathy

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Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667

By Dagomar Degroot

In recent weeks widespread outrage over the publication of Kate Middleton’s topless photos has existed in strange parallel with a decidedly muted response to a shocking acceleration of Arctic melting. While every day brought new stories of royal indignation and litigation to the front pages of major newspapers, concern over the plight of our increasingly topless planet was tucked away in corners of the internet, where many comments were, as ever, skeptical at best. Nevertheless, our destruction or, at least, transformation of the planet’s environment continues despite our apathy and cynicism. This summer Arctic ice cover fell to 3.41 square kilometers, a decline by an area the size of Texas against the previous minimum and some 50% lower than the average between 1979 and 2000. The reasons for enduring public skepticism of climate science and global warming have been examined at length – most eloquently in Naomi Oreskes’ and Eric Conway’s Merchants of Doubt – but the causes for the apathy of believers are less clear. Continue reading →

The Day the Music Died: Remembering Sam the Record Man

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“Sam the Record Man,” photo by 24by36. Creative Commons License.

By Jay Young

The passing of Sam “the Record Man” Sniderman at the age of 92 filled the airwaves, newspaper pages, and conversations on the street in Toronto this past week.  Sniderman owned the largest chain of record stores in Canada and ardently promoted the Canadian music industry.  Many people expressed warm memories of the entrepreneur and his flagship shop on Yonge Street.  His death has also prompted Canadians – and especially Torontonians – to reflect on change along downtown Yonge Street and within the Canadian music industry over the past half century. Continue reading →

The Sound Canadian Research Behind Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

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By Mark J. McLaughlin

September 2012 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. In this influential book, Carson argued exhaustively that the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides such as DDT for industrial and agricultural purposes was detrimental to ecosystems and human health. Generally well received by the public, Silent Spring helped fuel the development of modern environmentalism around the world in the 1960s and 1970s. This growth in environmental awareness subsequently compelled various governments, among other things, to put in place regulatory frameworks for the use of pesticides and to even ban certain kinds, including DDT. Continue reading →

Myth-making and the Non-Commemoration of the War of 1812

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By Greg Kennedy

The government is trying really hard to make Canadians feel like the War of 1812 was important.  Variations of these themes announced on the government’s website, 1812.gc.ca, are routinely expressed by politicians, directors of heritage sites and members of local historical societies:

“Canada would not exist had the American invasion of 1812-15 been successful.”

The war “set the stage for the emergence of an independent Canada.”

The war “gave Canadians a sense of shared experience and relationships.”

 This is nonsense.  American war aims, the rhetoric of the war hawks notwithstanding, did not centre on annexing the colonies of British North America.  Carl Benn explains that the Americans intended to occupy Upper Canada, and perhaps Montréal, in order to force the British to give in on other more important issues, namely, American territorial expansion to the south and west, as well as freedom for American transatlantic commerce Continue reading →