Esyllt Jones and Adele Perry, eds. People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011).
Reviewed by E.L. Payseur
I was asked to write a review of the People’s Citizenship Guide as someone who has fairly recently taken the Canadian citizenship test, and not as the historian I am. It is extremely difficult to separate these two identities, but I will do my best to write as a mere mortal, rather than as an historian. Continue reading
By Kayla Jonas
Group on Tour of the Hamilton Municipal Cemetery, Photo by Author
As a heritage lover I’ve been on walking tours in cities all around the world. Everywhere I go I like to get the city’s history by walking around and seeing the sights. But I’d never been on a cemetery tour, and surprisingly never on a tour in my hometown of Hamilton. A recent tour given by historian Robin McKee of the Hamilton Municipal Cemetery was one of the best walking tours I’ve ever been on and revealed many layers of the War of 1812 in Hamilton. Continue reading
By Daniel Ross
Party People. Christopher Livingston. Photo by Jenny Graham.
How do we create art about history? Can we make it powerful, relevant, and pedagogical? What happens when the people whose lives and struggles we portray are still alive – and in the audience? Anyone making art about the past has to come to grips with questions like these. But it’s rare to find artists comfortable enough with the practice of history to build an entire piece around answering them. Bronx-based collective UNIVERSES does just that with the play Party People, which tells the story of the Black Panthers and Young Lords movements in the 1960s and early 70s. Continue reading
By Krista McCracken
Calves and Sheep, George Horlor, 1891.20. Black County Museum.
One of my favourite rural Canadian moments occurred when I was a child attending the International Plowing Match. I was standing with my parents in front of a pen that held two young calves, when a young girl yelled “Look at the sheep, Mom!” The girl was at least eight years old and apparently didn’t know the difference between a sheep and a cow. My farming childhood mind was boggled. Looking back, perhaps the girl simply misspoke and really meant to say cow. However, the incident serves as a glimpse into why community agricultural fairs and large agriculture events like the International Plowing Match matter. Continue reading
The National Council on Public History (NCPH) invites proposals for the Poster Session at the 2013 Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Ontario. The conference will take place April 17-20, 2013 at the Delta Ottawa City Centre.
The Theme of the Conference is “Knowing your Public(s) – The Significance of Audiences in Public History.”
The Annual Meeting Poster Session is a format for presentations about projects that use visual evidence. It offers an alternative for presenters eager to share their work through one-on-one discussion, can be especially useful for work-in-progress, and may be a particularly appropriate format where visual or material evidence represents a central component of the project.
Poster proposals must be received by November 1, 2012.
For more information, click here.
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In this edition of the history slam I talk to Laurie Bertram about her upcoming exhibit Pioneer Ladies [of the evening], which opens this week at the Human Ecology Gallery at the University of Alberta and has previously been on display in Winnipeg. We chat about material culture, the role of trauma in history, and perhaps the coolest research trip in the history of the discipline. The exhibit is open until November 5 so if you’re in the area, be sure to check it out!
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.
What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 16 2012
Palmerston Branch, Toronto Public Library
560 Palmerston Ave., Toronto, ON
Inspired by the newly published People’s Citizenship Guide (Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011), this roundtable of historians will discuss how concepts of citizenship have changed over the past century, and how history has been mobilized to create particular understandings of citizenship.
Panelists include:
In the lead-up to the event, ActiveHistory.ca will feature blog posts from the panelists on the themes that will be explored during the roundtable.
By Christine McLaughlin
On a hot summer day, few activities are more pleasant than a visit to your nearest waterfront to enjoy a cool dip or a stroll along a breezy beach. In my own heavily (de)industrialized city, where the landscape is dotted with abandoned factories, vacant fenced lots, and a few industrial complexes that still produce in the city, Lakeview Park, nestled along the shore of Lake Ontario, serves as an oasis for local residents and weekend visitors from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA); it serves as a much-needed escape from the daily grind of urban life. For those who prefer a less manicured scene, a leisurely stroll along the Waterfront Trail will lead to Second Marsh, an environmentally protected wetland.
In this context, the outrage of local residents who discovered last month that an ethanol refinery will be built on Oshawa’s harbour, which borders Lakeview Park and Second Marsh, is certainly justifiable. The proposed facility will extend as high as twelve stories, and could attract up to 300 truckloads of corn a day. Longstanding local opposition to this facility is rooted in concerns over the detrimental environmental, social and cultural impact this poses to the waterfront. Continue reading
Image from PEI Visitors Guide (2005), p. 18.
By Alan MacEachern
Once in a while, historians come up with an idea, do some research, analyze it, write that up, and find we have something resembling a book. Or maybe it turns out to be an article. Or a blog post. In those cases, we attach our name to it and send it out into the world. But what about those stray and idiosyncratic findings that don’t even rise to the status of a blog post, and deserve a longer life than a tweet?
So here’s my idea: The Acknowledgments Project. You post stuff you’ve found that you know you can’t use as well as someone else probably can. If someone can use it, great. If when they write it up they acknowledge your little contribution, great. Whatevs. Continue reading
Enjoy reading about the experiences of people who lived in the past? Love learning about the history of places that mean something to you? If so, then you might want to review a book for us at ActiveHistory.ca. We are looking for new book reviewers – people who are currently outside of university history departments who will read and comment on recent history books. These reviews will be added to our book review section.
Please continue reading to see a short list of some of the history books published in Canada recently: Continue reading
