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 →

Marie-Joseph Angelique: Remembering the Arsonist Slave of Montreal

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Montreal’s Place Marie-Josèphe Angélique. Photo by author.

By Mireille Mayrand-Fiset

When wandering around the streets of Old Montreal, one may come across a public square facing City Hall named Place Marie-Josèphe Angélique. Most people will not give much thought to it, unaware that the woman who gave her name to the square was once accused of setting fire to the very streets they are walking on.

Marie-JosephAngélique was a black slave who lived in New France during the early eighteenth century. Her fascinating story reveals a facet of our history that remained hidden for a long time and that is, still today, widely unknown to the public: the presence of slaves in New France. Continue reading →

New Paper: Jason Ellis: The History of Education As “Active History”: A Cautionary Tale?

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ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to announce the publication of Jason Ellis’s paper The History of Education As “Active History”: A Cautionary Tale?

This paper looks at the long tradition of “active history” within the history of education field. It traces the active history of education’s influence on teacher preparation programs, on educational policymaking and reform, and on activism in education, from approximately 1890 to the present. The paper also examines some of the consequences of the active history of education. In the history of education field, right wing school reformers in the 1980s and 1990s used active histories written by New Left historians in the 1960s and 1970s to draw up and justify blueprints for market-based school reform and privatization. In 2012, some people see these reforms as imperilling the continued existence of the American public school system. Is the “active history” of education therefore a cautionary tale? What happens when active histories are used to further political goals that the authors of those histories may not have foreseen or intended?

Click here to continue reading

Editors Note: In addition to our group blog, ActiveHistory.ca strives to provide timely, well-written and thoroughly researched papers on a variety of history-related topics. This is an area of our website that we would like to develop further. If you have a paper that you think resonates well with our mandate please consider submitting a paper to us.  Expanded conference papers or short essays that introduce an upcoming book project are great starting points for the type of paper we publish. With a current readership of about 10,000 people per month we can assure that you will find an interested audience through our site.

For more information visit our Papers Section or contact papers@activehistory.ca. All of our papers are peer reviewed to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date. 

Review of the People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada

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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 →

Cemetery Tour Reveals War of 1812 Stories

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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 →

Active History on Stage: Party People at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

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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 →

Canada’s Farming Roots: Agricultural Fairs and Education

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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 →

Call for Posters: National Council on Public History 2013 Conference

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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.

History Slam Episode Five with Laurie Bertram

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Event Announcement: What’s the Use of History? Citizenship and History in Canada’s Past and Present

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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, ONInspired 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:

  • Heidi Bohaker, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, University of Toronto
  •  Sean Kheraj, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, York University
  • Steven Maynard, Adjunct Lecturer, Dept. of History, Queen’s University
  • Sean Mills,  Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, University of Toronto
  • Pam Sugiman, Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Ryerson University.

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.