By Andrew Nurse
More often then not, Christianity does not enjoy a positive public image. Canadians may be willing to select Tommy Douglas as the “Greatest Canadian,” but one suspects that this had more to do with medicare than his evangelical background. Interestingly, Christianity’s PR problems have a lot to do with history. Continue reading
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A full room at the Waterloo Public Library for "'Whose War Was It, Anyway?' A Round-Table Discussion"
By Jay Young
Not only are interpretations of war up for debate; the reasons behind how and why we remember it are too. On May 30th 2012 a packed Waterloo Public Library hosted a roundtable titled “Whose War Was It, Anyway?” Organized by the Active History Canadian Historical Association (CHA) Committee and supported by The History Education Network/Histoire et Éducation en Réseau (THEN/HiER) and the CHA, the event brought together a handful of historians to discuss not only various perspectives on the War of 1812, but also the meanings that lie behind the most recent moment of commemoration.
ActiveHistory.ca is happy to feature a podcast of the roundtable.
The roundtable concluded an engaging mini-conference on the War of 1812. The conference included presentations on topics such as augmented reality, the relationship between local tourism and the war’s commemoration, and the role of historic peace churches in Upper Canada during the conflict. Continue reading
By Ian Mosby
Charles McKiernan, the original Joe Beef ca. 1875. McCord Museum, UAPT5014
As countless Canadian undergraduates have learned after reading Peter DeLottinville’s classic 1982 article, “Joe Beef of Montreal: Working-Class Culture and the Tavern, 1869-1889,” Joe Beef’s Canteen was more than just your ordinary tavern. Described as the “Great House of Vulgar People” by its larger-than-life proprietor Charles McKiernan – or Joe Beef as he was popularly known – a nineteenth century visitor to this ramshackle Montreal institution would likely have seen a brown bear named Tom drinking ale in the corner, two human skeletons hanging behind the bar, and piece of beef that had caused the death-by-choking of an unfortunate customer on display for all to see. For middle class Montrealers, it was a source of drunkenness, criminality and moral hazard. But, as DeLottinville argues, McKiernan’s working class patrons saw Joe Beef’s Canteen as more than just a place to find food, alcohol and sociability. McKiernan’s support for the unemployed, hungry, and sick – as well as for striking workers – saw the tavern become a kind of makeshift safety net for Montreal’s workers during hard times and, partly as a result of this function, a “stronghold of working class values and culture.”[1]
Although the recently published The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts (2011) begins with selections from DeLottinville’s article – albeit with the discussions of working-class politics and culture noticeably absent – it quickly becomes clear that the form of living described within would be much more recognizable to the educated leisure class that makes up today’s ‘foodie’ universe than the original Joe Beef or his clientele of “sailors and longshoremen, unemployed men and petty thieves.”[2] Written by the founders of contemporary Montreal restaurant Joe Beef – which has been described by celebrity chef and tastemaker David Chang as his “favorite restaurant in the world” – the ‘cookbook’ establishes its distance from this world of unskilled labourers and thieves by presenting the reader with the decadent “Fois Gras Parfait with Madeira Jelly” as its first recipe and by including an entire chapter dedicated to fine French wines. Continue reading
By Dan Horner
The face that glares down from the cover of the June 4th issue of Maclean’s is meant to be unsettling: A protestor scowls at us, his menace heightened by some digital tweaks that bathe the whole scene in a blood red glow. The accompanying headline plays to the dystopian gloom of the image, suggesting that the mob personified by the masked thug on the cover has overthrown the elected government of Quebec.
This is how English Canada’s mainstream news weekly chose to frame the Printemps érable– the wave of protests that began as a response to the Liberal government’s decision to impose a dramatic hike on university tuition rates in the province: As an attack on Quebec’s legitimate political institutions by a gang of masked thugs on the street. This sort of coverage points to the central role that the task of policing urban space plays in this discussion: As with so many past outbreaks of popular protest, the government’s ability to impose its own version of order on the street has become a political battleground. These tensions between crowds, protest and the state are not new. They reflect a tangle of anxieties about the limits of democracy that have persisted for centuries. Continue reading
May 2012 clean-up of oil spill near Rainbow Lake, Alberta
By Sean Kheraj
Late Thursday evening on June 7, 2012, the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group, a not-for-profit society, notified Plains Midstream Canada of a major oil pipeline failure near Sundre, Alberta that spilled an early estimate of between 1,000 and 3,000 barrels of light sour crude oil (~159-477 cubic metres) into Jackson Creek, a tributary of the Red Deer River. The river is one of the province’s most important waterways, providing drinking water for thousands of Albertans.
This recent spill occurred just weeks after another oil pipeline burst in Alberta in late May, spilling an estimated 22,000 barrels of oil and water (~3,497 cubic metres) across 4.3 hectares of muskeg in the northwest part of the province near Rainbow Lake. According to the Globe and Mail, this rupture, which occurred along a pipeline operated by Pace Oil & Gas, Ltd., “ranks among the largest in North America in recent years,” and certainly in the province of Alberta. A couple of weeks after the accident, the company downgraded the estimate to 5,000 barrels of sweet crude oil with no water (~795 cubic metres).
King Family, Gull Bay, Nipigon, Ontario.
By Krista McCracken
Historical photographs can be used to serve a variety of research, personal, and community interests. Images can be used for genealogy, legal testimony, supplementing written historical accounts, and providing windows into the past. Photographs can also be used as important tools in healing, reconciliation, and in the reclamation of lost history.The use of photographs in the reclamation of history resonates most frequently with minorities and repressed peoples. Historically many underrepresented groups simply did not have access to the means to take photographs. This does not mean that photographs were not taken of them by other groups. Continue reading
By Christine McLaughlin
Cliff Pilkey and Bev McCloskey, UAW Local 222 Executive Board, 1955.
Sometimes ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I had the pleasure of witnessing an example of this recently when I attended a tribute luncheon in honour of the 23rd annual Agnes Macphail Award winner, Beverly McCloskey.
Agnes Macphail was the first woman in Canada elected to the House of Commons and first woman sworn into the Legislative Assembly of Ontario where she played a leading role in passing Ontario’s first equal pay legislation in 1951.
Despite this first legislative step, it was still legal in Ontario to employ “girls” in segregated workspaces, enforce separate seniority lists for men and women, and to negotiate very unequal collective agreements on their behalf. For a group of seven women from UAW Local 222 in Oshawa who were capable of doing the same jobs as their male coworkers, this was grossly unfair. More importantly, they set out to change it. Continue reading
By Daniel Macfarlane
Niagara River Remedial Works.
Nik Wallenda’s impending and controversial tightrope walk across Niagara Falls, set for June 15, is just the most recent in a long line of such spectacles (e.g. actually going over the falls!) at the iconic cataract. Given the banality of the carnivalesque at the Niagara Falls – just think of circus-style attractions – it has often interpreted as a touchstone of cultural and social history, ranging from the epitome of the North American natural sublime in past centuries, to the cradle of electricity since the late 19th century, honeymoon central since the mid-20th century, and then serving as a symbol of environmental degradation (Love Canal) in more recent decades.
But I would argue that what is going on underneath Niagara Falls, is much more intriguing, and culturally revealing, if not as made-for-TV dramatic as a tightrope walk. Ontario Power Generation, one of the successor organizations to Ontario Hydro, is set to finish a massive 10.4 km mega-tunnel in 2013 which will take water from above the cataract, funnel it underneath the community of Niagara Falls, Ontario to the Sir Adam Beck powerhouses downstream. But this tunnel is nothing new, as it joins similar diversion tunnels and conduits that were built throughout the 20th century (Canadian Geographic recently featured this tunnel’s construction, including a map of the past and present tunnels, in its April 2012 issue). The soon-to-be-completed tunnel is part of a massive and historic hydro-electric production landscape in which water falling down the Niagara escarpment has been diverted on both sides of the border in order to generate power. Continue reading
By Thomas Peace
In one of her blog posts on THEN/HiER’s Teaching the Past, Samantha Cutrara asked a challenging question that gets to the fundamentals of history education. Who, she asks, is history education for? This question is more complex than it seems, because, depending on the answer, it has a variety of implications for historians and history educators. Implicit in this question is a set of power relations that often remain undisclosed in discussions about history and how it is taught. By probing the implications that develop from the question of ‘who history is for’, it becomes apparent that we must ask a more basic question that helps us better understand the uses and abuses of the past. What do we mean by history education?
Continue reading
This summer marks the two hundredth anniversary of the United States’ declaration of war on Great Britain and her colonies (including what eventually became Canada). The bicentennial of the War of 1812 this summer will be the starting point for a number of commemorations, restorations, re-enactments and monument building. The Government of Canada, under current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reiterated its commitment to supporting commemorations across Canada in its most recent Speech from the Throne. Numerous events planned across the country will serve to “perpetuate the identities of War of 1812 militia units,” as well as to demonstrate, in the words of Heritage Minister James Moore, that “This was the fight for Canada.” A public study conducted recently by the Department of Canadian Heritage, however, points out that many Canadians cannot name the three combatants in the war, and argues that it “may not be something that a lot of Canadians recognize or understand. Continue reading
