10th Annual(?) Year in Review (100 Years Later): Final

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By Aaron Boyes and Sean Graham

After three weeks, hundreds of votes, and some excruciatingly tough matchups, it’s time to determine the most important event of 1922. But before we do that, we have some business to attend to from last week’s Final Four.

Ottoman Empire Collapses defeats Japan Launches First Purpose Built Aircraft Carrier (22-13)

Vitamin D Isolated ties TV Receiver Patented (10-10)

For the first time ever, we have a tie! Now, we don’t actually have an established tiebreaker procedure, but not having a clear plan has never stopped us before.

After debating for hours, and creating a tie-breaking procedure so convoluted that even the NHL was impressed by its complexity, we asked Aaron’s 6 year-old to pick the winner. And just like the NHL, the fans are likely to be unhappy with the result.

Editor’s note: I finally got off the plane and made Sean and Aaron actually discuss each event and come up with a way to determine a winner. Ultimately, we decided to go with the total cumulative votes received over the previous two rounds. As a result, TV Receiver Patented is moving on the final.

We submit to you our thoughts, but ultimately the decision is yours. So submit your vote in the poll at the end of the post or add a comment stating which of these events you think deserves to be crowned the most important event of 1922.

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The Importance of the Past – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

For as long as people have been doing history, there have been debates over how to best share the stories of the past. In recent years, this has revolved around discussions over teaching history and ways to better engage people with the history that shapes our daily lives. In this episode, I explore these themes with Trilby Kent, author of The Vanishing Past: Making the Case for the Future of History. We discuss the ways in which history is taught across Canada, the importance of historical knowledge within public life, and ways historians can move beyond the insular discussions that too often define the discipline.

Historical Headline of the Week

Roscoe Oliver, “Biography and Autobiography,” The Maple Leaf, April 23, 1931.

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A woman erased from history: The ghosting of Rae Luckock

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Official portrait of Rae Luckock, MPP 1943-45, Ontario Legislative Assembly.

Dean Beeby

This is a story about a famous woman erased.

The ghosting of Toronto’s Rae Luckock (1893-1972) is a case study of the fate of many outspoken women, including feminists. Remembering her is a form of belated justice, a grim reminder of the silencing, even today, of women who threaten the status quo. Continue reading →

10th Annual Year in Review (100 Years Later): Final Four

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By Aaron Boyes and Sean Graham

We’re down to the Final Four. Be sure to cast your vote for which should move on to next Friday’s final

After two rounds of intense voting, we have our Final Four. And, much like in Round One, we are (mostly) in agreement with how the people have thus far voted.

Elite Eight Results: 

TV Receiver Patented over Nosferatu Released (29-5)

Japan Launches Purpose Built First Aircraft Carrier over Canadian Tire (21-11)

Vitamin D Isolated over First Steel Tape Measure (28-7)

Ottoman Empire Collapses over USSR Founded (20-14)

In this penultimate round, we have two tough matchups. We have a technological innovation against a medical/scientific discovery, and one Empire’s collapse against a purpose-built ship of, at the time, a budding Empire.

We have provided our thoughts on which we think are the most important, but which events make it to the finals is up to you.

You can vote by using the Twitter polls embedded herein, by sending us a DM (@theseangraham and @aaronboyes1), or an email to historyslam@gmail.com. Voting ends on Monday and the Enrico Palazzo Pre-Memorial Championship will go live next Friday, December 16.

Final Four

Ottoman Empire Collapses

v.

Japan Launches First Purposefully Built Air Craft Carrier

Sean: Plot twist – I actually think the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is the more important of the two in this matchup. I know that goes against everything I have advocated for over the last 10 years (PLANES!), but that just goes to show how significant the Ottoman Empire and its demise was in human history.

A good way to think about the Ottoman’s comes from Alan Mikhail, who has suggested that if we look at history from an eastern rather than western perspective, we would find that the Muslim world was the driving force in global events for centuries. He argues that nations in Western Europe viewed things like colonial expansion as part of their larger struggle against Islam. Within a framework where containing the Ottomans was central, things like the slave trade, Protestant Reformation, and militarization are inextricably linked to the Empire. Mikhail has even gone so far as to argue that the Ottoman Empire made our modern world.

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A Samurai Suit in Fort Smith & A Blanket of Butterflies – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham 

Samurai armour at the museum in Fort Smith, NWT.

Fort Smith, NWT is probably not where you would expect to find a suit of samurai armour and sword, but at the local museum that’s exactly what you can find. When he first saw it, author Richard Van Camp started to think about all the possibilities of how it got there. The result is A Blanket of Butterflies, which is the first volume of The Spirit of Denendeh. This beautiful new edition, illustrated in full colour for the first time, tells the story of a young Dene boy and his grandmother helping a Japanese man recover his grandfather’s armour. Through the story, Van Camp addresses questions of colonialism, knowledge transmission, and the complicated legacy of Second World War-era mining in the North.

Historical Headline of the Week

“Echoes of the Atomic Age: Cancer Kills Fourteen Aboriginal Uranium Workers,” Calgary Herald, March 14, 1998

To learn more about RIchard’s work, visit him at RichardVanCamp.com

You can watch A Village of Widows here.

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Should non-Indigenous scholars learn Indigenous languages? What it’s been like learning Kanyen’kéha as a settler historian

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Photo of a blonde woman in a green sweater holding three books. The book at the front of the stack is titled "Kanyen'keha Tewatati (Let's Speak Mohawk)."

Elizabeth McKenzie holding three Kanyen’kéha dictionaries.
Image Credit: Elizabeth McKenzie

Elizabeth McKenzie

A few weeks back, I was presenting at a conference in Niagara Falls on some of my research that looks at the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s longstanding, continual sovereignty, and the failure of the League of Nations in 1924 to uphold the rights of the traditional governing council in the wake of a Canadian military coup at Six Nations of the Grand River. The paper was one of my first attempts at integrating Kanyen’kéha (Mohawk) into my work as a settler historian. Not only is the title of my paper in both Kanyen’kéha and English, but I also began my presentation with an introduction in the language that paid my respects to both the audience and the land that I was visiting. I hope to do more of this in the future because I believe that it is essential for settlers, and particularly settler scholars, to participate in language revitalization movements. When we talk about reconciliation and restoring our relationships with Indigenous communities, we need to understand Indigenous worldviews and what it means to honour the true spirit and intent of the treaties that were established over the territories we call home, or conduct research in. Learning an Indigenous language is a powerful step towards doing so.

I’ve been learning Kanyen’kéha for a little over a year now. Continue reading →

10th Annual Year in Review (100 Years Later): Elite Eight

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By Aaron Boyes and Sean Graham

Last week we launched our annual Year in Review (100 Years Later), but this time with a bit of a twist: reader voting to determine who moves on. After hundreds of votes on Twitter, Instagram, and through email, we tallied everything up and determined which events have moved on in their quest to be crowned the most important of 1922 and join the elite group of past winners. With one glaring exception, we’re ok with the first round results, which played out like this:

Discoveries Bracket

Vitamin D Isolated defeated King Tut’s Tomb Discovered (105-30)

Steel Tape Measure Invented defeated Good Humor Bar Invented (111-24)

Around the World Bracket

USSR Founded defeated Mussolini Becomes Prime Minister of Italy (108-27)

Ottoman Empire Collapses defeated British Mandate of Palestine Begins (81-39)

Entertainment Bracket

Nosferatu Released defeated First Little Rascals Short Films (69-42)

TV Receiver Patented defeated BBC Founded (72-63)

Potpourri Bracket

Japan Launches First Purposefully built Air Craft Carrier defeated First Mid-Air Collision of Commercial Air-Liners (66-45)

Canadian Tire Founded defeated MLB Monopoly (96-33)

So this week we assess the winners as we see who will make it to the Final Four. Like last week, you can vote via the Twitter polls embedded here, through a comment on the post, or through email at historyslam@gmail.com

Discoveries Bracket

2) Steel Tape Measure Invented

 v.

4) Vitamin D Isolated

Sean: What is particularly notable about any science-related topic we cover in these brackets – at least as two non-scientists – is that the discovery is frequently just the start of something bigger. In the case of vitamin D, for instance, it led to further experiments on animal fats and UV rays as cures for rickets. Essentially, now that scientists had access to Elmer McCollum’s experiments, they could push the science forward in an effort to find the best possible way for people to get the vitamin D they needed. It serves as a stark reminder that science isn’t static. Knowledge through experimentation continues and we, as lay people, need to be conscious of that.

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Substance Use, Overdose Deaths, & Shared Humanity: What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

In this episode, I explore the history of substance use disorders and overdose deaths in Canada, which have regularly be presented through a moral lens. By othering those experiencing substance use disorders, policymakers have created an environment where ensuring support is available to users and their families is not a priority. To highlight the importance of approaching this issue with humanity, I am joined by Tara McGuire, author of Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose. In telling the story of her son, Tara honours him while also sharing their collective story. Poignant and powerful, the book shows how community and compassion are central to addressing the issue.

Historical Headline of the Week

“Death of Dope,” Vancouver Daily Sun, April 28, 1921

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Raising Awareness about Canada’s Indian Day Schools with Digital History

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Jackson Pind and Sean Carleton

Many Canadians are finally coming to terms with the truth that the Canadian government, in co-operation with Christian churches, ran a genocidal school system targeting Indigenous Peoples for more than a century.

What most people do not realize, however, is that Canada’s system of “Indian education” was not limited to Indian Residential Schools. It also included combined schools (for settler and Indigenous students), sanatoriums and tuberculosis hospitals, and a vast network of nearly 700 federally funded and church-run Indian Day Schools, which were attended by an estimated 200,000 Indigenous people between 1870 and 2000.

In its 2015 Final Report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) showed Canadians the truth about the IRS system, but there will be no such truth-telling commission for Indian Day Schools. Instead, there is a national Class Action that seeks acknowledgement and compensation for the damages and abuses suffered by Survivors who attended Indian Day Schools and were excluded from the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement. The Class Action deadline closed on July 13, 2022, but Class Members can now apply for an extension until January 13, 2023.

To help support Survivors and to raise more awareness about Indian Day Schools in Canada, we are writing this article to share more information about the system through our recent work using digital history and GIS (or Geographic Information System) mapping.

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Archiving Twitter During the Upheaval

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Derek Cameron runs a twitter collection code. Photo Credit: Kyle Stringer

By Derek Cameron

When Jim Clifford and I started archiving the Canadian conversations about COVID-19 on Twitter, it did not seem an urgent task. While Musk had made overtures to buy twitter on 13 April 2022, he had cooled by May. Similarly, we didn’t have the forethought to imagine that six months later, Musk would fire half of the 7,500-strong workforce or that he would follow this up by canceling remote work, and demanding “hardcore” commitments, which led hundreds more to quit. In recent weeks, our leisurely approach to mining Twitter for the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan project gained new urgency.

Jim and I are exploring how COVID-19 policies in Saskatchewan were received by residents of the province. While it would be possible to get glimpses of this through traditional print sources, or cursory glances into social media, we knew that a fuller picture would emerge by systematically analyzing social media. We also see this as a way to test the new digital methods historians will need to learn to study the history of the pandemic, where the internet is now the main repository of primary sources.  As a result, we decided we would capture tweets from politicians, activists, and journalists. More importantly, however, we wanted to know what everyday people were saying in reply. Luckily for us, Twitter provides great access for Academic researchers for free to capture ten million tweets per month and the ability to request tweets from the platform’s launch until the present. But that access, as discussed below, may not last. Continue reading →