Active History

2010 is Year of the British Home Child in Canada but Some Descendants Want More from Ottawa

September 13, 2010 3 Comments

“British immigrant children from Dr. Bernardo’s Homes at landing stage, Saint John, N.B.”, n.d., photo by Isaac Erb, Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN no. 3193366. Copy of an official work published by the Government of Canada, not produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of the Government of Canada

The Government of Canada has declared 2010 to be the Year of the British Home Child. Earlier this month, Canada Post released a commemorative stamp to honour this recognition.

The stamp, designed by Debbie Adams of Adams+Associates Design Consultants, contains three images: the SS Sardinian, on which home children migrated from Britain to Canada; a photograph of a home child engaged in farm labour; a portrait of a newly-arrived boy passing through Halifax en route to Hamilton. The young boy, looking directly at the camera and whose image is enclosed by a metal frame, emerges as the main focus of the stamp. Such a visual device is intentional, as Adams notes that the frame represents the “relationships” home children developed in Canada: “It shows that someone cared enough about this child to preserve and display his image.” Continue reading →

Active History Announcements: Sept 12-18

September 11, 2010 No Comments

The following upcoming events may be of interest to our readers (click on ‘continue reading’ below for full descriptions):

1) Thought Exchange (History Matters) – Sept 14, 2 p.m.

2) Canadain Museum of Civilization: Lunchtime lecture series – Jameson Brant: Training and Enhancing the Aboriginal Presence in Museums – Sept 16, 12-1.

3) Volunteer Opportunity – Multicultural History Society of Ontario

4) Petition: Preserve Pennhurst State School and Hospital as a memorial to the past.

5) The Toronto Beer Quest – Sept. 26, 11 a.m.

6) Approaching the Past: The Past through Place – Sept 30, 7 p.m.

7) CFP: History 2.0: Active History Roundtable on new media

8) This week in the Active History blogosphere!

If you have an announcement that you would like included in this weekly dispatch, please e-mail info@activehistory.ca. Continue reading →

New Book Review: Mitch Primeau on Karen Dubinsky’s The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls

September 8, 2010 1 Comment

ActiveHistory.ca is happy to announce that it has published its second book review written by an individual outside the academy. Mitch Primeau, a teacher living in Toronto who was raised in Niagara Falls, provides his thoughts on reading Karen Dubinsky’s The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls.

We want to expand our book review section. If you are a non-academic who is interested to review a historical work for ActiveHistory.ca, please contact us at info@activehistory.ca

History 2.0 – CFP: Active History Round Table at the 2011 CHA

September 7, 2010 No Comments

HISTORY 2.0: HISTORIANS AND THE NEW MEDIA

The co-coordinators for the Active History/Histoire Engagée CHA Working
Group are calling for papers for a proposed round table for the CHA
Annual Meeting to be held in May of 2011 in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Our proposed round table, will, we hope, trigger wider discussion about the
current opportunities and challenges that new media provide historians
working in a discipline that is undergoing significant change. Media
forms such as blogs, online journals, personal web sites, podcasts and
online conferencing abilities have, in many ways, democratized and
diversified how historians engage with each other and the wider public. Continue reading →

Toronto: A Proud Union City

September 6, 2010 1 Comment

The 19th Century Toronto Walking Tour (from the map)

Take a walk from The Don Drewery, learning about the United Brewery Workers and their victory for a city-wide union label, down to the Distillery District and learn about William Gooderham’s paternalistic relationship with his employees. Maybe you’ll then pass through the St. Lawrence Market, stopping for a tasty snack while contemplating the history of workers’ rallies on the site, before finishing up at a plaque at Yonge and King commemorating the failed 1872 Printers’ Strike, the Nine Hours Movement, and the subsequent Trade Unions Act – part of the story of Labour Day! These would be just a few stops on the recently unveiled 19th Century Toronto Labour History Walking Tour. On Wednesday, September 1st, “Mapping Our Work: Toronto Labour History Walking Tours” launched. Continue reading →

Active History Announcements: Sept 5 – 11

September 4, 2010 No Comments

After a month long vacation, AH Announcements is back! The following upcoming events may be of interest to our readers (click on ‘continue reading’ below for full descriptions):

1) Thought Exchange (History Matters) – Sept 14, 2 p.m.

2) The Toronto Beer Quest – Sept. 26, 11 a.m.

3) Approaching the Past: The Past through Place – Sept 30, 7 p.m.

4) This week in the Active History blogosphere!

If you have an announcement that you would like included in this weekly dispatch, please e-mail info@activehistory.ca. Continue reading →

Exploring Toronto’s Rich Beer History

September 1, 2010 4 Comments

By Mirella Amato

Toronto has a rich brewing history. This is a fact. I got my first glimpse into this history in 2007 in my early days working with beer. At that time, I did some work for Oliver Dawson on the Old Toronto Beer Tour. This daylong tour explores Toronto’s current breweries as well as the remnants of older breweries and various locations that were significant in Toronto’s brewing past. In preparing to guide the tour, I was delighted to learn about Toronto’s history and to explore Toronto in a new light. I was even happier to have the opportunity to share these discoveries with the various people who signed up for the tour. Continue reading →

The Reenactment of Wartime Pasts in Yasukuni

August 25, 2010 No Comments

In Japan, August is the month of the dead. It is the time of the year when spirits of the dead are believed to return home and when millions of people return “home” to greet them. This past week, my family in Japan and I busied ourselves by cleaning the family tomb, sprucing up the household altar, and suffering half a day of bumper-to-bumper traffic to visit my mother-in-law’s hometown to pay our respects to both the living and the dead.

The month of the dead is also defined by the anniversary of the end of the war, which falls coincidently in the middle of the Bon (ancestor) Festival. For the most part, the welcoming and sending off of the spirits of the war dead happens in the private spaces of the home and the family tomb, where the families welcome the dead, spend the week eating and drinking with them, and then send them off with some drink, fire, and food.

On 15 August, the spirits of some 3 million Japanese soldiers and civilians who were killed in World War II come home. Most of the remembrance ceremonies for the war dead are private. However, there are much more public ways of remember people who not only died for their families but also as a sacrifice for the welling being of the nation. On 15 August, the spirits of the dead are coaxed to join people in more complex, raucous spaces of memorialization. On this day, the Yasukuni Shrine complex serves as an important space for this kind of memorialization. Built in 1869, the shrine lists the names of some 2.5 million Japanese war dead from 1869 to 1945, including 14 Class-A war criminals who were enshrined in 1978. Continue reading →

Time Machine Being Built South of the Border

August 23, 2010 No Comments

The first steps towards building a historical time machine are underway south of the border. A group of American history educators have founded an ambitious plan to create the “Civil War Augmented Reality Project.”

This first time machine will be a literal window into the past. By taking advantage of smart phone and tablet computer technology, as well as their beautiful screens, the project team hopes to let visitors of Civil War sites see aspects of the past by holding up their computers and looking at them as though they were a window.

Virtual bridge At one river crossing in Pennsylvania, visitors will be able to look through their virtual window at a bridge that was burned down during the Civil War to prevent enemy troops from making the crossing. As the visitor drives along the present bridge, their view will pan to reflect their moving position and a seamless image will augment their view outside the car.

This project is still in the planning – and fundraising – stages, but the organizers have big dreams for a complex network of activities aimed at teachers and Civil War tourists. In a few years, we might be seeing a lot more of these windows into the past.

You can keep tabs on this project at their website: http://acwarproject.wordpress.com/

Place and Time: Old Photographs and New Technology

August 16, 2010 1 Comment

This week I was made aware of a great new website that I think not only has broad interest and appeal, but also a high level of cool. Historypin is a collaborative website where google maps and google street view is combined with user contributed photographs in order to provide the viewer with a doorway to the past. Users on the website can scan and upload their own photographs and place them onto a google map so that any visitor to Historypin can access the photograph in order to get a peek into a particular area during a certain time period. The website works by simply browsing on the map or by searching for specific places, time periods or events. In addition to their photographs, contributors can also add stories about the image, helping to give the photographs further context and meaning. Users can also expand on the content by contributing comments, or by adding on to a particular photo’s story. This is a cool tool that would of interest not only to historians and genealogists, but to anyone curious about their surroundings. Continue reading →

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