Active History

Congress 2020, Interrupted: A Brief History of University Codes of Conduct

April 21, 2020 1 Comment

Will Langford

Congress 2020 is cancelled. But before the conference is forgotten, let’s ponder the anti-racism Congress that never was.

At last year’s gathering, in a brazen act of racial profiling, a participant harassed political scientist Shelby McPhee and falsely accused the Black graduate student of theft. Following an investigation, the perpetrator was issued a ban for violating the Congress Code of Conduct.

The Black Canadian Studies Association led the way in demanding redress. In part, it challenged the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences to add anti-Black racism to the theme of Congress 2020.

Before the response to COVID-19 intervened, about 8,000 academics were set to attend Bridging Divides: Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism, the re-titled event hosted at Western University (commonly known as UWO prior to its rebranding in 2012).

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Jean Little: Celebrating Friendship and Kindness

April 17, 2020 1 Comment

By Catherine Carstairs

One of Canada’s best-known children’s writers, Jean Little, passed away at the beginning of April at the age of 88. With COVID-19 dominating the news cycle, her death attracted little attention.

Jean Little just before delivering the 2016 Margaret Laurence Lecture in Toronto. (Wikimedia Commons)

And yet, as we live through a severe epidemic, perhaps we need Jean Little’s wisdom more than ever. Little created a world in which injustice was real, but her characters did their best to make the world a kinder place. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 143: Building the Greatest Hockey Team Ever

April 17, 2020 1 Comment

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By Sean Graham

One of the great things about sports is the ability to argue passionately and vehemently about subjective things that, ultimately, don’t matter. Would you rather a defensive stalwart who can’t score or a gifted offensive player who is a turnstile on defense? Did a coach make the right decision in switching lines down the stretch? And, of course, most debated question across all sports: who is the greatest player of all time?

One of the things that makes that question so tough is that comparing players across eras is nearly impossible. In the NHL, for instance, the 1980s saw a scoring surge while the mid-1990s were notorious for low-scoring plodding games (See: Devils, New Jersey). So how do we assess goalies who played in these eras? Could a 1980s goalie with a higher goals against average than a 1990s goalie be considered a better player?

A popular off-shoot of the greatest player debate is the greatest team debate. Teams like the 1985 Chicago Bears, 1927 New York Yankees, 1980s Boston Celtics, and 1976 Montreal Canadiens have become mythic within the canon of their respective sports, but definitively knowing who is the greatest is impossible to know.

Fortunately, there are simulators available that attempt to settle these long-standing debates. To put these programs to the test, I asked History Slam veterans Aaron Boyes, Jeremy Garrett, Mike Thompson, and Pat Fournier to put together a roster for what they would consider to be the greatest NHL team of all time. Each person selected 11 players for their teams, which I then put into a 30-game simulated season, the results of which were at times what I expected and, in a couple cases, shocking.

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Deep listening and remote interviews with military families

April 16, 2020 1 Comment

Isabel Campbell

In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, blogs, webinars, and posts with expert advice about remote interviewing in oral history have blossomed. For example, three experts at Baylor University in the United States put together a webinar which is available on YouTube.[i] It is particularly aimed at Americans; Canadians will quickly realize that our legal environment is very different, though the webinar includes relevant ethical and technical information. The Oral History Society (of Britain) has also created a helpful web page which begins with “Oral historians have always favoured the face-to-face interview and discouraged remote interviewing.” This piece cautions us about the need for informed consent with signatures, trust building, and concern for the archival quality of the end product. It contains a list of helpful sources.[ii] Graham Smith, an oral history activist, responded to this piece, emphasizing the vital role of oral history in exposing ageism and violations of basic rights to life which are heightened during this crisis.[iii]

The best practices remain the same, but may be more challenging to achieve during a pandemic, while utilizing remote technology. Joy Parr’s ‘”Don’t Speak For Me”: Practicing Oral History amidst the Legacies of Conflict’[iv] was written in 2010, but is especially relevant as it addresses the problems of vulnerable narrators and power relationships based in academic authority which utilizes methodology as a thick barrier. In effect, she asks: Do we have the right to interview traumatized people, and who are we to speak for them?[v]

And yet, I have learned that whole life oral history methodology is a powerful way of allowing people to speak for themselves. Continue reading →

Learning from Past Pandemics: Resources on the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic in Canada

April 15, 2020 3 Comments

By Sean Carleton, Andrea Eidinger, Carolyn Podruchny. This is an Active History/Unwritten Histories Collaboration.

We are living in unprecedented times, or so we are being told by many commentators, health experts, and politicians these days.

Just last week, Dictionary.com released a list of “The Best Words to Use During Unprecedented Times” to help people describe their experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. The first word was “unprecedented.” The website explained, “If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ll have seen this word used quite a lot. Instead of defaulting to “I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ say ‘This is completely unprecedented.’”

Though the world has never seen a coronavirus pandemic quite like we are currently witnessing, that does not mean that what we are experiencing is “completely unprecedented.”

COVID-19, as a global pandemic, is extraordinary but it is not unparalleled. Indeed, we can learn how to respond to the current crisis, in part, by studying how people responded to past pandemics, including the influenza epidemic that spread around the globe in 1918–1919. That pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people globally; in Canada, the influenza epidemic claimed 55,000 lives.

Poster issued by the Provincial Board of Health about the influenza epidemic, Alberta. Glenbow Archives, NA-4548-5.

Drawing inspiration from a list of sources on the history of epidemics (that ignored Canadian scholarship) recently posted by the Society for the Social History of Medicine, we have compiled the following resource guide to direct people to available sources (a mix of popular and scholarly materials) on the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in Canada. Continue reading →

Feasting with the Imagination Now and in the Second World War

April 14, 2020 No Comments

Cover of the print version of The Prisoners of War Cook Book. Mindemoya Pioneer Museum Archives, Manitoulin Island.

Suzanne Evans

We are living through a time made for feasting with the imagination, an act precedented in Second World War prison camps.

“Am cooking Mum’s old favourite tonight – scalloped potatoes on ham. It makes me think of her every time I make it.” Over the past few weeks of pandemic lockdown my sister has reverted to our mother’s old reliables, recipes so tried and true they were never recorded, just absorbed. She is not alone in changing her cooking habits. From stress baking to rediscovering the oven or learning how to turn it on for the first time, many who are lucky enough to have a constant supply of food are making meals differently. Comfort, whether it be found in a bag of take-out or a homemade gourmet meal, is high on the list of goals. One friend has been relaxing into one of the few methods of travel still open – eating her way around the world. “So far our family has made food from Lebanon, Greece, Palestine, Belgium, next is France, Italy, Mexico, we are also planning South Africa, Canada and beyond.”

Her efforts echo the tastes of Audrey Goodridge, a British woman who contributed international recipes to an odd little cookbook with an unwieldy title: Prisoners of War Cook Book: This is A Collection of Recipes Made by Starving Prisoners When They Were Interned in Changi Jail, Singapore. The collection was compiled by a Canadian prisoner, Ethel Mulvany, and contained over four hundred recipes from the women interned at Changi Jail. Audrey was young and pregnant when the British colony of Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. The invaders had no plan for feeding the tens of thousands of military and civilian prisoners who quickly became their responsibility.[i] Over the next three and a half years of the war those prisoners were always more than hungry. Continue reading →

Resuscitating Stories: Some reflections on the “Ododo Wa” exhibit and experience

April 10, 2020 1 Comment

Gilbert Nuwagira

Growing up in south western Uganda, I would hear whispers of stories told in hushed tones; stories of what the River Kagera had brought in 1994 and of the then on-going Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in Northern Uganda. The latter stories were relayed to us by people who had not been in northern Uganda. Going through school in the early 2000s, the curriculum was silent on the ongoing conflicts at the time. Although we learned of the rebellions leading to independent East Africa, I can see in hindsight that there was a notable silence on how the aftermath of those rebellions was handled. My young self was thus unaware of and removed from the multiple gross human rights violations that were happening in my country.

That stories need to be told is an understatement. Stories break the shackles of ignorance and tear down barriers as people gain a more nuanced understanding of their past and how it is actively shaping their future. Untold stories are like ulcers that continue to feed on the fabric of society even after the “guns go silent.” Failure to create spaces to share untold stories become active forms of silencing and a recipe for future conflict. The disruptions caused by conflict often remain unknown, which makes for an even stronger case for stories to be told. Communities need to reckon with their shared past and different experiences without negating other people’s accounts. Telling stories is a way of giving space to persons who have lived through tumultuous times and to acknowledge diverse histories whose trajectories are often otherwise erased. Acknowledging lesser-known parts of our history (whether they damn us or glorify us) is important for all generations, especially when this knowledge can inform policies, laws, practices, and frameworks that avoid repeating past wrongs.

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Telling my story through words and artefacts

April 9, 2020 No Comments

Grace Acan

As I think back about how it all started, I find truth in the common saying “a problem shared is a problem half solved.” Sharing a story like mine is not easy. It takes time and courage. When I escaped the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) after eight years of captivity, I was unable to do so. It took years and a book (A Lone Way Gone: Memoirs of A boy Soldier) written by Ishmael Beah for me to consider the possibility.

When reading Beah’s story, I found myself pondering how helpful it can be to share one’s story. As a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone, Beah went through a lot more than I had imagined. He faced and escaped many dangers on the frontline of armed conflict. When I compared this to my own experience in the Ugandan war, I understood why they used to say that I was a civilian living amongst soldiers. My experience of captivity in the LRA was similar to Beah’s, but also quite different. I realized that I needed to share my own story.

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Sharing, healing, advocating

April 8, 2020 No Comments

Evelyn Amony

Much of my life is full of ups and downs, and I know it will keep moving on like that. At the age of 11, turning on 12, I was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)—a group of rebels that fought against the Ugandan government for over 20 years. Before my abduction, I lived with my parents and went to school in Gulu, a small town in northern Uganda. I was separated from my family and held captive for over a decade. Like many other abductees, I was taken to southern Sudan where I lived in an LRA camp. And, like many other girls, I was forced to marry a commander and to bear children.

I narrowly escaped death in 2005 when I was captured with my newborn child in a military ambush by the Ugandan army. The green skirt I was wearing that day is displayed in the exhibit presented at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It bears holes from the bullets that grazed my body as I put my arms up, holding my baby above my head.

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