By Esyllt W. Jones
For a historian of pandemic influenza these are uncanny days. The past is colliding with the present. As if a thread has emerged, now, connecting us with those who faced, in their own ways, a globally shared experience in 1918-1919.
A group of nurses in High River, Alberta, wear face masks in an attempt to ward off the Spanish Flu, October 1919. Glenbow Archives 3452-2. Continue reading
By Mary Chaktsiris
Many of us have just received an official e-mail informing us that classes have been suspended for the rest of the term and that learning will transition online. This is just the latest in a series of shifting messaging, circumstances, and fluctuating decision-making as institutions cope with the global spread of COVID-19.
People, instructors and students, are feeling this uncertainty in multiple areas of their lives, and now in the area of course design with a sense of urgency about how to respond and adapt quickly. Abruptly transitioning your course to a new online pedagogical approach three quarters of the way through the term is not how you imagined it unfolding.
When approaching the teaching of History, which often revolves around lecture-based transmission of knowledge, moving to digital pedagogies might seem like a stretch for your teaching strategy toolkit. You will need to pivot.
As an instructor this concept is familiar to you. There is likely at least one specific time, probably burned into your memory, where a course or activity did not go as planned and it caused you to reconsider or change direction quickly and sometimes drastically. Recall how you navigated this circumstance, and how you acted to create meaningful change. Draw on that experience and apply it here.
From Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty
Precarity in History is our discipline’s great challenge today.
As the Precarious Historical Instructors’ Manifesto puts it: “There is a crisis in working conditions for precariously employed history professors in Canadian universities. It is a crisis decades in the making; it has taken a profound personal and collective toll on generations of historians.”
All too often, the burden for finding solutions falls on the precarious instructors themselves – the people with the least power to make changes. When they do propose solutions, tenured faculty and university administrators too often ignore those ideas or give them a low priority.
The Precarious Historical Instructors’ Manifesto is a remarkably constructive and thoughtful document. People struggling to make ends meet and faced with broken promises and high walls on the part of their profession would be well within their rights to express anger. The Manifesto instead makes a series of sensible calls for change that would in many cases be simple to implement. Taken together, they lay out an agenda for real change and for greater justice within our profession.
The Canadian Historical Association has responded. It is a welcome step that the peak association for Canadian historians has not ignored the Manifesto. Yet the response reads as half-hearted. The CHA pledges to create “a sub-committee to examine and highlight the progress that has already been made toward addressing the concerns expressed in the calls to action, and to consider ways in which we can continue to work towards limiting precarity, and limiting the high professional and emotional cost of such employment.”
The undersigned welcome the CHA’s decision to address the crisis of precarity, but we see a simpler and more responsive solution: the CHA should work to implement the calls to action addressed specifically to historical associations. Some of these are simple: the removal of institutional affiliations can happen immediately at the 2020 CHA conference, where it would also be simple to make sure contract instructors are referred to by academic title. Others may take longer, but the work can be started now and the end goals accepted.
The CHA’s decision to address the Manifesto’s calls is a good first step, but discussion of how to do so should be done openly within the wider profession, not only by narrowing it down to a sub-committee. And the intention to listen and act can be announced now. As CHA members and Canadian historians, we urge the CHA to start acting now, and accept the calls to action for professional associations made in the Precarious Historical Instructors’ Manifesto.
Signed (in alphabetical order),
Tina Adcock, Simon Fraser University
Kristine Alexander, University of Lethbridge
Jess Clark, Brock University
Isabel Campbell
Jim Clifford, University of Saskatchewan
Michèle Dagenais, Université de Montréal
Joanna Dean, Carleton University
Karen Dubinsky, Queen’s University
Finis Dunaway, Trent University
Brian Gettler, University of Toronto
Jason Ellis, University of British Columbia
Robert Englebert, University of Saskatchewan
Steven High, Concordia University
Dan Horner, Ryerson University
Benjamin Hoy, University of Saskatchewan
Nathan Kozuskanich, Nipissing University
Catherine Larochelle, Université de Montréal
Mark Leier, Simon Fraser University
Josh MacFadyen, University of Prince Edward Island
Daniel Macfarlane, Western Michigan University
Laura Madokoro, Carleton University
Ian McKay, Wilson Institute, McMaster University
Lynne Marks, University of Victoria
Sally Mennill, Douglas College
David Meren, Université de Montréal
Ian Mosby, Ryerson University
Jamie Murton, Nipissing University
Sharon Myers, University of Prince Edward Island
Sarah Nickel, University of Saskatchewan
Carmen Nielson, Mount Royal University
Thomas Peace, Huron University
Daniel Ross, Université du Québec à Montréal
Daniel Rück, University of Ottawa
Daniel Samson, Brock University
Veronica Strong-Boag, UBC/University of Victoria
Shannon Stunden Bower, University of Alberta
Janis Thiessen, University of Winnipeg
Coll Thrush, University of British Columbia
Peter L. Twohig, Saint Mary’s University
Ali Versluis, University of Guelph
Andrew Watson, University of Saskatchewan
Martha Walls, Mount St. Vincent University
John Walsh, Carleton University
David Webster, Bishop’s University
Please add your name and affiliation using the comment section below:
When I began this blog on January 29th, I had just returned to my office at the University of Regina after speaking about my research on an inspiring panel of powerful First Nations women leaders in Treaty 4 territory that included Chief Lynn Acoose, Chief Roberta Soo-Oye Waste, Dr. Priscilla Settee, and Dakota Elder Diane McKay. “The Indigenous Women’s Leadership Forum: Reclamation of Matriarch and Ogijidaakew Sovereignty” was framed around reclaiming Indigenous women’s roles and responsibilities as matriarchs in their families and communities and nations through storytelling, visiting, and inspiring each other. This conference followed, but was not related to, another compelling full-day event at First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv), organized by FNUniv’s Students’ Association, in response to the appalling behavior of George Elliot Clarke and the University of Regina. Originally conceived by a group called “Matriarchs on Duty,” the event on Thursday January 26th, which would have been the day that George Elliot Clarke gave his ill-conceived talk “‘Truth and Reconciliation’ versus ‘the Murdered and Missing’: Examining Indigenous Experiences of (In)Justice in Four Saskatchewan Poets”, began with a pipe ceremony, followed by a smudge walk around the U of R Campus, and then a series of dialogues about the relationship between the University of Regina and Indigenous peoples in the community. The controversy made national headlines when Clarke initially refused to consider altering his topic, or responding to concerns raised by faculty, staff and Indigenous community members. Several in the Regina university community early on identified the problematic relationship between Clarke and Steven Kummerfield/Stephen Brown, and Clarke’s decision to speak on this issue in Regina.
Perhaps it might seem odd to begin a blog about teaching Canadian history with this story. Perhaps it might also seem odd that I am writing a blog about Canadian history, considering I myself do not teach in a History department. In fact, I chose deliberately to locate my Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples and Global Social Justice in the Department of Politics and International Studies when I began at the University of Regina in January of 2018.
Please bear with me though. I think I might have something useful to offer.
By Jessica DeWitt
[We are publishing this in partnership with the Network in Canadian History & Environment.]
Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park’s Tolman Bridge Campgrounds will be closed as part of the “Optimizing Alberta Parks” plan. Photo Credit: Jessica DeWitt, August 2015.
This past week the Alberta Provincial Government announced it’s plan to ‘optimize’ its park system. This includes:
Unsurprisingly this news has caused an uproar from Alberta residents and park-goers. People mourn the closure of their favourite parks. They fear for a possible future for-profit park system and what that will mean for recreation and preservation in the province. For the general public parks are more than a line on a balance sheet. They are places where we relax, create memories, and find ourselves. They are something we can be proud of. They are good.
As someone who has immersed myself in the history of provincial park development and studied Alberta’s park system in detail, I am not as distressed by this news as one may expect. One reason for this lack of anxiety on my part is that I know that parks are dynamic, colonial institutions that have always existed in a for-profit, capitalist system. Parks are pieces of land whose borders are designated by settler governments As Leslie Bella noted in Parks for Profit, the creation of a park is inherently exploitative. Parks reside on occupied land. The boundaries of a park are created by settler governments in order to control and economically benefit from the activities that take place within them.
“Parklands are often positioned as apolitical, as ‘common’ or public land that somehow eludes examination amidst the grit of property markets and land-use battles, but it is critical to understand parks as a central feature of colonial land logics, as aggressively regulating and disciplining the land and its occupations.” – Matt Hern, On This Patch of Grass: City Parks on Occupied Land
We may wrap our parks in a shroud of preservation, but ultimately they exist because they are useful to us. Any claim that parks are not about making money (at least partially) is false. There is no magical time in the past when provincial park systems acted solely altruistically.
My initial reaction upon hearing about the optimization plan was: “yeah, that sounds about right.” If there is anything that sets Alberta’s park history apart from other provinces and US states, it is its repeated regret at creating them. Throughout its history the province has tried to close and offload its parks onto other public governing bodies and private institutions. When they have not directly tried to do this, they have whispered internally about a desire to do so. Alberta has always been a reluctant park steward. Continue reading
Last month, the Graphic History Collective released Remember/Resist/Redraw poster #22 by Lianne Charlie and Siku Allooloo.
Through the lens of Allooloo’s family story, the poster (which is based on a photo of Allooloo’s grandparents) looks at the history of Inuit relocation. Between the 1920s and 1960s, Canadian officials relocated Inuit families to the high arctic as a means to establish an RCMP presence and protect Canada’s sovereignty against foreign interests. It is a difficult history but, as Allooloo argues in the poster’s essay, it is also a story of Inuit resilience.
We hope that Remember | Resist | Redraw encourages people to critically examine history in ways that can fuel our radical imaginations and support struggles for social change. Learn more about how you can support the project on our website, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Matthew McRae
The Thomas Scott Memorial Orange Hall in Winnipeg, 2019, about a year before its demolition. Photo by author.
The City of Winnipeg recently tore down the Thomas Scott Memorial Orange Hall, located in the city’s historic Exchange District. News coverage about the demolition has focused a lot on the loss of architectural heritage. This is important, but it’s only one part of the story. There’s also the story of who the building is named after: Thomas Scott.
Allana Mayer
Historically-minded folks will likely have seen the flare-up and fizzle-out of scandal around the USA’s National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in January. A Washington Post reporter noted that applique images on the walls of the NARA Museum lobby had blurred out words on signs held by Women’s March protesters in 2017. The blurred words included “pussy” as well as “Trump” on a “God Hates Trump” sign.
Cher may have been one of the most vocal and famous critics, but she wasn’t the only one.
NARA, in its apology after the public backlash, noted that the photograph was a purchased stock image they used as part of the hallway exhibit, not an official NARA archival record, and that they would never alter their own archival holdings. The word “pussy” was removed to keep the display “family-friendly” and “Trump” was blurred “so as not to engage in current political controversy.”
This story only came to light because the WaPo reporter noticed it by chance while there to research another story about the Archives and tourism. Let’s consider the odds that a major news outlet journalist would have noticed a blurred patch on a sign in a photograph of a protest, versus the odds that a conservative visitor would have noticed the word “pussy” or gotten offended about “God hates Trump.” I would guess the odds of the former were way lower than the latter, and that the latter seems like it would draw significantly more ire, from significantly more volatile people. The design and communications staff of the exhibits part of the Museum part of NARA probably hedged the right bet. Continue reading
This is part of an ongoing series of reflections from the Manitoulin Island Summer Historical Institute (MISHI)
By Catherine Carstairs
I am a Canadian historian, and I teach the Canadian survey course.
Lately, this seems a lot more complicated than it did when I trained as a historian. Much of what we call Canada today rests on the unceded territories of Indigenous peoples. What does that mean for how we teach Canadian history?
No one would think of me as a historian of Indigenous peoples. I think of myself as a historian of health and medicine and a gender historian. While Ian Mosby and I have been collaborating recently on two articles on Indigenous people and oral health , I am not an expert in Indigenous history, or even of settler colonialism. But fortunately, I am being drawn into what feels like a significant change in how we do Canadian history. Continue reading
By Andrea Chandler
On 15 January 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise announcement in his annual address to Russia’s Parliament. Following a recitation of the country’s recent successes and near-term goals, Putin devoted a sizeable portion of his speech to a plan to introduce significant changes to the Russian constitution. On its face, the proposed changes seemed to expand the role of the government and to link the government more closely to the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma. The language used by Putin suggested a proposal to strengthen the political system’s checks and balances. Debate immediately arose about the speech’s significance: was it paving the way to a greater diffusion of political power, or a path to creating an even more hierarchical system? It is difficult to evaluate Putin’s intentions until more details become apparent about the constitutional reform. But the evidence suggests that this is an effort to further concentrate presidential power and to move even further away from liberal democracy.
To provide context, let us examine the essential existing features of the Russian constitution. It was adopted in 1993, having narrowly passed a referendum during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. The document is, in many respects, a very democratic constitution. The citizenry are to choose the president in elections and there is a bicameral parliament that contains elected representatives of the people as well as an upper house (the Federation Council) where regions are represented. The constitution contains an extensive list of citizen rights and a Constitutional Court that rules on the constitutionality of laws and government decisions. On its face, then, the president’s power is checked by parliament and an independent judiciary; regions and localities also have self-government bodies in what is purportedly a federal system.
If the system is so democratic, what has enabled Putin to amass so much personal power?
