It’s American election time again and, once again, everyone has an opinion on whether this is just another election or whether rule of law is seriously under threat. Donald Trump has said that he needs only one day of dictatorship, only one hour of summary violence, to quell all unreasonable resistance, leaving only the reasonable. Can we test such claims against experience and evidence? It behooves the historians, if no one else, to scour the archives for answers.
Some historians point to Nazi Germany circa 1933 as the obvious rejoinder. When the public empowered politicians who promised dictatorial and violent solutions to social and economic tensions, the dissolution of the Reichstag and Kristallnacht followed. But the comparison fails without deeper causes and consequences: the circumstances leading up to the Nazi seizure of power and the circumstances that finally restored democracy and rule of law. When peace came, at the end of the Second World War, it was built on the ashes of Nazi Germany but also on the firm conviction that the Second World War must not end as the First World War did: with a Carthaginian peace and American isolationism.
John Maynard Keynes called the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 a “Carthaginian peace” because it took the lessons of economics and applied them in reverse, to impose lasting economic injury to Germany. For Keynes, it obstructed not just Germany’s but also Europe’s economic recovery. It enabled the Nazi seizure of power, repudiation of Germany’s payments (with American conniving), and the remilitarization of Germany.[1]
CPR porters, L–R Phil Witt, Jack Davis. Source: Stanley G. Grizzle Collection, Library and Archives Canada, E-copy number: e011781985
In 1986 and 1987, Stanley G. Grizzle began to cold call old friends, asking them if they would be willing to share their memories of portering during the first half of the twentieth century. This famed Toronto-based labour activist, war veteran, civil servant and citizenship judge, who was also a porter for twenty years, was in the midst of writing a memoir. Beyond his own story, Grizzle sought to fill in gaps in his knowledge about the history of unionization and, in particular, the development of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada. This was the first organized union for Black Canadian men who worked as porters for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Some were unabashed in their refusal, making it quite clear that they did not want to revisit the past. Dredging up the details was too complicated, and they had closed the book on that chapter of their lives.[i] Most, however, said yes immediately, inviting Grizzle into their homes across the country, where they proceeded to banter about life on the rails while hammering out the finer details of the larger processes through which they had lived.
A selection of cassette tapes from Stanley G. Grizzle’s collection; note that while the tape recorder pictured here was not his, it is similar to the one he would have used to record his interviews. Credit: Jennifer Woodley, Multimedia Production Specialist at LAC
These interviews and others are at the heart of a new Discover Library and Archives Canada podcast series. In particular, Voices Revealed showcases LAC’s vast but little-known oral history collections, making space for those from a variety of marginalized and underrepresented communities from across the country to tell their own stories in their own voices. Narratives of injustice, conflict, resilience and resolution enable us to understand how the past powerfully defines our present, while also providing the insights we need to imagine new directions for our collective future. Everyone has a story to tell, and it is our hope that this podcast series will provide an accessible means through which a variety of narratives can be contextualized and shared.
The first season, “Porter Talk,” which is rooted in Grizzle’s interview collection, introduces listeners to the Black men who rarely had a name, let alone a voice, while they were employed in the extractive and highly exploitative job of portering. Their stories, along with those shared by their wives and children, speak truth to power, emphasizing the anti-Black racism these folks endured both on and off the rails and the strategies they employed to move forward and build community. This season begins by introducing listeners to Grizzle himself, reconstructing his life story and the ways that activism shaped his worldview. This episode provides the essential information needed to wade into his interview collection and the particular clips that are integrated into successive episodes. “Porter Talk” also focuses on who the men were, where they came from, what their working conditions were like, how unionization developed and the various ways that communities, and women in particular, created the necessary foundations on which change could occur. Episodes are contextualized by leading Black scholars, Canadian historians and community storytellers and knowledge keepers, helping listeners make sense of the larger narrative that shaped the kinds of stories porters could tell. It is our intention to launch a new episode every six weeks. Those interested are encouraged to subscribe on their favourite podcast platform to listen to episodes as they are released!
Pedagogy has been central to the design of this series. Encouraging listeners to ponder who created the interviews and the conditions under which these exchanges took place serves as our starting point. Each episode also includes a timestamped and searchable transcript that directs listeners back to the original collection material. Our hope is that teachers and students in particular will engage with the primary sources themselves, listening to the interviews, making their own connections to these men and finding their own unique meanings in the words that are shared. Additionally, we have provided a list of resources for each episode, drawing attention to major works in this field, as well as biographies for each interviewer, interviewee, scholar and community member included in the episode. There are many ways to gain access to this important collection!
Oral histories, once recorded, are rarely listened to again. They tend to gather dust on closet shelves, remain packed away beneath mattresses or simply take up space on our computers and external hard drives. Publicly available interviews are often edited into short clips and presented on engaging websites. Mostly though, whenever possible, the vast majority of us choose to read transcripts rather than take the time to listen. Limited time, resources, and searchability often make this choice for us. Very few of us can commit to listening to a complete interview, let alone an entire collection. “Porter Talk,” and subsequent seasons of Voices Revealed,provides an alternative, albeit long-form, way to engage with the stories that shape who we are as Canadians. The humanity inherent in these narratives allows us to build connections with the past, which rarely looks that much different from the present. This is the power of oral history, however we choose to access it.
Stacey Zembrzycki is an award-winning oral and public historian who serves as a Podcast Development Specialist in the Outreach and Engagement Branch at Library and Archives Canada.
The second episode in the Porter Talk series launches today.
Notes
[i] Towards the end of his life, Grizzle recorded nearly every telephone message and conversation he had on cassette tapes, in addition to the interviews he conducted. Some of these conversations are available here.
Suggested Readings
Melinda Chateauvert. Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998).
Cecil Foster, “They call me George”: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada(Windsor: Biblioasis, 2019).
Stanley G. Grizzle with John Cooper, My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada. Personal Reminiscences of Stanley G. Grizzle (Toronto: Umbrella Press, 1998).
Steven High, Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence and Class (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).
Saje Mathieu, North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
Dorothy W. Williams, Blacks in Montreal, 1628-1986, An Urban Demography (Montréal: Les Éditions Yvon Blais Inc, 1989).
Dorothy W. Williams, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal (Montréal: Véhicule Press, 1997).
This week I talk with Bethany Kilcrease, author of Falsehood and Fallacy: How to Think, Read, and Write in the Twenty-First Century. We discuss the assumption that young people are well prepared for online misinformation, increased accessibility of quality sources, and the pros and cons of gatekeepers’ reduced power. We also chat about the CRAAP test, the benefits of short-form online writing, and proving causation.
“Surveyor Mr. Stayner, at Don Diversion, Toronto, Ont,” 1914. Credit: Toronto Harbour Commissioners / Library and Archives Canada / PA-097849. Copyright: Expired.
Active History recently circulated a survey that asked readers how they use the site, what they like about it, and what they would like to see in the future. The respondents provided fantastic feedback, and we would like to thank them and share what we learned.
Our Reach
Active History has been publishing for 15 years. In that time there have been over 2.5 million site visits. The site hosts an archive of over 2,600 essays. We have readers in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Germany, France, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Italy.
Posts get traffic year over year in part because students access them; 80% of the educators who responded to our survey assign Active History posts in their classes.
Lawrence Avenue West and Weston Road (site of two MTHA properties) from the air, 1974. Copyright City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 8, Item 51.
This is the third in a series of articles on Toronto public housing in the late 1980s. All entries in the series will be collected here.
In the 1980s, the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA)’s tenant population shifted as the demographic makeup of Toronto changed. At the same time, Community Relations Worker (CRWs) developed big and ultimately doomed plans for social service provision. The MTHA was hampered in its unwieldy mission. Poor organizational structure and management of CRWs meant they were not equipped to deliver ambitious programming. Furthermore, since staff failed to take demographic shifts into account and sometimes held prejudiced attitudes toward tenants, they failed to identify and plan appropriate programs. A consultant report from Simon Associates and the MTHA’s response to it provide a window on these major issues in MTHA in the 1980s.
This week I talk with Rosemary Pennington, author of Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media. We discuss how Ms Marvel contributed to the book’s origins, what forms of media are included in the book, and how stereotypes of Muslims are perpetuated in popular culture. We also chat about the challenges faced by Muslim stand-up comedians, how reality show editing influences perceptions, and how popular culture reflects society at large.
Edward Dunsworth: Tell me a bit about Laborem Ex Machina and how the project came to be.
Gilberto Fernandes: The project results from a collaboration between the Global Labour Research Centre at York University, where I was a visiting professor, and the International Union of Operating Engineers’ Local 793, which represents workers that operate all kinds of construction machinery: cranes, bulldozers, diggers, et cetera.
The business manager of Local 793, Mike Gallagher was one of my interviewees for the documentary film series City Builders, where he spoke about his father, Gerry Gallagher, founder of the Labourers’ International Union of North America’s Local 183. He liked the work that I had done with City Builders and came in with funding for a public history project on the history of construction machinery and operating engineers in Canada.
On September 11th, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup in Chile, overthrowing the democratically-elected President Salvador Allende. This event marked the onset of a brutal dictatorship that lasted from 1974 to 1990, characterized by widespread human rights abuses including torture, kidnappings, and the exile of thousands of Chileans. Between 500,000 and 1 million Chileans fled the country. Between 10,000 and 15,000 found refuge in France from 1973 to 1989 while Canada welcomed 7,000 refugees between 1973 and 1978. The coup’s impact reverberated far beyond Chile’s borders, reshaping global diplomacy, inspiring human rights activism, and altering the lives of those who fled.
As a child of this diaspora, I was born and raised in France and Belgium with Chilean relatives who eventually resettled in Canada. I want to reflect on how the history and memory of Chile’s September 11th, 1973 have been preserved across the Atlantic. This historical moment can provide for the re-building of a transnational memory of refuge, reinforcing its continued significance in our shared understandings of democracy. But this memory offers more than just moral “lessons.” It provides an opportunity to reflect on the intersection of history, diasporic memory, and the craft of historical memoir. As French historian Ivan Jablonka discusses inhis books, blending history with personal narration helps us approach the past in unconventional ways. Rather than presenting facts as isolated elements of a distant era, this approach reveals how they actively influence our present, reflecting the wounds they have imprinted on us.
The execution of the Anglo-Canadian expansionist Thomas Scott by Louis Riel’s Red River provisional government on March 4, 1870 is one of the most calamitous acts in Canadian history. In his 1912 Reminiscences, the one-time Liberal finance minister Richard Cartwright estimated that, from a monetary point of view alone, “the volley that killed Scott cost Canada more than a hundred million of dollars,” which would be over 2.5 billion dollars today. Much more devastating, as Cartwright himself notes, was the political cost. The event split Canada in half, largely along ethnoracial and religious lines, and considerable violence ensued. One of the lesser-known casualties of the killing of Scott was his own brother Hugh.
This week, I talk with Molly Schneider, author of Gold Dust on the Air: Television Anthology Drama and Midcentury American Culture. We talk about the origins of television anthologies, the transition from radio, and their popularity among audiences. We also discuss the role of anthologies in reflecting American culture, pushback from audiences and studios, and the legacy of anthologies and what they tell us about the significance of television programs.
Historical Headline of the Week
Joshua Rothman and Erin Overbey, “How TV Became Art,” The New Yorker, August 28, 2017.
