For a Francophone University in Ontario

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The following open letter, written by the leadership of the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française, was published in French by Le Devoir on Wednesday and HistoireEngagee.ca yesterday. 

With two lines in its 15 November budget announcement, Doug Ford’s government abolished l’Université de l’Ontario français. Tied to the closure of the French Language Services Commission, this act removes the rights Franco-Ontarians had gained in July 2017 to receive postsecondary education exclusively in their language.

As far as we know, nowhere else has this type of decision been made. For the first time, a state has abolished a university due to budgetary constraints. This action calls into question important principles about the role of higher education and the place of community, which lay at the heart of our society.

Far more than an institution that prepares people for the job market, a university is a crucial institution for any society. Continue reading →

Meaning Making in the Digital Age

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Sean Kheraj

This week, I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about digital technologies and open access in the university. I’ll be addressing these issues as they relate to my field of Canadian history.

We have been provided with a series of questions to address. Here are two of the most significant questions that we will consider on this panel:

How does the digital – tools, technologies, methods, instruction, etc – connect with the ways you make and find meaning in your discipline?

Digital tools, technologies, and methods have transformed the discipline of history in three primary areas:

  1. Scholarship
  2. Teaching
  3. Public history

The ways in which the digital has changed history as a discipline are numerous, but I will provide a couple examples in each of these three areas.

Scholarship

Digital technologies have changed the scale of historical research and precipitated a need to develop new digital methods for search, analysis, and communication. These changes begin with the digitization of research sources. In the discipline of history, digitization has had its most transformative effects on primary source research, working with original historical records. Mass digitization projects have created enormous digital archives of primary source records easily available online.

The availability of digitized primary source records has created the need for the development of better systems of metadata for searching these new digital archives. Digital historians are also developing their own custom search engines to meet their particular research needs.

The ability to search and access large digitized primary source collections has created “big data” challenges for historians. Researchers can now collect more records than they have ever been able to before. When once a historian might have scoured a newspaper archive on microfilm using labourious (and arguably inefficient) search methods of manual review, she can now use keyword searching and other digital search methods to acquire mass databases of digital records that exceed a scale that can reasonably be analyzed with traditional close reading methods. Making sense of that massive digital archive now requires what some digital humanists call “distant reading,” the use of machine reading technologies to organize data and even generate analytical insights that cannot be observed via traditional methods. Digital text analysis tools and geographic information systems are two technologies that facilitate distant reading that have become more common in historical research today. Continue reading →

Remembrance Day 2018 and Canada’s First World War Centennial

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By Nathan Smith

This past Remembrance Day I was at Don Heights Unitarian Congregation in Toronto to speak about the armistice of 1918 and commemoration. I arrived feeling grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts on the centennial of that moment in time, and was surprised to immediately encounter the congregation’s exhibit of items from the era of the First World War. The congregation held an opening ceremony for the displays the day before I visited, and the WWI Keepsakes and Propaganda exhibit received attention from a number of media outlets, including CBC, CTV, Toronto.com.

As the news reports and poster included here reveal, the exhibit is open to the public. I spent some time viewing the displays after my talk and was impressed by the quality and engaging historical content of the material. Some of the material is from a trunk discovered in an attic, full of publications a French teacher collected and used in her classes. Another part of the exhibit is from a family collection of items from First World War veterans, one of whom is William Andrew White, an important figure in the Canadian history of anti-racism who served in Canada’s segregated No. 2 Construction Battalion.

Continue reading →

Unexpected Archival Finds: Shingwauk Student Register

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Krista McCracken

Recently staff at the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) began a project to digitize a number of the stock registers, accounts books, and financial records associated with the Shingwauk Indian Residential School, which operated in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The materials in this project ranged in date from 1883 to 1945, with the bulk of the records relating to the 1905 to 1930 period.

At first glance these accounts books might not seem like a prime candidate for digitization – visually they aren’t overly interesting and they have been used relatively little by researchers. Digitization takes a lot of time and effort – so why was the SRSC looking to digitize these particular records?  

One of the major gaps in the SRSC’s archival records about the Shingwauk Residential School, relates to student life from 1905 to 1935. The Centre has a significant number of photographs from 1910-1920 but there is relatively little textual documentation related to this period. The accounts books and associated material are the only written records from this period and can provide insight into the food at Shingwauk, clothing worn by the students, farming practices, and other parts of daily student life.

Cover of Clerk's Fee Book

Re-purposed Shingwauk Residential School Clerk’s Fee Book.

One of the unexpected results of this project was coming across a book that, from the outside, appeared to be a “Clerk’s Fee Book” (pictured above). When Madison Bifano, the SRSC archival assistant, was preparing the book for digitization she realized that this accounts book had been re-purposed as a student register.  It contained names of students and information about their weekly attendance at Shingwauk from 1930 to 1941. In some sections the book also divides students into class groupings and lists the teachers for each class, providing additional information about school structure at Shingwauk. The student’s names captured in this book fill a significant gap in the Shingwauk Residential School records and this book is the only record in the SRSC’s holding which explicitly lists Shingwauk students for the 1930s. Continue reading →

Remembrance Day Poppies: The Political History of a Symbol

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Field of poppies

This post by Andrea Eidinger originally appeared on Unwritten Histories.

This post was inspired by a suggestion from Tina Adcock, and without her support and encouragement, it probably would have remained unwritten. So I would like to send her a huge extra-special thank-you. I would also like to thank the individuals who read and commented on previous versions of this draft, including Tina Adcock, Andrew Nurse, JonWeier, Chris Schultz, and Maj. (ret.) Peter Scales MA. A special thank-you goes to Christina Wakefield for supplying me with information about the 1921 Great War Veterans Association. Finally, many of the points raised in this blog post emerged out of online conversations about wearing poppies, both on Facebook and Twitter. I would like to thank everyone who participated for their contributions and for making this blog post much more nuanced.

A few weeks ago, the Royal British Legion posted a series of images designed to bust some prevalent myths about what poppies mean. One of the comments caught the attention of Tina Adcock and myself:

“Poppies are not pro-war, they are a symbol of respect for those who sacrificed everything for our safety. But not commemorating past wars would mean we don’t learn from history.”[1]

That is one hell of a loaded sentence, especially when we are still in the midst of Monument Wars. But it did make me start realizing that we don’t know very much about the poppy’s history as a symbol in Canada. Since I don’t like unanswered questions, I decided to dig a little bit deeper to see what I could find. In today’s blog post, we’re going to talk about what I uncovered, take a look at the history of the poppy, what it means to wear one, and how we learn from the past.

Poppy History and Historiography

The origins of the Remembrance Day poppy are pretty well known. If you’re like me, you had to memorize and recite “In Flanders Fields,” by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in elementary school. However, what happened after, particularly how they made the jump to Canada, that is rather unclear. I could only find one scholarly article, Deborah Nash-Chambers’ 2015 piece, “Memorializing Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Civic Commemoration and the 100thAnniversary of ‘In Flanders Fields,’” that dealt with the subject in any way. In it, Nash-Chambers connects the publication of a collection of McCrae’s poems in 1919 to a rise in the idea of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance. From there, two women, Moina Michael (who was American) and Anne Guerin (who was French) move to the centre of this relatively poorly known story. Michael was inspired to create the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy Fund after reading a copy of McCrae’s poem, and she resolved to make and sell poppies to raise money for veterans. Guerin organized a group of French widows and orphans who made artificial poppies to sell, using the proceeds to support themselves. In 1921, she visited London and convinced the British Legion to purchase them. From there, disabled British veterans began to produce the poppies themselves. The symbol was then adopted by the American, British, and Canadian Legions, and the first “Poppy Day” was held in Canada and Britain on November 11, 1921.[2]However, the article does not explain how the poppy made the jump from Britain to Canada. Nash-Chambers’ main source for this information was Bev Dietrich, then Curator at the Guelph Civic Museum (since retired), who also published her own piece on the subject “John McCrae and McCrae House: Keeping the Faith for Those Who Died,” in a local magazine; her main source of information appears to be clippings from the scrapbook of Jeanie Matthew McCrae (McCrae’s aunt), held at McCrae House.[3]This same sequence of events was included in an article for The National Post on the history of poppies, by Jon Weier and Chris Schultz.

Even Jonathan Vance’s book on the commemoration of WW I, Death So Noble, only contains a couple of references to poppies. He mentions a couple instances of poppies being used as a symbol in WW I writing, usually as a representation of the good memories of soldiers.[4]I also checked Robert Rutherdale’s book, Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to the Great War. There is one mention of the poppy in this book, and it points to an article by Alan R. Young, ‘“We Throw the Torch’: Canadian Memorials of the Great War and the Mythology of Heroic Sacrifice.”[5]In this piece, Young explains that “McCrae’s poem [has] stuck in the popular memory.”[6]In the next sentence, he says he will explain why this is the case, but the remainder of the piece discusses the crucifixion motif in the mythology of heroic sacrifice.

Christina Wakefield pointed me to a possible solution. A recently published book by the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, Thunder Bay and the First World War, 1914-1919, by Michel S. Beaulieu, David K. Ratz, Thorold J. Tronrud, and Jenna L. Kirker describes a visit by Anna Guerin to Port Arthur, Ontario. According to archival documents, a meeting took place between Guerin and the Great War Veterans’ Association at the Prince Arthur Hotel on July 4, 1921; Guerin argued that the Association should adopt a “poppy day.” Not only did the Association agree, but it also initiated Canada’s first poppy campaign the following November. This campaign sold poppies as both a symbol of remembrance and as a way for members of the public to financially support wounded soldiers.[7]

While this is really important information that helps us to understand how the poppies came to Canada, it also deepens the mystery. You see, the Great War Veterans’ Association is not the same thing as the Legion. The Great War Veterans’ Association was one of a number of veterans advocacy groups that sprung up in the immediate aftermath of the war. The Legion, on the other hand, was only established in 1925, and was an amalgamation of several of the previous veterans organizations, including the Great War Veterans’ Association. It remains unclear, so far as I can tell, why the Legion adopted the poppy and how the poppy came to be so indelibly associated with the organization.

This is not simply a meander down historiographical memory lane, but an interesting perspective as to where our symbols come from and how the process of adopting symbols is — or, it seems, is not — recorded.. The fact that no one seems to know for certain exactly how the poppy was adopted is bothersome. There is a similar lack of historical research on traditions for Thanksgiving in Canada and Victoria Day. This makes me suspicious and raises a number of important questions: When I wear a poppy, what does that mean? What kinds of engagement with the past and present does it suppose? Can we remember past conflicts without wearing poppies on our breasts every November? Continue reading →

Reflections on the Far Right, Intellectuals, and Hope in Toronto and Beyond

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Protesters outside Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, venue of the Munk Debate between Steve Bannon and David Frum, 2 November 2018. Photo courtesy of author.

By Edward Dunsworth

It’s been quite a month for the far right in Toronto.

Two weeks ago, proto-fascist hype man Steve Bannon – unable just days prior to attract more than twenty-five people to an event in Kansas – drew a sold-out (and well-heeled) crowd to downtown Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall, where he squared off against former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum on whether the future of western politics will be populist or liberal, in the latest iteration of the Munk Debates.

Eleven days earlier, on October 22, white nationalist Faith Goldy placed third in the city’s mayoral election, tallying 25,667 votes, 3.4 per cent of the total.

Finally, on October 28, Toronto played a bit role in Brazil’s election of ultra-right strongman Jair Bolsonaro, with 64 per cent of votes cast by Brazilians in Toronto going to the candidate whose love for military dictatorship was equally clear as his hatred for women, Black and Indigenous peoples, queer folk, and leftists.

Continue reading →

History Chat: A Conversation with Douglas Hunter

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On October 26, the History of Indigenous Peoples (HIP) Network sponsored the launch of two books by HIP member Douglas Hunter, which included a conversation with Douglas about writing for the public hosted by Boyd Cothran. The two books are:

The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past 

Beardmore: The Viking Hoax That Re-Wrote History

Hunter is an author, artist, and historian who has published twenty books and innumerable articles on the histories of exploration in the New World, Canadian business history, hockey, and the environment. He holds a PhD in History from York University (2015). His current book project is called Jackson’s Wars, which explores Group of Seven artist A. Y. Jackson’s experiences as a soldier and war artist in the First World War. 

 Active History is pleased to present a recording of the conversation as part of our History Chats series. The History Chats features recordings of public lectures and roundtables on a wide variety of topics. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

A new approach to debates over Macdonald and other monuments in Canada: Part 2

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This is the second part of an essay that ran last Tuesday. Read Part 1 here.

By Stéphane Lévesque

I believe that every citizen of Canada, from students to adults (including political leaders), would gain from a progression towards more sophisticated forms of historical consciousness that encourage critical distance and informed opinions, and cultivate the capacity to “digest complexity” – both human and societal.

Memory and identity politics thrive on tribalism and cognitive simplification. They promote projects and muster support based on political agendas that evade complexity. Yet, societies and their pasts are highly complex and multifaceted, and need to be analyzed and recognized as such. Representations of the past, and possible courses of action, might better be informed by this sense of historical complexity.

Any attempt to delineate this intellectual complexity of historical consciousness runs the risk of cognitive and normative generalization but in this article I hope to offer a conceptual map as a starting point for further discussion (and transposition) on how “types” of individuals are most likely to engage in issues of commemoration, using the Canadian situation as an example. Continue reading →

Revisiting the 1981 CUPW Strike for Maternity Leave

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A July 11, 1981 demonstration in Edmonton, Alberta. CUPW/AUPW.

Mikhail Bjorge and Kassandra Luciuk

As co-instructors, we are currently teaching a course on the history of women and work. Our primary concern in this course is to have students think historically about women’s lived experiences under capitalism. We explore how things looked in the past, how they were transformed over time, and, in turn, why they look the way they do today. By teaching in this way – pulling history into the present – we aim to re-center the enduring struggles of women to create a better future. Moreover, we try to dismantle the notion that gains are bestowed on societies through benevolent states or the calm functioning of legislative powers. Whether it be suffrage, equal pay, women’s liberation, gender parity, the right to choose, sexual harassment legislation, or LGBTQ2 rights, all were widely disparaged yet courageously fought for through the direct action of women and their allies.

The struggle for maternity leave by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) serves as a particularly powerful lens through which to analyze these themes.[1] By the 1980s, the union began to push seriously for the inclusion of maternity leave as a core bargaining demand. The Treasury Board of Canada Post, with whom CUPW was negotiating, as well as the government was worried about the spillover effects. If Canada Post agreed to paid maternity leave, then other government departments, and even the private sector, would be forced to follow suit.[2]

With negotiations going nowhere, CUPW went out on strike. Their demands were multifaceted, but maternity leave was singled out by capital, media, government, and the public.[3] In turn, maternity leave was deemed egregious, unnecessary, and even greedy. Risking it all, postal workers and their allies fought for forty-two days and won. Their victory reverberated across Canadian society. Other unions quickly followed suit and, before long, the government institutionalized and expanded maternity leave to equalize the playing field. What started out as a gain for postal workers quickly turned into a gain for all Canadian women.

It’s important to recognize the spirited efforts of CUPW members during the strike to illuminate that progress doesn’t happen without struggle and courage. But it’s even more critical to shed light on how the 1981 strike was demonized. This is in stark contrast to how maternity leave is presented today – a fundamental right to be enjoyed by all Canadians. Indeed, it’s even commonly referred to as a “Canadian value” that differentiates us from our southern neighbours.

In our course, we think about what accounts for these kinds of shifts in societal thinking. How was maternity leave reconceptualized from a “greedy demand” into a core Canadian tenet? We also explore the problems and consequences of these mythologized understandings. What is conveniently forgotten in current conversations about maternity leave? How does this impact the narrative surrounding strikes and the way in which they are understood?

With a postal strike looming, it’s worthwhile to challenge the depoliticized accounts of gains made on the picket line. Continue reading →

“The town’s gone wild”: Sounds of Victory in Toronto, 11 November 1918

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By Sara Karn

Come along, be merry, join our Jubilee.
Mars has got the knock-out, Peace is in, you see.
Toot your little tooter, deck yourself with flags.
Grab your feather tickler, be among the wags.
Don’t forget the powder, sprinkle it around.
Laugh-it will not hurt you; make you strong and sound.
Show you are a human – be just as a child.
Everybody’s happy; the town’s gone wild.
Take your wife or sweetheart, stroll on Yonge or Queen.
Million flags are waving; oh what sights are seen!
Smiles, about ten million greet you everywhere.
Everybody’s busy – busy chasing care.
Climb into an auto, choose a truck or Ford;
Blow your little whistle; What a din, Oh, Lord!
Peace, we bid you welcome, woman, man, and child.
Everybody’s happy; the town’s gone wild.[1]

When the First World War came to an end at 11:00am on 11 November 1918, the battlefields fell silent but there was an explosion of sound around the world in celebration of victory and peace. In Toronto, people emerged from their beds in the early hours of the morning to join spontaneous gatherings in the streets. Later in the afternoon, many cheered-on the floats and marching bands in organized parades. As described by Toronto resident, Robert Todd, in the above poem, the streets of Canada’s largest city were filled with men, women, and children waving flags, tooting horns, and blowing whistles. Indeed, the town had gone wild.

Continue reading →