Active History

Memory, History, Monuments, and Mennonites: Or, what Winkler, Manitoba might teach us about dealing with historical and moral complexity in public commemoration

August 15, 2018 4 Comments

By Matthew Neufeld

Lifestyle of Peace Monument, Winkler

I am against removing statues of controversial figures from our history. I think removals are misguided because they amplify rather than diminish the moral charge of public commemoration. Instead of removing monuments that might provoke emotional pain among some members of historically marginalized groups or foster moral unease in the consciences of Canadians with European ancestry, I propose that historians, communities and governments cooperate to find creative ways both to commemorate and to acknowledge the moral complexity of the past.

The role of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald in developing and implementing the Indian residential school system, which until recently was not central to historical assessments of his career, has prompted civic leaders of Victoria, BC to remove a statute of Macdonald from outside the city hall. There are strong moral and ritualistic components to removing Macdonald’s statue, as reported by the Vancouver Sun. Proponents feel that clearing away Macdonald’s image now will start to make amends for past wrongs, and so contribute to the city’s process toward reconciliation with First Nations. Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, despite receiving graduate-level training in Canadian history, expressed shame not to have learned until recently about Macdonald’s role in the residential school system. Now that the statute has been removed, the mayor is promising that a ‘cleansing, blessing and healing ceremony’ will take place on the spot. In place of Macdonald, the city will put a piece of Indigenous art. Thus, the demon of Macdonald will have been exorcised from Victoria’s civic space.

The removal of Victoria’s Macdonald statute amplifies and simplifies the moral dimension of the complicated history of the Canadian state’s interaction with Indigenous peoples at the cost of the historical. Continue reading →

What’s In a Monument? Part II: The Edward Cornwallis Monument and Reconciliation

August 14, 2018 1 Comment

“What’s in a Monument?” is based on a public lecture delivered on March 11 in the History Matters Series organized by the University of Calgary History Department and the Calgary Public Library. We recommend that you read yesterday’s post by Jewel Spangler about the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville before Part II because it provides the theoretical framework for this piece.

By Nancy Janovicek

This blog post builds on Jewel Spangler’s arguments about heritage stories and the crucial distinction between history and commemoration in Part I of “What’s in a Monument?”, which discussed the Charlottesville Riots that erupted after the attempted relocation of the Robert E. Lee Monument a year ago. Focusing on the January removal of the Edward Cornwallis monument in Halifax, I also begin from the premise that monuments “are artifacts of those who commemorate.”

Statue of Edward Cornwallis removed from Halifax Park, January 2018

The Canadian controversy echoed the US incident, but in Canada, the removal was resolved peacefully. I argue that the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) opened a space receptive to Indigenous critiques of imperialist heritage stories. But I want to be clear from the outset that it was never our intention to contrast a violent and racist US debate with a peaceful and tolerant Canadian response to contestations about interpretations of the past. We gave the public lectures on which these posts are based shortly after the verdicts were delivered in the Colten Bouchey and Tina Fontaine cases. Their violent deaths demonstrate that in our journey towards reconciliation, heeding Indigenous people’s criticisms of colonial narratives is only a first step in connecting past actions with current injustices.

The Cornwallis Monument Debate

Past Active History posts about the Cornwallis debate provide further context for this piece. Thomas Peace appealed to history educators to move beyond unproductive debates about teaching history that pit rote learning of facts against inquiry-based pedagogy. In order to use history to participate in civic debates and politics, people need to “think with history,”[1] a skill that requires both facts and process. Tom Fraser celebrated the success of the thirty-year Mi’kmaw campaign launched by Daniel Paul. These heritage projects, he argued, are remnants of an imperialist national project that insist that Canada is a British space. He called on educators and historians to take a leadership role in explaining what these commemorative projects represent to Indigenous peoples. Continue reading →

What’s in a Monument? Part I: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Memory

August 13, 2018 1 Comment

By Jewel Spangler

“What’s in a Monument?” is based on a public lecture delivered on March 11 in the History Matters Series organized by the University of Calgary History Department and the Calgary Public Library. This first post by Jewel Spangler is about the attempted removal of the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville. Tomorrow’s post by Nancy Janovicek focuses on the Edward Cornwallis monument in Halifax.

Unite the Right Rally, Charlottesville, VA. Photo by Anthony Crider (Wikimedia Commons)

Last weekend marked the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville Riots. In the run up to a white-nationalist “unite the right” rally that had been planned in that southern college town for the afternoon of August 12, 2017, skirmishes between white supremacists and counter-protestors became such a threat to public safety that Virginia’s governor ended up declaring a state of emergency and local police proclaimed the assembly illegal before it could officially begin. Clashes ultimately resulted in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer and injuries to 19 others when one of the white-supremacist ralliers intentionally rammed his car into a crowd.

While the terrifying scenes from that weekend may still be fresh in memory, one might easily forget that they were sparked by the planned relocation of a 1924 monument of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park. Both before and after the riots, defenders of Lee’s monument, including the unite-the-righters, decried the Charlottesville City Council’s re-location plan as a threat to “history” or an attack on southern “heritage.” Disturbingly, the President of the United States himself tweeted: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” . . . “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it.” “Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”

Comments like these rest on several well-documented fallacies. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 120: Decoding Monuments and Memorials

August 2, 2018 No Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Tonya Davidson of Carleton University about the meaning of monuments. We talk about monuments from a sociological perspective, the controversies around taking monuments down, and whether we should have monuments to individual people. We also visit two monuments in downtown Ottawa to talk about their designs meaning, and use in public spaces.

In addition to teaching at Carleton, Tonya also does walking tours of downtown Ottawa where she takes groups to various monuments to discuss their role as pieces of public history and sociology. She runs her tours through (De)Tours, so the next time you’re in the nation’s capital, be sure to check them out.

Continue reading →

Canada Docks and Quebec Pond

July 30, 2018 2 Comments

By Jim Clifford
[This post was originally published on the Network in Canadian History & Environment site.]

Canada Water is a small lake and wildlife refuge in the heart of Rotherhithe in South London. It is one of the few remaining parts of the once extensive Surrey Commercial Docks that covered much of the Rotherhithe Peninsula during the nineteenth century. Canada Water was Canada Dock, the centre of the timber trade in London, where timber was unloaded into the water and formed into rafts that were stored in Canada Pond and Quebec Pond (see the map below).

Map of Canada Dock, Canada Pond and Quebec Pond

London Sheet VII.99, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

British Empire Dockyards and Ports, 1909 (Public Domain)

Continue reading →

Remember/Resist/Redraw #16: Radical Bookshops in 1930s Montréal

July 27, 2018 No Comments

In the spring, the Graphic History Collective re-launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as an ongoing series.

Earlier this week, we released RRR poster #16 by Adèle Clapperton-Richard and Andrée Lévesque, a bilingual poster that looks at radical bookshops in 1930s Montréal as important spaces of activist education and organizing.

We also created a list of radical bookshops (included at the bottom of this post) in operation today in what is currently Canada, and we are encouraging people to seek them out this summer. Many radical bookshops have excellent history sections, accenting people’s history and histories of the marginalized and dispossessed that you won’t find at corporate bookstores. So, instead of (or maybe in addition to??) completing the #InMyFeelingsChallenge this summer, we are challenging you to check out your local radical bookshop.

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.

***

Continue reading →

Fire in the Belly: A Short Reflection on the Late Stan Rogers

July 25, 2018 1 Comment

By Ann Walton

Recently, I’ve started to view Stan Rogers through a different prism.

Listen to the late folk singer’s music and you’ll discover not only a stunning songwriter, but a passionate historian whose work was inseparable from the history of his country.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s two young brothers from Hamilton toured Canada and the United States, singing songs like Northwest Passage and Fogarty’s Cove in every kind of venue imaginable. When I listen to the recordings now, it’s hard to imagine that life on the road was anything but lively gigs in theatres and bars all bursting at the seams with joyful spectators. But back then, long before Stan Rogers’ tragic death transformed him into the “voice of Canada,” and then the “legend” that he is today, he was, in every way, a working-class musician, often horrendously represented by some incompetent publicist, playing to half-empty rooms with his younger brother Garnet, and just hoping to make enough money to fill the tank.

“It wasn’t like today, where there is some little room in nearly every town,” Garnet Rogers explains in his wonderful memoir, Night Drive: Travels with my Brother (2016). The folk revival of another decade was all but a memory, and there simply were no gigs. “If you presented yourself as a songwriter,” he recalls, “you were met with puzzled silence.” There were only a handful of places to play, and only rumours here and there of others, though they didn’t pay well, if anything at all. “You watched and you waited,” writes Garnet, “and you played where you could, and you tried to make it count.”[1] Night after night with their instruments, the two brothers and their bassist climbed into their van, playing shows for over a decade together.

But just why did they stick with it for so long? Why didn’t they just go back to Hamilton, and throw in the towel already? Get ‘real’ jobs and lead ‘normal’ lives? Continue reading →

Newfoundland’s 1948 Referendum: A People’s Victory?

July 23, 2018 1 Comment

The Responsible Government League attempted to scare the electorate in the referendum campaigns by emphasizing how Confederation with Canada would result in the imposition of a wide range of taxes. The Independent, April 5, 1948.

Raymond B. Blake

Referendums are blunt instrument to measure public sentiments. They take complex issues and reduce them to simple yes or no answers. They allow charismatic politicians to seize the public stage and rally voters for or against a particular public policy option through the greater use of fear, distorted realities, and appeals to emotion than is generally normal during regular elections. Yet, there has been a resurgence recently in the use of referendums, and the consequences have been considerable.[i] In 2016, for instance, British voters opted to have their country leave the European Union and Colombians rejected a peace deal to end 52 years of war with Farc guerrillas. We often regret the choices citizens make in referendums and conclude that if they were as wise as we, then they would have voted differently. Do voters really know what they are voting on in referendums?

An important referendum took place 70 years ago this week, when on 22 July 1948 Newfoundlanders were asked to decide between becoming Canada’s 10^th province or remaining an independent dominion. It took two referendums to settle the question but both had much of what we see with such instruments of direct democracy. A diversity of actors entered the fray to promote their own interests. Negative advertising predominated with the major groups attacking each other, often with misinformation and exaggerated claims. Special interests groups, notably the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the leadership of the Loyal Orange Lodge, attempted to rally the faithful to their cause. There was also an attempt to exploit the regional and class divisions that had long marked Newfoundland. The Confederates, lead by Gordon Bradley and Joseph R. Smallwood, played the anti-establishment card, presenting themselves as ‘outsiders’, standing up for ordinary citizens against an elite and a system of government that, they claimed, had largely ignored the needs of the people. They promised that Confederation would usher in a new relationship between state and citizen, elevating the social and economic status of all Newfoundlanders and providing all with a measure of protection from the vicissitudes of the international economy upon which the country depended for its well-being. Continue reading →

History Slam Episode 119: Pierre Trudeau, the Constant Liberal

July 18, 2018 No Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

The 2015 election of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party, along with the 50th anniversary of his father’s election as Liberal leader, has generated plenty of renewed interest in the life and career of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. The popular conception of the elder Trudeau has been that he is very much a leftist figure, a sentiment that is, partly, the product of his social policies. In economic and business, matters, however, the situation is more vague. This is where Christo Aivalis’ new book The Constant Liberal: Pierre Trudeau, Organized Labour, the Canadian Social Democratic Left comes in. Avalis argues that Trudeau was much less a left wing figure that is typically believed and, in fact, he was at odds with leftist economic beliefs.

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Christo about the book. We talk about the renewed interest in Pierre Trudeau, the difference between Liberal and liberal in Canadian political parlance, and Pierre’s social policies. We also talk about Canada’s economic structure, Pierre’s policies, and whether the electorate supports leftist reforms. Continue reading →

Last »