Canadian History Roundup – Week of December 10, 2017

“A merry Christmas to you.” Ephemera. 1912. New York: Gold Media Art. Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Literature. Toronto Public Library. Public Domain.

The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.

Missed last week’s roundup? Check it out here.

• This week Histoire Engagée welcomed a new editor, Cassandre Roy Drainville!
• Also on Histoire Engagée this week is a new piece by Adèle Clapperton-Richard comparing how museums and theatre engage with the past, particularly around representations of the “west” and the history of the Métis, and how two particular productions help to decentre traditional white-male-centric narratives.
• Christine Grossutti reviewed Ronald Rudin’s Kouchibouguac: Removal, resistance, and Remembrance at a National Park for NiCHE this week.
• The latest post from Borealia is by Jerry Bannister, who has some great advice for anyone starting their graduate thesis. I wish this blog post had been around when I started!
• Krista McCracken makes me feel really lazy in this look back of all of the amazing work she did in the past year! And if you missed any of it, this is a good place to start! Krista, when do you sleep???
• This week’s most commonly-used words in #envhist, according to Jessica DeWitt (who also apparently never sleeps) are: “GLERL,” “Elton,” and “Land.”
• Heather Read is back with the latest installment in her ongoing series on Canada 150 for the ROM blog. In this post, she looks at handmade objects from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC. And omg, that teapot.
• This week on Unwritten Histories, Best New Articles returned! In this post, I talk about my favourite articles from October and November!
• Immediately following the government’s apology to LGTBQ+ communities, Bill C-66, which allows for historical convictions that are now considered to be unjust to be expunged. Patrizia Gentile, Tom Hopper, Gary Kinsman, and Steven Maynard have written a response critiquing Bill C-66 for being too limited, too vague, too onerous, and permitting the destruction and removal of historical records.
  • Gentile, Hopper, Kinsman, and Maynard also authored a brief for the government on the bill, but they were not permitted to make a presentation. The bill was passed without any revisions, although the government claims it will look at the exclusion of bawdy house records.
• Read Janelle Baker’s poem, “In Search of the Toxic Berry Patch,” in memory of “Cibomb” Clement Auger.
• The ROM is reopening their Weston Entrance, and in honour of the occasion, they’ve put together a blog post with eight things you may want to know about it.
• Check out William Lyon Mackenzie King’s ice skates.
• Jessica DeWitt is back with her monthly look at the best in #envhist for NiCHE!
• LAC has a new blog post this week all about tintype photography, which is actually really cool.
• This week Instantanés has a new blog post featuring images of Christmas celebrations in the 1950s and 1960s in Nord Sept-Iles and Schefferville from the Compagnie minière fonds.
• Samantha Cutrara is back with another blog post in her examination of history education. In this post, she looks at regional histories and collaborative Canadian history curriculums. She is referring to the practice whereby certain provinces either borrow, or expand curriculums from other provinces, or collaborate with them.
• The Chilliwack Museum and Archives profiled their collection of Violet Dickinson’s hats. While I can admire them aesthetically, hats and me do not get along.
• The Canadian Encyclopedia published several new articles this week, including:
  • Francophones of Manitoba
  • Coast Salish artist Susan Point.
  • Jagmeet Singh
• And this week’s latest biography from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for George Hunt, aka Xawe, ’Maxwalagalis, K’ixitasu, and Nołq’ołala, who worked closely with a number of anthropologists and ethnographers, most notably Franz Boas.
• My high school English teacher has a new blog post about the first pedestrian killed by a car in Montreal. Believe it or not, it took until 1906. Seems rather late if you know anything about Montreal drivers…
• The Virtual Museum of Canada also launched a new exhibit this week, “Growing Pains – the 1867 Crisis at Kingston General Hospital,” about the year in which there were no funds for public hospitals in the entire country.
• Sean Munger reminds us that it’s almost 20 years since the 1998 Ice Storm. And in the new year, we’ll have a special blog post devoted to this subject.
• LAC hast posted another installment in their series, Who Do We Think We Are. This time, guest curator Katie Cholette discusses Lester Pearson.
• Sanober Umar has written a new blog post for Active History about the links between white nationalists and some ethnic nationalist organizations, like the Hindu nationalist diaspora.
• Krista McCracken also posted the latest episode in her mini-series on demystifying archival labour on the Historical Reminiscents podcast. In this episode, she talks about preservation best practices.
• Next year Makoons Media will collaborate with the 1850 Robinson Huron Treaty Trust to create a podcast about the importance of the Robinson Huron Treaty lawsuit, treaty education, and the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the government.
• Tom Peace and Sean Kherj spoke with the Getting Air with Terry Greene podcast about their work creating auxiliary materials for the BC Open textbooks on pre and post confederation Canadian history.
• The British Library put together an exhibit on the 150^th anniversary of Confederation, in honour of a visit from a group of North American curators. In this blog post, they profiled some of the items in this exhibit, particularly a copy of Alexander Tilloch Galt’s A History of Canada 1849- It’s rather interesting that the exhibit is framed as the 150^th anniversary of the passage of the BNA Act, rather than Confederation, as it is referred to here.
• Lauren Markewicz looks back on 150 years of prairie history through a “bison lens,” and discusses the implications of living in a “post-bison landscape.”
• Parks Canada historian Karen Routledge spoke with the Time to Eat the Dogs podcast about the history of the Inuit of Baffin Island. Warning: the website looks really strange on my browser, but the podcast should be on the left-hand side of the page.
• Ramona Rose and Erica Hernandez-Read have written the latest blog post from BC Studies on railways in northern BC, particularly in regards to the relevant records held at the Northern BC Archives in the Geoffrey R. Weller Library at UNBC.
• It’s not specifically Canadian, but Atlas Obscura has put together a list of their favourite archival collections that were digitized this year.
• The Calgary Gay History Project has put together their own mini roundup of media interviews they conducted regarding the LGTBQ+ apology from last week!
• The Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University has a new blog post looking back on the history of the commute to York.
  • And an accompanying Twitter essay.
• LAC’s digitization of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Personnel Service files has reached the last name Smith. And my guess is that they’ll be there for a while…
• All 202 issues of les herbes rouges, a literary journal from Quebec that was in operation from 1968 to 1993, have been digitized by BAnQ.
• The Archives of Manitoba shared these cool images of Christmas menus for WW1 troops training in England.
• The Friends of the BC Archives blog answers the questions: ‘How was Christmas celebrated 100 years ago?’ and ‘What was Santa Claus called at the time?’
• You can now read a transcript of Guy Berthiaume’s recent talk at the Queen’s University Archives Annual Lecture, which examined local, regional, and territorial archives.
• While I was in Ottawa, I was lucky enough to get a tour of the new Canadian History Hall with one of the curators that worked on the project, Jamie Trepanier. And the latest blog post from the Canadian Museum of History is by him! In the post, Jamie focuses on the adorable St. Onuphrius Ukrainian Catholic Church (which is in the Canadian History Hall)! Ironically, we did miss that part, but we had to do a 14,000 years of history in about 1.5 hours, so I did miss some stuff.
• Retroactive shares some very cool pictures of Christmases past, and some historical Christmas recipes!
• The Dartmouth Heritage Museum wished Joseph Howe a happy birthday this week. He turned 213.
• Find out about the upcoming Dalhousie Originals storytelling project, highlighting 52 individuals who have contributed to the university since its establishment. The project honours Dal’s 200th anniversary, and launches at the beginning of 2018.
• The Toronto Public Library shared these cool images of vintage holiday cards from their digital collection, several of which have appeared in recent roundups, including this one.
• Whistorical remembers how Eleanor Kitteringham prepared food in Whistler between the late 1940s and the mid 1950s during the winter, when all she had was a stove that burned sawdust.
• Yet again proving she doesn’t sleep, check out Jessica DeWitt’s live-tweeting her read of Moving Natures: Mobility and the Environment in Canadian History.
• The Canadian Museum of History seems to have my number because this week they’ve shared this gorgeous 1921 dollhouse. I’ve always loved looking at these.
• Stephanie Bellissimo shared her work with the Royal Botanical Garden creating an exhibit with Erin Aults and Marie Minaker, showcasing two of their archives, RBG: the Centre for Canadian Historical Horticultural Studies and the RBG institutional archives.
• Canadian History in the News
  • The last Trappist monk who makes fromage de la trappe (Trappist-style cheese) in North American is retiring. One Winnipeg couple is hoping to keep the tradition alive.
  • Charmaine Nelson was interviewed on The Sunday Edition about her work, why it is important we teach students about Canadian slave-owners, and the legacies of slavery.
  • Thirty years ago this week, Vancouver doctor Jean Carruthers pioneered the use of Botox for cosmetic purposes.
  • Twenty years ago this week, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered their decision in the Delgamuukw v. British Columbia case, which affirmed the recognition of Indigenous oral tradition as evidence with respect to establishing land claims and treaty rights.
  • UVic has a new interactive website that allows viewers to compare mountains from 150 years ago to today. This includes 7,000 pairs of images. Go here to check it out yourself.
  • See the Great Lakes in a whole new way with these eight maps.
  • Some students at a PEI high school have made their own film about residential schools for the PEI Human Rights Commission’s Human Rights Day. Check it out for yourself here.
  • The Yukon Archives is getting a new cold vault (my husband: why do they need a cold vault in Yukon???) to store fragile materials, including material relating to the territory’s residential schools.
  • St Catharines, ON is still trying to save the church where Harriet Tubman worshipped.
  • It only took nearly twenty years, but Nunavut has finally been added to the Centennial Flame.
  • Angela Shisheesh, a survivor of St. Anne’s Residential school, would like have her story preserved at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. However, in order to do this, she requires permission from the government and the Catholic Church first.
    • And I am sure you will be shocked to hear that after the news story dropped, the federal government reversed their decision.
  • Do you remember the Google Earth project mapping residential schools? Well, the story was picked up by the news this week.
    • CBC profiled it, and spoke with one of the team members, John Thompson, as well as Ry Moran.
    • The Winnipeg Free Press also interviewed Thompson in more detail.
  • Martha Troian and APTN Investigates has uncovered the existence of hundreds of Indigenous human remains in universities across the country. Which is absolutely horrifying.
    • Joanne Hammond put together a Twitter thread explaining why this is such a problem, why it happened, and archaeology’s complicity.
  • Doreen Nicoll explains why everyone should read Arthur Manuel’s books.
  • Shirley Tillotston explains the relationship between citizenship, taxes, and qualified voters, and why it took until 1963 for married women to be able to vote in Halifax municipal elections.
  • Inside Toronto profiled the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives and the really fantastic work that they’ve been doing for forty-four years now.
  • You may remember that in a previous roundup, I mentioned CIA brainwashing experiments on Canadians that took place in the 1950s and 1960s. The government has recently issued a gag order as part of an out-of-court settlement with the families. Nope, nothing suspicious to see here, now move along…
  • UNESCO recognized the Neapolitan art of pizza making as one of their “intangible” cultural practices. And this week The Current debated whether or not Canada has any intangible cultural practices deserving of meeting UNESCO’s criteria.
  • Two pieces by Emily Carr have been newly acquired by the Royal BC Museum.
  • The Petitcodiac War Museum is trying to return WW1 medals belonging to Private J. J. Jenks to his family, but they’ve reached a dead end.
  • Do you remember how, a couple of weeks ago, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic contained inaccurate information about the impact of the Halifax Museum on Africville? Well, the error has now been corrected.
  • The Canadian Museum of Human Rights just opened a new exhibit on “Canada at 150,” which includes information on the forced relocation of Inuit communities, like Ahiarmiut.
  • The flags of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations have been permanently installed at Vancouver City Hall as part of the formal recognition that Vancouver sits on their traditional territories. This is awesome!
  • Canadian Geographic has also put together this wonderful map of Indigenous languages spoken at home, which is available in a fold out version if you have a hard copy of the latest issue.
  • The Globe and Mail looks back on the history of potted meat in Newfoundland.
  • Jocelyn Paquet is closing his Archive of Photography and is looking to sell roughly 10 million photo negatives, chronicling decades of Quebec history.
  • Find out about Ben Ginter, one of the founders of the craft brewing industry in BC and the subject of a new exhibition at Exploration Place.
  • The recent film, Victoria and Abdul appears to be problematic, but there is a fascinating Canadian connection through our fourth prime minster, Sir John Thompson (omg, how many John Thompsons are there in this roundup?)
  • Doug Tsuji found a box of photographs, and discovered his grandfather’s (“George” Sadakihi Iga) history as a member of the Vancouver Asahi baseball team.
  • The Halifax regional council has voted to restore the historical boundaries of Lucasville, a historically Black Nova Scotian community. The boundaries were originally redrawn in 1996, without any consultation with the people of Lucasville.
  • Three more lighthouses have been designated as heritage lighthouses, which are protected under the Heritage Lighthouses Protection Act. This includes the Gillis Point, Black Rock Point, and Green Point lighthouses. Now say heritage lighthouses three times fast.
  • Global profiled work by Ryan Heavy Hand and Andy Wilson to return Indigenous ceremonial items to their original communities, where they take on new life. Included in the article are comments from Jerry Potts Jr., a Piikani Elder from southern Alberta about why repatriation is so important.
  • The Telegram spoke with Hayward and Raymond Blake about the impact of the forced relocation of 1,300 Newfoundland and Labrador communities from the 1950s onwards.
  • Sneaking in one last roundup mention for 2017, Jenny Ellison spoke with Global News National about the outdoors hockey game celebrating Canada150 and the 100th anniversary of the NHL . The story starts around 14 minutes 15 seconds, and Jenny is on around 16 minutes.
  • Irene Gyselinck came to Canada as a refugee from German in 1951. And sixty years later, she discovered that she was never granted Canadian citizenship.
  • Andy Riga takes a meandering look at three different perspectives on Jacques Cartier’s 1535 visit to Hochelaga. While we know he sailed on a river and climbed a mountain, we’re not totally sure which ones… Featured in the article are Donald Wiedman, Jocelyn Duff, and Christian Gates St-Pierre. Content warning: three white men talking about their views on Indigenous history. Riga did speak with  Chief Christine Zachary Deom of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, but she is only mentioned at the end of the article in passing.
  • The Toronto Star looks back on 100 years of tax history, and why people pay more taxes than corporations.
• Better Late than Never
  • A group of Edmonton Elders with the Kohkom Kisewaisowin Society have created a calendar with stories for Indigenous women that highlight Indigenous traditions. APTN spoke with Elder Elsie Paul, who is Cree-Metis from the Wolf Lake Metis settlement, about the project.
  • The Only a Game podcast looked back on the life of Joseph Barss, the Halifax Explosion, and the establishment of a hockey program at the University of Michigan.
  • Do you remember me talking about the discoveries made by Katherine Cook’s class at the Johnson Street Bridge in Victoria? Here’s some more information on what they found. And another Johnson!
  • Gary Kinsman explained why the LGTBQ+ apology fell short.
• Calls for Papers
  • The Canadian Committee on Women’s History is seeking nominations for the Hilda Neatby prizes, for the best articles on women’s or gender history in English and French, and the CCWH Book Prize, for the best book on women’s or gender history in English and French. The awards will be given out at the 2018 CHA. Authors and publishers are welcome to submit!
  • Do you remember all those great reflection posts from NiCHE about CHESS? Well, it’s time to sign up for CHESS 2018!
  • The Revue d’Histoire de l’Université de Sherbrooke has issued a call for papers for their upcoming issue for Fall 2018. The issue’s theme will be the relationship between historians and their sources. Proposals are due January 31.
  • Arcadia, the blog of the Environment and Society Portal, has issued a general call for papers on extreme natural events in inhabited areas. There is no set deadline.
  • Do you want to help make the next Heritage Minute? Historica Canada is looking for proposals! Proposals are due February 12 at 5 pm.
  • The Underhill Colloquium Planning Committee at Carleton has issued a call for papers for the 24th Underhill Graduate Student Colloquium. This year’s theme will be “Storying our pasts: historical narratives and representations.” Proposals are due January 21. 

So what’s with all the Johnstons anyways? Hehe. Anyways, I hope you’ve enjoyed this last roundup for 2017! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for our look back on Canadian history in 2017! See you then!

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