The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Missed last week’s roundup? Check it out here.
Environmental History
- The most common-used words in #envhist last week, according to Jessica DeWitt, were: ‘Environmental,’ ‘History,’ and ‘University.’
- NiCHE had a super busy week!
- First, NiCHE reposted a piece by Brittany Luby on environmental vocabularies and naming practices, and how both impact Indigenous Peoples, that originally appeared on Active History in 2010. It is still very relevant, even eight years later.
- NiCHE also republished a piece by Katie Schroeder on a recent workshop on the texture of words, and the meaning of the term “fomites.”
- Next was a piece by David Neufield on observing the freeze-up of the Yukon River.
- Edward Jones-Imhotep and Tina Adcock have a brand new book that’s just come out, Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History. For the launch, Jones-Imhotep put together a wonderful Twitter thread with short descriptions of each chapter. What a fantastic idea!
- Thomas Blampied wrote a new piece for Active History on Treaty 9 and the Ford government’s attempt to develop mining in Northern Ontario, and how everything old is new again.
- As It Happens republished a 1975 interview with Helen Klaben, who, along with pilot Ralph Flores, survived for forty-nine days in Yukon with almost no supplies after a plane crash. Klaben passed away earlier this month.
Military History
- The Library of Congress announced that it has fully digitized their collection of WW1 newspaper clippings from 1914 to 1926. Gail Dever noted that this new database includes Canadian content as well.
- The Canadian War Museum has a new traveling exhibition with colourized images from WW1. You can see some of them here. Many of these are well-known images, and seeing them in colour is a bit of a shock.
Archaeology
- Archaeology and puppies? Sign me up. Though I am actually more of a cat person.
History Education
- There is a brand-new education guide for the Finding Cleo podcast, that explores community and family in Indigenous communites and the impact of the Sixties Scoop.
- Krista McCracken put together a fantastic piece about how they used the the fantastic Identifying & Dismantling White Supremacy in Archives poster, created by Michelle Caswell’s Archives, Records, and Memory Class in 2016, in their own recent Archival Studies course. I so want to do this.
- Find out about some of the new grassroots reconciliation circles that are popping up in Manitoba.The CBC article link profiled Raymond Currie’s “Circles of Reconciliation” initiative in particular.
- Riley Resno (Anishinaabe from Eabametoong First Nation, who grew up in Thunder Bay) has written a new op-ed for Maclean’s on why the truth aspect of Truth and Reconciliation needs to prioritized before reconciliation, and the widespread ignorance of treaty and Indigenous history among settler Canadians.
- While this post by Godefroy Desrosiers-Lauzon deals specifically with a course on the US history, it’s a helpful look at the limits of textbooks, and his experiences getting around these problems by using primary sources instead.
Transnational History
- In the final Beyond Borders blog post of 2018, Daniel Macfarlane discussed transborder history and seeing Niagara Falls as a dynamic, static, natural, and artificial place all at once.
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History
- Black Perspectives has published their list of the best Black history books of 2018.
- A panel investigating Dalhousie University’s history of racism and links to slavery has issued their final recommendations. The panel was chaired by Afua Cooper, and recommended that the institution should issue an apology to the African Nova Scotian community. They do not, however, recommend a name change because the name “Dalhousie” is no longer associated with the founder.
- There is a new radio documentary out about Fairbridge Farm on Vancouver Island, where 329 British Home Children were sent from 1935 to 1951,
- Check out this interview with Carolyn Butler-Palmer, who provided feedback to the Bank of Canada on the design of the new Viola Desmond $10 bill.
Indigenous History
- Inuk musician Susan Aglukark has just published a new children’s book that follows a young Inuk girl, Ukpik. The book is set in the area currently known as Nunavut at the turn of the 19th century, and focuses on how Ukpik’s life changed as result of increasing contact between Inuit communities and settlers.
- Did you know that one of the oldest human-made structures in the area currently known as Canada is the Majorville Medicine Wheel, a 5,000 sacred site built by the ancestors of the Blackfoot? Though as Val Jobson pointed out on Twitter, the title of the piece is really problematic.
- Paul Seesequasis put together two great Twitter threads with additional photographs and information. The first one is here (on the Majorville Medicine Wheel alignments) and the second is here (on other medicine wheels)
- CBC spoke with Inuk tattoo artist Holly Nordlum about how she is revitalizing the ancient art of kakinniit or Tunniit (Inuit tattoos).
- One of Krista McCracken’s research students put together an absolutely wonderful Google map plotting the home communities of students who attended the Shingwauk Residential School.
- Darryl Leroux put together a new Twitter thread on the Eastern Métis phenomenon, showing how they have been using non-status and Métis groups in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia from the 1960s-1980s to try and legitimize their claims.
- Joanne Hammond set the record straight by explaining that Indigenous cultures mostly developed in place, with little to no evidence of violent population replacements.
- Check out Skylee Storm Hogan’s new digital history project on Story Maps, retracing Chief Shingwaukonse’s trip from Baawating (Sault Ste. Marie) to Toronto between 1851-1853.
- They also provided additional details about the project here.
New France/British North America
- Russell Potter has a new blog post on Lady Franklin’s funeral. That is quite the crypt.
Political History
- This week marked the seventieth anniversary of the passing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Social History
- Kesia Kvill posted an edited version of her previous blog post on Fall Fair Mocha Cake on Active History this week! I love this post.
- It is entirely possible that LAC has picked up on my love of puppies and kittens, since their latest Flickr album contains images of working dogs. Check out the images themselves here.
- Retroactive looked back at the history of Christmas editions of mail-order catalogues.
- This week the Archival Moments blog celebrated the anniversary of the first transatlantic radio message, received at Signal Hill, St. John’s, on December 12th, 1901.
- Also on LAC this week was a look at the British Columbia Penitentiary’s inmates bimonthly magazine, Transitions, first published in 1951.
- Who else got Harry Potter vibes from this piece from the University of Waterloo Special Collections and Archives post on mysterious wand work?
- Pop-up books, anyone? Warning: also includes images of creepy puppets.
The History of Gender and Sexuality
- Find out about the great work that the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives did over the past year.
- And they also profiled a new collection they’ve recently received, from Monica Forrester, a Two-Spirit trans woman from Toronto.The collection will be invaluable for learning more about trans history in Canada.
- Tarah Brookfield’s latest book, Our Voices Must be Heard: Women and the Vote in Ontario, was profiled by Laurier University!
- Donica Belisle has written a new piece for The Conversation on Quebec’s long history of policing women’s fashions.
Local History
- Heritage Winnipeg profiled the original Winnipeg “Christmas headquarters,” The Imperial Dry Goods store.
- The UBC Digitizer’s blog looked back at winter concerts in Vancouver’s past, using their collection of Discorder magazine.
- I’m in love with this 1957 Medicine Hat ambulance.
- Historic Nova Scotia published a bunch of new pieces this week, including:
- Alex Boutilier again on the bylaw against tobogganing on Citadel Hill. Oops. I miss tobogganing.
- Iris V. Shea (with the Mainland South Heritage Society) on the Pinegrove Hotel.
- The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic on the oldest banks schooner in Canada, the Theresa E. Connor.
- And finally, Boutilier again on the politics of horse racing in mid-19thcentury Halifax.
- The latest blog post from Eve Lazarus detailed the unsolved rape and murder of convent resident, Albina Lequiea. Content warning.
Digital and Public History
- Check out the new digital exhibit from the Virtual Museum of Canada, on the bell towers of the churches of Vaudreuil-Soulanges.
- Back issues of the British Colonist (the ancestor of the Times Colonist), from 1858-1970, are now available. The remainder from the 1970s will be added in the new year.
- Laura Markewicz was back with another museum review. This week she reviewed the Museum of Vancouver’s c̓əsnaʔəm: City Before the City.
- Find out what the Manitoba Food History Truck has been up to!
- LAC has launched a new interface for searching and accessing their published holdings, called Aurora.
- This week Instantanés showcased a really cool project that BAnQ Sherbrooke did in association with masters students in history at the Université de Sherbrooke and Centre de resources pour l’étude des Cantons-de-l’Est (CRCE), using printed advertisements to showcase the built heritage of the Eastern Townships.
Doing History
- This blog post by Jessica DeWitt on the problems of place and precarity is an absolutely essential read for all academics. Seriously. Just read it.
- This week on Unwritten Histories we saw the return of everyone’s favourite series, Historians’ Histories! This week’s
victimvolunteer was environmental historian, Heather Green! - And we also had a special blog post this week, which was shared on Active History and Histoire Engagée. The post, by Adele Perry, argues that we need to do a better job of supporting the precariously-employed and early-career researchers who are producing the bulk of digital Canadian history projects. Hear hear!
- If you’d prefer to read the post in French, check it out here.
Miscellaneous
- The latest biography from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for forensic pathologist, Wilfrid Derome.
- Canada’s History has published their 2018 Book and Gift Guide.
Podcasts
- CBC has just launched a new six-part podcast on the crash of Canadian Pacific Flight 21, sixty kilometres from 100 Mile House, on July 8, 1965. The RCMP determined that a bomb was detonated on the floor of the plane, and that this caused the crash, but the perpetrator and their motive remain unknown.
- The latest episode of Cool Canadian History looked at the assassination of D’Arcy McGee.
- LAC published their latest podcast, on holiday music in their collection.
- The latest History Slam episode featured Sean Graham in conversation with Aaron Boyes and Megan Reilly-Boyes about the biggest Christmas toy fads of the twentieth century.
- Check out episode two of the Manitoba Food History Podcast, on Winnipeg’s burger joints.
- Last week, Dig: A History Podcast published an episode on fur trading and life in New France.
- The latest episode of the Secret Life of Canada is a bonus episode featuring a Q&A from their live Toronto show.
Calls for Papers
- The Juno Beach Centre, in association with Active History, is seeking blog post proposals on the history, memory, and legacy of Juno Beach and the victory campaign in Europe. Submissions will be accepted through to May 8, 2020.
- The Association for Canadian Studies in the United States has issued a CFP for their 2019 Biennial Conference. This year’s theme is “Canada: Forces of Inclusion.” Proposals are due April 15, 2019.
That’s it for the last roundup of the year! But don’t worry, we still have one more post this year, our annual Year in Review! I hope you enjoyed the latest Canadian History Roundup. 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 annual review! See you then!
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