Canadian History Roundup – Week of February 26, 2017

Housewives! Wage war on Hitler (1941-42). Canada. Dept. of Public Information. Toronto Public Library. Public Domain.

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

*Before I get to the roundup, I would like to take a minute to thank each and every person who has contributed money to Unwritten Histories and/or helped to spread the work about our funding campaign. The messages of support and encouragement that I have received this week are overwhelming, and it has been amazing to see so many people speak up for this blog and myself. Words cannot express my gratitude fully, so I will simply say thank you.

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

• This week NiCHE continued its series of posts from contributors to the edited collection, Animal Metropolis. Here are the remaining entries:
  • First this week was an article from Carla Hustak, who discussed the long relationship between feminism and animal rights, particularly the ways in which female bodies have been objectified.
  • In the final post, Jason Colby talks about an orca named Skana, whose story resulted in the creation of the anti-cetacean captivity movement. I personally love whales and dolphins, and think these majestic creatures should be left alone in the ocean, where they belong. If you’d like to learn more about what happens to whales and dolphins in captivity, I highly recommend the films The Cove, and Blackfish.
• Borealia is back this week with Part 4 in Alan Corbiere’s series on Anishinaabeg Warriors in the War of 1812. This week’s post focuses on the island of Michilimackinac, particularly the central role it played in Anishinaabeg culture and society and their fight to maintain possession of it.
• Krista McCracken is back with another excellent piece about Indigenous history and education. This time she addresses teaching the subject of the Sixties Scoop and tying it to ongoing child welfare inequality (the Millennium Scoop). Rather than simply talking philosophically, she has specific advice on how to integrate these subjects into your classroom!
• Russell Potter’s “Franklin Searcher of the Month” series focuses this month on Tookoolito, a young Inuk woman. Also known as Hannah, Tookoolito served as a main translator for Franklin searcher Charles Francis Hall in the 1860s, allowing Inuit testimony to be recorded for future generations.
• For Black History Month in Canada, African Nova Scotian Affairs posted a series of narratives recounting the experiences of notable Black Nova Scotians. There are four weeks total of narratives, which can be accessed using the menu bar to the right.
• For those of you who missed my blog post on Tuesday, I launched a Patreon campaign to help financially support Unwritten Histories. Check out this blog post to find out more. Without this support, I won’t be able to continue writing Unwritten Histories.
• Library and Archives Canada has added more images to the Flickr collection of Rare Books. Check them out here.
• The Vancouver as it Was blog remembers one early proposal for the crossing of Burrard Island via foot bridge.
• BAnQ’s blog, Instantanés, has a new post this week about the song, “Chagall,” by Marcel Cabay and Herbert Ruff.
• The blog of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women has a post this week about two Inuit women and their children who were kidnapped by European explorers in the 1500s. The first pair — a woman and child whose names are not known — were kidnapped by French sailors in 1567. The second was Ignorth, an Inuit woman who was kidnapped by Martin Frobisher and “brought over” to Europe, and her child. The word “Ignorth” was the Inuktitut word for “woman,” and her captors mistakenly believed that was her name.
• The Ontario Heritage Trust has published a new issue of their magazine, Heritage Matters. – Warning: It’s a PDF file. The issue includes information about archaeological finds regarding the Underground Railroad in downtown Toronto.
• Stephanie Ann Warner has a new blog, where she will be posting about her historical and travel adventures. She also launched another new blog, called Prairie Pioneer Letters, where she is posting information from her latest project on love-letters between a prairie farming couple.
• Heather Read posted a behind-the-scenes look at some of the artefacts that will be featured as a series on the ROM blog in honour of Canada 150. They look so cool….
• Bill Waiser has a new blog post this week about efforts by white political leaders in Saskatchewan to alter the province’s borders, including one attempt to allow direct access to the Hudson Bay.
• How’s this for awesome: remember Sarah Van Vugt’s fantastic blog post on Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl? Well, it has been translated into French and posted to Histoire Engagée! I think that is fantastic!
• In addition to her earlier post on the Sixties Scoop, Krista McCracken also has a new blog post on her own blog about a workshop session where she and Skylee-Storm Hogan spoke about how faculty members can collaborate with archives in the classroom.
• There is a new History Slam episode out this week! In the latest episode, Sean Graham speaks with Aaron Boyes about the 10 most shocking deaths of the 20^th century.
• Also on Instantanés this week is a blog post about the creation of the Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine tunnel in Montreal. Or, as I knew it, that annoying tunnel that we had to go through to get downtown that cut the radio off. #Montrealgirlproblems
• Queen’s University has recognized Robert Sutherland, the first black graduate of the university. who graduated in 1854 with an astounding 14 academic prizes and became the first black lawyer in Upper Canada. When he died, he left his entire estate to Queen’s, allowing it to continue after a financial collapse. If only it hadn’t taken almost 140 years to acknowledge this.
• This week on the Acadiensis blog is a video of a talk by UNB professor Bill Parenteau about the past and future of New Brunwick’s forest industries.
• This week on the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog is a first post about the Lost Loyalist project, recreating the biographies of some of the lesser-known Loyalists. Stay tuned for interesting developments here on Unwritten Histories in relation… 😉
• Gail Dever writes about the news regarding the first French-Canadian couple to be married in Quebec.
• The Landscapes of Injustice project hosted a Scholarship and Activism forum this week at UVic. You can watch the entire discussion at the link above. Watch out for Georgia Sitara in particular, one of my favourite people.
• Jessica DeWitt has a new blog post about the objectification of women in historic videos about national parks.
• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography’s new biography this week is for John Charles Fields, mathematician who founded the Fields Medal. Personally, I’m allergic to math.
• Christopher Moore has a fascinating blog post this week in response to a recent Slate article on the True Cost of the Louisiana Purchase, and how the same methodology could be applied to Rupert’s Land.
• The City of Vancouver Archives has just updated their search engine. Users will now have access to copyrighted digital objects.
• This week on Retroactive is a look at the fate of the Old Fort Edmonton, tracing where its building material ended up being reused.
• The Canadian War Museum has posted a beautiful image of a biscuit tin from WW1.
• This week’s #tbt from the ROM features Dorothy Burnham’s work hanging blankets.
• Borealia has a second blog post this week, by Isaac Land. Land takes a moment to remember Danny Vickers: his kindness, his curiosity, and his enduring legacy.
• The latest Ben Franklin’s world podcast episode is out, and it looks at allegiances during the American Revolution, including the Loyalist factions!
• Also from Krista McCracken this week is a blog post about her visit with her family to the Bushplane Museum! I bet my nephew would adore that, since he’s currently obsessed with all things vehicular, especially fire trucks (he’s 3).
• Harold Bérubé continues his series on Montreal’s Tri-centennial this week, with a look at an exhibition of historical books from February 27, 1942.
• It’s not really quite Canadian, but the UBC Digitizer’s blog looks at world travel this week, including materials from the CPR.
• Library and Archives Canada has a new blog post this week about BC’s Penitentiary, Goose Island, and the dangers of running prisons in remote locations
• Adam Pratt reviewed David J. Silverman’s Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America for the Junto this week.
• This week on the Black Perspectives blog is a new post by Paul Hébert on Black Canadian and Caribbean intellectuals’ critiques of Canadian neoimperialism in the 1960s. This was in response to public debate about the anti-imperial struggles in the West Indies and Africa.
• The Vancouver As It Was blog takes a look at Howard and Mary Plummer, British missionaries who moved to Canada in 1913, and what happened when they began planning for a mission to Bolivia.
• There is a new online service from the makers of Early Canadiana Online, called Canadiana Online. This database allows full text-searches to three collections of documents. Find out more here.
• The BC Studies Conference program is out! I can’t go this year, but it looks fantastic!
• There is a new entry from the Canadian Encyclopedia this week, on Rural Teachers in Canada.
• The Toronto Reference Library Blog has a sneak-peak at some of the items that will be featured in an upcoming talk about sex work in Toronto in the 19^th century .
• The Underhill Graduate Colloquium program is also now online!
• In their third blog post in a series about their latest traveling exhibit, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights discusses the subject of responsible government.
• Eve Lazarus has a blog post about the life and death of Muriel “Capi” Wylie Blancet, the author of The Curve of Time. 
• Canadian History in the News
  • David Wencer at the Historicist remembers the July 1933 protest against fascism in Toronto.
  • The Huffington Post had an article this week by Maimuna (Muna) Gaye, Program Coordinator at Historica, arguing that we need to recognize that Black History is Canadian History. I couldn’t agree more.
  • Nova Scotia museums don’t need any more of your mom’s fruit peelers, no matter how special (shoutout to Christina Madonald, ‪@LawLoreNS‪!)
  • New Brunswick is implementing mandatory Indigenous curriculum as part of their response to the TRC Calls to Action. It’s great to see how well the education sector is responding in many parts of the country.
  • In awesome-sauce historical nerd news: the “Book of Negroes” is now available as a downloadable dataset. Hang on, I need a minute…
  • And also, architectural historian Peter Ziobrowski has created a new online map of Africville to help provide compensation to former residents
  • Atlas Obscura featured the first European map of the North Pole this week. Did you know there is a giant magnetic mountain there? 😉
  • CBC has a fascinating story about Yukon Miner Pete Risby’s parents. His father was African-American and his mother was white. They came to the Yukon fleeing persecution from the KKK in Kansas.
  • CBC spoke with archaeologist Karolyn Smardz Frost about her latest research into the life of Cecelia Jane Reynolds, a former slave who came to Toronto in 1846 via the Underground Railroad.
  • There is a super cool new exibit in the Anchorage Museum called “I am Inuit.” Originating in an Instagram account that replicated the Humans of New York model, the exhibit strives to showcase life among the Inupiat and Yupiit of Alaska and counteract stereotypes about Indigenous peoples in the Arctic.
  • On February 16^th, the House of Commons officially apologized to the British Home Children.
  • Remember how a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that a Métis law student, Jesse Donovan, was calling on the RCMP to return stolen items belonging to Louis Riel to the Métis National Council? Well, the federal government has agreed to do it! Remember children, stealing is bad.
  • The CBC spoke with Murray Mayes this week, whose grandparents led a group of Black families out of Oklahma to settle in Eldon, Saskatchewan, the first Black settlement in the province.
  • New Brunswick is beginning to rename locations that have the word “Negro” as place names. Yay!
  • Two homes where Nellie McClung lived during her lifetime are being moved to the Archibald Museum.
  • Have you ever heard of the 1966 Great Winnipeg Gold Heist?
  • This week, Wired.com takes a look at the history of some of Canada’s most “iconic” designs, like the CN logo. There is also a new film coming out about this subject, called Design Canada. I just love the history of design.
  • Arthur Williams at the Prince George Citizen shows some of the historical gems waiting to be found in their online archive.
  • Edmonton’s Heritage Council is sponsoring the creation of a 3D film about a proposed city plan that was never implemented, part of the City Beautiful movement.
  • The South Asian Canadian Histories Association will be sponsoring a series of events in the Fall about some of the darker stories from Canadian history, through a South Asian lens.
  • The oldest traces of life have been found in Quebec. Insert joke here. 😉
  • A new monument is being placed on Mount Royal in Montreal called “L’étreinte des temps” (The Embrace of Time).
  • Métis elder Christine Blondeau spoke to students this week about the history of the Métis in the Estevan, Saskatchewan area.
  • Teachers in Winnipeg are learning a new workshop for teaching about the history of residential schools, called “Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools.”
  • This week The Guardian remembers the important role that the mining industry has played in the history of Toronto.
  • A Franco-Ontarian heritage home is in danger of being torn down.
  • One man who had been sent to New Zealand as part of the Sixties Scoop has returned to Canada for the first time.
  • Daniel O’Toole has an editorial about the problems of DNA testing with respect to Indigenous ancestry, particularly as concerns the so-called “Métis of Chibougamau.”
  • The Historicist has another re-reun this week,  about the Toronto Women’s Home Guard. It’s worth checking out for the pictures alone. 😉
• Better Late than Never
  • Learn about the history of Snyder’s Shipyard in Nova Scotia.
  • Emily Lonie posted about her experiences at this year’s Association of Canadian Archivists Student Chapter at UBC.
  • I didn’t know this, but Danny Vickers was apparently name-dropped in Good Will Hunting.
  • This is a sponsored article from the Star Phoenix, but it contains some interesting information about Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan.
  • John Lutz asked: “Why did James Douglas’ treaty era end after 1854?”
  • Did you know there is a podcast from the people who organize Haunted Walks in Canada? Well, apparently there is. The latest episode looks at Kingston Penitentiary.
  • Stephanie Bellissimo features a really neat online exhibit about two WW1 vets from Atikokan, Ontario.

Is it just me or are there fewer stories about history in the news lately? Hmm… interesting. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed our latest blog post! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And as always, don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for our regular monthly favourites from the latest scholarly journal issues. See you then!

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