Canadian History Roundup – Week of July 24, 2016

Cargoes of Empire (Circa 1929), William D. Suddaby, Library and Archives Canada, C-126260 / CC by 2.0

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

• Renée Lafferty-Salhany reviews a newish book over on the Acadiensis blog. Wanda Lauren Taylor’s The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children shows that Black children at industrial schools in Nova Scotia were subjected to systematic physical, emotional, and sexual abuse over the course of decades.
• UBC Library has a new research guide, entitled “Musqueam: Land Beneath Our Feet.” UBC (and Richmond, where I live), is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. This looks like an amazing resource.
• This week, there are two new interviews from the Question sociale et citoyenneté  conference posted at Histoire Engagé
  • The first interview, with Sébastien Rioux looks at his work on food security and politics in south-east Asia.
  • And the second, with Caroline Durand, looks at the relationship between citizenship and discourses of nutrition, health, and consumption.
• Library and Archives Canada has a new website all about the Carignan-Salières Regiment of New France. The website includes audio from an interview with the curator for New France from Canada’s Museum of History, Jean-François Lozier.
• This week was all about Vikings over at Unwritten Histories! Over the course of three blog posts, I look at the recent identification of a possible new Norse settlement in Newfoundland.
  • In Part 1, I provide some background on the history of the Norse in Canada as well as additional information about the discovery made by Dr Sarah Parcak.
  • In Part 2, I interview Dr. Teva Vidal to gain some perspective on the recent finds and their meaning for Norse History in Canada.
  • And in Part 3, I conclude my interview with Dr. Vidal by talking about the larger meaning Norse explorations in Canada and why they continue to get so much attention.
• Jessica DeWitt has a new blog post over on her personal website, featuring an update on her work using interactive timelines to look at park systems in Canada and the US. In this post in particular, she discusses her experiences working with the park system in Ontario. This looks super cool!
• McGill is conducting new archaeological excavations along the St. Lawrence River. This dig is designed to teach students about archaeology while also engaging with the larger public.
• There is a brand new book out that looks like an amazing read: Indigenous Notions of Ownership and Libraries  Archives, and Museums, edited by Camille Callison, Loriene Roy, and Gretchen Alice LeCheminant. This is totally going on my to-read pile.
• Colin Osmond talks about a new initiative from the University of Saskatchewan called “Community-Engaged History Collaboratorium.” The goal of the project is to make academic work meaningful to the larger community while also collaborating with marginalized communities. This sounds like amazing work!
• The Champlain Society has posted their July “Findings” blog post! In this edition, Jesse Allan Munroe looks at the Canadian National Exhibition through the eyes of three generations of the Withrow family.
• The Canadian Forest History Project has announced a new archival donation over on NiCHE. The donation, by Western Forest Products, contains maps, aerial photographs, and records from the company’s work along BC’s coastline.
• There is a new episode of the History Slam Podcast out this week! In this episode, Sean Graham talks with Paul Kahan about his new book, Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s Scandalous Secretary of War.
• Also on Histoire Engagée this week is a blog post by Ronald Rudin on his most recent book, Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park. This book and the blog post look at the long-term impact of the Acadian expulsion. This research was also part of his Lost Stories project, documenting and dramatizing the experiences of ordinary Canadians. You can see the first episode in French on Kouchibouguac by going here.
• NiCHE’s latest blog post is by Blair Stein, and it looks at the use of humour in mapmaking. She focuses specifically on a map produced by Trans Canada Air Lines in June of 1953. While intended to be humourous, astute environmental historians can use these maps to learn about contemporary understandings of nature and wilderness. I still want to go see the “meremaydens” and “sirenes” in the Panamal Canal. Damn you, The Little Mermaid.
• Alan MacEachern has a new article out on Arcadia, a collaborative online journal from the Rachel Carson Centre and the European Society for Environmental History. MacEachern’s article looks at the creation of Banff and the particular challenges it has faced as one of Canada’s foremost national parks.
• Library and Archives Canada’s blog has a post spotlighting their collection of posters from the Empire Marketing Board. You can see some of the images by looking at the Flickr Commons album from LAC. The artwork is amazing, and that’s why I chose this roundup’s featured image from the collection.
• Mark Wilson reflects on his experiences living in Beijing over on Active History. He compares contemporary Beijing with Victorian London and the Great London Smog Disaster of December 1952.
• The Laurentian Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies at Wilfred Laurier has a new blog post up on using Veteran Disability Pension Files from WW1 that they have available in their collection. In addition to providing help on how to use the collection, the blog post also features some amazing images of the files in question.
• The Canadian Centre for the Great War has a new blog post up about transportation by horse. Despite being the first industrial war, WW1 could not have been fought without horses and other animals.
• The Doing Our Bit blog is also looking at WW1 this week, spotlighting the collection of trench journals available at LAC, particularly The Canadian Machine Gunner.
• BC Studies has two new blog posts this week.
  • The first is Part 4 of Sean Mullan’s look at the Queen Charlotte Fault line.
  • And the second, by Patrick Dunae, looks at the Vancouver Island Separatist movement.
• The Association for Canadian Studies has released its latest newsletter. The topic this month is the perceptions of the historic treatment of minorities in Canada.
• Canadian History in the News
  • The Inuit are asserting their claim to co-ownership of artefacts from the Franklin Expedition. Canada agreed to surrender them to Britain, who owned the ships, in 1997. But president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc, Cathy Towtongie, notes there is a prior agreement from 1993 giving the Inuit joint ownership with Canada of any archaeological artefacts. Seems like since it was Inuit oral history that permitted archaeologists to find the wreck, this seems pretty straightforward to me.
  • In WTF were they thinking news, Pokemon Go made an Indigenous burial ground in Prince George a Pokestop. WHYYYYYYYY?????
  • Check out this collection of printed menus from a once popular Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, the WK Gardens! They are currently on exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver. Super cool!
  • Tom Hawthorn writing at the Tyee discusses the Canadian boxers who protested against Hitler’s Olympics by attending the People’s Olympics and the Workers’ Olympics in Barcelona instead.
  • Westmount, Montreal, is honoured by the Canadian government with the designation of “historic national significance.” Fun fact: my mom grew up in the not-rich part of Westmount, and seems to have a death wish as far as racing up and down those damn streets are concerned. Montrealers, you know what I’m talking about.
  • The Ottawa River has also been designated as being of historical significance, but only the part of the river located in Ontario….
  • Macleans has a new article out for their 1916 series. The July post talks about the experiences of Chinese workers recruited by Britain and France before being transported across Canada on their way to the Western Front.
  • Barrington Walker was interviewed in this piece on race relations in Canada. The article comes after the sentencing of the officer who killed Sammy Yatim three years ago, and the death of a mentally ill Somali-Canadian, Abdirahman Abdi, after an encounter with Ottawa police.
  • The Toronto Public Library is working to build its first Chinese-Canadian archive.
  • Following the recent oil spill near Prince Alberta, Saskatchewan, Vice Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations speaks about the role of First Nations as traditional guardians of the environment. The spill has severely affected locate Indigenous communities, most notably Muskoday First Nation and James Smith Cree Nation.
  • Paul Hébert discusses the contributions of the late Austin Clarke in the context of the Black Lives Matter protest in Toronto over on the African American Intellectual History Society blog. Clarke was a noted author of Black experiences in Canada and anti-racism activist who spoke out frequently against police violence against young Black men and women.
  • July 29^th was the 100^th anniversary of the deadliest fire in Canadian history: The Great Matheson fire. CBC did a feature on the fire including archival radio recordings.
  • And Vancouver’s Japanese-Canadian community is asking that the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) livestock barns be designed as an official historic site. The barns were used to house Japanese-Canadians before being transported to internment camps.

That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a brand new blog post!

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