Canadian History Roundup – Week of June 23, 2019

[Man and woman reading sign outside replica of pioneer home, Alberta. Photo promoting Alberta taken for the Western Travel Bureau]. August 1956. Gar Lunney. Library and Archives Canada. Copyright: Expired

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

Environmental History

• The most commonly used words in #envhist last week, according to Jessica DeWitt, were: ‘People,’ ‘Said,’ and ‘EPA.’
• This week on NiCHE, Daniel Macfarlane interviewed Dave Dempsey about his new book, The Heart of the Lake: Freshwater in the Past, Present, and Future of Southeast Michigan.
• Also on NiCHE this week, Josh MacFayden and Nick Scott explained the new research project that they have started, as part of the Geospatial Research in Atlantic Canadian History project at UPEI, on the relationship between food, agriculture, rural environments, and the modernization of Canada. This post in particular focused on the Comprehensive Development Plan.
• Do you know the history of Cariboo Potatoes? (I’m not sure how it has taken me so long to find this website, but thanks to Ben Bradley, I finally did!)

Military History

• Chelsea Barranger has written a new post for the Beyond Borders blog, about Canadian War Brides, their children, and Canadian citizenship, drawing on her own family history.
• This week’s Solider Spotlight from the South Peace Regional Archives is for WW1 solider, Private Philias Durand.
• Ian McKay spoke with The National Post aboutthe anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and why it is going mostly unnoticed.
• The latest entry from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for WW1 veteran, Arthur Mignault.
• Leslie Rodriguez was back with another blog post form the Ottawa Jewish Archives. This week she focused on the history of WW2 RCAF officer, Duke Abelson, and the work she did to set up a display in his honour.

Archaeology

• Russell Potter continued his series on the Beechey Island graves with the first known photograph of them.
• Brienna French was back on the Woodland Cemetery blog this week, and explained why lichen, moss, and ivy grow on some gravestones, but not on others.
• Shawn Graham spoke with the Ottawa Citizen about how he is using digital humanities methods to track the illegal trade in human remains.
• Lillanohna Naytowhowcon (Nehiyaw) spoke with CBC about the need for more Indigenous archaeologists in the field, and the challenges of being an Indigenous student in university.
• Matthew Betts has written a new piece for Canadian Geographic on the damage that climate change is doing to archaeological sites across the country, the knowledge that we are using as a result, and how this is a tremendous loss for Indigenous folks, both in terms of their revitalization efforts and as they pursue land and resources claims.
• Dig It was back this week with a new piece by Pheobe Murphy, where she explained the history of ancient living spaces, particularly winter pithouses in the BC Interior.
• Construction crews have uncovered Secwépemc ancestors during work at West Victoria Street in Kamloops. Joanne Hammond wrote an accompanying Twitter thread, about why we should not be surprised, since Canada was built on the actual bones of Indigenous ancestors.

History Education

• While not specifically Canadian, Robert Suits has shared some of the amazing ‘unpapers’ that his students have produced in a course on imagined frontiers.
• Over on Active History this week, Bathsheba Demuth explained how she uses historical documents to diversify her syllabus for an environmental history survey course.
• Le Devoir has obtained access to new documents showing the efforts of the Comité d’orientation pédagogique du réseau scolaire anglophone du Québec (COPRSAQ) to change the new high school history curriculum, to little avail.

Transnational History

• Karen Dubinsky has written a new piece for The Conversation on the decision to stop issuing visitor visas in the Havana Embassy, including a look back at the history of Canadian-Cuban relations.

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History

• This week, the UBC Digitizer’s blog explored their collection of the Tairiku Nippo, a Japanese-Canadian newspaper published in Vancouver from 1907 to 1941.
• Five Black communities in Nova Scotia say they are seeing progress in efforts to gain legal ownership to land that was promised to them in the late 1700s.
• Joyce Pillarella spoke to Breakfast Television about the history of Italian-Canadian internment in Canada during WW2.
• Landscapes of Injustice have released their Spring 2019 newsletter.

Indigenous History

• As Kate Sjoberb explained in this piece on CBC, the new request for proposals to dismantle homelessness camps in Winnipeg is part of a longer history of the dispossession and oppression of Indigenous peoples, as well as their consistent resistance against these intrusions. Content warning: discussions of colonial violence against Indigenous peoples, colonial roots of Indigenous homelessness.
• Amy Beatrice (nunatsiavummiuk) wrote an insightful Twitter thread about the history of Guides/Scouts, and its relationship to settler colonialism. Content warning: settler colonialism, racism
• Paul Seesequasis (Willow Cree) shared a powerful story about a pass given in 1896 to his great-great-grandfather, Joe Seesequasis, to visit his children at the Indian Industrial Boarding School in Regina, and the transitions he witnessed in his lifetime. Content warning: the pass system, residential school, colonial violence.
• Speaking of which, the federal government has transferred ownership of land — containing a cemetery, where approximately thirty-six students who attended the Regina Indian Industrial School were buried — to the Regina Indian Industrial School Commemorative Association. There ceremony was attended by the families of students and Elders from surrounding First nations communities. CBC spoke with Debbie Hill, whose grandparents attended the school, about what this meant to her. Content warning: residential schools, Ralph Goodale.
• This week on Active History, the editors have chosen to re-publish the section on “Defining Genocide” from “Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Women and Girls,” in solidarity and support for the Report’s findings. Content warning: discussions of genocide, discussion of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks.
• Also on Active history, Shawkay Ottmann (Anishinaabe from Fishing Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, as well as British, German, Polish and Norwegian) looked back at Indigenous participation in D-Day and WW2.
• Apparently the federal government is considering stronger rules to enshrine legal protection for Indigenous traditional cultural practices. I’m not going to hold my breath.
• As part of the community celebration and imminent federal pardon of Chief Pitikwahanapiwiyin, the Canadian Museum of History loaned a child’s dress made by See-ascum-ka-poo (Mary Peemee, Mrs. Horsechild, the daughter-in-law of Big Bear) for Marilyn Kasokeo on Poundmaker Cree Nation in the early 1950s. Katie Pollock described how this loan came about and her work displaying the dress at Poundmaker Cree Nation for the blog this week. Marilyn Kasokeo herself even attended, which is pretty awesome.
• The federal government has pledged $13 million for community-led projects to honour the lives and legacies of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks. Content warning: discussion of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks.

New France/British North America

• Daniel Samson published a new blog post on the Acadiensis blog about James Barry, and what his library can reveal about the transatlantic exchange of books and ideas in Christian theology in the mid to late 1800s in his community.

Political History

• Shirley Tillotson explained the origins of her work on tax history in a new Twitter thread this week.
• Check out Christo Aivalis’ new Youtube video on Pierre Trudeau and the limits of his Just Society.
• Just in time for Canada Day, Matthew Hayday has published his annual Twitter thread on the history of the occasion!
• As I’ve mentioned previously, I don’t tend to include the “This Week in History” pieces from various news outlets. But this one, on a punk and anarchist anti-Canada Day concert in Vancouver 1978, just has to be here. Rules are made to be broken, right? Too much?

Social History

• The latest Flickr album from LAC features images of potatoes. Yes, you read that correctly. Check out the images themselves here.
• Laurie Bertram published this pretty awesome piece in the University of Toronto Magazine, about a brothel keeper named Big Nelly, who shot a Mountie in Edmonton in 1888.
• Find out about a new exhibit in Halifax about the history of female mariners, including folks like Theresa McGuire and Patricia Martinson.
• Keith Grant published a lovely Twitter thread on what young Nova Scotian women would have learned in high school around 1916.
• Again, I also don’t normally include reunion stories facilitated through genealogical research, but this story is pretty darn cool. 

The History of Gender and Sexuality

• Tom Hopper wrote a guest post for the University of Toronto Journals Press on the Toronto bathhouse raids, and the limits of the Omnibus Bill.
• I am pleasantly surprised by this awesome and nuanced feature from CBC on Canada’s LGTBQ2+ history.
• This year’s Saskatoon Pride parade honoured the history of local LGTBQ2+ activists, especially Neil Richards.
• You may remember that a few weeks ago. the St. Catharines Museum put out a call for folks to send in stories about the LGTBQ2+ history of the area. Well, here are some of the responses!
• Find out about the LGTBQ2+ history of Vancouver from Glenn Tkach.

Local History

• The Degannes-Cosby House in Annapolis Royal has just been designated a national historic site.
• Joan Champ shared the history of a small-town Saskatchewan hotel, Hotel Wynyard.
• Whistorical looked back this week at summer preparations at Alta Lake.
• Heritage Winnipeg looked back at the history of the Fortune and Macdonald Blocks.
• Did you know that Toronto’s original brick roads can still be found underneath the ashphalt?
• Stephanie Joe looked back at the relationship between Indigenous peoples in Treaty 7 territory and the Calgary Stampede, and the history of the Elbow River Camp.
• I love news stories about finding old posters.
• A church that was built to commemorate the Halifax Explosion is now officially on the list of the most endangered historical buildings in Canada.
• Do you know the history of the Newfoundland Clothing Company?
• Le Journal de Québec looked back this week at the history of celebrations of Saint Jean Baptiste.
• This week Eve Lazarus shared the history of Vancouver’s Denman Area.

Digital and Public History

• You may remember that last week I mentioned how a Vancouver school decided to remove a display to Cecil Rhodes. This week, Niigaan Sinclair (Anishinaabe) explained why Winnipeg’s Cecil Rhodes School should follow suit. Hear hear.
• Karina Vernon spoke with the University of Toronto Magazine about her work on the upcoming book, The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology, containing writing by Black Canadian authors from the Prairies from the mid-1800s to the present.
• Kaiti Hannah wrote a new blog post for Active History this week, on authenticity and museum experiences. And yes, I totally used the same picture for the roundup. Because it is awesome.
• A site has finally been selected for the national monument for the war in Afghanistan. It will be east of the Canadian War Museum. This is not the same monument as the one to soldiers who died in the same war.
• Historica has come out with another new poll showing how little Canadians know about their own history. The theme this time was “quirky Canadiana.” The complete survey results are here. Random aside: these are great to use with students to talk about narratives of Canadian history. Though to be fair, I don’t know that I could pass this.
• On a related note, the Association for Canadian Studies also released a new report on the things Canadians feel most proud of. And historical events were pretty far down the list.
• Canada Post is celebrating the Apollo 11 mission landing gear that remains on the Moon, which were manufactured by a Quebec company.
• I don’t agree with Marc Milner here, but this is an interesting discussion about whether an armoured tank should be used in the Sackville Memorial Park.
• Just go check this out. Seriously. RIP The Elephant Show.
• LAC has issued a new co-lab challenge for the Winnipeg General Strike trials. Co-lab challenges are invitations for members of the public to transcribe historical documents.
• Western Libraries is the new owner of a database of digitized influential North American magazines, including Maclean’s.
• Memorial University has announced the digitization of Dr. Nigel Rusted’s diaries, which he kept from 1925 to his death in 2012.
• A collection of over 500 historical photographs has just been donated to the Ryerson Image Centre.

Doing History

• Library and Archives Canada has released their 2018-2019 Annual Report.
• BAnQ discussed how a letter that Louis Riel wrote to the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal in 1874 was lost and then rediscovered.
• The South Peace Regional Archives has posted another call for help identifying Indigenous peoples on photographs in their collection.This call related to an image from the Flying Shot School.
• This week on Unwritten Histories, we decided to start an ambitious new project: creating a crowdsourced list of history scholarly journals.
• And Stephanie was back with her regular look at upcoming publications in Canadian history.

Miscellaneous

• Crawford Kilian reviewed Wendy Wickwire’s At the Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging for The Tyee this week.
• The McGill Library blog profiled the Robert Roussil mural, Dance de La Paix, which the artist created to pay for legal services.

Podcasts

• The latest episode of the Secret Life of Canada podcast focused on the history of the Indian Act.
• There was a new History Slam episode this week, where Sean Graham spoke with Aaron Boyes and Corey Beaton about Bill C-150, which is often credited with decriminalizing homosexuality in Canada, and the commemoration of the Omnibus Bill.
• You can now listen to a recording of the Canadian Network on Humanitarian history panel from the CHA Annual meeting, entitled “Learning from Development/Development from Learning: Aid and Education, 1945-1975.” The panel featured Jill Campbell-Miller, David Meren, and Kevin Brushett.
• The latest Witness to Yesterday podcast featured an interview with Norman Hillier on the 2013 Champlain society volume, O.D. Skelton: The Work of the World, 1923-1941.
• LAC also released a new podcast episode this week, on the Prime Ministers of Canada and the arts.

I keep expecting the Canadian history news to quiet down for the summer, but it doesn’t seem to be doing that this year! So many cool things going on. I hope you enjoyed this week’s 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 a special guest post! See you then!

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