Canadian History Roundup – Week of March 4, 2018

Woman using machinery to bind a book, Industrial School for the Deaf. 1961. Chris Lund. Library and Archives Canada 4301545. Copyright: Expired

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

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

• The Canadian Museum of History shared an image of this beautiful adze from an unspecified Pacific Northwest Coast Indigenous community.
• The most commonly used words in #envhist this week, according to Jessica DeWitt were: “Environmental,” “Coal,” and “People.”
• Once again, it’s been a busy week over on Active History
  • James Cullingham started off the week by focusing on Indigenous-settler collaborations in documentary filmmaking and journalism, particularly in relation to his own experience. He touches on themes of free expression, cultural appropriation, and teaching.
  • Daniel Ross shared some of his recent experiences with using digital history in the classroom, particularly with respect migration patterns in Montreal.
  • In the latest blog post in their series on Canada’s First World War, Eliza Richardson discusses the female veterans of WW1 and how they have been largely forgotten.
  • And they also announced the new podcast series, History Chats, featuring recordings of public talks, conferences, and roundtables from their archives!
    • Their first one features Elsbeth Heaman’s 2017 Donald Creighton Lecture on “The Civilization of the Canadas in the 1860s.”
• Katrin Kleeman reported on the second meeting of NiCHE New Scholars for this year, on the topic of “environmental history or environmentally minded history.”
• Do you know the history of the oldest surviving LGTB bookstore in North America?
• Allison Jones shared the piece she wrote on territorial acknowledgements for native-land.ca! And if you don’t know about that website, you need to check it out!
• This week on Unwritten Histories, I read all of the journal issues again, and talked about some of my favourite new publications from the past month!
• Sarah York-Betram may be on strike this week (solidarity!!), but she’s still laying down awesome Twitter essays, like this one on residential schools, settler colonialism, and the law.
• And Darryl Leroux took a look at how settlers who claim to be Indigenous actively work against real Indigenous communities, particularly with respect to the recent land claim filed by Elsipogtog First Nation.
• The UBC Digitization Centre celebrates its seventh birthday!
• Dan Horner has written the latest blog post for Beyond Borders, on the ideal mid-nineteenth century police officer and James Starke’s Regulations for Governance of the Police Force.
• This week LAC released a new Flickr album featuring bird’s eye views of various locations. See the pictures themselves here.
• There was a lot of activity on the Toronto Public Library blog sthis week!
  • They had fun with Google Street View this week, looking at the history of 10 intersections in the city.
  • They also looked back at March 6^th in years past at the library and the City of Toronto.
• The Toronto Public Library, Regent Park Film Festival, and York University Libraries are looking for home movies, particularly from Indigenous peoples and people of non-mainstream backgrounds, for digitization. The project, called Homes Made Visible, is designed to make Canadian archival records more reflective of the population.
• Can I interest you in vintage official Government of Canada Toilet Paper?
• This week on the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog, Zoe Louise Jackson wrote about her experience with GIS story-mapping for the New Brunswick Loyalist Story Mapping Project.
• NiCHE and the Acadiensis blog are collaborating on a new series on new approaches to environmental history in Atlantic Canada. The first post is by Tina Loo and Sally Hermansen, on the pain of forced relocation in Newfoundland and Labrador.
• Find out about the UBC Indigitization Program.
• As Y Vy Truong explains, here is a good example of why we need more archivists from diverse backgrounds and collaboration with communities.
• Historical futurism is always fun, like this imagination of what North Vancouver would be like in 1963, from 1913.
• This week on the Ben Franklin’s World Podcast, Liz Covart spoke with Daina Ramey Berry about her recent book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation.
• The City of Montreal Archives has a new blog post by Marcela Aranguiz about the construction of the Camillien-Houde way in Mont Royal in the 1950s.
• Did you know that Newfoundland once considered selling Labrador to Quebec? I didn’t.
• In the latest Witness to History podcast episode, Greg Marchildon spoke with Barbara Mitchell about her new book, Mapmaker: Philip Turnor in Rupert’s Land in the Age of Enlightenment.
• Teaching with nineteenth and twentieth-century board games on Canadian History? Yes please!
• Whistorical looks back on the week of March 8 in years past.
• And then later discussed the 1980 proposed plan for the Whistler Resort Centre. 
• The Calgary Gay History Project remembers the 1991 performance of The Sum of Us.
• This past Thursday and Friday, Jessica DeWitt hosted the ASEH 2018 Twitter Conference! Check out the hashtag (#ASEH2018Tweets) for all of the presentations. But here are the ones that dealt with Canadian history:
  • Alan MacEachern presented on “Phenology Then and Now,” on the digitization and analysis of the Meteorological Service of Canada data since 1871.
  • Sean Kheraj presented on “Contesting Environmental Impact: The Norman Wells Oil Pipeline Proposals, 1980-81.”
• This week, Daniel Francis remembers forgotten Canadian runner, Bill Parnell, who also broke the 4-minute mile barrier in 1954, alongside the better-known Roger Bannister.
• The City of Richmond Archives is back with Part 2 of their history of the city’s town halls.
• You don’t have to live in Vancouver to see the new Video Wall Show from the City of Vancouver Archives, showcasing their holdings on the theme of “Food and Drink,” since it is also available on Youtube. See the video itself here.
• Yet more evidence that early explorers couldn’t find the broad side of a barn: in this case, it was because of an imaginary mountain range.
• The latest biography from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for biochemist James Bertram Collip, another member of Banting’s team.
• You can now watch Camille Robert’s talk,  “Toutes les femmes sont d’abord ménagères,” from a recent  conference at the Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale.
• Check out this statement from the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society on reconciliation and prairie history. 
• You need to see these beautiful historical examples of beading by Métis and Anishinaabe women. 
• This week Eve Lazarus spoke with Bob Cain about his beautiful photographs documenting Vancouver’s history from the 1950s to the 1960s.
• The Library and Congress blog discussed the preservation of their recently acquired photo album containing rare photographs of African-American leaders, like Harriet Tubman.
• Look at this stunning mid-20th century hooked rug, made by Alice Rioux from Île d’Orléans. It shows traditional French-Canadian methods for harvesting maple syrup. One of the things I miss the most about living in Montreal is going to the cabane à sucre.
• If you’ve been paying attention to the news this week, you might have noticed that the Robinson-Huron Treaties trial has begun! Catherine Murton Stoehr has been faithfully live-tweeting the proceedings, along with several others. I’ve compiled all of the relevant tweets into this Twitter moment.
• The Laboratoire d’histoire et de patrimoine de Montréal has just launched a brand new website for their Historical GIS projects. The home page is available here, and the following stories are currently available:
  • Vendre la banlieue aux Montréalais by Harold Bérubé
  • Adresses et assemblées en réponse à l’incendie du parlement de Montréal en 1849 by Alain Roy and a team from the Pointe-à-Callière Museum
  • Les commerces d’alimentation du Faubourg à m’lasse, 1949, 1953, 1963 , by  Michelle Comeau.
• Everyone was celebrating International Women’s Day this week:
  • Historica Canada conducted a poll to assess Canadians’ knowledge of women’s history in this country. Unsurprisingly, epic fail.
    • In response I had a mini-Twitter rant, about how we’re failing to teach women’s history in Canada, and the need for a history that is truly representative of our diverse population.
  • Instantanés discussed three new acquisitions relating to the history of women in Quebec — documentary collections from the Fédération des femmes du Québec, the Fédération du Québec pour le planning des naissances, and the Coalition Québécoise pour le droit à l’avortement libre et gratuit.
  • The Bank of Canada unveiled the new $10 bill, featuring the image of Viola Desmond.
  • Retroactive profiled surveyor and cartographer, Mary Schäffer Warren.
  • Historica Canada unveiled a new Heritage Minute, all about Lucy Maud Montgomery.
  • On Active History, Claire L. Halstead had another fantastic blog post about the Sisters of Service Photograph Collection, and how it functions as a Living Archive.
  • The Toronto Public Library highlighted twenty-three “firsts” for working women in Ontario.
  • Marilou Tanguay reviewed Marie Lavigne and Michèle Stanton-Jean’s recent biography, Idola Saint-Jean: L’insoumise for Histoire Engagée.
  • Naomi Sayers wrote a must-read piece for The Huffington Post on the erasure of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks who fought for human rights, including Lizzie Cyr, Tina Fontaine, and Cindy Gladue.
  • The Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto highlighted the work of the Catholic Women’s League in Canada.
  • LAC shared a video from a NFB documentary from the 1950s on women’s rights.
  • Instantanés also shared the story of Jacqueline Savard, journalist and radio presenter, who lost her job in 1944 because she was female.
  • The Canadian Museum for Human Rights blog has a new post on the contributions of one of Canada’s first female surgeons, Lucille Teasdale Corti.
  • The Huffington Post profiled seven amazing women from Canadian history.
  • The Georgia Straight profiled “Vancouver’s 30 most influential female politicians in history.”
  • The St. Catharines Museum podcast looked at the history of women’s activism in the city, particularly in relation to the YWCA. I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but it’s possible that they don’t talk about the problems of the social reform movement and the YWCA, so approach with caution.
  • Though their history is not well known, about 280 Jewish Canadian women served in WW2. 
  • Kesia Kvill shared a story about this wonderful article by Kathleen Kyle, called “The Call to Women,” from the 1917 edition of Everywoman’s World.
  • The Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women has just launched a new website containing portraits of nine diverse women who played an important role in Nova Scotia’s history. Check out the portraits themselves here.
• Canadian History in the News
  • Once upon a time, people used these things called “card catalogues” to find out information. These catalogues are now more often found in antique shops.
  • Black History Month is over, but it is important that we keep remembering Black history throughout the year.
  • RIP Vancouver’s Downtown Historic Railway/Olympic Demonstration Line.
  • Ottawa announced the names of the new cars for their new light rail lines a couple of weeks ago. There are some concerns about which historical figures were represented in the mix.
  • Hamilton doesn’t have a museum dedicated to its own history.
  • Season 2 of Connie Walker’s Missing and Murdered podcast is back, and focuses on the search for Cleo Semaganis Nicotine, who was separated from her Nehiyaw family in North Battleford during the Sixties Scoop.
  • So Hollywood might be making a movie about the Gimli Glider, the Air Canada plane that Captain Pop Pearson was able to land in 1983, despite not having any fuel.
  • The latest Dig It column is by Joanne Hammond, expanding on her earlier Twitter essay on ancient Indigenous bridges.
  • The Manitoba Métis Federation is seeking feedback from Métis Sixties Scoop survivors about what they need to heal. Their president, David Chartrand, spoke with Carolyn Bennett earlier about why Métis survivors were left out of the recent settlement package.
  • Baby historian alert: elementary students created art projects celebrating the accomplishments of African Nova Scotians in history.
  • Shawn Micallef shared some images from the new exhibit at Ryerson on Avard Woolaver’s photographs of Toronto from 1980 to 1995.
  • A Summerside, PEI resident found some old suitcases in the attic of his apartment, and discovered the lost history of a PEI family and the life of Mildred Marion Stewart.
  • The Royal BC Museum has updated their display on logging following interviews with the Punjabi community. Funny story: one of the first dates my husband and I ever went on was at the Royal BC Museum, and the logging display was his favourite.
  • Another settler “discovered” something Indigenous peoples have known about for millennia.
  • Addison Herman, a university student, updated the Wikipedia page for the Saskatoon police station with information on the history of “starlight tours.” And then someone with an IP address matching the station deleted this section.
  • Michael Valpy has written an op-ed in The Star, arguing that Russell Street should be renamed. The street is named after Peter Russell, a significant slave owner in Upper Canada, who actively fought against the abolition of slavery. 
  • Do you know the history of the Vancouver special?
  • Archaeologists working in Windsor have located a projectile point from around 7,500 B.C.E.
  • Do you remember that horrifying plaque on the former Bank of Montreal building about how Paul de Comedy de Maisonneuve killed a Haudenosaunee chief “with his own hands” in 1644? Kanien’kehá:ka teacher Michael Rice things an Indigenous viewpoint should be added.
  • Find out about the Canadian  flag collection of the Settlers, Rails, and Trails museum in Argyle, Manitoba. 
  • Jeremy Dutcher (Tobique First Nation) is helping to revitalize the Wolastoqiyik language through 110-year-old wax cylinders preserved at the Canadian Museum of History.
  • Heritage Ottawa is not happy with the proposed Chateau Laurier expansion.
  • Terry Glavin has a short look at the Canadian history of the Khalistani movement.
  • Raymond Yakeleya (Dene, from Tulita, NWT) is producing a new documentary about the history of the Charles Camel Indian Hospital in Edmonton, and the abuse that many patients suffered. 
  • After 40  years, Lee’s Donuts is changing owners. 
• Better Late than Never
  • Do you know the history of Black settlers who helped establish Mississauga?
  • A Newfoundland champion boxing belt was reunited with the family of its winner, solving two family mysteries in the process.
  • Check out this really neat video from the Sunnyside Historical Society, showing 11,000 years of history on Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto. The work that went into this is astounding.
• Calls for Papers
  • NiCHE and the Nexus Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences Research has issued a CFP for graduate students want to participate in a workshop entitled “Environmental Humanities in the Public Realm.” The workshop will take place on May 10^th and 11^th at Memorial University, and travel grants are available. The deadline to submit an application is March 21.

That’s it for this week! I think we’re all hard into marking season, which is why the roundups have been so short lately. Not that I’m complaining! 😉 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 what we’re hoping will be a regular new feature! See you then!

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