Canadian History Roundup – Week of May 13, 2018

People in a yellow and red ride at La Ronde at Expo 67. May 1967. Library and Archives Canada.

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

• This week’s most frequently used words in #envhist, according to Jessica DeWitt were: Said, Water, and One.
• CBC looked back on the 1948 Fraser Valley Flood.
• Over on NiCHE, Elizabeth Cavaliere reviewed Colleen Skidmore’s Searching for Mary Schäffer: Women Wilderness Photography.
• As part of her ongoing series pubishing her comps notes, Jessica DeWitt shared her notes from reading William J. Turkel’s The Archive of Place: Unearthing the Pasts of the Chilcotin Plateau.
• The Winnipeg Grain Exchange is closing its doors.
• This forest fire awareness sign is both awesome and terrifying.

Military History

• LAC’s digitization of WW1 personnel files has reached the last name Waterous.
• Kesia Kvill shared this neat tidbit about the Canadian Food Board, WW1, and Meatless Mondays.
• Find out about this new art project designed to commemorate Newfoundlanders who fought in WW1.
• Someone thought it would be a good idea to put a live WW1-era artillery shell in the garbage.
• The latest biography from the DCB is for Édouard Percy Cranwill Girouard, a military engineer from Montreal.

Archaeology

• The latest edition of Dig It is out, featuring a discussion by Phoebe Morphy on shovel tests.
• A stonemason has been brought in to restore grave markers at the Old Protestant Burying Ground in Charlottetow

History Education

• Daniel Poitras reviewed Arnauld Theurillat-Cloutier’s new book, Printemps de force. Une histoire engagée du mouvement étudiant au Québec for Histoire Engagée
• I haven’t felt that it would be appropriate to include the current debates about whether a white settler scholar should teach a course on residential schools at Mount Saint Vincent, since it’s not really historical. But Erin Millions has put together a fantastic Twitter thread about the need for discussions around this subject.

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History

• There are some tense discussions in New Westminster about commemorating the city’s former Chinatown.
• Lindsay Gibson kindly tweeted some of the most important points from Henry Yu’s recent talk on “Are the Chinese a Problem? What are the legacies of Canada’s racism that continue to shape us.”
• Two UK researchers are embarking on a new project to study the resilience of former residents of Africville following the destruction of the community.
• Jamie Trepanier has written a new blog post for the Canadian Museum of History honouring Asian Heritage Month. In this post, he discusses representations of Asian-Canadians n the new Canadian History Hall.
• The Envisioning Technologies online exhibit premiered a new section looked at mid-century refugees with disabilities, and their relationship with technology.
• I’m not going to comment on the recent incident regarding Blackface in an elementary school in Strathcona, but I highly recommend this tread by Bashir Mohamed explaining the history of Blackface and minstrel shows in Alberta. 
• Check out these awesome pictures of 1990s hip hop in Toronto.

Indigenous History

• The Battleford Industrial School Cemetery has official been designated a municipal heritage site.
  • And here is why this is so important.
• CBC spoke Sixties Scoop survivors, including Mary Longman (originally from George Gordon First Nation) and Maggie-Blue Waters (originally from Montrael Lake Cree Nation), about their experience
• Check out this really neat story about how Bimadoshka (Annya) Pucan (from Saugeen First Nation) rediscovered and interpreted wax cylinders containing conversations with Robert Thompson, an Indigenous community late from Chief’s Point Reserve near Sauble Beach, thanks to help from elders in her community.
• One of the Canadian Encyclopedia’s new entries is for the practice of smudging.
• This week on the LAC blog is a new post on how the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Tribal Council repurposed St. Eugene’s Residential School as a very profitable resort that benefits the community.
• There is discussion and controversy about the fact that Emily Carr’s painting  at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Indian Church, has been renamed Church at Yuqot Village.
• Allanna Mayer shared important thoughts on the issue of repatriation and reconiliation, in light of the recent private member’s bill as well as the Twitter discussion about the Newberry Library I mentioned in the previous roundup.
• And on a related note, check out this fantastic story about Adrienne Doris, of Dokis First Nation, and how she has taken her training as a curator back to her community to care for their artifacts.
• NAISA 2018 happened this weekend! Catch up on all the great presentations using the #NAISA2018 hashtag.

New France/British North America

• Join Stephen Smith and Russell Potter for their review of the penultimate episode in AMC’s The Terror.
• This week on the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog, Bethany Langmaid argued that the roots of Canada’s mental health care are found in loyalist Saint John County in New Brunswick.
• The Toronto Public Library took a look at the history of United Empire Loyalists in Upper Canada.
• The Annapolis Heritage Society has finally unveiled the long-anticipated The Painted Room’s 170-year-old murals, located at the Sinclair Inn Museum National Historic Site.
• Douglas Hunter has the best response ever on how to make Canadian history more interesting: add aliens! Hey, it worked for the History Channel!
• Patrick Lacroix is back with part 4 of his look at King George III as a Late Stuart. 
• Russell Potter profiled the Inuit cast members of AMC’s The Terror. 

Political and Economic History

• Instananés traced the history a recently rediscovered copy of the political testimony of François-Marie-Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier following his involvement in the Lower Canadian Rebellion.
• Don Nerbas reviewed Scott Macdonald and Robert D. Gregory’s latest, From Humble Beginnings: A History of the Credit Union Movement on Prince Edward Island, 1936-2016 for the Acadiensis blog.

The History of Gender and Sexuality

• The Canadian Encyclopedia also has a new entry for singer and songwriter Catherine MacLellan.
• Camille Robert discussed the historical relationship between the struggle against capitalism and the issues of women’s work and social reproduction, and why these issues should matter to everyone.
• The Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity announced a plan to build the world’s first LGTBQI2 museum.
• This weekend was the Rural Women’s Studies Association conference!
  • I put together a Twitter moment with the live-tweets that will be of particular interest to Canadians. Of course, for the full conference, check out the hashtag on Twitter, #RWSA2018
  • And Daniel Joseph Samson put together a fantastic blog post about his presentation, on James Barry’s wife Bell, and experience at the conference! 

Labour History

• Daniel Francis wrote a fascinating review of the recent publication of Alan Caswell Collier’s letters recounting his experience working on unemployment relief camps in BC during the Depression.
• LAC’s latest Flickr album features images of blacksmiths. See the images yourself here.
• This is a really neat project on the history of garment workers.
• Plans for the 100th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike have been announced!

Local History

• This story of flirtation by postcard is both adorable and kind of sad.
• The Heritage Winnipeg blog takes a look back at the history of the Uptown Theatre.
• The Instantanés blog looked back on how architect Cardwell Ross Anderson saved the Dorion-Coulumbe historic house from demolition in 1975.
• The residents of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, are fighting for recognition as the location of the world’s oldest basketball court.
  • And there is a cool Canadian history connection, via Keith Grant!
• Check out this really cool picture of the Toronto-Dominion Centre from 1973.
• Find out about the history of nineteenth century Vancouver Baptists, in this blog post on Reverend George Armour Fair.
• Whistorical looked back at the week of May 17 in the 1980s. 
• They also showed us what it was like to drive on the Sea to Sky highway back when it was still a dirt road.
• Eve Lazarus remembered the former Vancouver Police Headquarters on East Cordova. 

Digital and Public History

• All week long, Active History has been hosting a series on the Lost Stories Project
  • First, Ronald Rudin wrote about the messiness of public history.
  • Next, John C. Walsh wrote about his involvement in the episode, Quamutiik: From North to Ottawa’s Southway Inn.
  • Then Ronald Rudin returned to write about the story of Yee Clun and the Exchange Café.
  • Keith Thor Carlson then wrote the project to commemorate the Stó:lõ boys who were kidnapped during the 1858 Fraser River Gold Rush, and why stories like this one are so important in the present.
  • And finally, Scott Pollock wrote about how the Lost Stories project can be used in classrooms.
• The UBC Digitizer’s blog shared some amazing images of objects from their CPR collection.

Doing History 

• Need some suggestions for your summer reading list? Check out Krista McCracken’s!
• The Toronto Reference Library takes a look at their Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, containing primary sources from the eighteenth century to the present.
• So this week the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada placed a 50-year embargo on documents from judicial deliberations.
  • Here are some of the details of the embargo.
  • We also found out that the Supreme Court had already been pulling documents from their case files since 2005.
  • And this editorial from The Globe and Mail explains why this is so problematic.

CHA Reads 2018

• This week on Unwritten Histories, we hosted the second annual CHA Reads! Here are all of the blog posts, so you can relive the experience!
  • Series Introduction
  • Krista McCracken defendingThe Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River
  • Ian Jesse defendingHomelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1973.
  • Carly Ciufo defendingResidential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts Its History
  • Dan Horner defendingTravellers through Empire: Indigenous Voyages from Early Canada
  • Carmen Nielson defendingTax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917.
  • And don’t miss our Twitter discussion, helpfully compiled in this Twitter moment.
  • A big thank you again to all of the participants, and a huge thank you to Stephanie Pettigrew for all of her work on this!

Miscellaneous

• LAC looked back at the snubbing of the Stanley Cup in 1892.
• CANADIAN KITTENS
• The Soeurs des Saint Noms de Jésus et de Marie looked back at their 50^th jubilee, which took place in 1894.
• Donica Belisle shared this awesome picture from her current research.
• This toy sled, in a style still in use by modern Inuit, is just too adorable. But I want to know more! Was this created by an Inuk artist?

Podcasts

• This week on the Ben Franklin’s World Podcast, Liz Covart spoke with Max Edelson about his book, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence, which a particular focus on maps of North America.
• In the latest Witness to Yesterday podcast, Greg Marchildon spoke with Maureen Lux about her newest book, Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada.
• This week’s History Chats episodes features Heidi Bohaker and Paula Hastings on, “The Broader Significance of the 1860s.”

Better Late Than Never

• I was bound to have missed things in last week’s mega roundup, and boy did I miss a big one. Canada’s History published a fantastic new issue on the history of Treaties and Treaty Relationships. It is available both in English as well as in French.
• Our Digital World also released three new online exhibits about Ontario’s history, focusing in Black history, Japanese history, and women’s history.
• You should also check out this new exhibit from the Great Lakes Research Alliance Aboriginal Arts and Culture, “Four Views of a Drum.”
• Local politics are delaying the restoration of the Fugitive Slave Chapel in London, Ontario. 
• This post on the island off Parliament Hill generated a lot of discussion online!
• David Frank looked at the history of worker’s compensation in twentieth-century New Brunswick.
• Kathy Louttit, from the Cree community of Chisasibi, has learned to read Cree syllabics in order to read her grandfather’s (Abraham Pisiniquon) journal, which he kept for thirty-six years, chronicling his life.
• The monument to the workers who died building the Rideau Canal has been replaced.
• The debate over the value of Alexander Graham Bell’s estate continues. 
• Nelson Cloud, who now lives on Metepenagiag First Nation, spoke with CBC about his experiences when the RCMP attempted to recruit him as an informer during the Cold War. 

That’s all for this week!  I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup. If you did, please considering sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. Just a short head’s up for the following week: this coming Tuesday will be my usual top picks for the CHA. And there won’t be any roundup for the next two weekend, since I will be in Regina and then recovering from Regina. So stay tuned for another mega roundup! See you Tuesday!

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