Erickson, Glen E., “Tillicum posing with balloons in front of Canada Place (1986),” City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver Centennial Commission fonds AM1576-S6-12-F45-: 2011-010.2719 CC by 2.0
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Missed last week’s Roundup? Check it out here.
- In more spooky Montreal history, the Haunted Montreal Blog’s latest post looks at the Ghost of L’Esplanade Street! The street is apparently haunted by a ghostly soldier walking with a cane, but no one is sure when or where he is from.
- The Ben Franklin’s World podcast now has apps for both Android and IOS!
- Ian McKay and Jamie Swift have a new article on Active History about Canada’s “return” to peacekeeping. But as McKay and Swift have noted, this peacekeeping was not always peaceful (or welcome), and much more about colonialism than we’d like to admit.
- Paula Dumas continues her series about Loyalist documents with her latest blog post, about who the Loyalists were.
- For the next two weeks, NiCHE has a new series dedicated to profiling the new and forthcoming books on Canadian history and the environmental from the University of Calgary Press. All of these books are open access, meaning they are free!!!
- The first post was a series introduction
- The first book profiled was Animal Metropolis: Histories of Human-Animal Relations in Canada
- Followed by Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History
- I’m a little late on this one, but here’s the Museum of Vancouver’s favourite five photos from 1974.
- And here’s this week’s Friday Five, for the year 1975!
- This week on Unwritten Histories, I wrote an editorial on the subject of Canadian nationalism, national identity, and race and ethnicity.
- Following a reevaluation of artefacts discovered in Promontory Point, Utah, archaeologists have concluded that they are belonged to the Dene who migrated south nearly a thousand years ago. Many of these people went on to become the Navajo and Apache peoples. What an absolutely amazing discovery. This was posted in August, but I was only just made aware of it and had to include it in this roundup.
- This week on the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Liz Covart interviewed Ann Little about her latest book, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright. As many of you know, this is the story of a woman who was born in Puritan New England, lived among the Wabanaki for many years, and later became an Ursuline nun in Quebec City.
- Julian Peters has posted an illustration of an old song from Montreal, dating back to 1709. The songis about Jean Berger, an accomplished criminal who thumbed his nose at the authorities. Nothing like any Montrealers today….
- Stephen Bocking has posted another set of lecture notes from his course on Canadian environmental history. This lecture also reflected on the recent American election results, and the impact that politicians have on the environment.
- This week on Histoire Engagée is a blog post by Daniel Letrendre on the Quiet Revolution as depicted in contemporary novels. In each new iteration, the Quiet Revolution is reinterpreted, remembered and forgotten anew.
- Alan MacEachern, writing on Active History, talks about how easy it is to be fooled by seemingly legitimate news and information sources online. We may like to think we’re smart and educated enough to be able to spot problematic sources, but even historians aren’t infallible. 😉
- Read this beautiful article by Erica Violet Lee, about love, indigenous languages and bodies, and the colonial world, or as Lee argues: “[…] Indigenous love is radical: because for centuries, colonialism has ruled that Native bodies cannot be beautiful, valuable and loveable.”
- Also on NiCHE this week is Jessica DeWitt’s monthly Environmental History Worth Reading blog post!
- This week on the Atlantic Loyalist Collection blog, the editors profiled a web series from Morristown National Historical Park Museum & Library’s blog all about paleography.
- Krista McCracken discussed her participation in a meeting of the Anglican Diocesan Archivists in Toronto. McCracken reflects upon her experiences and professional communities, and also includes a video on archives and reconciliation.
- Krista McCracken also wrote a couple of blog posts about the museums she visited while in Toronto.
- Stephanie Ann Warner has an absolutely charming love story of two Saskatchewan homesteaders on her blog this week. I’m such a sucker for these stories.
- This week on the BC Studies blog, Veronica Strong-Boag writes about the uphill battle that female politicians have had, and continue to face, when being elected to office, both in Canada and the rest of the world.
- Retroactive talks about the problem of new graffiti on historical landmarks. It’s a much more complex problem that you might think, involving a balance between quickly removing the graffiti to prevent copycats and properly preserving the historic location. This is especially a problem on areas that look empty, like Big Rock, but actually contain ancient Indigenous pictographs.
- This past Wednesday, Library and Archives Canada released its latest podcast episode. This most recent episode looks at Sir. Wilfrid Laurier. Accompanying the podcast is a Flickr album, which you can access here.
- And there is also a blog post by Michael MacDonald on Laurier and LAC’s collection of materials relating to him.
- The LAC blog also has an update on the digitization of the CEF personnel files
- An Acadian settlement dating back to 1672, that is currently still being excavated, has been recognized by Parks Canada as a historic site! This site is believed to be the former village of Beaubassin.
- Sean Kheraj has a new blog post about the history of Indigenous peoples’ resistance to oil and gas pipelines. This blog post is in response to the recent #NoDAPL movement, and looks at the Dene Tha’ First Nation’s protest against the Norman Wells Pipeline in the 1970s and 1980s.
- The City of Vancouver Archives has made the Vancouver Legacies Program’s photographs available online for the first time! This program documented and repaired parts of Vancouver in anticipation of the 1986 Centennial.
- This week’s blog post on the UBC Digitization Centre blog is dedicated to international students, since November 17th is International Students’ Day.
- Athabaska University Press has a new podcast, and the first episode is an interview with Shannon Stettner. Stettner is the editor of the recent book, Without Apology: Writingson Abortion in Canada. I know what I’m listening to this week… Also, there is a knitted uterus on the cover! Love!
- Stephen Bocking is back this week with another couple of excerpts from his upcoming edited collection. This week’s theme is the role of the state.
- Heritage Winnipeg takes a look at The Firefighter’s Museum of Winnipeg this week. No shirtless pictures though. ::sadface::
- There is something of a theme with quilting history, as you’ll see in the rest of this blog post. The Canadian Centre for the Great War takes a look at subscription quilts and other efforts that were made to raise money for the Red Cross, YMCA, and Salvation Army during WW1.
- The Canadian Legal History Blog celebrates the successful LLM thesis defense of Suzie Chiodo, who wrote on the history of the Ontario Class Proceedings Act.
- In more Wilfrid Laurier news this week, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography has a new thematic gallery devoted to Laurier.
- And they also have a new biography, this time of Henri Béland, a noted physician and politician.
- The latest issue of Manitoba History is out, and looks at the history of WW1 in Western Canada.
- In more journal news this week, the latest Canadian Historical Review is also out!
- Also from Krista McCracken this week is a blog post about the implications of the reliance of archives on volunteer labour.
- The Wilson Centre has a brand new mandate, and it’s available in both English and French.
- Also from Unwritten Histories this week is the latest in our monthly series on upcoming publications in Canadian history. Find out which books will be published in December!
- Also newly published is the latest issue of the Rachel Carson Center: Perspectives. This latest journal issue contains papers from a workshop sponsored by the Carson Center and NiCHE in 2014 on “Environmentalism from Below.” This issue contains a number of articles that deal with Canadian environmental history, so check it out!
- Maureen Lux gave a talk at Carleton this past week on segregated Indian Hospitals. Dan Rück and Jo McCutcheon live-tweeted it, and you read can the tweets here and here. Jo McCurtcheon used the hashtag #his4360 to label her tweets, so you can also follow along that way.
- Canadian History in the News
- Canadian WW2 Conscientious objectors were honoured last weekend with a monument at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Manitoba.
- Snuneymuxw First Nation has just agreed to a settlement in compensation for the loss of the land that is now downtown Nanaimo. This land was supposed to be used for a reservation, but the Canadian government failed to deliver its promise.
- While written to appeal to the people watching the new tv show Frontier (who is watching that, anyways?), Canadian Geographic profiles the five most prominent fur trade companies that operated in the place we now call Canada.
- CBC also talked to the series creator about its historical authenticity. Sure…. especially since, as “Rob Blackie said it’s fair to say that Frontier aims to take a different perspective on Canadian history and shows the fur trade more as an “invasion” of first nations territory by the companies vying for a piece of the lucrative pelt business”
- Much like Erica Violet Lee’s article mentioned above, this discussion with Nathan Tidridge is about how treaties are about relationships, and that love is at their very foundation.
- Last week, Concordia University hosted a conference on Black Studies. One of the papers highlighted Montreal’s history as a hub of African diaspora activism through a look at the life of Louise Langdon. Langdon is best known as Malcolm X’s mother, but was a noted activist in her own right. She lived in Montreal from 1917 to 1920 and was active with the Maison de l’Afrique Montréal.
- Many of you may already be aware of this, but every year Nova Scotia sends a tree to Boston in thanks for their help after the 1917 Halifax Explosion. This year’s tree is from Cape Breton, but it cost almost ¼ of a million dollars to move it.
- This week, in honour of Riel Day, the Canadian government “remembered Louis Riel.” As Ryan McMahon noted, too bad they forgot that they killed him.
- The federal government also seems to be ignoring the fact that the 1870 land claim dispute was only settled this past Tuesday. The Canadian government had promised to set aside more than 5,500 square kilometers for the Métis, before distributing the land in a random lottery open to both settlers and Métis.
- Much in keeping with my earlier editorial, which also discusses how Canadian history has been whitewashed, is this article from the Toronto Star on William Peyton Hubbard. Hubbard was Toronto’s first black alderman, elected in 1894. You read that correctly. He won 14 elections and even served as acting mayor.
- The Canadian Museum of Human Rights has lit its Tower of Peace, marking 50 more days until the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
- Kael McKenzie has made history as Canada’s first openly transgender judge! Yay!
- Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, is relocating four heritage buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. This includes an old RCMP barracks and three HBC buildings. These buildings were going to be demolished due to their condition, but the community decided that they needed to be preserved. Repairs and restoration are planned, and the buildings will be part of a new heritage park.
- As Justin Trudeau visits Havana, the CBC takes a look back at Pierre Trudeau’s historic visit to Cuba in 1976. Also, the year my parents go married. Coincidence? I think not. 😉
- In a move of stunning idiocy, a legal brief submitted on behalf of Nova Scotia, part of a court case over a natural gas storage project, has referred to the Mi’kmaq as a “conquered people.” Seriously, wtf?
- Canadian Geographic has nominated the gray jay, also known as the whiskey jack, as Canada’s official bird. The grey jay plays an important role in the Anishinaabe oral tradition, as a mischievous, but also wise and intelligent creature. You can read some of there stories in the article linked above.
- A new exhibit at the Dalhousie Art Gallery is using quilts to tell family stories. While it’s not totally clear from the article, most of the quilts seem to be from African Nova Scotian families, and the exhibition highlights the quilts as works of art and historical records. As a quilter myself, I think this is fabulous. They are just gorgeous.
- And in more quilt news, the Confederation Quilt is undergoing conservation and repairs! The Confederation Quilt was created by dressmaker Fannie Parlee, from pieces of the gowns she made for the women who attended the balls held during the Charlottetown Conference in 1864. It’s an amazing artefact and record of the participation of women in Confederation.
- The S.J. McKee Archives of Brandon University is in the process of acquiring the archives of the Manitoba Pool Elevators. City girl that I am, I had no idea this was a thing.
- A historic building in Montreal’s Chinatown that was reputed to have shown the first film screening in Canada has just burned down. No one was injured, since it was vacant at the time, but the building is pretty much a total loss.
- A study of the genetics of 25 Indigenous peoples who lived along the northern coast of BC from 1 to 6 thousand years ago has concluded that there was a significant drop in population in this area 175 years ago. Based on the genetic data, biologists estimated that nearly 60% of the population died around this time. This research was completed by a team that included members of the Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla First Nations.
- Two professors from Laurentian University, Dieter Buse and Graham Mount, have begun research on a new project about the Northern Ontario soldiers who served during WW1 and WW2.
- This week’s Puck Talks podcast interviewed Mike Commito about the 1917-1918 hockey season.
- Colour Code, my husband’s new favourite podcast, looks at anti-Asian violence in Ontario from the recent-past.
- The Huu-ay-aht First Nation’s hereditary chiefs (Ha’wiih) are in the process of taking legal possession of seventeen historical artefacts that have previously been “owned” by the Royal BC Museum.
- Recent archaeological excavations in Wôlinak, an Abenaki First Nations reserve in Quebec, have turned up some really great finds, including the remains of buildings dating from 1700 to 1750.
- And just like last week, another building undergoing renovation has yielded some great historical artefacts. The building in question this week is the Imperial Hotel in New Hamburg, Ontario. My favourite discovery was a box of letters telling the story of a man who lost all his money to a friend seeking a fortune in California.
That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a brand new blog. This one’s going to be really fun, so I’ll see you then!
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