A Blast Furnace (1926-1934) Clive Gardiner. Library and Archives Canada, C-109483 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.
- The latest issue of BC Studies is out!
- This week on Borealia, Maxime Dagenais talks about the mission and work of the Wilson Centre. The Wilson Centre is devoted to the study of Canada in a global context, and this blog post highlights the importance of transnational history for Canadian historians.
- This week on the Laurier centre’s blog is a review of Graham Broad’s A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939-1045, by Daniel German.
- Bonnie Huskins reviews two books for the Acadiensis blog — A Calendar of Life in a Narrow Valley: Jacobina Campbell’s Diary, Taymouth and Hector Maclean: The Writings Of A Loyalist Era Military Settler. Both of books are published editions of diaries by Scottish loyalists, and provide important insights into the daily lives of people in late 18th century Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
- NiCHE is continuing its spotlighting of new publications on Canadian environmental history. This week’s books include:
- There is a new post this week from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 Blog. This latest post, by Jan Raska, looks at efforts to resettle Armenian child orphans who came to Canada from 1923 to 1927. This is really a fascinating blog post about an area of Canadian history that we know little about: Armenian Canadian immigration.
- Paula Dumas is back with another blog post in her Loyalists series. In this latest post, Dumas shows what you can learn from digitized Loyalist sources, using the example of her ancestor, Henry Anguish.
- Active History features a new website project by Megan Davies and Erika Dyck, After the Asylum, which is the first national project to document the history and impact of the deinstitutionalization of asylums in the 20th. Check out this amazing website here.
- Ed MacDonald has won a prestigious award from the Canadian Catholic Historical Association. Congrats!
- This week on Unwritten Histories, I decided to lighten the mood with my gift guide for historians and history-lovers! Now’s a good time to get your shopping out of the way before the end-of-the-semester crunch!
- Thomas Peace, writing for Active History, offers his perspective on recent debates about “fake news,” focusing specifically on the way in which history is used and misused for the purpose of nationalistic rhetoric alongside the marginalization of academic historians. And all of this comes at a time when history is less popular with university students than ever. Funny coincidence, that.
- Ann M. Little continues with her weekly excerpts from The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright, with some fascinating insights into the intellectual world of Ursuline Convents.
- I mentioned last week that Maureen Lux gave a talk at Carleton University on Indian Hospitals, and that the event was live-tweeted. Jess Clark has helpfully compiled them into a Storify, which you can see here.
- Christopher Moore talks about the latest publication by the Champlain Society, a collection of Le Devoir editorials by Henri Bourassa.
- Gail Denver talks about the new online collection of documents from Smithers and Bulkley Valley in BC. There are 5,000 digitized photographs and 3,000 documents.
- Also on Active History this week, George Colpitts, Shannon Stunen Bower, and Bill Waiser showcase their new project, Climate and Change: Making Sense of the Dustbowl Years on the Canadian Prairies. Check out the website here.
- The Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog tackles the problem of 18th and 19th century given names, particularly the prevalence of biblical names that repeat themselves over and over again within families. Author Leah Grandy talks about period naming trends and provides tips for researchers.
- Check out Sean Kheraj’s syllabus for a graduate course on North American Environmental History.
- Hakai Magazine has a great new video-story by Grant Callegari, Meigan Henry, and Amorina Kingdon about the 6,000 year history of the village of Hauyat, where the ancestors of the Heiltsuk First Nations people lived.
- To support Treaty Education in Nova Scotia, in response to last week’s “conquered people” remark, the Nova Scotia Archives have made high-resolution images of Peace and Friendship Treaties available online for download.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia has a new exhibit about the history of Canadian money and the representation of women.
- This week’s new biography from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for Joseph Taylor Marks, an Ontario labour organizer who lived around the turn of the last century.
- The UBC Digitization Centre has dedicated this week’s blog post to Movember, highlighting some of their favourite moustaches from their collection.
- Last week, the Museum of Vancouver invited Rob Frith and Howie Vickers to speak about the Vancouver music scene in the 60s and 70s. Frith is a concert poster collector, and Vickers used to belong to the band The Collectors. The MOV blog has posted some video from their talk!
- Whistorical, the official blog of the Whistler Museum talks about the history of public and civic institutions being housed in portable buildings.
- UNBC history professor Jonathan Swainger has just published a new book on the history of the university! Swainger was the obvious choice to write this book, since he was one of the first faculty members hired at UNBC 25 years ago!
- Check out this really neat carved stone mailbox from WW1. It was used by Canadian soldiers who lived underground.
- The official Heritage Winnipeg blog takes a look at the Victory Building this week.
- Library and Archives Canada celebrates 5 years of blogging at The Discover Blog!
- Katrina Ackerman has a new blog post at Active History this week, about the history of rural women’s access to abortion. This is a problem that endures to this day. This blog post was released in anticipation of the new “abortion pill,” mifegymiso, in Canada, and debates about whether it should only be dispensed by physicians.
- Read this superb article by Scott Rutherford, on Active History, a stunning indictment of the culture of whiteness at Queen’s University.
- In yet another blog post in the Laurier Centre’s blog on Photography on the Front Lines, Carla-Jean Stokes looks at official photography during WW2. She focuses specifically on the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit, and their work on the front lines.
- The Saanich Archives (on Vancouver Island) have released a newly digitized collection, the Hebert and Heather Shields fond. This fond contains some beautiful pictures of their travels around the island and BC.
- Brock Humanities and Alison Innes live-tweeted a talk by Daniel Joseph Samson and Mike Driedger on “Teaching Slow and Distant Reading of early Modern Texts in Hist 2F90: Exploring the Pedagogy of Transcription.” Check it out here! And check out their really cool infographic of the talk here!
- The Museum of Vancouver is back with another Friday Five, featuring their favourite photos from 1976.
- This week on the Canadian Centre for the Great War is a new blog post about the logistics of feeding the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
- Canadian History in the News
- The genome of a 5,310-year-old maize (early corn) has been sequenced, providing new information about how maize was domesticated in central Mexico.
- Archaeological investigations at the Toronto Chinese United Church in Toronto have revealed artefacts from when it used to be the site of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, the centre of Toronto’s black community in the late 19th century.
- I mentioned last week that the Royal BC Museum has repatriated a number of artefacts to the Huu-ay-aht First Nation. This article provides some more information about the artefacts and also features an interview with Chief Councillor Robert Dennis Sr.
- Valerie Henitiuk, a professor at MacEwan University, is studying the first Inuit novel, written in Inuktitut and syllabics. The novel is Harpoon of the Hunter, by Markoosie Patsauq.
- Dalhousie University is now offering a new minor, black and African Diaspora Studies, created by Afua Cooper. This is so awesome!
- In a headline that shouldn’t surprise anyone, science is confirming what Indigenous oral histories have been telling us for centuries. This article refers to the genetic study I mentioned in last week’s roundup.
- Pauline Marois has donated her records to Quebec’s National Library and Archives.
- Nick Walker, at Canadian Geographic, has a really great article about how the maps that were created by the Canadian Land Inventory from 1963 onwards were used by settlers to lay claim to Indigenous land on the prairies.
- The Toronto Life blog shows us some of the treasures contained within the University of Toronto’s Leonard Cohen collection.
- The first copy of a full-length audio book has been rediscovered in Canada! These recordings were made in 1935 of Joseph Conrad’s novella, Typhoon, published in 1902.
- The main trail of Bonshaw Provincial Park in PEI has been given a new Mi’kmaq name in recognition of PEI’s status as traditional Mi’kmaq territory. The new name will be The Ji’ka’we’katik Trail, which means “the place where bass are plentiful.” This was the original name for the West River.
- The Huffington Post showcased LAC’s “Fantastic Beasts of Canada,” in honour of the latest Harry Potter movie. I just wish they had used the occasion to speak out against the movie’s appropriation of Indigenous culture.
- The Star has reviewed the two new books titled Trudeaumania.
- CBC Saskatoon interviewed Yasha Rassi about his hobby of metal detection, highlighting some of the cool finds he’s made over the past few years!
- Because we apparently need more evidence of global warming, Captain Cook’s 1778 records from his voyage near the Bering Straight are providing evidence of warming in the arctic.
- Bill Waiser just put out his regular column at the Star Phoenix about Saskatchewan history. This week he talks about the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic, and how it inadverdently provided greater political opportunities to women, resulting in the first female MLA in the province.
- The analysis of mammoth bones unearthed in Michican last year is making scholars revise the earliest date of a human presence in North America. While more tests are needed, the mammoth’s bones may be nearly 15,000 years old, and there is evidence to suggest that it was killed by humans.
- The final five candidates for the next Canadian woman to be featured on a bank note have been announced! They are: E. Pauline Johnson, Bobbie Rosenfeld, Elsie MacGill, Viola Desmond, and Idola Saint-Jean.
- Again, this isn’t specifically Canadian, but this article looks at “donor conceived” children from the 1940s to the 1990s. This was a practice before IVF, where doctors would inseminate women with sperm from themselves or medical students using a rubber syringe. This happened when women desired a child, and they either did not have a husband, or had a husband who was infertile. One of the now-grown babies discussed in the article is Canadian.
- Mike Commito is back with another history of hockey column on the history of Sir John Abbot.
- The 9th Canada’s History Forum will be held on November 27th. The subject is Engaging Authentic Indigenous Histories.
- The East Northumberland Secondary School in Ontario has raised a flag in honour of Louis Riel and in recognition of the unjust treatment he endured from the Canadian government.
- I mentioned last week that the birthplace of cinema in Canada, Montreal’s Robillard Building, was just destroyed by fire. This week, CBC takes a look back at the history of the building.
- I also mentioned last week that the Confederation Quilt was undergoing restoration. It was returned just this past Monday.
- Listen to this interview of Tom Swanky from CBC Daybreak North. Swanky talks about his latest book, The Smallpox War in Nuxalk Territory. This book looks at the case of six Tsilhqot’in leaders who were executed in 1864 and 1865 for accusing the colonial government of deliberately introducing smallpox into Nuxalk territory. Nearly 70% of the people in this area died. Read more about this book here.
- Lester B. Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize has been loaned to the Canadian Museum of History for their new Canadian History Hall.
- A brand new interactive documentary has just launched, called The World in Ten Blocks. Made in partnership with The Globe and Mail, this documentary looks at the diverse community of Bloorcourt in Toronto.
- The Chief of Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario is calling on the environment minister to follow through on the government’s promise to clean up the English-Wabigoon River system. This river system was containminated back in the 1960s and 1970s when a paper mill dumped 9,000 kg of mercury into its waters.
- The Vancouver Sun goes back in time to remember the discovery of a dismembered body in a trunk in 1928. The trunk had been sold in an unclaimed baggage sale by the CPR.
- The same genetic study that revealed the catastrophic loss of Indigenous populations in BC has also revealed that the same epidemics that killed so many left a permanent mark on the DNA of survivors and their descendants.
- CBC remembers a long-lost CFL team, Sarnia’s Imperials. Named for Imperial Oil, players could work for the company when their football careers were over. Lovely.
- Miche Genest, writing for Yukon News, takes us back to the introduction of western agricultural methods in the Yukon, around 1840. Despite many early failures, farmers soon learned to grow plenty of fresh vegetables.
- The Northern View, out of Prince Rupert, remembers Earl Danford Corliss. Corliss had been a decorated WW2 veteran, family man, and outdoorsman whose life fell apart after his wife died. This article explores Corliss’s life and efforts to give his body a dignified burial.
- Rosanna Deerchild, host of CBC’s Unreserved, interviews Jesse Wente about the (mis)representation of Indigenous peoples in film.
- Deerchild also speaks with Chelsea Vowel about her recent book, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada.
- Chris Bateman, writing for the Historicist, looks back at the adoption of the global time standard and the subsequent disappearance of 20 minutes of Toronto’s history.
- CHEK News’s This Week in History series profiles Thomas Robson Pattullo, one of the wealthiest men to come out of BC’s Gold Rush.
- CTV News has posted a rare video of the immediate aftermath of the Halifax Explosion.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup! Lots of BC news for some reason… Anyways, don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for a brand new blog post. I’m trying something new this week… let’s hope it goes well. 😉
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