Canadian History Roundup – Week of October 15, 2017

A house being floated from Silver Fox Island, Bonavista Bay, to Dover, Newfoundland. 1961. B. Brooks. National Film Board of Canada. Still Photography Division. Library and Archives Canada, e010975948. 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.

• Library and Archives Canada has its regular monthly report on the digitization of CEF files. They have reached the last name “Russell.”
• This week’s most popular words in #envhist, according to Jessica DeWitt are: “Capacity,” “Water,” and “Hampton.”
• This week Active History premiered a new online exhibit, in collaboration with the Halton Region Heritage Services, showcasing the history of Ontario over the past 100 years. This exhibit focuses on using historical materials to teach historical understanding. Don’t miss the special blog post introducing the exhibit and how our understanding and interpretation of historical objects has changed over time.
• The Vancouver as It Was blog is back this week with a cool picture of an early car service White Spot, which is a Vancouver-based restaurant chain.
• Today we associate Montreal’s Place des Arts as a centre for culture, but it used to be a thriving commercial and residential district. Find out how this transformation took place this week on the Montreal Archives blog.
• The UofA Faculty of Law faulty blog had a whole series this week devoted to the Sixties Scoop, including
  • An introduction to the Sixties Scoop and a primer in euphemisms for assimilation;
  • A history of the Sixties Scoop;
  • The impact of the Sixties Scoop on the lives of those affected;
  • How survivors have used art to heal and reconnect with their Indigenous heritage and families;
  • And a discussion of the settlement, reactions from some survivors, and how Métis survivors were excluded.
• Adam Coombs responded to critiques of his Active History post from last week in this Twitter essay.
• This week on the Beyond Borders blog is a post by Whitney Wood on the history of “natural childbirth” and leading proponent, Grantly Dick-Read, as well as the natural childbirth movement in Canada and internationally.
• Krista McCracken initiated a great conversation this week about recommendations for cover letters and resumes for public history positions.
• The York University Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections shared its five favourite responses from #AskanArchivist day.
• Joanne Hammond is back with another important Twitter essay this week about the intersections of denial and history in British Columbia.
• Do you remember how, last year, Ian Mosby went through the TRC’s Calls to Action to see Canada’s progress? Well, he’s back with another update, storified by Kim Patrick Weaver. Over the last year, two more have been completed.
  • And this was even covered by the CBC!
• This week on Unwritten Histories saw the return of our regular Best New Articles series! Find out about my favourite scholarly articles published in the last month.
• Jessica DeWitt is also back this week with her picks of the new environmental history stories from the past month for NiCHE.
• Alison Norman has a new blog post for Active History this week, focusing on the British women who spoke out on behalf of Six Nations Soldiers during WW1. This blog post not only focuses on two of these women — Mary Pamela Milne-Home and Sarah Robertson Matheson — but also discusses how Norman researched and published on this topic.
• This week saw the Canadian History Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon! Check out the final results here. I am so proud of the work that my students did on this project!
• The Heritage Winnipeg blog explored the history of North Point Douglas this week, including the 1928 disappearance and unsolved murder of a little girl, Julia Johnson.
• This week on the LAC blog is a short guide to their collection of pre-Confederation St. Lawrence maritime pilot certificates. Try saying that three times fast.
• The St. Catharines Museum has posted a new episode of their podcast, on the historiography of Louis Riel. Fair warning, I haven’t listened to the podcast, so I can’t vouch for the quality of the discussions…
• Krista McCracken has a fantastic post this week about what it’s like to be an introverted professor. As a fellow introvert, this very much resonated with me!
• This month is Women’s History month! In honour of the occasion, McGill-Queen’s University Press has put together a list of recommended readings.
  • And also in honour of the occasion, Gail C. Campbell has written a new blog post for Acadiensis on the history of Women’s History Month, and the newsletter that launched the event in Canada.
• Leah Grandy has the first post in a mini-series on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog this week. In this series, she explores some of the real-life inspiration behind the story, starting with the Hessian soldiers.
• This week, Instantanés shows how archival collections can hold the most fascinating stories. For instance, the Jean-Paul Simard fonds contains information about his family and the unusual and tragic life of his sister, Marie-Alice.
• In the latest post in the Age of Revolutions blog’s Native American Revolutions series, Karim M. Tiro discusses the involvement of the Haudenosaunee in the American Revolution.
• Adam Bunch put together a really interesting Twitter essay about the impact of Hurricane Hazel in Toronto, which hit 63 years ago this week.
• Vancouver property tax records up to 2005 are now available at the City of Vancouver Archives. Click the link above to find out what kind of information is included and which records are available.
• The UNB Loyalist Collection announced the launch of “New Brunswick Loyalist Journeys,” HGIS story maps recreating the stories of Loyalists who settled in New Brunswick.
• The Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences at RICE posted a review of Anya Zilberstein’s A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America.
• Janis Thiessen has a food truck. I am totally jealous.
  • Find out what she plans to do with the food truck in this episode of The Other Side of the Mic podcast.
• Sean Carleton has written a new blog post for Histoire Engagée this week, reflecting on his recent visit to the new Kent Monkman exhibit, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, and how Monkman subverts the Canada150 narrative in his work.
• Allyson Stevenson has written a new blog post for Active History examining the history of the Sixties Scoop project in Saskatchewan. In the post, she examines the imagery and tropes that were used in the adoption campaigns, and how Métis children were specifically targeted.
• In her latest blog post, Stephanie Bellissimo explores the history of farm service in Ontario during WW2, whereby boys and girls could sign up to work on farms during the summer as part of the war effort.
• Robyn Lacy has another update on her work in New Perlican, particularly with respect to footnotes and blank grave stones.
• The Historical Atlas of Canada has just re-launched a web-mapping pilot project exploring census divisions from 1851 to 1961, using GIS.
• Sylvain Raymond has put together a time-lapse video of the construction of the new Canadian History Hall, which took place over three years. Check it out on the Canadian Museum of History blog.
  • Also on the new Canadian History Hall this week is a new Active History blog post reviewing the exhibition by Christoph Laugs.
• Also new on NiCHE this week is a blog post by Jennifer Bonnell on environmental resilience and adaptation in urban landscapes, and hope for the future.
• Also on Instantanés this week is a really sweet blog post about how archives can reconnect long-lost friends.
• The latest Dictionary of Canadian Biography biography is for Louis de Lotbinière Harwood, a Quebec physician and gynaecologist.
• This week on Unwritten Histories we also posted our Upcoming Publications update, with the new books in Canadian history coming out next month.
• The latest Flickr album from LAC features images of life on islands. As an island girl, this is right up my alley, so of course I had to use one for this roundup. Check out the pictures here.
• Harvard Library is about to release a new website for its Colonial North American Project at Harvard University, with 450,000 digitized images of their holdings related to this subject.
• The Canadian Committee on Women’s History is now accepting submissions for sponsored panels for the Canadian Historical Association’s 2018 Annual Meeting!
• The Canadian Centre for the Great War blog is back after a short hiatus with a new post on the process of surrendering on the battlefield.
• The Calgary Gay History Project is back with Week 3 of their Klippert Month. This latest post focuses on Everett Klippert’s family.
• The Virtual Museum of Canada launched a new Community Stories this week: Île Jésus Follows the Pace of Its Rivers.
• Ian Mosby posted excerpts from “A Report on Some Environmental Health Aspects of Native Housing,” from November 1974.
• LAC shared this amazing photograph of an Indigenous woman knitting a Cowichan Sweater.
• Joanne Hammond also put together a Twitter essay on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, particularly the subject of cultural heritage.
• The ROM posted an image of a carved antler found on Baffin Island. Some believe that this showed Inuit and Viking faces, but other disagree.
• Harold Bérubé posted the abstract for his presentation at the 70e Congrès de l’Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française on the Golden Square Mile in Montreal, and how it changed from 1945 to 1980.
• In this week’s #TBT from the ROM, the exhibition goes on tour.
• The latest blog post from the Chilliwack Museum and Archives looks at the history of the local ferry, and its one-time captain, John Thomas Henley.
• The St. Catharines Museum has reached ‘Walk R’ on their tour of the city. In this walk, they explore letter-writing.
• The Etobicoke Historical society has just created a new online image library with more than 1,800 images.
• The Centre d’archives de la Grande Zone argileuse in Northern Ontario has just announced that it has received and organized a new fonds covering the history of schools in Fryatt, Ontario.
• The Canadian Museum of History shared an image of this amazing Iroquoian pipe.
• Whistorical explores the history of their Gothic Arch Huts, specifically the Himmelsbach Hut, built in 1968 on the top of a mountain.
• Eve Lazarus explores the lost history of All Season Park, where several developers tried to build hotels in the early 1960s.
• Canadian History in the News
  • Find out more information about the Robinson-Huron treaty court case, and the attempt by Indigenous signatories to raise the annuity from $4 per year.
  • Chantal Hébert has some choice words to say about reconciliation and Justin Trudeau.
  • The Toronto Reference library has a collection of these things called vinyl? 😉
  • Vice explores how food has been used against Indigenous peoples, particularly with respect to the new Kukum Kitchen.
  • TVO explores the life of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, a Romanov exile who found refuge in Toronto.
  • Laurier University’s newly-digitized collection of correspondence between William Lyon McKenzie King with a mayor of Kitchener is revealing some interesting and random insights, like the fact that he loved pears and preferred the name “Berlin” to “Kitchener.”
  • Simon Fraser University has pledged $9 million towards implementing recommendations from the Aboriginal Reconciliation Council.
  • Carla Peck and Lindsay Gibson published an editorial in the Edmonton Journal this week, busting myths about the revision of the Alberta Education social studies curriculum.
  • Find out about an ongoing project designed to preserve and document the history of the Italian-Canadian community of Trail, BC.
  • Michael McClelland makes the case for an archaeology park in Toronto.
  • The Globe and Mail interviewed Hayden King, Nicole Cardinal, and Onowa McIvor about the process of Indigenization at Canadian universities.
  • Did you know that the one of the main beneficiaries of residential school settlements was lawyers? Especially those that committed fraud?
  • This week archaeologists revealed the finds they made while excavating the site of the now-destroyed Parliament of United Canada in Montreal. Omg, this is too cool.
    • La Presse also covered this.
  • Crystal Fraser was featured on Entrée Principale this week for her work on #150Acts of Reconciliation. Except they forgot to mention that Fraser worked with Sarah Komarinsky. The discussion starts at 21:30.
  • Adam Brunch was interviewed by CBC about his new book, The Toronto Book of the Dead.
  • The Canadian War Museum has debuted a new multi-media exhibit based on correspondence between a WW1 soldier, Lt-.Col George Stephen Cantlie, and his one-year-old daughter, Celia. He included a pressed flower he picked just for her in each letter, no matter the conditions her endured. I’m not crying, I swear.
  • Check out this amazing 328-year-old aboiteau that was discovered in Grand-Pré. An aboiteau is an important piece of dyking technology that was/is used to drain marshes.
  • Janice Keil is working to return her lands to Alderville First Nation. She spoke with Rosanna Deerchild on Unreserved about why she wants to do this and what inspired her.
  • Dalhousie student Masuma Khan is facing disciplinary action for speaking out on social media against Canada 150.
  • Find out about the first Western map to ever include the term “Canada.”
  • There was another Wikipedia edit-a-thon this week as well, on Indigenous women!
  • After being disappointed with the lack of information about the experience of immigrants documented in the records of the NFB, CBC, or LAC, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn decided to create her own archive. See the archive for yourself here.
  • Mike Committo tackles the subject of the Persons Case this week for Sudbury.com.
  • Students from a school in Winnipeg are working with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to help teach the history of residential schools to other children.
  • A dugout canoe that is several hundred years old has been found in the Ottawa River.
  • Members of L’association franco-yukonnaise have put together a collection of little dolls representing historical French-speaking Yukoners. Creepy or cute? You decide.
  • Master Haida carver James Hart has just finished the UBC reconciliation pole. The pole, which went up earlier this year, is dedicated to survivors of the residential school system.
  • Duncan McCue explains his sign off for The National, chi-miigwech, which is Anishinaabemowin for “big thank you.”
  • Ry Moran has some great questions to ask yourself to get started with reconciliation.
  • The Canadian treasury board is considering amendments to a new bill about access to information, following concerns raised by Indigenous organizations who believe that the bill could be used to block land claims.
  • Find out what it’s like to be the head archivist at the University of Manitoba’s Archives and Special Collections!
  • A number of volunteers are working to restore the headstones in the Dresden cemetery.
  • Find out about the story of John Ramsay, an Indigenous man who saved the lives of 75 newly-arrived Icelandic settlers in Manitoba in 1875.
  • There is a new online dictionary to help individuals learn how to speak Mi’kmaq!
  • Read this fantastic editorial by Yves Engler about why we don’t need another military memorial in Canada.
  • A social media campaign has led to the identification of an RCMP special constable from a photograph in the Yellowknife Museum. Turns out he is Ningeok Killiktee, from Pond Inlet, Nunavut. That picture is pretty bad-ass too.
  • The lead plaintiff in the court case regarding the Chinese Head Tax, Quen Chow Lee, has died at the age of 105.
• Better Late than Never
  • Water that fell or flowed into Lake Superior in 1826 is only now leaving.
  • Justin McElroy explores why so many people are opposed to renaming places in Vancouver.
  • There is a new digital walking tour app dedicated to the Halifax Explosion.
• Calls for Papers
  • There is a new CFP for a proposed edited collection called Revolution as Reformation: Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions (1688-1815). Research on Ireland, the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples in North America, and African Americans is particularly welcome. Proposals are due November 20.
  • Two scholars are organizing a one-day conference on the subject of the age of consent and child marriage in the British Empire from 1880 to 193 The conference will be held in London in June 2018, and proposals are due January 8.
  • The Black Canadian Studies Association has issued a CFP for the 4^th Black Studies Association Conference, to be held as part of Congress for the first time. This year’s theme will focus on reparations and apologies for slavery and anti-Black racism. Proposals are due December 24^th.
  • The Canadian Committee on Migration, Ethnicity, and Transnationalism is now accepting submissions for its article prize. Submissions are due January 15^th.

I know that IHAF was going on this week, but I can’t seem to find any lists about any of the prize winners. Otherwise I would absolutely have included this in this week’s roundup! In any case, 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 brand new blog post! I’ll see you then!

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