Harvesting oats on the Ed Euie farm near Collingwood, Ontario. On the racks is Ed Euie, pitching sheaves is Jack Bell. (1949)Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque, Library and Archives Canada, e010955655 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.
- First up, from Active History, is a blog post by Jim Clifford looking at the recent scandal involving UofO historian Jan Grabowski and the Polish Government regarding the punishing of historians who tell “inconvenient truths” about history.
- Russell Potter discusses how the recent discovery of the HMS Terror is forcing archaeologists and historians to reconsider contemporary Inuit testimony.
- Mica Jorgenson, writing for NiCHE, has a new blog post about gold mining in Canada. The post is the third is a series cosponsored by NiCHE and Edge Effects. Jorgenson focuses specifically on gold mining in Wells, BC in the 1930s, and what we can learn from the impact of historical mining efforts.
- In a second blog post this week, Russell Potter talks about Inuit testimony given in the 19th century to Charles Francis Hall regarding modern Terror Bay (then known as the “tent place”).
- The McGill-Queen’s Press blog has kindly posted an excerpt from the keynote address by Dr. Marie Wilson on the role of Canadian publishers in reconciliation, based on Wilson’s notes.
- Check out this amazing chart by Steve Marti of senders and receivers of letters by Canadians in WW1. Apparently, “Mother” received the most letters. OMG, where’s the Kleenex.
- October 3rd was the 143th anniversary of the signing of Treaty 3.
- Active History reprinted an excerpt from Nic Clarke’s latest book, Unwanted Warriors: The Rejected Volunteers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, about the fitness of WW1 volunteers.
- Unwritten Histories has a new edition of Best New Articles, spotlighting the latest in Canadian history research, this week! There are some really great articles out this past month, and you can find out which ones were my favourites.
- Borealia has a new blog post out this week! Patrick Lacroix talks about the role that borders play in peaceful relations between nations, particularly with respect to Canada and the US after the War of 1812 and the Rebellions of 1837-38. Spoiler alert: there be pirates.
- Jessica DeWitt is back this month with her Environmental History Worth Reading list for September! She has some great suggestions, including a 99% Invisible podcast episode that I particularly loved!
- The Library and Archives blog takes a look at Margaret Marshall Saunders’ children’s story, Beautiful Joe. Funny story, I had once a student who, in a assignment about historical fiction, tried to convince me the book was an adult historical novel and that the story was a metaphor for multiculturalism.
- Are you a scholar who works in legal history? The CLSA’s fall bulletin is looking for submissions!
- Carmen, from the All About Canadian History Blog, has a wonderful blog post this week about Canadian travel ads from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. I particularly liked the one about “sexy Nova Scotia calling.”
- Acadiensis is spotlighting the Atlantic Loyalist Connections Blog this week! I love the blog, and wholeheartedly agree with their endorsement.
- The latest issue of the CHR is out!
- Vancouver As It Was talks about the Special Service Squadron of 1923-24 that embarked on something of a world tour called the Empire Cruise (apparently called the World Booze by the sailors).
- Chelsea Vowel (apihtawikosisan) has a great Twitter essay about the role that history and forgetting plays in settler colonialism.
- The Vancouver Historical Society talks about the sale of bread to 1920s housewives.
- Find out which new communities will have virtual exhibits developed by the Virtual Museum of Canada program!
- Jamie Murton reviews André Magnan’s When Wheat was King: the Rise and Fall of the Canada-UK Wheat Trade for NiCHE this week.
- The framing is especially problematic, but this new blog post from LAC discusses how to identify Indigenous peoples in historic censuses.
- Check out this really important Twitter essay from Allison Mills about #AskanArchivist day, Canadian archives, Indigneous peoples, and reconciliation.
- Also check out this blog post on #AskanArchivist day by Canadian archivist Emily Lonie about some of the questions and answers she got, including a discussion about the strangest things people have found in their archives.
- The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has a new article out this week, about Élisabeth Bergeron, called “Saint-Joseph.”
- Bill Waiser’s A World We Have Lost has been shortlisted for the GG’s non-fiction award!
- Rosie Prata has a thoughtful reflection about whether or not we should continue to use titles for artwork that contains offensive words in Canadian museums.
- The Nova Scotia Archives has a new blog! Check out their first blog post, about how the ephemera of everyday life can provide so many insights into our ancestors’ experiences.
- In more archival news, Krista McCracken has storified the opening of the new Archives of Ontario Family Ties Exhibit, The exhibit looks at the lives of individuals and families living in Ontario at the time of Confederation.
- Last month I mentioned that George Cartwright’s The Labrador Companion was released. MQUP has a new blog post featuring some excerpts from the book, including tips for bear riding. Cause that’s a brilliant idea.
- Bill Buchanan, writing at the Bill’s Genealogy Blog, shares the story of his grandmother, Louise Ellen Wright, who came to Canada from London in 1913.
- Acadiensis also posted a TBT this week about weather history in New Brunswick.
- It’s not strictly Canadian, but this article by Felicity Turner on teaching rape is a must read for all professors.
- Andrew Nurse reviews Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace for Active History this week. This is really more my husband’s thing than mine, since, in his eyes, I have terrible taste in music because I don’t like Neil Young’s work.
- Mica Jorgenson has a second article out this week for NiCHE, recruiting participants for the October New Scholar’s Event about the history of parks. She also has a summary of last month’s meeting available for those who missed it.
- In LAC’s ongoing series profiling Canadian recipients of the Victoria Cross, Emily Monks-Leeson takes a look at Piper James Cleland Richardson. I am a sucker for a man in a kilt.
- The Laurier Centre Blog has a new blog post out this week called “The Wabanosse Hearing: An Indigenous Veteran Fighting for a Great War Pension.” This would be such a great post to use in a survey course to talk about WW1.
- Canadian History in the News
- Find out about the history of Girl Guides in BC. Mmmmm Thin Mints…
- PBS takes a look at Nova Scotian Groaning Cake, a traditional post-partum dish that is featured in the wonderful book by Ami McKay, The Birth House.
- The Mohawk band council of Akwesasne is introducing the first Indigenous legal system in Canada. The system will mix parts of the Canadian system with traditional Mohawk values and traditions.
- Artist Daphne Odjig, recognized as one of the “Indian Group of Seven,” has passed away.
- I missed this last week, but Chris Bateman, writing for the Torontoist, looked at the Indianapolis-Scarborough Peace Games in 1973.
- Queen’s University’s journal profiled Peter Edmund Jones, the first Indigenous physician in Canadian history.
- Someone decided that we need a musical about Terry Fox. Because, why not….
- A statue has been commissioned in Belgium to honour the soldier believed to have been the last Commonwealth soldier to have been killed in WW1, Nova Scotia’s George Price. Price died two minutes after armistice.
- On Wednesday, Saskatchewan journalists gathered to discuss how Indigenous peoples are represented in the Canadian media, in response to the TRC Calls to Action.
- The wonderful Buffy Sainte-Marie is calling for an adults-only exhibit on residential schools to be created at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
- The federal government is planning to review all of the shenanigans involved in the rediscovery of the HMS Terror.
- The Canadian Princess ship is leaving Ucluelet, where it has served as a fishing lodge for the past 30 years.
- In a poll that shouldn’t surprise any historians, Angus Reid is reporting that Canadians want minorities to “fit in” better.
- Radio Canada speaks with archaeologist Sarah Lockyer about the process of identifying unknown soldiers, including the more than 27,000 Canadians missing in action.
- Kennewick Man is finally going home.
- Archaeologists have found a 1,600 year-old artefact at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta: a roasting pit and perfectly preserved meal.
- A new documentary is out about the history of the Charles Camsell Hospital, where Indigenous peoples with tuberculosis were sent to receive medical care significantly inferior to the care offered to non-Indigenous Canadians.
- Terra Aronone, writing for the National Post, reviews D. Peter MacLeod’s Backs to the Wall: The Battle of Sainte-Foy and the Conquest of Canada
- Dan Levin has an editorial in the New York Times about the failure of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights to acknowledge the stolen land it sits on.
- And you can see the museum’s response here.
- Well, every cloud has a silver lining since the melting artic ice has revealed ancient hunting equipment in the Selwyn and Mackenzie Mountains in the NWT. Archaeologists are working to collect these items alongside the local Indigenous community, Shúhtagot’ine (Mountain Dene) of Tulita. Here’s hoping future underwater archaeologists will be able to find our society one day….
- Canadian Geographic has a sweet little article about the history of rural postal delivery in Canada. The latest move towards community boxes harkens back to a time when everyone got their mail at the community post office.
- Cindy Blackstock has a new article out in Policy Options about the history of Canada’s discrimination against Indigenous children.
- There is a new exhibit out at Citadel Hill about WW1 soldiers, including one of Canada’s first casualties, Malcolm Cann.
- The Vancouver Public Library is about to receive a massive collection of documents from the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, from the 1870s to the 1970s.
- Another new exhibit at the Canadian Museum of History, developed by the Manitoba Museum, looks at the history of women’s suffrage in Canada. The exhibit it titled “Nice Women Don’t Want the Vote.” You can see some of the artefacts from the exhibit in the article, and they are wonderful. I always feel uncomfortable around celebrations of women’s suffrage, though, due to the very racist beliefs held by many of the key members.
- Read about the creation of the exhibit here.
- Remember those films found in Dawson City? Well, Canadian Geographic sat down with the director of the film featuring the discovery, Bill Morrison.
- The RCMP and Health Canada are investigating the two cases of babies switched at birth that occurred at the Norway House Indian Hospital in Manitoba in 1975.
- Margaret Sutherland and her siblings are searching for their lost brother, Alex, who was taken by child services as part of the Sixties Scoop.
- In ill-advised journalism this week, Maclean’s has a new article this week ranking Canada’s PMs. As Carmen Neilson noted, the experts break down as follows: 21 men, 2 women, 0 Indigenous peoples. ::headdesk:: Results are predictably bad.
- Condos and condo developments have a devastating impact on sacred land belonging to all Indigenous peoples, including Anishinabe, across the country.
- Find out about one of the men from Prince George who served in Canada’s Siberian Expedition Force in WW1, J.F. “Doc” Campbell.
- This week, in 1909 Vancouver, the brand new ambulance killed a pedestrian on its first test drive. Oops.
- Find out about a new exhibit at the Toronto Archives — “From Streets to Playgrounds: Representing Children in Early 20th Century Toronto” — about when city officials decided that children playing on the streets was a bad idea.
- Brock University has just received a collection of 17th and 18th century maps, largely of Ontario and Eastern Canada, from retired diplomat, Dan Livermore.
- More bodies have been discovered at a church in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario, in what is believed to have been an early 19th century settler cemetery.
- In the latest Historicist column, David Wencer looks at Count Jacques de Lessep’s 1910 flight over Toronto.
- Ok, this is kind of adorable, but the South Peace Regional Archives held an archives-raising bee this week. I’m dying. Anyone else just love Catherine Anne Wilson’s article?
- Ontario has declared October as Islamic Heritage Month.
- Peter Robb, writing for the Ottawa Citizen, reviews Douglas E. Delaney and Serge Marc Durgflinger’s Capturing Hill 70: Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First World War.
- There are two new murals honouring the Rideau Canal on the underside of the Laurier Bridge. The murals focus on the history of the canal specifically.
- Parks Canada is using an abandoned apple orchard in the Gulf Islands to learn about the farmers who settled there. The presence of a certain species of apples suggests the former inhabitants were Hawaiian settlers.
- Erosion from flood waters has exposed new archaeological evidence along the Bow River, near Calgary. So far, excavators have found tools from 300 to 500 years ago, including a stone used to to chop bison bones and a copper point.
That’s it for this week’s roundup. Lots of neat stuff to read over the long weekend. And don’t forget to check back tomorrow for a special Thanksgiving blog post, debunking commonly held myths about the history of the holiday in Canada. Spoiler alert: Martin Frobisher was NOT involved.
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