Canadian History Roundup – Week of October 9, 2016

An autumn day at a summer cabin on the Gatineau River, Quebec, October 1950 / Chris Lund. Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, e010955747 / 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 Vermont State Archives posted an amazing document from the 1798 meeting between the Chiefs of the Seven Nations of Canada and the Vermont Legislature in which they discussed a land dispute.
• Vancouver As It Was takes a look at the history of English Bay Theatre in Vancouver. The blog post also features some great reviews of some of the productions.
• Another reminder that Winter is Coming from Vintage Everyday: an image of a snow storm on Sparks Street (Ottawa) in the 1890s. I’ll just be over here in BC with my palm trees.
• Here at Unwritten Histories, I had a new blog post all about the real history behind Canadian Thanksgiving, and the relationship between remembering, forgetting, national identities, and holidays. The response was overwhelmingly positive!
  • And also new this week is my monthly list of upcoming scholarly publications in Canadian history!
• Are you interested in finding out more about relatives who worked for the HBC? Check out these suggestions. Also great for social historians!
• Stephanie Ann Warner has a lovely blog post about the life and death her great-great-great-grandmother, Susan Gagan, who died far too young.
• NiCHE is getting into the Halloween spirit with an environmental ghost story from the Yukon this week! Jonathan Peyton talks about massive mining and engineering projects that were proposed and planned, but never carried out, and why historians need to consider “the importance of failure as an object of historiography and analysis.”
• Library and Archives Canada, together with Queen’s University, has launched a new project highlighting speeches by Canada’s prime ministers. The Discover Blog has an interview with one of the project’s undergraduate student research fellows, Mariam Lafrenie, about the project and her experiences working for it.
• Andrew Parnaby, writing for the Acadiensis Blog, discusses the response to the Sydney Steel Crisis in 1967 and how the Antigonish movement mobilized the Cape Breton community in searching for a solution.
• Christopher Moore looks at the recently released Capturing Hill 70: Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First World War, and disputes complaints that military history in Canada is a “forgotten” field.
• Margaret Bond interviewed Krista McCracken about her work as an archivist at Algoma University. McCracken talks about some of the holdings of her archive, her responsibilities as an archivist, and her favourite archival finds!
• Mary Anne Poutanen has won the Prix Lionel-Groulx 2016 for her book Beyond Brutal Passions: Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal! I’ve read the book myself and absolutely loved it, and all of Poutanen’s work. I’m such a fan girl.
• October 11^th was the International Day of the Girl Child. In honour of this, LAC posted a new album of images on Flickr. Check the album out here.
• The Journal of the American Revolution has a new blog post by C.E. Pippenger featuring a recently discovered letter that provides insight into the Battle of Valcour Island. This battle took place in October 1776, over control of Lake Champlain, and was the only naval battle that took place between the American and British fleets in the American War of Independence.
• The Canadian War Museum talks about its Women and War research initiative, particularly with respect to the creation of a recent exhibit, World War Women.
• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has a new entry for businessman and politician, Frank Oliver. Check it out here.
• Library and Archives Canada’s Twitter posted a wonderful video of washday back in the early 20^th century.
• UBC’s Digitization Centre has a blog post up this week all about fall. It’s my favourite season, and the images in this blog post are great.
• Check out this super cool early meteorological register in LAC’s holdings. Has anyone written about the history of weather in Canada yet?
• Lachlan MacKinnon has a new blog post out for Active History looking at oral histories of past storms. I lived through the Ice Storm of 1998, and BC is going to get hit by a series of massive storms this week, so I find the post to be particularly fascinating!
• The University of Toronto Press blog takes us behind the scenes with Cecilia Morgan on her latest book, Building Better Britains?: Settler Societies in the British World, 1783-1920.
• Stephen Bocking has posted an excerpt of his new book, Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, over on his blog. The excerpt is from the introduction and talks about some of the papers featured in this edited collection.
• This week on the Canadian Centre for the Great War blog is a feature on WW1’s William Elliot, who was a featherweight boxer in his civilian days. The blog post talks about his life, his experiences during the war, and his death during the Battle of Courcelette.
• LAC has its monthly update on the digitization of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces personnel service files.
• Blake Brown talks about his experiences being the only Canadian historian at an American symposium entitled “Firearms and the Common Law Tradition,” looking at gun rights and the American constitution. He also discusses Canada’s own interpretation of the Constitution and how it has changed over the years.
• Facing Canada is a community blog all about teaching history in public schools in Ontario. This week they have two new blog posts.
  • Brenda Ohnegemach talks about teaching her students about residential schools, especially her use of the film, “We Were Children.” She goes over her classroom activities in detail and discusses what worked and what didn’t. These activities could absolutely be adapted for use in Canadian history survey classes. Incidentally, that’s the film I use when I teach the same topic in my surveys.
  • The second blog post is from Cheryl Payne-Stevens and is a call to the Blue Jays to include a formal territorial acknowledgement before the singing of the national anthems, setting an example for all of North America. Hear, Hear.
• The Canadian Jewish Heritage Network has released a new sound clip on their Youtube channel. The clip is an interview between Leslie Lutsky and Evelyn Brook from 1994 on Jewish divorce.
• There is a brand new website on environmental history debuting this week: Climate and Change: Making Sense of the Dustbowl Years on the Canadian Prairies. The website was put together by George Colpitts, Shannon Stunden Bower, and Bill Waiser. Looks like a great resource!
• The Champlain Society’s Findings Blog is back this month with an article by Gilles Havard. This blog post looks at the precursors to the “coureurs de bois,” a term which first appeared in a written document in 1672. Previously, these individuals would have been referred to as volontaire” (“volunteer”) or as “Gens des Outaouais” (“People of the Outaouais”), and it is the latter that Havard unpacks.
• Check out this amazing satirical image of the new “black plague” in 1938, censorship. Alberta (and also Quebec) is criticized for having “varying degrees of Control, Censorship and Intimidation.”
• Find out about the haunted history o the St. Lawrence Burial Ground in Montreal. Oooh… spooky Montreal…. spooky…. (my husband just added that I’m a “pretty nice ghoul.”) He thinks he’s punny.
• Russell Potter has posted some of the latest images of the HMS Terror. Now that’s actually really spooky.
• Chelsea Vowel has a new blog post about the hypocrisy of the federal government’s reconciliation agenda when it comes to pipelines.
• Histórica Canada has a new education guide out for the history of women’s suffrage in Canada.
• Canadian History in the News
  • Survivors of the Sixties Scoop tell their stories on the CBC website. The stories are harrowing and the portraits are breathtaking.
  • CBC takes a look at a new book on Vancouver during the 1970s. Groovy. (Sorry, I had to. Bad Millennial.)
    • The Museum of Vancouver is hosting the book launch and will also be showing some 400 images from the 1970s from the Vancouver Sun‘s archives. The images will stay up as a temporary exhibition until February 2017.
    • The Museum itself has a blog post showcasing their five favourite photos!
  • Bonnie Thomas talks about some of the traditional foods that Neskonlith First Nations people would have harvested this time of the year from the Shuswap area.
  • Although we now know where the HMS Terror is, there is still much that academics don’t know about the Franklin Expedition. It’s hoped that further exploration and discussion with Inuit elders will reveal more information.
  • A new book has just been released on the history of the Ottawa Central Experimental Farm.
  • The remains of a Thule man who lived near Arctic Bay hundreds of years ago will be featured in a new exhibit on Indigenous Peoples at the Canadian Museum of History. The grave of the Thule man was discovered in 1959, and contained numerous artefacts as well. The museum has been working with members of the Inuit community, in addition to scientists and curators, to ensure the remains are treated in a respectful manner and to provide insight into the kind of life the man might have lived.
  • Radio-Canada International commemorated the awarding of Lester B Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize, which occurred on October 12, 1957, for the creation of UN Peacekeepers to defuse the Suez Crisis.
  • The Institute of Prairie Archaeology, located in the territories of Treaty 6 and 7, will be organizing a number of opportunities for students to participate in local archaeological excavations. Students will be able to get hands on experience and also work with Blackfoot ceremonialists. The Institute is run out of the University of Alberta’s archaeology department.
  • Tim Cook was named the co-winner of the 2014-2015 Charles P. Stacey Award for his book, The Necessary War. Congrats!
  • Mike Wilson, who owns the largest personal collection of Leaf memorabilia in the world, has loaned 50 of his pieces to the Canadian Museum of History as part of their new mandate to highlight Canadian stories. I’m a Habs fan, through and through.
  • Toronto’s Wellington Destructor (a garbage incinerator built in 1925) has been designated a Heritage building and will be redesigned as a community centre. At the same time, the Schindler Company of Canada Ltd. Building, built two years prior, has been torn now. Journalist Shawn Micalleg talks about why some buildings are preserved while others aren’t.
  • On a similar theme, Bill Waiser talks about the damage done to rural areas as part of Tommy Douglas’ drive towards modernization as an attempt to solve the problem of the urbanization of Saskatchewan’s population.
  • Find out about ongoing projects celebrating Women’s History Month from the federal government. They have launched a new hashtag campaign, #BecauseofHer, asking the public to submit stories, images, and videos, of the women who influenced their lives.
  • Mary Jane Logan McCallum wrote an article for the Winnipeg Free Press about race-based discrimination in the treatment of tuberculosis in Manitoba from the 1930s to the 1970s. Indigenous peoples were routinely denied access to the same kinds of treatments offered to White Canadians. She is also seeking individuals who either received treatment or worked in a sanitorium in Manitoba during this period for interviews.
  • Michael Behiels has been awarded the Tyrrell Medal of the Royal Society of Canada for outstanding work in the field of Canadian history. Congratulations!
  • Mike Commito has a new column out for Sudbury.com about hockey during the FLQ crisis.
  • In honour of Halloween, check out this interview with Stéphanie Pettigrew on witches in New France! So cool.
  • The Middlesex Centre Archives in Ontario is looking for information about local war brides and their descendants!
  • Read all about the new exhibit from the Archives of Ontario, “Family Ties: Ontario Turns 150.” Algoma University’s archive participated in the creation of the exhibit and contributed materials on Chief Shingwauk and his family from the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre‘s (SRSC) collection.
  • CBC News Nova Scotia talks with the family of James Howard Tupper, a solider from WW1, and how his letters have become family heirlooms passed down through each generation. The thing that made me tear up was that Tupper wrote letters to his sons to be opened on their 12^th birthday if he died during the war, which unfortunately transpired in 1916. Hang on, I need to get some Kleenex.
  • The Huffington Post has an excerpt from Charlie Angus’s book, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream. The excerpt is about the missing boys of St. Anne’s Residential School.
  • Two 100-year old time capsules have been found in Moncton! The boxes contained mostly newspapers, money, postcards, and letters.
  • Remember the guy who stole bronze museum plaques in New Brunswick? He’s been sentenced to two years in prison.
  • The proposed new home of the North Vancouver Museum and Archives has just received federal grant money. Of course, this being Vancouver, it will be built at the base of a mixed-use condo building.
  • The Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada also received federal funding this week.
  • The Globe and Mail reviewed two new books about Pierre Trudeau, both entitled Trudeaumania.
  • Archaeologists have completed a three-year survey following the flooding in Alberta in 2013!
  • The Montreal Métro turned 50 on Friday! Ah, my old friend. How I don’t miss all the time I spent at Plamondon, Ville Marie, Lionel-Groulx, and Peel stations. That’s how much time I spent in it, that I still remember 10 years later. Ce n’est plus beau dans le métro.
  • St. Mary’s has just received a new collection, the  Lynn Jones African-Canadian and Diaspora Heritage Collection. An online searchable database is planned, and the collection will be open to the public.
  • A new project is underway to find the first Acadian settlement in Louisiana. While many Cajun families have well documented histories, the location of the first settlement is unknown.
  • The Historicist explores the rise and fall of Greektown this week, a community of Greek immigrations who lived in Toronto’s east end from the 1960s to the 1990s.
  • CHEK News and the Royal BC Museum take a look back at the 2013 fire at the  U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, including some of the restoration work that was done at the museum.
  • Check out this great new exhibit at Carleton University, “Envisioning Technologies,” which looks at the disability and technology in Canadian history.
  • Hakai magazine looks at the history of Petty Harbour, a fishing village in Newfoundland.
  • A really cool archaeological find has been made in Guelph: a streetcar rail!
  • Bob Muckle interviews Dr. Rudy Reimer/Yumks about the new Wild Archaeology show on APTN. I talked about this in a roundup a few weeks ago,. The show explores the archaeological history of Canada, concentrating on the experiences of Indigenous peoples. I absolutely loved it.

That’s all for this week! Check back on Tuesday for a special blog post about secondary source research management. You’ll get to find out what I really sound like! 😉

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