Woman speaking on phone inside Telephone Pavilion. September 1967. Credit: Library and Archives Canada / Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition / e011180026 ; Copyright: expired.
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
Missed last week’s roundup? Check it out here.
Environmental History
- The most commonly used words in #envhist last week, according to Jessica DeWitt, were: “Environmental,” “Extension,” and “Agriculture.”
- There is a new NiCHE New Scholars representative!
- The 2017-2018 rep, Robynne Mellor, says goodbye in this post.
- While the 2018-2019 rep, Heather Green, says hello!
- Also this week on NiCHE, Pete Anderson discussed his latest project, with a particular focus on how historians can read soil samples and the horizons within them. This is the same project he previewed in a blog post on Unwritten Histories a few months ago.
- Jessica DeWitt has posted her latest set of comps notes, this time for Paul Kopas, Taking the Air: Ideas and Change in Canada’s National Parks.
- The Whyte Museum is back with part two of their look at the photographs of Mary Schäffer Warren. In this post, they explore her photographs of animals in the Rockies.
- And on a similar note, the Library Matters blog from McGill Libraries looks back at the work of ornithologist Casey A. Wood and the creation of the Emma Shearer Woods Library of Ornithology, named for his wife.
Military History
- This week on their blog, LAC featured their newly digitized Canada’s first declaration of war. Which war, you may be wondering? WW2.
- The family of a Canadian WW1 soldier has been reunited with a medal that was given to their ancestor.The medal, a Victory Medal, given to Private R.C. MacDonald, was discovered while snorkeling in Hawaii in the 1970s.
- The Barrie Historical Archive was back with Part Six of Peggy Newman’s wartime stay in the city.
- The Ottawa Citizen recounted the sad story of WW2 soldier, Filip Konowal, a recipient of the Victoria Cross.
Archaeology
- Russell Potter provided us with an update on what Parks Canada is planning to do at the sites of the Franklin wrecks.
- Check out these neat images of the Canadian schooner, Queen of the Lakes.The ship sank in 1906, was rediscovered in 2009, and was recently visited by Canadian Geographic.
- Work on the Pioneer Cemetery in Whitehorse, active between 1900 and 1960, has revealed the existence of 485 unmarked graves.
- There is a lot of history at the bottom of rivers.
History Education
- Casey Burkholder has published a preview of a new project dedicated to reinserting queer and female-identified experience back into New Brunswick history. The project is a youth-led research project called, Where Are Our Histories? and is geared specifically at improving the New Brunswick Social Studies curriculum.
- Canada’s History has finally released their educational guide for their recent issue on Treaties and the Treaty relationship! While designed with elementary and high school students in mind, I think the document still has a lot to offer for higher education as well.
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History
- Find out more info on the sign acknowledging the contributions of Japanese-Canadian labourers that was unveiled in BC last week, as well as the history of Japanese-Canadian labour camps during interment.
- Bashir Mohamed was back this week with more fantastic work.
- Earlier in the week, he discussed the myth that lynching was uncommon in Canada.
- And later on, his work on Lulu Anderson, a Black Edmontonian who tried to purchase a theatre ticket in 1922 and was denied on the basis of her race, was published in The Yards.
- He also has some important questions that I would like to see answered about why the New Brunswick Museum has racist minstrel figurines on display. Especially since they don’t have any displays on Black history in the province…
- The Provincial Archives of Alberta has just received an enormous donation of material related to the Chilean diaspora in Alberta. So cool!
- The Shiloh Baptist Church and Cemetery, a historic Black church in Saskatchewan, has been given heritage status.
Indigenous History
- Stacie Swain wrote a fantastic response to a news article last week about the history of Beaumont.
- The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has just opened a new exhibit on the impact of the Indian Act.The exhibit was created in consultation with First Nations Elders and advisors.
- Sixties Scoop survivors may now fill out applications for compensation.
- There is a new virtual reality project that will allow people to immerse themselves in the residential school experience. The project recreates the Fort Alexander Residential School, operated on Sagkeeng First Nation from 1906 to 1970, and features testimony from survivors. Testing before the final release is about to start.
- Have you checked out APTN’s First Contact series?
- David A. Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) has some really important thoughts on the series, and why it is in some sense problematic.
- And Chelsea Vowel (Métis) also shared some important thoughts.
- Find out how Sixties Scoop survivors were reclaiming their heritage in Fort Resolution last weekend.
- Check out this thread from @BadSalishGirl about a story that an elder Methow man told her, about the lack of protection for Indigenous remains before the passage of the Native American Grave Protection Repatriation Act. While American, there is still much here that could and did take place in Canada.
- Find out about a wonderful new project, the Qatiktalik Photo Narrative Project, out of the Glenbow Museum, that will transport around a thousand photographs northwards. The photos were taken by Douglas and Geraldine Moodie between 1903 and 1909 in Nunavut and Churchill, Manitoba; the project is hoping to both share these images, identify the people within them, and collect stories about the individuals portrayed.
- Do you know the history of Kanien’kehá:ka ironworkers?
New France/British North America
- This week on the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog, Oriana Visser looked back on the history of the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1760 and 1761.
- You know how much I love fashion history…. This blog post from the Junto is a fascinating exploration of one dress that was implicated in racialized hierarchies and the imperial world, while also being an act of resistance.
- The Junto followed it up with another blog post on the discursive history of the busk as a symbol of confinement and consent.
- Patrick Callaway wrote a new piece for the Acadiensis blog on the legalized smuggling of American goods into Nova Scotia from 1807 to 1814.
Political History
- The federal government has reached an agreement with seven First Nations (Hiawatha First Nation, Curve Lake First Nation, Alderville First Nation, the Mississaugas of Scugog First Nation, the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, and Beausoleil First Nation) regarding the failure of the government to live up to the terms of the 1923 Williams Treaties.
Social History
- Edward Dunsworth has a new piece on Active History about high fatality rates due to car accidents amongst migrant workers both in Canada and abroad.
- This week on Instantanés, BAnQ profiled their collection of materials from Théodore Botrel, popular music connoisseur and composer.
- Cookbook reading with Ian Mosby!
The History of Gender and Sexuality
- This week on Borealia, Keith Grant interviewed Ann M. Little on her work, especially on her recent book,The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright.
- Find out about another amazing female scientist who deserved a Novel prize. Maude Abbott was a pediatrician who made important contributions to the field of pediatric cardiology.
Local History
- Take a look at Richards Street in Vancouver during the 1930s.
- Also on the Vancouver As It Was blog was a profile of shady character, Alfred Lafond.
- Although I would have liked to see more specific language used, this new blog post from Heritage Winnipeg features some of the oldest houses still in existence that were built since the establishment of the city. Obviously, these were not the first houses in the area, since there were Indigenous homes long before the arrival of any settlers or the establishment of Winnipeg.
- Who else loves Montreal’s Old Port?
- Find out about how a historical monument (the Hastings Mill Monument) was relocated in this latest blog post from Eve Lazarus.
- Whistorical looked back at the history of the Watersprite Lake Hut.
Digital and Public History
- A new plaque was unveiled this week in Ottawa, honouring the experiences of the Vietnamese boat people.
- Sarah Shulist wrote a fantastic piece about what was really lost in the fire at the National Museum of Brazil.
- Edmonton now has some new plaques honouring three historic minutes in Beverly.
- LAC has issued a new Co-Lab challenge, calling on the public to transcribe federal government documents about the response to the Spanish Flu pandemic.
- Please excuse me while I dork out about this cool blog post on Active History, by Olivia Raiche-Tanner, Annika Vetter, and Michael Roberston, on using technology to make faded documents readable.
- This latest blog post on the Chilliwack Museum and Archives blog explored the challenges of creating interpretive signage, and how Tristan Evans worked with the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre to create the signage at Vedder Crossing.
- As a Jewish woman, this blog post by Kaiti Hannah on the ethics of photography at traumatic heritages sites really resonated with me. I think it also provides important lessons for Canadians at some of our own traumatic heritage sites.
- The first artifact in a new Afghanistan war museum has just been unveiled.
- Trent University has donated 250,000 books to the Internet Archive.
- There is a new Heritage Minute coming, and it’s on the history of the Acadians!
Doing History
- This week on Unwritten Histories, I put together a guide to online Canadian historical images. And it’s already been updated with suggestions from readers!
- FamilySearch is looking for volunteers to help index the 1926 Prairie Census.
- The Winnipeg Tribune is now available digitally from 1890 to 1980.
- The CHA has issued a draft response to the recent Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy, and is seeking input.
- The City of Vancouver Archives profiled their very influential first archivist, Major J.S. Matthews.
- The Science and Technology Museum has ceased collecting material due to a lack of space.
- The title is a bit of a misnomer, but this article profiles the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies’ Sexual Representation Collection at the University of Toronto. Referring to this as ‘porn,’ as the title of the article does, is inaccurate at best. Though I will note that the article is more nuanced.
- Gabirelle Gaudreault has made an important donation of material from her life as a musician to BAnQ.
- In what is likely the most popular historical news item this week, Prize Papers has announced the digitization of more than 160,000 letters sent between 1652 and 1815 that went undelivered after being captured by British warships.
- The latest document in LAC’s Premiere collection is an unpublished work by Quebec playwright, Normand Chaurette.
- Did you know that BAnQ has a collection of letters from Victor Hugo?
Miscellaneous
- The latest Flickr album from LAC featured images of the aluminum industry. See the photos themselves here.
- The latest entry from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for public health specialist, John Gerald FitzGerald.
- Louis-Joseph Papineau had a beautiful pocket watch.
Podcasts
- This week’s History Chats podcast episode is a talk by Erika Lee on “Local, National, and Transnational Histories of Immigration to the Americas.”
I like the regular roundups much better! 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. Best New Articles is returning!
Leave a Reply