The Unwritten Rules of History

Category: Historical Tidbits (Page 1 of 3)

Guest Post: Family History and Immigrant Identity: The Perks and Pitfalls of “Insider” Status

Image of a white chair on a black background

 

Note from Andrea: Today we have a very special guest post from Kassandra Luciuk! This post originated as remarks that she delivered at the Coptic Canadian History Project’s Third Annual Conference, “Who Am I? Who Are We? Family, History, and Immigrant Identities,” as a discussant for the “Familiar Dilemmas and Ethnic History” panel. The panel itself included presentations by Pamela Sugiman (“The Stranger in my Family’s History: Reflections on the Telling of Japanese-Canadian History”); Roberto Perin (“Perin Peregrenations”); and Gabriele Scardellato (“The Catelli Clan in Montreal, 1845-1895”.)

Kassandra Luciuk is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto.

 

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Why on this night, only matzah? Matzohgate 1996

Close up shot of matzah.

 “Descent into Matzah Canyon,” by Avital Pinnick. via flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard me say that I’m Jewish girl from Montreal a time or two. Well, it just so happens that this Friday is the first night of Passover. For those who might not be familiar with this holiday, think the movie The Ten Commandments, but for real. It’s an annual holiday where Jews gather to remember the liberation of the Jewish peoples from enslavement in Ancient Egypt.* The celebrations take place over seven days and seven nights. On the first two nights, family members will gather to have special meals called seders, where the story is recounted. The holiday is intended to be one of remembrance and celebration. At least, that was the case in Montreal until April 1996. So join me today as we travel back in time to see what happened when the Jewish community of Montreal went head to head with the Quebec government in an event that has come to be called “Matzohgate.”

(Do you know where the quote from the titles comes from? Read to the end of the blog post to find out!)

 

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Heritage Gardening – Grow like it’s the Eighteenth Century

By Stephanie Pettigrew

Flowers from Stephanie's Garden

From top left, counterclockwise: Calendula, pansies, feverfew, morning glory, morning glory, pea flower, and another variety of calendula.

One of my favourite things about summer is gardening. Watching tiny little seeds grow into four to five foot tall tomato plants out on my deck is something akin to magic, and even though I know that I would never be able to feed myself from our tiny pot garden in a million years, it gives us a certain feeling of independence; it cuts down our produce bills, we can make salads all summer long by simply going out to the garden and picking out what we need, and it tastes so much better.

Both my spouse and I practice heritage gardening – not so much by choice, but because it’s all we really know. I learned how to garden from my grandmother, while my spouse learned most of what he knows about gardening from his place of work, the Fortress of Louisbourg, where he works in the department of animals and gardens. The Fortress only allows heritage breeds of animals and plants, along with historical methods of gardening, while my grandmother never really taught me how to garden with pesticides or manufactured fertilizers, so between us we manage to produce an all-natural, organic, heritage pot garden. It could easily be replicated on a larger scale, say, in raised beds or in a community garden if you don’t have the space or your own land or yard, but we live in an apartment with a 100-squre foot patio, so a pot garden is pretty much our only option.

 

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Celebrating Women and Non-Binary Historians

Banner calling for women and non-binary historians to inform us about their accomplishments over the past year.


Co authored with Krista McCracken

In 2017, archaeologist Steph Halmhofer (@bones_canada)  issued a call for submission for the first “Celebration of Women and Non-Binary Archaeologists.” The call was a response to the lack of women and non-binary representation in year-end archaeology roundups, as well as problems with representation in the media and public discourse. We have noticed many of the same problems in the field of History.

Inspired by Halmhofer, and with her permission, we issued an invitation in December 2018 to all women and non-binary folk who consider themselves to be historians to celebrate their personal and professional accomplishments from 2018.

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Active History and a Postponement!

My latest blog post for Active History, co-written with Laura Madokoro, has just gone live! In it, we talk about the difference between words and actions, specifically in relation to the MS St. Louis Apology. Here’s a sneak peek:

On November 7th, 2018, Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons and issued a formal apology to the families of passengers of the MS St. Louis as well as the entire Jewish Canadian community for the Canadian government’s decision to refuse to allow the ship to dock in 1939. As historians with expertise in these areas, both of us paid close attention to the apology. While we were pleased that to see the Prime Minister drew attention to this shameful event in our history and acknowledged the long history of antisemitism in this country, we felt that it ultimately rang hollow.

While the Prime Minister vowed to fight antisemitism and to learn from the past, the speech was short on specific details. As Trudeau noted in his apology, even today, Canadian Jews are the most frequent target of hate crimes in this country, at seventeen percent. In the wake of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, Christine Chevalier-Caron and Philippe Néméh-Nombré published a piece on Histoire Engagée, demonstrating how antisemitism is normalized in Quebec and Canada, as well as the prevailing belief that Canada was (and is) a place of refuge for those in need.

In our minds the contradiction is striking and not easily dismissed. How is it that antisemitism can be a quotidian part of life in Canada while the country is also associated with being a place of refuge? How did this fundamental contradiction come to be and what are the implications for the present and future? Part of the answer lies in the ease with which politicians can speak in morally righteous terms when apologizing for historical wrongs and the gulf that often exists between the symbolism of their words, their actions, and the lived experience of those most affected by the subject and substance of their apologies.

 

Check out the rest here: http://activehistory.ca/2018/11/24863/

Also, I know i said that tomorrow we were going to have a Stephanie’s monthly look at upcoming publications in Canadian history. But she’s coming down with something, so we’re going to postpone that post to next Friday. But don’t worry, everything is still on track! See you Sunday!

 

Halloween Special II – Charles Havard and the Blasphemed Crucifix

Image of spooky candles

Source: Flick

Special thanks to Andrea Eidinger and Michelle Desveaux for their help with this post.

Happy Halloween! As a historian of witchcraft and blasphemy, this is really my time of year. Last year’s Halloween special was such a hit that we decided to put together another one. Rather than discuss witchcraft cases at large in New France, this year we’ll be looking at the 1742 trial of François-Charles Havard de Beauford – lawyer, soldier, public entertainer, and sorcerer. – a  true jack of all trades who was arrested for performing a divination spell.

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Project Preview: Excavating Canadian Soil Science History

 

file boxes in an archive containing documents related to land management

Everyone once in a while here on Unwritten Histories, we like to show you how historians develop and design historical research projects. Today we have a special guest post by Peter Anderson previewing a new collaborative project with on the history of Canadian soil scientists and their work. Pete is one of the nicest historians that I know, and a big help on my blog post on lilacs, so I’m really excited to be able to share his research with you! Enjoy!

 

Peter Anderson

Photo by Will Knight

Peter Anderson is a historical geographer and science. He runs History Applied, a historical research consultancy in Ottawa, Ontario. His personal research examines the confluence of the agricultural sciences, politics, and landscape change in Canada and his doctoral thesis explored the early history of Canada’s Central Experimental Farm from the 1880s through the 1930s. He is a member of the Coalition to Protect the Central Experimental Farm and can be found on Twitter @dairpo.

 

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Guest Post: “They do not understand the democratic process”: The Abortion Caravan and UnCivil Disobedience

Image of female protesters from the 1970 Abortion Caravan.

Courtesy of York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, ASC04612.

 

Note From Andrea: Thank you all so much for your patience with me while I finish up this condensed summer course! Our last special blog post comes from none other than Shannon Stettner! I am so pleased to be able to share this post with you, since I think it is, unfortunately, extremely topical given events of the past few weeks. That, and Shannon is an extremely talented historian, as well as a wonderful friend. And she’s probably going to kill me for saying that. So I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did! And I’ll be back next week with a brand new post from me!

 

Image of Shannon Stettner

Shannon Stettner teaches in the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Waterloo. Her research examines women’s abortion rights activism, reproductive justice, and public opinion on abortion in Canada. She is the editor of Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada (Athabasca University Press), and co-editor of Transcending Borders: Abortion in the Past and Present (Palgrave MacMillan) and Abortion: History, Politics, and Reproductive Justice After Morgentaler (University of British Columbia Press). She is also a founding member of the Reproductive Activism and Abortion Research Network. Shannon tweets from @slstettner.

 

In this post, I would like to share some of the initial reactions to the Abortion Caravan in the immediate aftermath of the event.[1] I do so in light of recent conversations about civil disobedience, especially suggestions that there are right or wrong ways to protest.[2] After writing this piece, conversations about civility came to the fore and commentators have also offered ideas about “proper” ways to protest.[3] Arguments about the effectiveness of a particular tactic suggests that there is only one goal or outcome of an act of civil disobedience. But, the varied reactions to the Abortion Caravan suggest that there are multiple takeaways and when we judge an event as successful or not, we should be aware that the outcome observers may be focused on could well be a secondary (or even a non-) consideration for the organizers and participants. Change does not generally occur through a single act of protest. An event that isn’t “successful” or well received in one respect may still have a lot of value in another. What is valuable to remember is that it is through such actions that activists evolve and grow their messages and techniques.[4]

 

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