Mr. and Mrs. L.D. Clark and son Kerr lunch on roadside near Odessa, Ontario. Chris Lund. 1949. National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, e010955616. 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.
Environmental History
- Last week’s most commonly used words in #envhist, according to Jessica DeWitt were: “Environmental,” “Site,” and “Said.”
- Jessica is the star of this week’s Environmental history section. She also posted her comps notes for two pieces: Robert Craig Brown’s “The Doctrine of Usefulness: Natural Resource and National Park Policy in Canada, 1887-1914”and Joe Hermer’s Regulating Eden: The Nature of Order in North American Parks.
- And she also put together her regular Monthly Worth Reading Series for NiCHE, covering June and July 2018.
- NiCHE wants your summer pictures!
Military History
- LAC had two more entries in their series on WW1 Victoria Cross Winners:
- The Tyee profiled noted Canadian artist, author, and WW1 solider, Raymond Chandler, using LAC’s fully digitized personnel files.
- The Quebec City Archives remembered the First Québec Conference, code name Quandrant. This was an August 1943 meeting of Allied leaders to plan the Normandy invasion.
- The remains of three members of the Canadian Scottish Regiment — Privates William Donegan and Henry Priddle, and Sergeant Archibald Wilson — were laid to rest this week in Britain. These three men fought and died at the Battle of Hill 70, and their remains were recovered during a recent archaeological excavation.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia has updated their entry on Camp X, a crowd-pleasing lecture topic! This update includes images!
- The Canadian Encyclopedia has also started a crowdfunding campaign for a new Heritage Minute on D-Day. Of course, if you’re in a donating kind of mood, may I kindly suggest donating some money to Unwritten Histories? More details here.
Archaeology
- Find out about the four Anishnaabe students, including Joshua Odjick, who are working with the National Capital Commission on an archaeological dig at Lac Leamy Park.
- Robyn Lacy is back with another entry in her Curious Canadian Cemeteries series! This week, she showcased the Toronto Necropolis.
- I really loved Katherine Cook’s take on Montreal’s utility poles as contemporary archaeology.
History Education
- Over on Active History, Sean Kheraj introduced a free online textbook intended to compliment John Belshaw’s existing two textbooks for both Pre and Post-Confederation Canada. This new textbook,, Open History Seminar: Canadian History, is a collection of primary and secondary sources for tutorials and seminars that compliments the Belshaw books. Included is a great discussion of copyright issues and open-access materials!
- And over on his blog, he discussed his experiments with digital syllabi.
Transnational History
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History
- Bashir Mohamed gave us a bit of a preview of his upcoming blog post on Charles Daniels with a look at his court documents.
- And he also reflected on seeing the BlackKkKlansman movie by discussing the KKK and the premiere of The Birth of a Nation at Edmonton’s Empire Theatre in 1915.
- There is new research from the Landscapes of Injustice Program on the destruction of Canada’s first Japanese garden and teahouse. UVic is now planning to rebuild the teahouse to honour Japanese-Canadian internees.
- This week marked the 500thanniversary of the transatlantic slave trade. While most of the world ignored this date, researchers are making new discoveries about the earliest sanctioned voyages from 1519-1521.
Indigenous History
- The Retroactive Blog profiled a great community-created heritage project, creating an online archive of the Paul First Nation’s history.
- Earlier in the week, Joanne Hammond posted this heart-breaking image of latch keys made by hungry children at the Kamloops and Kuper Island Indian Residential Schools, which allowed them to break into food stores and stay alive. You should absolutely read the rest of the thread, as well as this Twitter memory of all of the similar stories IRS survivors and their descendants shared as well.
- A beautiful mural was created by Philip Cote (Moose Deer Point First Nation: Shawnee, Lakota, Potawatomi, and Ojibway) in an Anishinaabe woodland style (echoing Norval Morriseau), depicting an Anishinaabe creation story on the wall of a pharmacy in the Roncesvalles area of Toronto. A corresponding app with the story is also planned.
- Krista McCracken and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre were profiled on the Sault Star newspaper’s website for their work on the Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall exhibit!
- A federal court judge is concerned about the amount of money that will be paid out to the lawyers from the Sixties Scoop settlement, opening discussion about how class-action lawyers are compensated.
- A commemorative plaque at the Regina Indian Industrial School’s cemetery was unveiled on August 11th. Some of the descendants of students attended the ceremony, including Debbie Hill. Her grandparents are Frederick Dieter (Okanese First Nation) and Marybelle Cote (Cote First Nation).
New France/British North America
- Mlle Canadienne was back with a blog post on eighteenth century wigmakers.
- When European printmakers didn’t know anything about what colonial North American cities looked liked, they just made stuff up.
- A fur trader’s pistol belonging to Peter Pond, who explored the Mackenzie River basin in the 1770s, is for sale. But no Canadian museum is interested in buying it.I’m trying not to laugh… Trying. And I’ve failed.
- Sylvie Raymond has published the latest blog post for the Canadian Museum of History, on the Victory Point Note, a key piece of information in the search for the Franklin Expedition, and the challenges of displaying such an old piece of paper.
- There are some good suggestions for digital history projects on Vast Early America in this Twitter thread.
Political History
- CBC spoke with Matthew Bellamy about the long history of alcohol as a political tool in Canada, in the wake of the $1 beer debacle.
- Over on the Canadian Eyes Only blog, Antony Anderson reconsiders the Golden Age(s) of Canadian diplomacy.
Social History
- Dan Malleck has written a fascinating piece for The Conversation on the influence of moral panics over opium and cocaine on Canadian drug policy. And, of course, race was a huge element.
- To accompany their previous Flickr album on breakfast, LAC now has one for lunch! Check it out yourself here. Breakfast is still my favourite meal of the day though.
The History of Gender and Sexuality
- The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has updated their biography for Marie de l’Incarnation.
- And The Canadian Encyclopedia has premiered a new entry for the awesome Isobel Gunn. If you don’t know her story, do yourself a favour and check it out.
Local History
- Christopher Ryan took us on a short tour of the history of two Ottawa apartment buildings this week:
- Heritage Winnipeg remembered the Women’s Tribute Memorial Lodge, to assist WW1 veterans.
- So apparently there is a human heart within the walls of St. Basil’s Church in Toronto. This Jewish girl is both bewildered and slightly grossed out.
- The Toronto Public Library remembered the early days of the Canadian National Exhibition, before it was even called that.
- And apparently one of the more common displays at the CNE over the years has been leaps of faith? No thank you.
- Vancouver As It Was explored the creation of Victory Square and its cenotaph this week.
- The Pacific National Exhibition opened this week, and Eve Lazarus showed us some of the more fascinating displays of PNEs past.
- Whistorical looked back on the history of the railway at Alta Lake.
Digital and Public History
- Ok, you knew this was coming. So, like last week, I cannot collect every single editorial, op-ed, rant, or Twitter essay on Monument Wars Part Deux (as I am calling it). Rather, I have only included only the most salient posts — minus the racism and false equivalencies — about the removal of the John A. Macdonald statue from outside Victoria’s City Hall.
- Check out Rob Innes’ take over on The Conversation.
- Priya Ramsingh has some personal reflections on why we cannot whitewash our history.
- You must check out Lynne Marks’ op-ed for the Times Colonist, and not just because she used to be my supervisor.
- Daniel Francis has a rebuttal to Catherine McKenna’s comments.
- Did you know that the removal of the statue came after a year-long consultation?
- Charles Smith explains how this wasn’t a matter of a few bad decisions on SirJAM’s part.
- Bashir Mohamed wrote about how cities whitewash our histories in order to avoid difficult conversations.
- And here is Paulette Regan’s fantastic op-ed, also in the Times Colonist.
- It’s hard to list all of them, but I’ve certainly been enjoying the rejoinders to a recent op-ed by Jason Kenny. Check out some of the ones in this thread.
- Adam Gaudry wrote a great piece on this a couple of months ago that he posted about again this week.
- And of course, don’t miss the Walking Eagle’s fantastic takes, here and here.
- Finally, Matthew Sears pretty much sums it up here: “If removing a statue you’ve never seen upsets you more than generations destroyed by Residential Schools and other forms of cultural genocide, you need to look in the mirror and rethink your life.”
- Active History posted a series this week based on the recent public lecture on “What’s a Monument.”
- Nancy Janovicek provided some important reflections on the Cornwallis Monument debate, and why the past is an inextricable part of current activism against injustice. She also added a great postscript regarding the renaming of the CHA prize.
- The Manitoba Food History Project premiered their first Story Map, on Icelandic-Canadian foods in Manitoba.
- The Virtual Museum of Canada premiered two new community stories exhibits this week:
- One on Captain A. Roy Brown, WW1 pilot. The story is brought to us by the Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum.
- And the second, on ‘The Paris Crew’ of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada’s First World Champions, tells the story of Canada’s first victory at the International Rowing Regatta in 1867 Paris. The exhibit comes to us from the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame.
- Thanks to Christopher Ryan for the tip about the Ottawa Citizen now being text-searchable on Newspapers.com, as well as the Montreal Gazette, the Calgary Herald, and the Edmonton Journal. I’m still mad at google.
- And in more digital news, Maclean’s has digitized and made available 3,400 issues of their magazine, from 1905 to 2008. For free. At least, for now. Check out the archive yourself here.
- The federal government has announced that it will soon declare a new federal statutory holiday to honour the survivors of residential schools. Consultations with various Indigenous groups (though the article only mentions Perry Bellegarde) is ongoing regarding a date.
- Do you know about the Home Made Visible initiative?
- There is also discussion about the naming of Bishop Grandin Boulevard in Winnipeg.
- This week on Unwritten Histories was part two of our series based on a recent CHA Panel. In this blog post, Erin Spinney explored how digital history methodologies can help us learn about the histories of peoples whose voices have been silenced in the archives.
- There has been a horrific server crash at Memorial University that has affected their digital archive. It should be back online in a few weeks, fingers crossed.
Doing History
- Check out this great piece by Jennifer Anderson on why archives are so important!
Miscellaneous
- The Canadian Museum of History shared this beautiful Wendat basket by Mrs. Paul Thomas.
- The latest biography from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for Henry Mill Pellatt, who was known as the man who built Casa Loma, then the largest private residence in Canada. Mi casa es su casa? Sorry, could not resist. Also, that is the extent of my Spanish, besides counting to ten – both of which I learned from Sesame Street.
- Go behind the scenes and see what’s in storage at the McCord Museum!
- And the same goes for Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal!
- For all my fellow running-aficionados: find out about the history of running in Edmonton!
- The headline on this one is just too much.
Podcasts
- The latest podcast from LAC took us on a tour of the Canadian Canoe Museum.
- And this week’s History Chats podcast featured Susan Miranda’s 2010 talk, “Keeping the City Clean: Portuguese Women in Toronto’s Cleaning Industry.”
- I missed the last two Juno Beach and Beyond podcast episodes!
- The August 1st episode featured an interview with Barbara Dickson on female munitions workers in WW2
- And the August 15th episode featured a visit to the Canadian Historical Aircraft Association Hangar, site of a former WW2 flight training school.
That’s it for this week, and for the month of August! We’re going on vacation next week after Tuesday’s post, but we’ll back on September 4th with brand new material for you to enjoy! In the meantime, if you enjoyed this week’s roundup, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice! And don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for Stephanie’s paper on families in New France! It’s gonna be good!
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