“Let’s All Do More to Win the War,” 1944 Dawes Black Horse Brewery calendar / F. S. Berinner. Library and Archives Canada e010756828 / CC BY 2.0
The latest in blog posts, news, and podcasts from the world of Canadian history.
- Over on Borealia, Adam Nadeau reviews Michael A. McDonnell’s Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America, which looks at early modern North America. He argues that the French were dependent upon the Anishinaabeg, who served as gatekeepers to the interior of the North American continent.
- This week on Unwritten Histories, we continued in our Historian’s Toolkit series with a feature on Flickr Commons. Getting access to high quality pictures that are open-access can be a tremendous challenge. But there are a number of Canadian institutions working on this problem, and they’ve posted images that anyone is free to use on Flickr Commons.
- For the next two weeks, Active History and Canada Watch are partnering on a series of posts on the Confederation Debates
- The first article, Colin Coates and Philip Girard introduce the series, which focuses on the published debates on Confederation from the Legislature of the United Canadas in 1865. Series authors were asked to consider the following question: “From the vantage point of 2016, how can we read the Confederation debates in 1865 in the Canadian legislature from the perspective of the chosen topic?”
- In the second post, Philip Girard focuses how Canadian political leaders viewed Atlantic Canada and its role in the potential union, and argues that New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had few options but to join confederation.
- Marcel Martel brings us the third post, which focuses on French Canadians and confederation. While look specifically at the issue of minority rights, Martel argues that French Canadians preserved their religious and linguistic rights in Quebec at the expense of the rights of French Canadians outside Quebec.
- In the fourth post, David Koffman examines the role that Christianity played in the Confederation debates. He argues that while Protestants and Catholics cooperated together under the assumption that Canada was a Christian nation, though this led to some unintended consequences.
- In the fifth post for this week, David R. Cameron, Jacqueline D. Kriskorian, and Robert C. Vipond focus on the issue of rights by examining the role that the 72 resolutions played in the writing of the BNA act. While Canadian politicians sought to build their nation around the idea of rights, these same politicians had very narrow conceptions of who deserved these rights.
- In the final post for this week, Elsbeth Heaman takes on the topic of the Confederation debates and taxation. She argues that Confederation was, in many respects, a tax reform. Doing so provides important new insights into the pros and cons regarding Confederation weighed by both Canadians and Maritimers.
- Rob Houle, writing for the City Museum of Edmonton focuses on the extinguishing of Métis land claims through the Scrip system. Unscrupulous land speculators, like Richard Henry Secord, often took advantage of confusion regarding the laws around the scrips and defrauded many Métis out of their lands and money.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia and Historica Canada launched a new online exhibit commemorating the Battle of the Somme.
- Writing for the Acadiensis Blog, Matthew Hayes showcases some bizarre news reports from Nova Scotia, and examines media framing and reactions to these stories. He argues that this portrayal of Nova Scotia as backwards, is at once a critique of socio-economic inequalities in the Province as well as an attempt to dismiss Nova Scotia as being unworthy of resources.
- A new study, just released this week, shows that Indigenous children from Sakatchewan and Manitoba were healthy before they were sent to residential schools. The study’s authors argue that the government first created the problem of malnutrition among Indigenous children and then used this malnutrition as a justification to conduct nutritional experiments on the same children. Further, the repercussions of the malnutrition of Indigenous children in residential schools continue to this day. You can read the study, published in the Journal of Circumpolar Health, and conducted by Paul Hackett, Sylvia Abonyi and Roland F. Dyck, by clicking here.
- Two new pieces on the BC Studies Blog this week!
- The first is a continuation of last week’s blog post on the land grab involved in the Esquimalt to Nanaimo Railway. This week, Kelly Black discusses the land grab in the context of the current housing crisis in BC.
- The second, by Kirsten Mathison, is a portrait of the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island.
- Did you know that Library and Archives Canada has a podcast? The latest episode, just released, looks at Peter Rindisbacher, with the accompanying pictures posted to Flickr Commons.
- The LAC blog also has a look this week on Newfoundland and the Battle of the Somme, in honour of the 100-year anniversary of the battle.
- NiCHE is having a photo contest this summer! The theme is “Travel, Tourism, and the Environment. The contest closes September 1st. There are cool prizes for the winners! More details can be found by clicking here.
- SFU has digitized some neat postcards from BC!
- HistoireEngagée has posted a number of interviews that preview talks from the upcoming conference, Question sociale et citoyenneté.
- The first interview is by Benoit Marsan. Marsan interviews Jean-Philippe Bernard on the topic of the colonization of Abitibi and Bas-Saint-Laurent during the 1930s.
- The second interview, by Cory Verbauwhede, with David Niget, focuses on the rights, citizenship, and the institutionalization of juvenile delinquents from 1945 to 1970.
- Finally, Verbauwhede also interviews Benoit Marsan on the communist party and the unemployed during the Depression in Montreal.
- Canadian History in the News
- Learn about Ronald Rudin’s latest project, loststories.ca, which transforms the stories of ordinary people into public art and documents the process on film. The first of these stories, that of Thomas Widd, is already available on the website.
- The Ottawa Citizen has the story of the woman who sewed the first maple leaf flag, Joan O’Malley.
- There are two new articles on the Landscapes of Injustice project out this week. The first, in the Times Colonist, looks at the story of Eikichi Kagetsu, a successful BC entrepreneur who lost everything as part of the mass sale of Japanese property by the Canadian government. The second article deals with the same topic, but focuses on the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre’s acquisition of documents and photographs from Kagetsu’s family. There are some great pictures in this article too.
- As a side note, check out this talk about Kagetsu from the Landscapes of Injustice project.
- Ryerson University is in the process of digitizing what is described as “one of the world’s largest archives LGTBQ history.” This material is drawn from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives collection. This is awesome!
- In more digitization news, Maclean’s has completed digitizing its complete archive, dating back to 1905. The only down side, it’s only free to subscribers. You can get a trial month free, and after that pay a monthly fee.
- Required historical takes on Canada Day: Here’s the CBC’s take, featuring Forrest Pass, and here is the University of Guelph’s interview with Matthew Hayday.
- On a similar note, Hayday’s article on Canada Day is currently free to read!
- A controversial statue of Sir. John A Macdonald is set to be unveiled at a private estate in Wilmot Township after being rejected by the City of Kitchener and Wilfred Laurier University. The statue is part of a larger project to create bronze sculptures of all previous prime minsters for the 150th anniversary of Canada’s establishments. Wilfred Laurier objected to the statue on the grounds that it would be culturally insensitive to place the status on land that belongs to the local First Nations people.
- The Globe and Mail chronicles the history of Canada’s cars.
- Rick Hillier argues that battle of Beaumont-Hamel was an event characterized by “strategic stupidity.”
- Tracey Lindeman from the CBC traces the legacy of Canada’s Centennial. As someone who grew up in Montreal, Expo 67 was very much a part of the cultural landscape.
- Check out this great article by Mark Brown about how Canada’s mythology around slavery has prevented any recognition of the horrors Africans and African-Canadians experienced while also ignoring the lasting legacy of the slave trade on Africa-Canadians to this day.
- For sheer cuteness factor, check out these twelve aspiring historians from PEI!. Heritage Fairs, much like Science Fairs, are held across the country each year, with levels of competition ranging from individuals schools to Canada as a whole. This year, 200 finalists from across the country have posted videos online at youngcitizens.ca. You can vote for the best ones, and the top 26 will go on to the national competition in Ottawa. The competition is hosted by Canada’s History. Look at the tiny wittle historians!
And don’t forget to check back on Tuesday for the Best New Articles from June 2016!
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