Canadian History Roundup – Week of March 10, 2019

Woman dressed as a nineteenth century dairy farmer pours cream into a butter churn while a young boy watches as represented in the NFB production on the Canadian dairy industry. August 1950. Gar Lunney. Credit: Library and Archives Canada. 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: “Carbon,” “Biomass,” and “Environmental.”
• The latest blog post in NiCHE’s ongoing series on field trips and environmental history is by Daniel Macfarlane on his experience with his class, paddling a stretch of the Kalamazoo River.
• The latest blog post from the Quebec City Archives celebrated the Carnaval’s ice canoe race!
• Active History and NiCHE also posted the latest in their series on nuclear power. This latest is by Robynne Mellor and explored the impact of the Cold War on the development of nuclear energy, particularly with respect to uranium mining.
• Finally on NiCHE, Joe Anderson reviewed Joshua MacFayden’s Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent.
• The latest entry from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is for farmer, breeder, importer, exhibitor, and marketer of livestock, John Miller. He sounds slightly terrifying.

Military History

• Check out the Canadian Centre for the Great War’s online exhibit on the Siberian Expedition.
• Find out how the mystery of how a medieval altar stone was found under a lamp in a Toronto church was finally solved. The answer is WW1.
• On the Vancouver As It Was blog, guest author Neil Whaley explained what Tag days were.
• Do you know about the 1944 anti-conscription mutiny in Terrace, BC?
• The latest blog post from LAC explained why many hockey players were considered some of the best WW1 soldiers, with a focus on volunteer Allan McLean “Scott” Davidson.
• The 5^th Canadian Division cooking competition will now be named after the Canadian Forces’ first Black chief warrant officer, Hubert Reginald Johnson.
• Who else finds this hilarious?

Archaeology

• Robyn Lacy is back with a new blog post, showcasing some of her ongoing research on the evolution of roman lettering at Belvedere Roman Catholic Cemetery in Newfoundland. Super cool!
• The latest Alberta Archaeology Survey results are here.
• I am clearly in the wrong field: did you know sea otter archaeology is a thing???
• Archaeologists from the University of Alaska are investigating the history of the Swan Point site, home to the Tanana people, by relying on the Oral Traditions of the Tanana people. I do wish that the article had provided more information on the Tanana collaborators though.

History Education

• Check out this cool project going on at Lakehead University, to develop a land acknowledgements walk.
• In honour of the recent International Women’s Day, Samantha Cutrara shared some research by Jvalin Vijayakumaran on Active History on the presence of women in the grade seven and eight Ontario history curriculum.
• And in a subsequent post, Rose Fine-Meyer discussed the “role of women” in Ontario school history narratives since the 1960s, and why change is so desperately needed.

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration History

• Global News spoke with Cecil Foster about the experiences Black train porters in Canada.
• Check out this new graphic novel about the 1933 Christie Pitts riot.
• The latest news interactive from CBC focused on the experiences of the British Home Children.
• Patrick Lacroix shared some of his recent research on the settlement of French-Canadians from Quebec in smaller cities and rural areas in New England, from the 1830s to the 1880s.
• Anthony Morgan has published a new piece in Ricochet on the need for better language to capture the history of Black peoples in Canada, other than the term “settler.”
• There are some new articles from The Canadian Encyclopedia this week that all deal with issues of the history of race and ethnicity, including:
  • The Chatham Coloured All-Stars
  • Donald Jung, the first Chinese Canadian MP
  • And an interview with Pat Adachi on her experiences of internment.
• This week marked the 75^th anniversary of the passage of Ontario’s Racial Discrimination Act. Jamie Bradburn explained how the act came to be and why it is so important.
• These two Twitter threads unpack how we use language when talking about the history of enslaved peoples, especially enslaved Black women. 
• As someone who has worked extensively with archival documents from the Canadian Jewish Congress, I have some major problems with this new piece on the organization by Irving Abella.
• Canadian university campuses have a long history with anti-semitism.

Indigenous History

• Krista McCracken shared the slides from their recent talk at the Tri-University Annual Conference, on “Remaking Narratives: Community Archives and Residential School Photographs.”
• The federal government has announced that it will provide up to $200,000 for survivors of Indian Day Schools.
  • Sean Carleton provided some important perspective on this announcement in this Twitter thread.
  • More here too.
• Find out about the work that Jane Anderson is doing to help Indigenous communities reclaim and revitalize their traditions by restoring access to the images, cultural items, stories, and songs that are held in Western institutions. The article also discusses the importance of Indigenous copyright, the role of digitization, and the development of labels for materials that should only be used with input from its community.
• The Algoma Archives has just released the newly digitized “Our Indian Home Grand Summary Examinations” book from the Shingwauk Residential School.
• Part of the apology last week from Justin Trudeau on tuberculosis among the Inuit was a promise of funding for a project that will allow family members to locate the burial sites of lost loved ones, travel there, and provide a grave marker. The Nanilavut database of lost family members has gone live, and the first burial site has been found.
• A BC judge has sealed a document filed by the federal government in a court case regarding the reopening of the residential school compensation process. The document laid out their legal argument against the reopening of these cases if new evidence came to light.
• And Ottawa will be heading back to court in April in a class-action lawsuit involving students who attended residential schools during the day (called “day scholars.”) The case addresses the fact that day scholars were excluded from the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Agreement Settlement.
• The latest APTN InFocus featured a conversation with Ry Moran (Métis) and Martha Troian (Ojibwe, from Lac Suel First Nation) about the repatriation of ancestors and cultural artifacts to their Indigenous communities, and why this continues to be a struggle.
• The University of Manitoba shared some amazing items from their collections on the role that Indigenous students and scholars played in establishing the school’s Native Studies department in the early 1970s.
• A new piece by Corey Mintz for the Walrus examined how the colonial state sought (and still seeks) to destroy Indigenous food systems, and what Indigenous communities across this place we currently call Canada are doing to revitalize them.
• I’m not including Conrad Black’s latest “contribution,” but I would definitely recommend checking out Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee/ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ) ‘s response to it.

New France/British North America

• We were really excited when Borealia asked to republish Stephanie Pettigrew’s piece on Jeanne Dugas of Acadie this week! You should absolutely check it out.
• Stephen Bolton has written the latest blog post from the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog, on hospital mismanagement in 1778 Halifax.
• The Junto’s annual March Madness competition is back for another year, and this time Borealia is on the ticket! Keep your eye out for results!
• Forty years later, the search for a portrait of prominent Loyalist, James Moody, is still ongoing!

Political History

• The Alberta Labour History Institute has collected together an archive of their vignettes on the Great Labour Revolt of 1919.
• Bill Blaikie profiled Richard Allen’s research on the role of religion on the establishment of the Canadian left, in the form of social gospel. As many of you know, social gospel was an important part of the establishment of the CCF, the ancestor of the current NDP.
• J.P. Lewis looked back at the history of cabinet resignations in Canada.

Social History

• I am so missing MMMuffins now. Loved their chocolate chip.
• I’m starting to feel like LAC’s Flickr albums are trolling me. The latest is featuring images of sleep and beds. How did you know napping is my favourite activity? See the images yourself here.
• The Canadian Museum of History shared an image of the OSCar synthesizer.

The History of Gender and Sexuality

• Tom Hopper, Gary Kinsman, and Karen Pearlston have written a fabulous post on Active History problematizing the narrative of the 1969 Criminal Code Reform (also known as the Omnibus Bill). Absolutely a must-read.
• This week Notches spoke with Richard A. McKay about his new book, Patient Zero and the Makings of the AIDS Epidemic. For those who might not be aware of this, one of the individuals at the centre of early coverage of the AIDS epidemic was Quebecois flight attendant, Gaétan Dugas, who was previously and erroneously called “patient zero.”
• This thread from Shirley Tillotson made such an important point about how we remember the names of women.
• LGTBQ+ survivors of The Purge (whereby LGTBQ+ folks in the RCMP, federal civil service, and armed forces were forced out), Wayne Davis and Michelle Douglas,  spoke with Global News about the need for increased education on this history.

Local History

• There were several new entries this week from Historic Nova Scotia, including:
  • Sarah Paynter on Simpson’s Halifax.
  • Ashley Sutherland and the Colchester Historeum on the Science Building in downtown Truro, and another on the Provincial Normal School.
• Check out these cool images of Ottawa’s commuting history. I especially liked the streetcar snow ploughs.
• The latest blog post from the UBC Digitizer’s blog featured images of BC’s historic towns from their collections.
• This week, Whistorical asked, what is the oldest building in Whistler Village?
• Last week, Toronto celebrated 185 years as a city.
  • But we also need to keep in mind that the place we currently call Toronto has been home to Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. These are some initiatives from the City of Toronto to recognize this history.
• Check out the work of Bryan Frankfurth, who collects and restores old maps and images of Ottawa and Detroit.
• Ok, I think it is super cool that Kenton de Jong is developing a video game that explores the history of Regina’s cemetery.
• Eve Lazarus remembered the lost, but not forgotten, Italian restaurant, Casa Capri/Iaci’s. 

Digital and Public History

• Heritage experts predict that we will lose 9,000 churches in the next decade, roughly 1/3 of all faith-owned buildings in the country.
• Rhonda Hinther’s students at Brandon are working on a wonderful project, creating an exhibition on the 1919 Brandon Sympathy Strike.
• Anna St. Onge organized a Wikipedia edit-a-thon at York University, to add entries documenting women’s history in Canada.
• Find out about BAnQ’s work archiving the Quebecois internet.
• Members of the public have a wonderful opportunity to provide feedback to Parks Canada on their National Historic Sites, particularly around making the narratives more inclusive.
• A new online database with information on the marriages of early settlers in Quebec has just been released. The database covers marriages from 1617 to 1825. Gail Dever has also published a short guide for genealogists using the database.
• You can now get the chance to experience what it was like to fly in a Lancaster bomber in a WW2 bombing raid thanks to Virtual Reality. The simulation is by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, and uses real audio from a bombing raid.
• There is also another new history Virtual Reality project allowing users to experience the history of Quebec City. It apparently starts with the history of the Haudenosaunee, though there isn’t any information on what this involves exactly.
• The Manitoba Food History project now has an interactive map to allow users to search by location!

Doing History

• LAC just released an update for their LAC Canada Cataloguing in Publication data block.That’s the information that used to appear in card catalogues and is usually printed at the beginning of every book. The new format is designed to bring the data more in line with online catalogues and electronic databases.
• Mary Yearl, head librarian at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine spoke with Sarah Kearnan (of The Recipes Project) about their collections.
• Catherine Larochelle spoke with Radio-Canada about public history, her work on Histoire Engagée, and why history is never neutral.
• Alban Bargain-Villéger published some excerpts from his research diary on his trip to Groix, Francee, on Active History this week.
• The Provincial Archives of PEI are looking for a new home.
• This week we had a brand new edition of Historians’ Histories, featuring Kathryn Magee Labelle!
• While not specifically about Canadian history, I did also publish a Twitter thread that went viral on coping with academic rejection, here on the blog.

Miscellaneous

• Ben Bradley has been horrifying and delighting folks on Twitter this week with images of colonial butter sculptures, like this one of Prince Edward depicted as an honorary chief of the Stoney-Nakoda. The sculpture was the centerpiece of a butter recreation of an entire Stoney-Nakoda emcampment. Be sure to read through the entire thread. It was also the inspiration for this week’s roundup image. 😉

Podcasts

• Sean Graham has posted a new History Slam episode this week, featuring an interview with Sheldon Krasowki on his book, No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous.
• The latest episode of the Witness to Yesterday podcast featured Patrice Dutil speaking with D’Arcy Jenish on the FLQ Bombings.

Calls for Papers

• The ASEH has issued a CFP for their second annual Twitter Conference! Proposals are due March 20.
• Student members of the American Association of Geographers are invited to submit research proposals for the Historical Geography Specialty Group Student Research Awards. Submissions are due March 25.
• The upcoming conference, “Post/Colonial Ports: Place and Nonplace in the Ecotone,” has issued a CFP for proposals. This year’s conference will be held at Concordia University. Proposals are due April 5, 2019.

I’m still not over the butter sculpture. It’s haunting my dreams.  Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this week’s Canadian history 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. This week, we are heading outside! See you then!

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