Viola Desmond, cont'd.

Mark Reynolds, expat Canadianist and father to the most charming online family I know, adds some time depth to the Viola Desmond story:

...not to take anything away from Dr Backhouse, but as a student in Nova Scotia, I was definitely aware of her story long before 1999. I cannot for the life of me remember why - I seem to remember reading an article on her in the Chronicle Herald, but I'm fairly certain she was in the Pantheon that was presented to us each February along with Buddy Day, the Maroons and William Hall. Viola was never given the context nor amount of attention she deserved - much easier to present Hall winning a VC from the Establishment than Desmond, stalwart against white racism. N.S. is still not always that great about grappling with the less flattering aspects of its history. In any case, someone Down East was keeping her memory alive. Darned Upper Canadians get the credit for everything.

Update:  Who's Buddy Day, you (I) ask?  Here's who.

PS I think we can see the implied smiley-face (irony alert) in Mark's last line -- but I should emphasize it wasn't Constance Backhouse claiming any firsts. That suggestion was mine.

Viola Desmond stamp

Canada Post's new stamp honours Viola Desmond, a Nova Scotia woman denied entrance in 1945 to the main seating area of a New Glasgow movie theatre because she was black and then prosecuted for breaking the law when she complained.

I think maybe the stamp also honours historical scholarship.  To my knowledge, the Viola Desmond story was essentially unknown to the wider public before Professor Constance Backhouse, now of the University of Ottawa law school, wrote a chapter about her case in a scholarly work of legal history in 1999.

To recapitulate what I blogged a year's ago when Ms Desmond received a posthumous pardon and apology from Nova Scotia:

"The racial insult was not forgotten in the Nova Scotia black community and civil rights organizations. But the first really authoritative retelling was by Ottawa legal historian Constance Backhouse, who devoted a long and immensely detailed chapter to the event in her 1999 book Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada 1900-1950, published by UTP for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. Backhouse's chapter helped inspire a short story, "One Down," by Dionne Brand that was published in the 2001 history/fiction anthology Story of A Nation. CBC presented a radio drama, "Living in Hope." The Beaver ran a cover story by Dean Jobb in April 2009. Gradually the story just became part of the narrative. Now comes the pardon."

 Now there is also a kid's book by Jody Nyasha Warner: Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged.  And the stamp.  Update: and then there's Sister to Courage, by Desmond's sister Wanda Robson.

(I'd completely forgotten that post from April 2010 until, starting to post about the stamp, I googled a little and came across my own story.  Blogging life: file and forget.)

People of Monticello

From the New York Times, an impressive review of what sounds like two impressive exhibits: one at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC, and a permanent one at Monticello, the historic-site estate of Thomas Jefferson. Both exhibits focus on the community of enslaved black people who sustained Monticello  -- some 600 named individuals, over the years, not counting the anonymous ones.  The exhibitions sound like superb museology, and fascinating.

The review also suggests the difficulty Americans still have with seeing Thomas Jefferson as something other than, or more than, the white-marble paragon of liberty. Where the exhibit praises Jefferson, reviewer Edward Rothstein declares "there is no idealization here of course," (my italics), but when it states what seems to be the plain fact that Jefferson's Declaration of Independence “did not extend ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’ to African-Americans, Native Americans, indentured servants, or women,” he denounces its "political boilerplate."  He concludes, rather astonishingly, that Jefferson helped make global abolition of slavery possible. For Rothstein, Jefferson was an abolitionist at heart, and that's what really matters, not the 600 slaves.


I'm struck again by the truly immense achievement of historian Annette Gordon-Reed, who to my eye rises to remarkable dispassion and fairness in The Hemings of Monticello and other works on Jefferson's slave family. She would not assume that idealization of Jefferson is impossible.

Live-tweeting the Parliament fire of 1916

Brilliant:  Rebecca Murray, Carleton MA student in Canadian Studies, will be covering the 1916 fire that destroyed Ottawa's 1860s Parliament Building by live-tweeting (+96 years) on February 3:

You can find me by logging into Twitter, yes you will have to sign up, and search @HistoryTweetsEh.  You can simply read the tweets or choose to ‘follow’ me so that the new tweets appear on your main page.  This is where the magic will be happening on the evening of Friday February 3^rd, 2012 or if you prefer – Thursday February 3^rd, 1916.  The terror descends after 8pm ET and lasts until the wee hours of the morning.

Go, Rebecca! (Thank to Stuart at Public History Inc for the heads-up).

Update, same day:  Ted Betts emails:

As you probably know, one of the saddest consequences of that fire, aside from the loss of life, was the loss of all of Laurier's personal papers. I think that is why there are so very few biographies of him.

Actually that's news to me, Ted. The poignant loss I knew of was Robert Harris's "Fathers of Confederation" painting.  Rex Woods did an imitation of it that now hangs in the Centre Block, but Harris's sketches (at the Confederation Centre, Charlottetown) make clear that Harris was an artist and Woods really an illustrator. As it happens The new Feb-March Canada's History, just out, has a cool annotated layout of Woods' "Fathers," amid much else.

How's the War of 1812 doing in the media?

Pretty well, observes Toronto historian Stephen Otto in an email (that I have lightly edited and reprinted with his permission):

The pulse of interest in the War of 1812 bicentennial can be measured, I suggest, through the take-up in the press and publishing industry, not to forget the electronic media.
See the cover story for Canadian Geographic, Jan-Feb issue. It was written by the exceptionally talented and well-named Allen Abel. You might also want to check out the The Walrus magazine's cover story, March issue, which is not online yet but can be found on newsstands currently. Or the cover story in the Royal Canadian Legion's monthly magazine, Legion,  for Jan-Feb, 2012.
And then there are the websites and blogs. Two of the more delightful ones, a day-by-day blog and twitter feed came to our attention Friday through Shawn Micallef. They are posted by Fernando Sousa, a Toronto lawyer with a very literary turn of mind. See also the "Top Tweets" list of posts from other sources. There someone on The Globe's editorial board says it has just finished reading Alan Taylor's book, The Civil War of 1812. This is an interesting image to conjure: the paper's editorial board sitting 'round its table being read to like a bunch of monks.

Another site worth bookmarking is maintained by Peter Twist and his colleagues at the Discerning General  You may want to check out the war from a US perspective.  Note there a link to the front-page article in the Wall Street Journal this week quoting Toronto's Bicentennial co-ordinator, Sandra Shaul. And the Toronto tabloid T.O. Night, is also on the story.

A good day for parliaments

The Canadian parliament resumes sitting today, but that's not what I was thinking of.

Today, January 30, in 1649, Charles I of England was executed in London, after having being duly tried and convicted for war crimes against his own people and for overthrowing his obligations to the English constitution and the English parliament.  Charles denied he had any such obligations.  On his way to the block, he declared, "For the people I must tell you, that their liberty and freedom... is not for having a share in government.  Sirs, that is nothing pertaining to them."
 
On this day, a parliament responded, demonstrating rather forcefully that indeed the people do have a share in government.

(h/t to James Bowden, whose blog Parliamentum has struck me as rather Monarchum lately.  Image: Wikipedia)

Bytown Museum: SIX MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE URBAN FOREST

Hi Everyone,

I heard about this from a friend and I was actually quite intrigued.

From the link below:

"“Six Moments in the History of an Urban Forest” is an exhibit opening in January 2012 at the Bytown Museum.

Curated by Carleton University professor Joanna Dean and graduate student Will Knight, the exhibit explores the contested place of trees in Ottawa's urban history. The exhibit explores early street tree planting, the 1920s campaign to "control" urban trees, the commemorative Centennial crab apple tree, the role of arborists in negotiating the conflicts between trees and the built environment, and the closing of Lovers Walk behind Parliament Hill.  

It will include such artefacts as the cross-section of a 150-year old bur oak, arborist tools, and digital maps showing changes in Ottawa’s tree canopy since the 1920s.

The exhibit runs from January 24-May 27, 2012 and is funded by the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), a Jack Kimmell grant from the Canadian Tree Fund, and Carleton University

http://www.bytownmuseum.com/en/exhibits.html

Jordan

Is the past a funny place?

History Today's caption contest seeks original captions for this scene.  Details here.

Like to consult an archivist at Library and Archives Canada?

... Better plan ahead.  "Access to LAC experts will be available through a new reference by appointment service...."  sez a new LAC information pamphlet, not yet on their website, apparently. H/t Stuart Manson.

History Wars on Tommy Douglas

My observation last year, in my Canada's History column, that the Royal Ontario Museum's History Wars lecture series was fun but too present-minded and sensation-seeking for an institution of the ROM's stature  (you can find the column here) produced a spectacularly furious response from series impresarios Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein in the pages of the mag.

But even then I said History Wars had potential, and this week's debate on the legacy of Tommy Douglas and the state of Canadian medicare, in which historians Michael Bliss and Gregory Marchildon took opposing sides, seemed to bear that out. History Wars is still pretty present-minded -- the ROM doesn't do Canadian history with anything like the seriousness with which it will treat the Maya or the Ming.  But two skilled Canadianists on a topic of interest and importance?  No complaints.

End of War; End of Publishers?

Toronto writer Bill Freeman's new book The End of War argues the possibility of lasting peace:

The End of War is an examination of war and the possibility of peace. In the past empires have used war as the way to dominate and exploit others. Today the United States, the world’s sole empire and superpower, continues to use its military power to impose its will but the U.S. is meeting more and more opposition. Even though it has the most powerful military in the world, the American military cannot win guerilla wars or put down insurrections. The world is changing. Globalization, the rise of democracy, and improving living standards are creating new ways that nations relate to each other. A number of small wars continue, but major conflicts have diminished, peacemakers have developed new skills tools and the possibility of lasting peace is greater than at any time in a century. The book explores the practice of both war and peace and takes the optimistic view that we can finally achieve the dream of The End of War.

The End of War is part of that new, possibly historic, trend:  established authors giving up on traditional publishing and opting to make their work available through online distribution exclusively.  Website here. Hard-copy ordering information here.  EBook via Kobo, Kindle, and the usual ebook sources.

Hockey hockey hockey hockey hockey -- hockey all the time.

Denis Smith draws our attention to Puckstruck, a blog on the culture of hockey and vice versa with a fair share of historical sensibility.

Sample Puckstruck item, drawn from the New Yorker of November 27, 1937:

The young lady who sat behind us at last Sunday’s hockey game remained silent through the first period, evidently spellbound. Then she remarked to her escort, “I don’t know who these idiots are, but they certainly know how to skate.”

Yeah, fiction gets all the action.....

Haven't spotted any historians being featured in the kinda funny CanLit is Sexy tumblr of captioned photos.

What no Bliss, no Careless Bliss even?  Consider the possibilities!

History for a bleak winter morning

Don't know much about the book, but I love the cover -- featured on the cover of UTP's spring catalogue.

The book is edited by three Ontario history professors: Franca Iacovetta, Valerie Korinek and Marlene Epp.  Sorry, it's not available until May, but you can read the catalogue details here.

It is the duty of every Canadian historian to write a history of Canada?

So sez Alan MacEachern in this paper via Active History.

I think I see what he means.  You study Canadian history: you start to evolve a framework in which to put what you have studied.  I think I probably do have a ghost history of Canada in my head.  As to whether we all should write it down....