5000

Can't help noticing the blog counter just turned over 5000. Until I started the counter in January I thought of my readers as "both of you," and I was being optimistic. I find 5000 in four months a respectable count. Not in Perez Hilton's league, but we are more exclusive here.

I'm guessing the readership total is somewhere between one reader checking in 5000 times and 5000 readers coming once; closer to the former, probably!

Alberta's Oil in The Beaver

The June-July issue of The Beaver is in the mail and hitting the stands. My column this month, thanks to Doug Cass and David Finch and Andrew Nikiforuk, is about the profound importance of Alberta's oil in the modern history of Canada and the profound lack of substantial history about it, despite some notable bright spots:

One might think the Alberta history departments would have any number of endowed chairs in Petroleum History. But the historical file seems to depend more on Calgary’s Petroleum History Society, a lively ad-hoc group.

It's on sale now, and lots of other good stuff there too.

Live-blogging the CHA conference?

Ah, no. Canadian history hasn't discovered the blog yet, as I was saying. I found precisely one blog post related to the conference.

But it's a keeper. I'm glad to have found Andrew Smith's CanHist blog and this post about the conference.

[Update June 1: Andrew Smith's blog has more CHA postings since I wrote this. On the Congress, Ajzenstat's not to be missed too]

Today the CHA website has a list of prize nominees posted in April, though the prizes themselves were given out on Tuesday, May 26. It's from the publicists at Between the Lines Press and not from any historical source that I learned that Ian McKay was awarded the CHA's John A. Macdonald Prize the other day. From the BTL press release:

At its Annual Meeting in Ottawa, the Canadian Historical Association awarded the thirty-first Sir John A. Macdonald Prize to Ian McKay’s Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920. The prize is awarded annually to the non-fiction work of Canadian history "judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of the Canadian past."

Reasoning Otherwise is the first volume of Ian McKay’s groundbreaking multi-part history of the left in Canada. Using the strategy of “reconnaissance” (investigating history without purposely adding up the good and bad) first outlined in Rebels, Reds, Radicals, McKay examines the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. By seeking out the stories of leftist movements and leftism in Canada in this substantial work, McKay fills an astonishing void in Canadian scholarship, providing a comprehensive survey of a subject on which little else has been written except that which takes a very specific viewpoint or which focuses only on a portion of the whole.

Ian McKay is Professor of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

The claim that the history of the left in Canada is "an astonishing void" rather staggers me, but that's no knock on the book.

The great issues in the great north

The Lafontaine-Baldwin lecture on "issues related to the public good," inspired by John Ralston Saul and sponsored by the Dominion Institute, goes to Iqaluit this Friday to feature Siila Watt-Cloutier. Wish I were there, but we can see it live on film in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal (indoor and outdoor), Winnipeg, and Calgary. Filmed by Zacharias Kunuk, no less. All the details here.

New History books from Toronto

When nothing else is jumping, time to look for new books coming in Canadian history.

Sean Cadigan's new history of Newfoundland and Labrador is out from University of Toronto Press. I have not seen it, but it seems situated to be the new standard history, taking its place with UTP's other big regional histories like Jean Barman's West Beyond The West on British Columbia, and Gerald Friesen's Canadian Prairies. If it can stand with those, Cadigan's will be some good history. Barman's has been revised a couple of times; I don't think Friesen's has, which is too bad, but probably says something about the book selling potential of B.C versus the [generic] prairies.

Also imminent from UTP: 'Union Is Strength': W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada by Albert Schrauwers. I would have thought there was practically nothing to link together Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and joint-stock enterprise, but Schrauwers says otherwise.

Schrauwers shows how the overlapping boards of unincorporated joint stock companies managed by both Toronto reformers and the Children of Peace produced a culture of deliberative democracy in competition with the "gentlemanly capitalism" of chartered corporations.

Who am I to disagree? Sounds worth a look.

The British Parliamentary crisis

He may be a posh vulgarian, but the Mayor of London, England, Boris Johnson, can write a lively opinion piece -- I love the opening of this one on the corruption crisis enveloping the British House of Commons. But the money quote is here:

We don't need a constitutional convention. We don't need to contemplate proportional representation, since that will only intensify the power of the party machines and create even more lobby fodder. We want a new breed of MPs who will consistently tell the whips to get stuffed; who will smash the brutal and intellectually enervating system of party discipline that turns Westminster into a kind of Seventies Leyland car factory, apathetically turning out badly assembled laws to plague the people of this country.

Of course, Britain is a paradise of backbencher autonomy compared to Canadian legislatures on this matter. When will our worms be turned?

Hat tip Stephen Michael Maclean

How to elect a governor general

This is how the Germans do it.

History of Wikipedia

A thoughtful review of the Wikipedia revolution, both its wonderfulness and its inadequacies, in the London Review of Books. As it observes, the worst things in Wikipedia are often not the falsified or vandalized articles, which are soon repaired, but the overcooked ones, the ones to which so many contributors have added various details that the whole article loses all coherence.

It's also thoughtful on why Wikipedia thrives on open contribution, but the comments sections of most online newspaper and magazines are so tedious and offputting.

The Wikipedia principle that all mistakes can be corrected (so that it is hardly worth trying to introduce them) has much less force in the case of newspapers, because by the time any corrections have been made most readers will have moved on.

History of young men at war

The Illustrated History of Canada gets a shout-out on one of the most widely-read American blogs, The Daily Dish. Huge bump in our royalties next reporting period? Je m'en doute. But it's fun to track the degrees of separation involved here.

And the historical point being made -- all the Canadians who volunteered to serve in the United States' war in Viet Nam -- reminds me of something that was pointed out to me last week: with every Canadian casualty in Afghanistan, the numbers of young men turning up at Canadian forces recruiting offices goes up.

What makes democracy happen?

Social scientists in Europe and the United States collaborated on an immense study, using a statistical technique called "extreme bounds analysis" to assess which of 59 different factors and conditions seem to support or inhibit the development of democracy through history and around the world. In the end, they found few, and the ones they considered reliable have a high "well, duh" factor. They concluded:

We conclude that while there are many plausible theories of democracy, there are few robust predictors that we can trust as reliable. For policymakers interested in promoting democracy based on such reliable predictors, we suggest that there is little difference policy can make when it comes to the emergence of democracy.

History, in other words, is not so predictable. Who knew? (Historians.)

Paper of Record returns

In February, we noted historians' and researchers' dismay at the disappearance of PaperofRecord.com, an Ottawa-based website that had made available a collection of digitized historic newspapers whose users evidently loved it for being comprehensive, easy to use, and free.

Now Paper of Record founder R.J. Huggins announces that his newspaper online archive is returning to the World Wide Web through the genealogical website FamilyLink.com. Access will not be free anymore, apparently -- another small sign of rationality starting to prevail in the digital realm. This is the announcement:

To Our Library Community,

Thank you for your continuing patience as we bring PaperofRecord.com back online. PaperofRecord.com has recently concluded an exclusive distribution agreement with World Vital Records of Provo, Utah a division of Familylink.com.

FamilyLink.com, Inc. has more than 15 million unique global visitors each month and 40 million page views per month. With more than 31 million users We’re Related is the fastest growing social network for families and genealogists. We’re Related, a top-five application on Facebook, allows individuals to find relatives on Facebook, connect with friends and family members, build family trees, and share news and photos. It is the most popular family application on Facebook. Since October 2007, when the application was launched, more than 150 million relationships (of living people) have been defined on We’re Related. Within the past 30 days, the application has had 14.9 million monthly active users and 1,000,000 daily active users.

WorldVitalRecords.com provides affordable access to genealogy databases and family history tools used by more than 258,000 monthly visitors. The site registers 3.6 million monthly pages views and serves tens of thousands of paying subscribers. With thousands of databases—including birth, death, military, census, and parish records—WorldVitalRecords.com makes it easy to fill in missing information in your family tree. Some of its partners include Everton Publishers, Quintin Publications, Archive CD Books Australia, Gould Genealogy, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, Archive CD Books Canada, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., SmallTownPapers®, Accessible Archives, Genealogical Publishing Company, Find My Past, Godfrey Memorial Library, Find A Grave, and FamilySearch.

I encourage you to contact Scott Spencer at Scott@familylink.com to access our critically successful database of Historical Newspaper Images at the site that began it all, PaperofRecord.com!

Best

R.J. (Bob) Huggins
Founder
PaperofRecord.com

Update (May 22): Mark Reynolds observes:

Familylink/World Vital Records seem to have some connection with the Church of Latter Day Saints genealogical database (I did some poking around a few months ago when people tried to sign me up to use their Facebook application). Not that this is a reason to not use it, but I suspect that people looking into old obituaries for their family trees might end up having their data stored in ways that they aren't entirely comfortable with.

On the other hand, I'm just glad the resource is still out there - if someone wants to convert me after I die, I can hardly complain.

In my (limited) experience, you do genealogy, you deal with people in Utah. They just plain have the data, and have it in accessible form. Mostly, I think, genealogy gets at least as much from the Mormons' database than the Mormons get from us. Yes?

Where in the world is....?

Okay, just for fun, my highly educated and globally sophisticated lovelies, try this interactive map challenge.

It's easy. You just drag the names from the list to their place on the map. I confess I thought I could run up pretty close to a perfect score first time through. Ah... no.

Headbanger history

The Guardian looks into the long, slow decline of the serious non-fiction book. It's a well-made story with lots of effective interviews and quotations from people who otta know:

Among those who write, publish and sell serious non-fiction - the biographies, histories, travel and science books researched and written with a degree of subtlety for a general audience - the bad news seems to have been building up since long before the current recession.

But I think for Canadian writers in this situation, it's always been this way. It's true that I am sometimes grimly aware of all the books I might write that I simply cannot afford to. But then I reflect there are still 99 books I want to read for every one I get around to.

For me this was the laugh-out-loud quote:

Between about 2003 and 2006, a lot of agents and publishers thought history was the new rock'n'roll.

... but I like it, like it, yes I do.

Back to vote-buying

Following the resignation of John Tory, there will be a convention to select a new leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. How's it going?

The race is expected to heat up now that the deadline has passed for signing up new party members. Christine Hogarth, executive director of the Ontario PC Party, said the party has about 40,000 members after about 32,000 new ones were signed up by Thursday's deadline. (Globe & Mail)

32,000 people laid money down, or had it laid down for them, to purchase a vote.

I think it needs to be said again. Participating in a leadership convention in which the key transaction is either buying or selling your vote for $10 is not ethical behaviour. Which party it is does not matter; ethical Canadians should not participate in the buying and selling of public offices. Having 32,000 people do it more or less simultaneously does not mitigate the offence.

An example. Several months after Ernie Eves won one of these "races" in 2002 and became premier of Ontario, he released details of his campaign spending. It turned out the principal expense was for the purchase of memberships; enough memberships to provide his margin of victory in the race.

And a cautionary note. Tim Hudak, thought by the press to have been the frontrunner, is now reported (by CBC Radio, not yet online, it seems) to have failed to amass many members in his favour. He has also had a hard time fundraising. Meanwhile his rival Christine Elliott has been able to raise ten times as much money, under slightly dubious ("Who's your husband?") circumstances. She has access to lots of money, and gee, the frontrunner is not the frontrunner any more. Hmmm.

When every race must be conceded to the organization with the largest purse with which to buy the needed votes, in what sense are we talking about a democratic process?

Update, May 20: The Globe today reports that while Christine Elliott has by far the most money, the candidate who seems to have been most successful in amassing new memberships is the less well funded Frank Klees.

Where does your family come from?

Africa? Yeah, mine too. But now there is a map of it.

Enviro-historians online

Following up my posts (just scroll down) about CanHist blogging (or the lack thereof), Sean Kheraj, a postdoc in the History Department at UBC suggests:

I did want to bring your attention to the growing online Canadian environmental history community. The main portal for Canadian environmental history is: http://niche.uwo.ca. Each member of the site can post stories, news items, conference notices, research findings, and any other information related to the field. NiCHE's site also hosts a series of databases for research and teaching. I've been involved with NiCHE for the past couple of years and I think their work is an excellent model that more historians should adopt. Incidentally, I would also recommend you listen to our podcast, "Nature's Past". You can find past episodes and our iTunes subscription info at http://niche.uwo.ca/naturespast. Thanks again for the great post. Historians need to think more about using internet technologies to share information and disseminate research findings.

Vermeer without the hat

If you happen to be in Vancouver on this sunny/partly cloudy morning, where there is fresh snow on the Lions and the air is all rain-washed and clear, you should make an effort to see the Vermeer-and-his-colleagues exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. They knew something about rain-washed light too There's only one Vermeer in the exhibition, but the other guys deserve a look too. Along with the interior scenes and portraits, the exhibition makes another point by emphasizing marine paintings, trade items and other artworks that connect Dutch prosperity in the 17th century directly to international commerce.

The exhibition seems like a visual accompaniment to the themes of Vancouver historian Timothy Brook's book Vermeer's Hat -- Holland's rise to wealth, influence, and cultural glory under the impetus of international trade that was bringing the world together. And I'm off to talk to Tim Brook about that this morning.

More on blogging historians

Ryan O'Connor, who runs an terrific blog on Canadian environmental history at Great Green North, has been thinking about the state of CanHist blogging.

One of the major considerations, I believe, is many fear 'tipping-off' their forthcoming research. On my own blog I try and bring up little bits that pop up during my research that don't quite fit into my dissertation.

With respect, the fear of "tipping off" seems to me unscholarly, anti-intellectual, and, well, silly. I fear there is way too much timorousness and civil-service-type deference in our universities among people who ought to be revelling in their freedom to talk about what is important to them. (Not you, Ryan, not you! Just a sociological observation about Canadian academic culture.)

I sometimes click randomly on the blogs listed down the left hand of the Cliopatria blog, and it amazes me to find blogs on medieval history, Chinese history, women's history, any number of American history subspecialties, and so on, each run by historians or teams of historians who clearly are on fire with enthusiasm for their subjects and can't stop talking about all the ideas and issues that pop up. In the midst of all that, some of them also cover the big historical conventions and the debates that go on there, or talk about how the economic downturn is affecting their departments, or just note who had published something, or moved, or died, or whatever.

I'm a pure spectator in almost all of that -- but it looks like these are people who love their jobs and care about the state of their profession and take the issues that arise seriously. And I like to see that. I am sure there are Canadianists with the same love of their work and the same commitment to their profession -- but they seem pretty much invisible.

Blogging Historians considered

Courtesy of the American Historical Association (and the Cliopatria blog), the historian of China Jeffrey Wasserstrom ponders what historians ought to know about blogging as socio-cultural history and as professional outlet. Some random thoughts:

The group blog has a big future.

There is a distinct lack of blogs on Canadian history, and too many historians who blog mostly talk politics rather than history.

A blog that too often simply links to interesting posts elsewhere is useful but unsatisfying. (Guilty)

History of Voting: BC's STV referendum

I've been trying in desultory fashion to find something interesting to catch hold of in British Columbia's debate on electoral reform. Here, the night before the vote (not that I have a vote), California's election-systems blog Fruits and Votes finds something.

Rumour has it some voting-reformers will vote no; they are holding out for MMP. But Gordon Gibson, the man who put STV on the ballot in British Columbia (I know, they say it was a Citizens' Assembly, but those things are flocks to be herded), said if he lived in Ontario he would have voted against its MMP proposal. Electoral reform may fail because neither proposal can get past the post first?

Winnahs!

The Beaver was named Magazine of the Year at the first-ever Manitoba Magazine Awards on May 8. It also won an editorial package award (for "The Boy in the Picture," a story by Ray Argyle). Its little brother, the kids' history mag Kayak, was honoured for most innovative marketing program. The Beaver, they note, published its first French language edition (Le Beaver!) this year, has a book coming in the fall, and set sales records with every single issue last year. Nice work, guys.

And, blush, my column won best column honours.

Got a student with a great question?

The Dominion Institute is looking for entrants in its Great Canadian Questions essay competition for students -- prize money and travel offered. Details here.

Parliamentary democracy has a fan

Even Question Period ... usually derided here as just so much shouting.

Blogger neglects to self-promote!

Forgot entirely to mention this:

Thursday, May 7, 2009, Junction Historical Society, Annette Library, 145 Annette St., Committee Room 1. 7:30 p.m., Business meeting, 8:30 p.m., Christopher Moore: Great Photographs of Canada’s History. Later this year, The Beaver magazine and Harper Collins Publishers will publish 100 Photos that Changed Canada. Beaver columnist and WTJHS member, Christopher Moore shows a selection of photographs and discusses how they changed the country.

History as a graphic novel; the graphic novel as history

The doctoral research of historian Jessica van Horssen into the history of the Jeffrey mine and the town of Asbestos, Quebec, has been reworked as ... a graphic novel. Worth a look.

It's not just Van Horssen's research in this. She also wrote the graphic novel -- it's narrated by the mine itself -- and even plays the harmonica for the online multimedia publication. The artwork by Radna-Prema McAllister is striking.

Impresario of this inventive transformation seems to be the ever-creative Joy Parr and something called Megaprojects New Media. Nice work.

Update: I understand this link may be a better and more permanent connection to Megaprojects New Media and the Asbestos GR. (h/t to H-Canada.)

Waiting for the Aporkalypse: who did the 1918 pandemic get?

Nigel Jones of History Today surveys some of the casualties of the 1918 influenza pandemic:

King Alfonso XIII of Spain

the commander of the US Expeditionary Force, General 'Black Jack' Pershing went down - but survived. In October [1918], while 50,000 Americans died in battle, 70,000 of them were hospitalised with 'flu, of whom 32 percent died.

The negotiations to end the conflict were held up for 48 hours when Prince Max of Baden, the Kaiser's last Chancellor, fell sick with 'flu, overdosed on palliative drugs, and went into a coma.

Other fatally afflicted victims included; the great sociologist Max Weber, who died in June 1920 when the pandemic was long past its peak; Lenin's lieutenant Jakov Sverdlov; and the Austrian erotic artist Egon Schiele, who had to watch the funeral cortege of his bride Edith, pregnant with their first child pass by before returning to his sickbed to die.

Two of the world leaders who gathered in the French capital to hammer out the Treaty of Versailles, British premier Lloyd George and US president Woodrow Wilson, both caught the 'flu - and lived. But the young British diplomat, Sir Mark Sykes - whose controversial Sykes-Picot plan to carve the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence - did not.

The pandemic also spared Joseph Pilates, German founder of the eponymous exercises, who, interned in the Isle of Man, claimed that all those who had adopted his yoga-like routines in his prison beat off the 'flu.

Via a quick look into the Dictionary of Canadian Biography online, a few Canadian casualties:

John Craig Eaton, the department store heir, age 45
Charles Gill, Quebec artist
William Hamilton Merritt, mining engineer and militia advocate
Flora Merrill Denison, feminist, theosophist, arts patron
Cawthra Mulock, builder of the Royal Alex theatre in Toronto
Sam Steele of the Mounted
Shaaw Tlaa, or Kate Carmack, who started the Klondike gold rush

History of Piracy: The Globe hauls down the flag

It's one small story in The Globe, one large leap for digital culture. The Globe and Mail, after thirty years of appropriating and reselling the work of freelance writers without permission or payment, has admitted defeat and negotiated a settlement with the class action led by Heather Robertson.

Trying to make the best of it after years of stonewalling, Globe counsel Sue Gaudi says,

It is primarily a historical matter from the days before The Globe and Mail entered into written contracts with our freelance contributors. We value our relationships with our freelancers and are happy to move on.

It is much more than that. In a decade and more of fighting the freelancers' claim to payment, The Globe's lawyers insisted on a right to steal. Since they did not have permission to take what they wanted, they created a figleaf called "implied consent." There would be no contracts, historically or going forward, if the court had supported this drivel.

With Google negotiating terms for sampling books online, with the Pirate Bay guys going to jail, with Kindle and iTunes and a million other systems demonstrating how access and rights co-exist in the digital world, that romantic moment when digital piracy seemed to be the wave of the future seems to be receding.

Congratulations to Heather Robertson and all her compadres; a difficult struggle, a remarkable victory. (Note: I'm pretty sure I contributed nothing to The Globe in the period covered by the lawsuit and settlement and do not expect to be claiming a share of the long-delayed payment.)

Addendum: My extended take on this story from a couple of years ago here.

History of an institution in decline: the political party?

Even the true believers seem to have been bored silly with the Liberal convention in Vancouver this weekend. Calgary Grit called it the Seinfeld convention (does that joke need explaining, what with all the reruns on?). Trying to find the bright side, (s)he was reduced to saying, hey, the weather was great.

Our political parties really do have convention crisis. When there is a leadership race, the convention is dominated by huge rival blocs of mindless automatons whose votes have been bought up in advance. (I still love the memory of an Ontario convention year ago where one Charles Beer was a candidate, and his supporters marched about the hockey arena shouting Beer, beer, beer.) The race usually means the party and all its strong personalties are broke, exhausted and at loggerheads, and the winner is likely to prove to be inept... but that's what parties do, isn't it?

When there isn't a leadership race, well, parties have become so bereft of any purpose beyond recruiting donors and organizing sign-pounders that they simply don't know what to do. Serious policy discussion? In a political party, are you crazy? What do they do for three days before the leader gives his Triumph of the Will imitation?

Stephen Michael MacLean, noting the replacement of delegate conventions by one-member-one-vote, writes:

I suppose if it’s not essential for a party leader to enjoy the confidence of the caucus, they why should he require the support of committed party members? Instant member, instant leader. Although it may be tellingly nostalgic to speak of confidence with respect to any parliamentary institution any more....

In countries with a functioning party system, where the people elect representatives to parliament and the representatives hire and fire parliamentary leaders as necessary, party conventions still seem to have a function. Where it's understood that party leaders must be both skilled and accountable, there is no need for the mass party vote nonsense. And the party at large tends to be held together by, gasp, political conviction. Where there is a real party structure -- other than just an appendage to The Leader -- parties actually take an interest in policy and ideology, and members willingly get together to discuss those things. Not here, of course, but it happens.

Historians win Donner Prize

Historians Ken S. Coates, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, and William R. Morrison and political scientist Greg Poelzer won the Donner Prize last night for their book Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North, which is about... well, what it says. Details here.

If there were a prize for most-travelled historian, Ken C might be in the running for that too. I see he is now at the University of Waterloo, but that boy has taught everywhere.

Nice win for the small mostly literary publisher Thomas Allen & Sons too.