Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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 3rd, 2012 or if you prefer – Thursday February 3rd, 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.
 
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