Death of the Dominion Institute

It was fun while it lasted.

For a dozen years, The Dominion Institute, "an NGO for Canadian history," was a nimble and clever and provocative actor on the national scene. In the cause of Canadian history and Canadian citizenship, the DI was always coming up with innovative projects and publicizing them brilliantly. It partnered with novelists and veterans and celebrities and new-media gurus in startling ways, and it practised convergence across media platforms long before the concept was a cliché. Its cheeky polls became a July 1 tradition to rank with fresh strawberries and cold beer. The Dominion Institute was history in your face, of a kind we've never quite seen before. It did discomfit the usual spokesmen from time to time. But I admired it all. (Yeah, I got some work from them too, and they kept me on the invitation list for some terrific parties over the years.)

Anyway, today the announcement is out that the DI has been merged into the Historica Foundation, to create Dominion-Historica. Even the startlingly retro name has become a meaningless hyphen-thing.

The Historica Foundation has done useful things, for sure. Just keeping the Canadian Encylopedia alive, let alone all it has done to make it online, interactive and up-to-date, has been a great service to the world. But by comparison to the DI, the Historica Foundation has always seemed ponderous and sanctimonious and expensive and bureaucratic. It's not hard to guess which culture will dominate in the merged institutions.

Started with what seemed like vast financial endowments from two Canadian zillionaires, Historica somehow exhausted them and began competing against the DI (and everyone else) for public and private funding. The government started asking why it should have to listen to two or three agencies and began pushing for mergers. And no doubt the current economic downturn, shrinking the budgets of donors and funders everywhere, was the last nail.

Well, I wish the best for the newly merged institution and its projects, and all the people who labour on them. But some of the fun just went out of Canadian history. Rudyard, Marc, Alison, Eric, Jeremy, and all of you, you did a terrific thing while it lasted.

What's next for Historica-Dominion?

Toronto entertainment lawyer and producer Michael Levine will take the helm at the Historica-Dominion Institute.  Historica-Dominion has grown enormously since Rudyard Griffith's little idea factory merged with the larger Historica Foundation a couple of years ago. The appointment of Levine, dealmaker and entertainment entrepreneur extraordinaire, suggests some blockbuster events may well be part of the institute's future. I'm looking forward to it.

Levine succeeds journalist and scholar Andrew Cohen, the first head of the merged institute, who goes back to writing and teaching in Ottawa

Is Canadian history boring or is it just the names?

You're gone, you're history, you're in the archives

The name Historica-Dominion Institute always sounded like a temporary offshoot of the merger of the two organizations. Now they are renaming.

Stephen Smith, Chairman of the Board of The Historica-Dominion Institute, announced today that effective September 3, 2013 , the organization will change its name to Historica Canada.

But I can't say the new name sets my pulse aflutter.  Quick: between "Historica Canada," "Canada's History," "Heritage Canada," and "Canadian Heritage," how many Canadians could quickly explain what differentiates each one? Or keep their audience awake while they tried? Which one is a government department, now?

We are in a time of great identifiers.  Think of Apple, Google, Amazon: distinct, quirky, unforgettable. Why do the organizations pitching Canadian history and civics as lively and dynamic opt for bland when they name themselves?

I know that internet porn filters made "The Beaver" unsustainable. But would not any of these organizations have been more distinct and more top-of-mind as, I don't know, something like Orca, or Matapedia Foundation, or the Lightfoot Institute, or McClung? (Kudos to The Dorchester Review -- more vivid, more rooted than, say, The Canadian Review of Right-Wing Stuff.)

Have to say, though, it isn't just the history/heritage world. The Canadian Auto Workers and the Paperworkers are about to ask us to call them "Unifor."

Well, good luck to Historica Canada, anyway. We may spend time explaining it is not a government department, but it will still do good work.

Happy Heritage Day

This is heritage day in Canada. No, you didn't miss a paid holiday. This is not Good Friday. It's just a day.

But the day gives a chance to salute two organizations that have become part of the fabric of Canadian historical awareness.

One is the Heritage Canada Foundation (www.heritagecanada.org). Many years ago I actually worked for a few months for the Heritage Canada Foundation in a handsome old-house office in Ottawa's Centretown. But I mainly want to notice it for the extraordinary achievements it has made in making heritage conservation important in this country.

The foundation launched the idea of Heritage Day, for one thing. More important, it's been there on the ground in scores of towns and cities across the country, giving practical advice and pulling together expertise and money and citizen willpower. The Foundation has actually demonstrated that conserving heritage architecture is good economics, good public policy, and good cultural policy too. It has made a difference, and it deserves a good deal of the credit for the fact that we think differently about architectural heritage than we did 25 or so years ago.

The other organization is the Historica Foundation (www.histori.ca) founded a few years ago to promote knowledge of Canadian history. Its principal backers are the Bronfman Foundation of Montreal (originators of tv's Heritage Minutes) and Lynton "Red" Wilson, a Nortel millionaire with a powerful concern about the state of the country and its knowledge of itself.

Today Historica runs The Canadian Encyclopedia, the best online source of information about Canada. It runs the Heritage Minutes. It has a website full of historical stuff.

Mostly, Historica focusses on history education. Frankly, I'm not sure that is so wise a strategy for a history foundation. Not that education is unimportant. But sometimes Canadians fall into the error of thinking history is for kids and if we ram enough of it into them when they are young, the country will be saved. If we want to promote respect for our history, my sense is we need to work to ensure that adults respect history as an adult concern, a cultural richness to appreciate as much as music or sport or any other cultural pursuit.

Education is a $40 billion a year commitment in Canada. That's a big ship to turn around. Historica is the richest historical foundation Canada has ever seen, but I fear it could spend itself dry on the education system, and the next day the education system would be barely changed and hungry for more. A much smaller foundation, the Dominion Institute, has shown what a splash can be made by targeting lively history-centered campaigns at the public, the media, and the opinion-makers.

Maybe I'm wrong about the difficulty of influencing the educational system. Historica has certainly done some nifty things, and I'm glad it's there. This morning it was histori.ca that reminded me of Heritage Day, in fact.

So here's to Heritage Canada Foundation and Historica. Check them out.

HIstorica-Dominion goes global

The Dominion Institute used to be renowned for its annual Canada Day poll proving that Canadians knew diddly about Canada. Historica-Dominion still polls -- and still promotes its poll results brilliantly -- but its ambitions have gone global. Its enormous new poll is less about what we know of ourselves than what the world thinks of us. It's done in conjunction with Ipsos, the Globe and Mail, the Monk Centre, and other partners, and it's getting tons of coverage in the Globe & Mail. The Institute's own summary here.

History Foundations spat

Val Ross reports in a Globe & Mail story on the rivalry among Historica, Canada's National History Society, and the Dominion Institute -- mostly over who gets first grab at the taxpayers' money.

What a shame. Historica got $50 million from the philanthropy of the Bronfmans and Red Wilson. CHNS has the Hudson's Bay Foundation behind it. The Dominion Institute is much more an independent start-up, but it still has some substantial private supporters.

By-law #1 at these places should be "We are independent and private. We will never take one dollar from governments."

Problem seems to be, too often these organizations think they are not really about history, they are really about Saving The Country. And their strategy for saving the country is mostly about ramming history down the throats of young people via the education system.

But the education system is simply too big to be changed by private philanthropy. Give the education system $50 million one morning and it will say: "Thanks, and how much have you got for this afternoon?" That's why the schools have to be a public responsibility. When these private foundations march in to re-order the schools, the first thing they learn is they need a government-sized budget.

Historica above all really needs to rethink its priorities. It's about history, not politics. It's about appreciating culture, not saving the country. It's for Canadians, not children. It's private, not public.

And I say this as a friend and admirer of these organizations, someone who thinks the arrival of Historical NGOs has been a real boon to Canada and Canadian history. Seeing them become tied hand-and-foot to the Ottawa bureaucrats is sad.

NP on the Historica-Dominion merger

Adam McDowell at the National Post offers a long analysis of the Dominion Institute-Historica Foundation merger and what it might lead to. This blog gets a small part in the story.

Update, November 19: A perspective from KnowBC

The Minutes are back

Robert Harris's "School Trustees" -- memorably riffed on in a Heritage Minute

Pity!  I couldn't make it to the launch of the new Heritage Minutes at the Royal in Toronto the other night -- hey, that historybloggers' social circuit gets busy! But the minutes are up on the Historica-Dominion website. (The Minutes were originally an initiative of Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation, which morphed in Historica, which merged with the Dominion Institute, so it all fits.)

Maybe there'll be a Minute about inventing the Minutes one day.It would feature an actor playing the broadcaster Patrick Watson, who transforms a dull meeting by saying "mini-movies!" -- and then gets his way, damn the expense. I profiled Watson and the Minutes in the mid-1990s

The secret was finding how to leave things out. Or, as Watson puts it, "finding the dramatic nucleus." Where an historical documentary like the beautiful, much-admired American film "The Civil War" explains everything it knows, a Heritage Minute leaves a thousand things unexplained, undiscussed, barely evoked.  Its allusions just flicker by, and may not even make sense on a first viewing.  But like commercials or music videos, the Minutes appear over and over. The Foundation offers them free to TV stations, and since they confer valuable Canadian-content points, their total exposure nationwide now runs at more than thirteen hours of airtime every month. To your pleasure or fury, you may already know some of them by heart.

I wasn't in school, either as student or teacher, during the Minutes' heyday, and I probably wasn't a big watcher of the TV channels that needed to run them endlessly to score enough CanCon credits for their automatic licence renewals. I liked and admired the minutes, still do, but I actually did not see them that often. It was only in retrospect that I learned how many people had really been bathed in them during their youth.

Historica-Dominion lives

Down last night to the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in Toronto for the new Historica-Dominion Institute's launching party. I was a little sceptical here about the merger when it was first announced, and boy, did it get noticed. So it is only fair to report that my old and new friends there make a strong case that good things will surely flow from the new institute. And indeed, they still put on lively parties with interesting people.

John A birthday parties: there are prizes

If your school happens to be holding a John A. Macdonald birthday party tomorrow. the Historica-Dominion institute invites you to send a photo of the party for a chance at prizes. Email here or tweet @HDInstitute or seek out Historica-Dominion Institute on Facebook -- by noon on Tuesday, it says.

Call ourselves an institute

What's most striking about the tempest in a teapot over the possible renaming of Ottawa's Wellington Street "Macdonald Avenue" -- is how much the discussion relies on non-academic historians. In coverage I've seen, the debate is led, quite ably, by writer Rob Plamondon (yes, make the change), the Macdonald-Cartier Institute Society(no, don't), Andrew Cohen of Historica-Dominion (yes), and Rudyard Griffiths of the former Dominion Institute (no). Here's a well-sourced story on a matter of historical meaning, and the press doesn't see the need to consult a single professor of history, not even the regular quotables (I'm thinking of you, Des).

I find this a good thing, mostly. We benefit from an engaged, informed historical "public sector" drawing the links between historical meaning and public policy choices. 

But it also reflects what we might call "the silence of the academy" these days. Among the army of Canadianists in our university history departments, there are many busy, dedicated and hardworking scholars, but vanishingly few, it seems, who are writing big books or otherwise disseminating ideas that resonate with broader ideas about Canadian history.  I try to cover the waterfront, looking for big, serious, important contributions about the history of this country... and some days the gleanings seem pretty thin, compared to the historical resources we have.

So I'm starting to read In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia (by Ian McKay and Robin Bates) with added interest. At first glance, it seems to be a professorial attack on history done by people who are not professors. I'm eager to know more, but I wonder if the simple fact that so much history is done by people who are not history professors is going to be a subtext here. 

As for the controversy itself, I like the point of view of Professor Andrew. particularly on the problems in the trend to pedestalizing our prime ministers.

Update, July 13: Petition to save the Wellington Street name is here.

Veterans' Commemoration Day

Last year I was in Vancouver for a Dominion Institute event. When it ended, I headed home but the indefatigable DI warriors Marc and Jeremy jumped in a rental car for the (longer than they thought) drive to Spokane, Washington, to pay their respects to John Babcock, then the last surviving Canadian veteran of the First World War, who had been a supporter of and donor to their Memory Project initiatives. When I heard of Mr Babcock's death last week, I felt I was at one (or is that two) degrees of separation from him

John Babcock and his family having declined the proposal of a state funeral, his bereaved friends at the Historica-Dominion Institute are advocating a national day of commemoration for all who served in that war. Their Facebook campaign page is here.

History NGO merger?

There have been rumours for a couple of years about a merging of Historica (the history foundation founded by big donations from Charles Bronfman and Lynton "Red" Wilson), Canada's National History Society (the foundation midwifed by the Hudson's Bay Company principally known for publishing The Beaver), and The Dominion Institute (the brash upstart foundation launched by a savvy gang of twenty-somethings and committed to giving historical policy flash and flair).

Word was, the feds wanted the merger, since all these orgs are interested in public money, and the feds always prefer one big partner to several independent ones. Various efficiency arguments were floated. But the foundations seemed so different in what they did that a merger seemed most likely to make one big, bloated, directionless mess.

But it must be going again. Yesterday Rudyard Griffiths, impresario of the Dominion Institute, published an op-ed calling for the merger. Rudyard's so connected and savvy that if he's going public, there must be something in the works.

Viola Desmond on the money

Fresh from Halifax, where she witnessed the fulfillment of the long campaign to see an non-royal, non-British woman on some Canadian money, Merna Forster of heroincs.ca sends news of a recent poll by Ipsos (commissioned by Historica) about Canadians' lack of knowledge of women's history:

Canadians are largely unfamiliar with the achievements of notable women throughout Canadian history. As a measure of that lack of awareness, only a minority of respondents say they could identify the achievements of such accomplished Canadian women as artist Emily Carr (37%), author Lucy Maud Montgomery (27%), and suffragette Nellie McClung (16%).

I'm delighted to see Viola Desmond on the ten, and full of admiration for the campaign that put her there. And this is one of a long line of polls on historical knowledge, started by Historica's ancestor The Dominion Institute, which have often been fun and provocative.

But on any subject in Canadian history anyone can run a poll to prove that too little is known by too many Canadians. Every November 11 we are all abused for not knowing Canadian military history, and so on. Here's another well-meaning example from the current Literary Review of Canada:

At an event for her book at Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque late last year, Robyn Maynard asked the audience of about five hundred to raise their hands if they had been taught in school about the two hundred years of Black enslavement in Canada. One man raised his hand. One out of five hundred.

By now everyone is trained; they know the answer they are supposed to give. Do you know the joke about the survey that asked Canadians what month the October Crisis occurred?  Six out of ten responded they did not know -- the schools don't teach enough Canadian history.

 Oh well.  Salute, Viola Desmond.  Merna Forster too.

More on that head of state thing

Andrew Cohen, journalist, thinker, new head of Historica-Dominion, says we need to talk about it. (h/t Andrew Smith)

Last week in the same paper, Dan Gardner argued we need the queen because otherwise the federal government will get to appoint the lieutenant governors. But the feds always have named the lieutenant governors, and it "hasn't tipped the balance" -- as discussed in live-blog #11 on the 1864 Quebec conference.

October 27. Dan Gardner responds:

Your short blog post on my short blog post (which was reprinted in the Ottawa Citizen for some reason) misrepresents what I wrote. I know how L-Gs are appointed. It's a relic of the original vision of the constitution, in which the federal government was clearly the superior of the provinces.

I stuck with the formulation "constitutional symmetry" because, one, it's accurate, and two, it avoided a long detour into constitutional history.

Dan blogs here.

One for Remembrance

I missed Historica-Dominion's recent launch of We Were Freedom, an anthology of oral histories from the institute's Second World War oral history project. But I saw its director Andrew Cohen at one of those Toronto galas we literati spend all our time at when it's this time of year, and he promised me a copy.

Well, no copy yet, but around here we don't need to be bought. It looks like an impressive addition to the substantial shelf of Canadian military history that is out there.

Update, November 16: Book arrives at the door, and handsome it is. Thanks, HDI.

From a kiss to the courts

Constance Backhouse is giving the 2010 Avie Bennett Historica-Dominion Institute Lecture on "From a Kiss to the Courts: Canada's First Capital L Lesbian Sexual Assault Trial."

Date: Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Where: Robert R. McEwen Auditorium, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto
When: 7:30pm, followed by a Q and A and reception
RSVP

This picture is from the promotion for the lecture, not my private collection, I swear. A bit lurid perhaps, but it gets one's attention.

I have heard Constance Backhouse speak on this case before. It's a doozy.
She is described by the announcement as Distinguished University Professor and University Research Chair at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa and she's all of that. She's also the first non-American to head up the American Society for Legal History, a multiple-prize winning author for her three alliteratively titled legal histories: Petticoats and Prejudice, Colour-Coded, and Carnal Crimes and one of the movers and shakers of the Feminist History Society. And an exceptionally nice person. But more to the point, she is a heck of a story teller, and this is one she tells very well.

Willimae Moore was charged with “indecent assault on a female” in the winter of 1955, when she attempted to kiss a fellow stenographer working in Yellowknife.
It was a romantic overture that was unreciprocated and resulted in what appears to be Canada’s first prosecution of a woman for sexually assaulting another woman.

Renowned legal scholar Constance Backhouse will bring this fascinating historical case to life as part of this year’s Backhouse will provide a glimpse into sexual norms and gender roles at the time in the unusual context of Canada’s far north in the Cold War era. She’ll explore some of the most pressing questions about the case, such as: What forces came together in the Northwest Territories in the 1950s to make this possible? How did the police, the courts and the community respond? How did this case differ from the usual prosecution for sexual assault historically?

Samara on parliament, continued

I'm very grateful to Alison Loat of Samara for a long and thoughtful comment my post of yesterday about their latest report.  Her entire response follows.

Thank you for reading and writing on Samara’s last report.  I’m always glad when people read and talk about our work, even if they don’t like it! 

I’m writing in hopes you can both acknowledge and correct errors in the post.  In particular: Samara is not a foundation.  We are a charitable organization.  These are two different legal structures with different purposes. 

 Samara’s annual spend is about $700,000 and we have a national mandate.  While this is still real money, it’s notable that we are one of the smaller organizations doing the sort of work we do (e.g. we’re significantly smaller than nearly every nationally-known think tank and other civically-minded organizations such as the Historica-Dominion Institute or Maytree).   So to characterize us as having “tons of money” requires clarification and context.

 “Funding half the political scientists in the country.”  We do share our work and data with political scientists, graduate and undergraduate students at about 15 universities (there are about 25-30 academics involved; far from half of the country’s stock – although we welcome hearing from any others who are interested).  We do this because our goal is to advance greater understanding of and participation in our democratic system, and universities are one place where this can happen.  Our reports are on syllabuses, our data have been used by academics to advance their own research and teaching, and a few graduate students are building on our findings in their own dissertations.  We are also working on a book with UBC Press and many of our academic collaborators are involved. Most would say these are good things!

[CM: Indeed they are!]

We do provide small stipends from time-to-time to professors or research assistants to help us with our work (e.g., coding of data).  This helps ensure we are methodologically sound. Most think tanks work closely with the academy in different ways (e.g., IRPP, CD Howe); this is not unusual. It is, however, very different from “funding” them.

We also hire an outside public opinion research firm as we do not have this expertise in house.  Again, this is normal practice for many firms and organizations.

 The absence of discussion on accountability: Accountability is a theme Samara has raised numerous times, including in our MP exit interview reports, in regular op-eds and blogs and in many media interviews.  Perhaps we should have placed greater emphasis on it in this report; however, as you likely read, we are hosting a month-long series called “Redesigning Parliament” where contributors, including MPs and others, are asked to suggest ways that Parliament could be made more relevant to the public.  You can follow that project here and you will see discussion of restoring greater accountability.  As well, we’re inviting additional submissions and there is open commenting available, so please feel free to add anything you’d like.

While accountability is certainly central, it’s not always easily understood, particularly for people who aren’t political scientist or experts on Parliament. As such, we do provide space for discussion on other ways that Parliament can be made more relevant, as, in our views, there are many other small, easily-implementable ideas that are also worthy of discussion and may ultimately help get more people interested in the very important topic of our Parliament and democratic life. 

Thank you again for taking the time to read and comment on Samara’s work.

Happy Canada Day

I'm outta here for a few days, and I hope you are too.

I hear Michelle McQuigge is running a Canada Day story in the Toronto Star this weekend, based on conversations with some historians about Canadian history.  Canada.com has a Canada Day package, including a link to one of those Historica-Dominion Institute history quizzes that all serious historian types can ace.

If you really want to spend the day indoors reading historical journals online, Routledge offers a free look--  just until noon on July 2.  Y'know, I might miss that one..

H-Canada reports the journals included in the celebration are:

American Review of Canadian Studies - www.tandfonline.com/RARC Canadian Foreign Policy Journal - www.tandfonline.com/RCFP Canadian Journal of Development Studies - www.tandfonline.com/RCJD Leisure - www.tandfonline.com/RLOI Atmosphere-Ocean - www.tandfonline.com/TATO Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology - www.tandfonline.com/TCJP

From HistoryWire to TCEBlog

There used to be a CanHist blog called History Wire, with a mixed group of contributors somewhat associated with the Canadian Encylopedia and the Historica-Dominion Institute.  It used to mix substantial Canadian history pieces, HDI promotional pieces, and odd personal rants and prejudices. One never quite knew what to expect.

'Tseems HistoryWire is no more. In its place, as of June 30 (at least that's the earliest post found) there is TCE Blog, the blog of The Canadian Encyclopedia.  At a glance it seems to have a strengthened list of contributors, a clearer purpose, and a more ambitious posting schedule.  Notable right now is a series of excerpts from publisher Doug Gibson's about-to-be-published memoir of the Canadian authors he worked with, Stories about Storytellers.