Dare to blog?

American historian and blogger Edward Blum ponders the hazards of "academic blogging." If we only had more academic Canadianists blogging, these thoughts would even more pertinent, but I fear they may mostly intimidate potential starters.

I find troubling the profound concern with academic hierarchy and command and control that Blum expresses, largely to the exclusion of things like intellectual freedom ... and the sheer pleasure of intellectual discussion. To regret the absence of academic peer review from blogs seems to me to misunderstand the value of the medium profoundly.

Update, October 5: Janet Ajzenstat comments:

The best piece of advice I ever got about writing was to put the ideas out when you have them. Don't hoard, don't save for the "big book."
The well fills up.

Top Ten (Fictions) on the Ancient World

Vancouver writer Annabel Lyon, author of the novel of Aristotle, The Golden Mean, provides the latest in The Guardian's long-running Top Ten Books lists.  Hers is Top Ten Books on the Ancient World. Her choices are historical novels when they are not classical texts.

Being wicked: it's not just for witches and musicals any more

It's Christmas in September. Or it feels that way.

Last Friday another new book delivered right to my doorstep.

This one even has a boffo title, which will make lawyers smile, and, it's to be hoped, pique the interest of other Canadians.

Viscount Haldane: 'The Wicked Step-father of the the Canadian Constitution' by University of Guelph professor emeritus Frederick Vaughan is one of this year's publications of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, once again in conjunction with the U of T Press.

Who was Lord Haldane? This is what the U of T press has to say:

Viscount Richard Burdon Haldane was a philosopher, lawyer, British MP, and member of the British Cabinet during the First World War. He is best known to Canadians as a judge of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Canada's highest court of appeal until 1949), in which role he was extremely influential in altering the constitutional relations between the federal parliament and the provincial legislatures.

The latter is the wicked part. How so? Well, you could ask a constitutional historian or you could read the book. I recommend the latter. It's important history and a good story, made better by the depth of analysis and biographic context Vaughan provides.

Toronto Museum Project

Okay, Toronto does not have a museum, but now I find there is Toronto Museum Project: one website, one hundred things, and one hundred Torontonians telling stories linked to them. And plans to grow, I'm told.

(Image: the medal of the International Order of Mothers in Sacrifice, awarded to Maria Gill, the mother of a Torontonian killed in action 1917. And on the TMP page for it, that's my friend Susan C. telling a story related to it.)

History of Question Period

The return of Parliament stimulated a lot of discussion about "making question period work.” Not much of the discussion seemed very encouraging.

Much of the current issue of Policy Options is devoted to the question period question.  Something called the Public Policy Forum held a one-day workshop in Ottawa last week and came up with “top 10 ideas to improve Question Period.”  Many political reporters and columnists also took up the subject. Today Neil Reynolds in the Globe was recycling old Westminster anecdotes, as if Winston Churchill were the only person ever to say anything clever in a legislature.

The PPF’s top ten includes irrelevancies such as “reduce or eliminate the role of parliamentary secretaries in committees.”  And even the more practical proposals show a heavy reliance on what seem like tweaks and gimmicks: adding a few seconds to the length of a question, assigning ministers specific days to answer, forbidding the use of scripted questions.

MP Michael Chong (pdf in Policy Options) begins to approach the fundamentals when he notes that in 1977 the then-Speaker delegated control of question period to the party whips. Party organizers, not the Speaker or the MPs themselves, determine who asks the questions and what they ask about. But the problem that points to is not likely to be solved by the tinkering with the rules he advocates.  

An effective question period requires an effective legislature that has power and responsibility and that needs serious questions and answers in order to do its work. There are 308 MPs in today's House of Commons, but only four who are authorized to think and act: the four party leaders. So how can the others be expected to pose meaningful questions, or even to take the whole thing seriously?  Canada needs to build its legislature before it rebuilds question period.

In a perverse way, it make a kind of sense that today’s MPs cannot ask questions without permission, for today’s MPs cannot do anything without the leader’s permission. If MPs cannot speak, cannot hold opinions, cannot vote, except as directed, how can we expect them to care enough either to ask serious answers or to listen to the answers? Why shouldn't MPs bray and catcall, when there is nothing meaningful they could do even if they got useful and respectful answers?  If they are only there to prop up the leader, why do they get to ask questions in the first place?

We cannot expect serious questions and answers in parliament until we have serious parliamentarians who hold real and serious responsibilities. Men and women who have no freedom to act on what might come out of question period are not going to begin asking useful questions just because they have an extra minute in which to pose them.

Susan Delacourt, veteran reporter for the Toronto Star, has a knack of thinking what bien-pensant Ottawa is thinking. Her take on the question period problem is instructive.  She proposes not more independence for MPs to think and speak, but less. You want to improve question period, she says. Well, who do you know in the PMO?

“The PMO, regardless of stripe, is capable of exercising great control over MPs. If this PMO, or previous ones, had been interested in making QP better, it did/does have the clout to do so.”  

I can just see this at work. The boss walks into the next caucus meeting.  “I want searching serious, insightful respectful questions out of you all from now on. And if you don’t deliver, I’ll kick you right out of the caucus.”

Yeah, that’s going to work fine. “Yes, sir.  What do you want us to be serious and insightful about first, sir?” 

Surely it is the other way round. MPs will not have an incentive to ask meaningful questions until they have power to act on the answers they get, because you cannot empower question period unless you empower the questioners.  Anyone who wants to reform question period needs first to reform the relationship between MPs and leaders.  But I think Susan Delacourt knows what Ottawa is thinking. And that doesn't even make the top 10.

Book Notes: The Wild Ride

Lively writer Charles Wilkins turns to history with a new book from the Vancouver specialty publisher SAD/Stanton Atkins & Dosil: The Wild Ride: A History of the Northwest Mounted Police 1873-1904.  Comes with a blurb by, ah, me....

Queer Ottawa 2: A Place to Call Our Own 1975-1979

In connection to the Sept 12 and Sept 20 posts, we continue the series on tracing the movement of the Gays of Ottawa GO Centre around the Centretown area of Ottawa. The GO Centre was the first visible predominant LGBT space in Ottawa. The popularity of the GO Centre, it could be argued, revealed a market for LGBT social spaces and would subsequently lead to other commercial and service oriented LGBT spaces in the city and the proliferation of an open 'visible' queer identity to which a portion of the LGBT community came to embrace.

Between 1975 and 1979 the GO Centre would move twice due to circumstances beyond the groups control, namely fire and an uncooperative landlord who refused to deal with property safety issues. The first move in 1979 would be short lived and the community centre would moved again in 1979, but this will be dealt with in the next series post. I did have more photographs of articles and pictures from GO Info to supplement everything here, but of course, those files have disappeared somewhere into a digital black hole as well (sigh...this is going to bother me for a while). If anyone is interested in finding these articles I do have a list the dates and where to find the original documents, I just no longer have the images.

In January 1975, as a, “...very important step in GO’s development and proof of our growing success” (GO Info Nov-Dec 1975 issue) the GO Centre moved out of Pestalozzi College and into its own space at 378 Elgin St. (the north-west corner of Elgin and Gladstone streets).  Unfortunately, shortly after moving a fire ripped through a row of businesses in which the Go Centre was a part, as this article from the Ottawa Citizen from 17 February 1975 attests. A picture of the site in its current form follows the article (courtesy of Google Earth), I believe the current shorter large-windowed building replaced the burnt section after the fire but I'm not 100% on it. It's just an assumption from comparing the photos. I'd have to trace the history of the property to know for sure.

 

*Click on the picture above to see the whole article

Gays of Ottawa searched a new home for the GO Centre between February and June 1979. In May they almost moved into a space above Yesterday's Restaurant at the corner of O'Connor and Sparks streets. However, the deal fell through, with Gays of Ottawa citing discrimination as the reason.

After continuing to search the GO Centre moved into 2881/2 Bank St. (near the north-west corner of the intersection of Bank and Somerset streets) in June of  1979. This was short lived, however, as due to landlord refusing to bring the property up to health and safety codes Gays of Ottawa acted on the advice of a lawyer and decided to move once again in Nov of 1979. Below is a current photograph of the location (courtesy of Google Earth). The entrance was where the Tae Kawn Do entrance is now. This space is actually just a short distance down Bank St. from where Pink Triangle Services is currently housed. Pink Triangle Services (PTS) was created out of Gays of Ottawa in the 1980's in order to gain charitable status and to allow Gays of Ottawa to focus on legislative and legal issues while PTS took the educational and social services for the LGBT community.

Jordan Kerr
http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

Remarks on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Statue of L.B. Pearson on Parliament Hill...

It's not my day to post, but I think this is worth sharing and as to not take up space in Chris's blog I've posted it to my own.

Jordan Kerr

Every day should be Museum Day

Tomorrow, Saturday, September 25 is Museum Day in the United States.  With leadership from the Smithsonian Institution, some 1300 museums across the USA are offering printable online coupons for free entry.  If you are south of the border, take in a museum. (The interactive map at the link above identifies all the participants.)  Far as I can tell, Canadian museums are not part of the project.

Speaking of museums, I recently took in "The Warrior Emperor and China's Terracotta Army" at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An exemplary museum exhibit, I would say. It only runs until the New Year. Go if you can.

There's the intrinsic interest. The exhibit only has ten of the many thousands of terracotta figures, and seeing them here cannot be anything like seeing their serried ranks in situ. But they still impress. And in exchange the exhibit offers us Westerners a powerful introduction to the world of Qin Shihuangdi, the "First Emperor" who unified China by conquest in 221 BCE, and who had the army fashioned as one small element in the tomb he prepared for himself.

Qin's conquest was preceded by five hundred years of "the warring states period" -- long enduring nations, enormous battles, political intrigues, cultural shifts and borrowings. It is a whole massive period of vastly complicated history -- and largely unknown to us for whom the doings of, say, Pericles, or Rameses or Charlemagne or Napoleon, are familiar historical and cultural icons.  It's a bigger place than we often realize, the human past. This exhibit immerses in one big story from it.

The ROM exhibit present its story very effectively in a very historical show. The artifacts are presented not simply as artifacts for artistic appreciation, but as integral parts of a historical exposition on war and culture in China 600 BCE to 200 BCE: the warring states, the life and consequences of Qin Shihuangdi, his megalomaniac afterlife planning, and the era that followed. The whole thing is well-designed and cleverly presented, and the exhibit texts are intelligent and appropriate.  Bravo, ROM.

Just a little melancholy thought: imagine if we had a museum in Toronto that would apply this kind of talent and passion and resources to a Canadian history subject. I wonder if that might be on new director Janet Carding's horizon, at all.

History hits the road

Ouch! Fifteen tons worth of Andrew Marr's new history of Britain -- scattered all over the motorway after a truck accident

History of blogging

Blog, and you take your life in your hands?

This is about as unconfessional a blog as you are likely to find. But I have been impressed recently by the experience of a blogger who managed to antagonize the blogosphere.

Todd Henderson, a law professor in Chicago and contributor to the blog "Truth on the Market" (mostly about economics from a conservative, free-markets point of view) recently posted the argument that although he is a a law professor and his wife is a doctor and they earn maybe $400,000, they really do not have a penny to spare and simply cannot afford to have President Obama discontinue the Republicans' special tax concessions for people earning over $250,000.

The thing went viral. Economist and blogger Brad DeLong tore the arguments to shreds (one of his posts is here), and the post became widely cited as evidence of the delusional self-entitlement of the powerful and well-to-do. Henderson began to be deluged with hostile commentary and, he says, personal attacks, both in blogs and emails. (And back home his wife told him he shouldn't have been exposing their life online anyway.) Apparently terrified by the response he had provoked, trying to get away from the whole thing, the professor removed the controversial post from the blog.

But the blogosphere doesn't like being denied the material it is engaged with. DeLong retrieved and posted the original Henderson post here.

Now Henderson has announced he cannot take it anymore and has abandoned blogging altogether. ("I was a fool, and I didn’t anticipate how this kind of thing could happen.")

Lessons for bloggers? It is true that having Professor Henderson present his views and having them exposed to critical scrutiny has been a small but useful contribution to the debate on an important matter of public policy -- just what blogging is good at. But any blogger may have that chilly sensation: what if the blogosphere rose up and came after me for something I innocently posted, on the assumption that only my usual three like-minded readers would ever see it.


Seems to me, however, Professor Henderson needs to carry on. His pain is as nothing compared to those who antagonize the mullahs or blog in China. If you can't stand by what you say, in the end you cannot say anything. I find myself thinking along the lines of "if you can't stand the heat..."


Peripherally related: yesterday I heard a digital marketing consultant's story. His CEO client tells him, "Look at what young people put on Facebook! Who is ever going to hire them?" Consultant: "It's the other way round. If all the young people are doing that on Facebook, who are you going to hire? Or does your company want to be the one that hires the only kid in Canada not on Facebook?"  One way or another, you are out there. Get used to it.

Update Sept 23: University Diaries has the last word:

In a dark and drear room on the quad
Sits a man quite abandoned by God:
“We make half a million
But not a gazillion.
Dear Lord, can you hear me? It’s Todd.”

Dalhousie Prof Makes Good

Shirley Tillotson rocks. As does tax law history. Seriously.

Says the Canadian Historical Review:

Congratulations to Shirley Tillotson, who was chosen as the English-language recipient of the Hilda Neatby Prize, 2010, sponsored by the Canadian Committee on Women's History. Dr. Tillotson was awarded this prize at the Canadian Historical Association's annual meeting in May, held at Concordia University. The prize is awarded to the best English-language academic article deemed to make an original and scholarly contribution to the field of women's and gender history. Dr. Tillotson won for her article, "The Family as Tax Dodge: Partnership, Individuality, and Gender in the Personal Income Tax Act, 1942 to 1970", which was published in the Canadian Historical Review, 90:3 (2009): 391-425. Her article was described by the awards jury as making 'a major contribution to our understanding of the welfare state, the family economy, feminist theory and political history.'

Chris likes pictures. So here's one of Shirley from the Dal History website. And one of Hilda Neatby from the University of Regina Archives and Special Collections 80-8-16.
via the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan.

























Update, September 22: From Shirley Tillotson (Shirley[dot]Tillotson[at]Dal[dot]ca):

Thanks for starting a tax history thread. It's true -- tax history is SO interesting!

There's an Americanist historian in France, Romain Huret, who has a fine blog on the history of tax "refusals" in the United States. He and Nicholas Delalande have organized a conference this fall, where Elsbeth Heaman of McGill and I are presenting papers. Details here.

David Tough, a doctoral student at Carleton, is working on a thesis about the intellectual history of the early federal income tax.

There are a million great stories to track down in tax history. What about the work of poll tax collectors in the 1920s through the 1960s? This kind of head tax was often called a bachelor's tax, because it was usually only paid by men and only by men who didn't own a home or other real estate. (An M.A. student here at Dal this year might take up this project, if you're a grad student, check in with me to talk about sharing the subject.) And the municipal income taxes! The scandals around how those were dodged give a fascinating look into the real world of municipal wheeling and dealing in the late 19th century.The abolition of the war income tax in Newfoundland must be another great story, part of the background to the events of 1934. And there are so many more possible topics. I'd be happy to hear from anyone working on tax history.

Book Notes: Histories of Spies and Painters

Even though it includes some scandalous revelations about British skullduggery, the most impressive thing about Keith Jeffery's Secret History of MI6 may be the small print on the copyright page: 

Published with the permission of The Secret Intelligence Service and the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Jeffery, a history professor at Queen's University Belfast, was commissioned by the British intelligence service to write and publish its history.  The Brits have concluded that freedom of information includes information about even its intelligence services -- or at least their activities decades ago.


The Canadian security-intelligence bureaucracy, regrettably, is still code-red secret even about its activities before and during the Second World War. Some years ago, when I profiled Wesley Wark, the leading historian of Canadian intelligence operations, he told me about how British historians used their intelligence connections to help convince the agencies of the need for genuine and open historical study of the field. Wark also described the history of Canadian secret agencies he had written -- but he couldn't let me or anyone else read it.  He'd been given access to all the sources, but only on condition that his history become as classified as they are.

Official secrecy is not the only obstacle to publication historians may face. Yesterday's Globe had a James Bradshaw story (not in the online ed, it seems) of the difficulties Iris Nowell had getting her history of the Canadian abstract expressionists, Painters Eleven: The Wild Ones of Canadian Art, into print, as one publisher after another flinched from the cost of reproducing PE's artworks. After a lot of fundraising in the fine-art community, the book is now out from Vancouver's Douglas & McIntyre, "an argument for the group's importance artistically as well as a tribute to the 'vigorous challenge to the stuffy status quo' of the Canadian art establishment mounted by these 'wild ones'."  


Also a record of some hot art parties Nowell got to attend, Bradshaw suggests.

The big questions of history

What are the intellectual and ethical responsibilities of historians? What different futures can be imagined when hidden episodes of the past are revealed? What is memory and how has it been made and re-made over time? What role does forgetting play in remembering? How do historic sites work -- and how do they not work -- to commemorate a place, a person, or an event? How do people make history? How does history make people? How have people resisted, joined together, and won? And what impact does place have on who we are, on what we do, and on what we dream?

Damned if I know. But these are the questions to be resolved at the Canadian Historical Association's AGM in Fredericton next spring. And they are looking for contributors. Details here.

Wheel story has legs

Went down to Queen's Park in Toronto yesterday to watch a little of the bike race featuring Tour de France competitors Ryder Hesjedal and Mike Barry, feeling just a little pumped about the Toronto Star story on Hesjedal's new fame that references my column on biking history from a recent Canada's History:

While the 29-year-old from Victoria makes his living on sleek, carbon-fibre bikes that are feats of engineering, the image he chose to brand a fundraising campaign to help aspiring Canadian cyclists was the penny farthing, an absurd-looking contraption with a huge front wheel and tiny back wheel that is widely regarded as the first bicycle.

The slogan on T-shirts being sold for the campaign — Wheelmen Ride Bicycles - came from an article in Canada’s History magazine last summer that resonated with Hesjedal and childhood buddy Cody Graham. The story was about Hesjedal, the Tour de France and the Wheelmen, a different breed of cyclists who formed clubs in Canada in the late 1800s.

It was my smart editors at the magazine who came up with the headline "Wheelmen Ride Bicycles" for my column. Now Ryder's people are using the line for their website promoting access to cycling: Wheelmen.ca

Photo: Well, I guess Hesjedal himself was going so fast yesterday that my shot missed him! Some other terrific Canadian cyclists are in there.

Queer Ottawa No. 1: The Beginnings 1971-1975

My research followed Gays of Ottawa and its GO Centre, the community/bar and administrative centre of the organization, and argued that as it moved into various locations around the centretown area of Ottawa between 1971 to 1995 it served as a performative catalyst (tweaking Judth Butlet's perfomativity theory) in the proliferation of both identity and identifiable spaces. It helped foster an visible gay community for those who participated in the public culture of the gay liberation and rights movement in Ottawa and hence also fostered the holding of LGBT nights at straight owned establishments and eventually full-time Queer commercial spaces. I traced the GO Centre and other LGBT spaces using the GO Info newsletter. Below is the front cover of the inaugural issue. From the beginning Gays of Ottawa situated itself as bi-lingual as the Ottawa and Gatineau-Hull LGBT communities was essentially one.

This series, because I only have photographs for the GO Centre, will focus on the movement of the GO Centre. Other commercial LGBT social spaces not directly affiliated with GO (Gays of Ottawa) were identified but won't be included. If you'd like to know the ones I identified simply contact me or Chris and I can send you a chronological list and of when they appeared/changed names. The essay was split into six chronological periods, so I'll include two per post. I would be happy to stand corrected on any information I put forward.

1971-1972:

152 Metcalfe St. - St. George's Anglican Church

Gays of Ottawa first met at 152 Metcalfe St. in the basement of St. Georges Anglican Church. This photograph is from the first issue of GO Info (July 1972), the newsletter published by Gays of Ottawa. This not an official GO Centre but was the first central meeting place for newly formed the organization. I do believe the inaugural meeting was held on Sept 14, 1971 and was at the church. Below is a current photograph of St. Georges courtesy of Google Earth.

1972-1975:

160 Chapel St. - Pestalozzi College

The first official GO Centre at Pestalozzi College at 160 Chapel St. (at Rideau) was described as , “...a liberation, information, and distress centre...(to)...serve as the headquarters of GO, a drop-in centre for the gay community, and a locale for organizing, printing...etc.” (from Aug-Sept 1972 issue of GO Info). LGBT dances were beginning to be held at the college while the group was meeting at St. George's and had not yet obtained space at Pestalozzi. Below, the high rise apartment is where the college was. I'm not sure, but I believe it's the same building as the college was more communal living than actual educational institution. However, I could be way off on that one. Whatever it was the fact remains that Gays of Ottawa had their first community centre there. The photograph is taken on Chapel St. with Rideau St. intersecting. Photograph also courtesy of Google Earth.

Enjoy, 

Jordan Kerr

http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

Book Notes: Benedict XVI and Charles I

Apparently Pope Benedict XVI has landed in Britain without being arrested. But he has a formidable opponent on his trail: British/Australian barrister Geoffrey Robertson. In his new book The Case of the Pope, Robertson, a distinguished prosecutor in international war-crimes tribunals, seeks to fix upon Pope Benedict "command responsibility" for the crimes and cover-ups committed under his authority.

I haven't read The Case of the Pope, but Robertson's previous book was a historical tour de force.

The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold, from 2005, is both a tribute to John Cooke, the lawyer who prosecuted King Charles I of Britain in 1649, and a spirited argument that that trial was the first true war-crimes trial, the first demonstration that the law can and must hold heads of state responsible for acts of tyranny committed in their name and at their direction. It's also a vigorous survey of English constitutional development in the seventeenth century, and Robertson has strong views on the subject. He much prefers the head-chopping republicanism of 1649 over "the constitutional milk-soppery" of the 'glorious revolution' of 1688-9, which merely produced lasting constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy in Britain.  But if the new book is anything like the previous one, the Pope has something new to worry about.  (Charles I thought he was under divine protection too.)

From Rocking the Cradle to Rocking the Boat

To rocking the world.

The Feminist History Society has just launched its inaugural volume, Feminist Journeys/Voies feministes, a collection edited by Marguerite Andersen.

The book of the year is included with membership in the society ($100, of which $30 is tax-receipted).

I just received my copy in the mail, and it looks like a keeper.

Book Notes: Charlotte Gray's Gold Diggers

Book reviewing may be dying in the newspapers, but with praise like this on the editorial page, who needs it?

Something has gone awry over the past decade and a half in Canadian non-fiction writing: Charlotte Gray has not won one of the country’s leading book prizes. Perhaps this year, that oversight will be corrected, once judges get to read her latest book, Gold Diggers.

What a fascinating, rich account Ms. Gray’s book presents of one of the most astonishing moments in Canadian history: the Klondike gold rush.

-- from Jeffrey Simpson's column in the Globe and Mail today.

(Meanwhile a British newspaper headlines "The lonely death of the real-life Charlotte Gray." But that's someone else entirely.)

Parler Fort -- new talk series at Toronto's Fort York

My friends the Friends of Fort York announce "Parler Fort," a series of historical talks at and about Fort York in Toronto.  The first, on September 27, features historians Donald Smith and Margaret Sault on the history of the Mississauga First Nation in the early 19th century and since.  (Details here - scroll down.)

Book Notes: MacSkimming on Laurier

In 2007 editor, cultural bureaucrat and homme de lettres Roy MacSkimming made John A. the subject of a well-received novel, Macdonald. Now he's moved on to Laurier. Laurier in Love is newly published by Thomas Allen Publishers.

MacSkimming is not the first to make prime ministers into fictional characters. He acknowledges that Heather Robertson's 1983 novel Willie, about Mackenzie King was an inspiration.  And Richard Rohmer once wrote a book called John A's Crusade, which must be one of the very worst of Canadian historical novels -- John A. undertakes a secret mission in Russia in 1867. 

Others?  Linda Griffiths's Maggie and Pierre (1981) was a terrific piece of theatre, partly because Griffiths played - brilliantly - both lead characters. 

Now you don't have to choose

...between history and geography.

Arm chair and other travellers and all who like their history event-centred take note: a new wiki promises interactive global "points of interest" in which 'point' connotes time, space and incident.

So far, only a handful of POIs, but of those a high percentage are Canadian (read Great Lakes region.)

I couldn't discover the identities of the initiators, nor how the contributions are to be vetted, if at all, but the announcement came from a most respectable source, Professor Timothy Pearson of the History Department at McMaster.

Queering Ottawa's History

Hello Everyone,

This past August the Ottawa LGBT community held Capital Pride week with a historic theme in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Pride events in the nations capital. Coincidentally, last term I took an urban history course and ended up researching LGBT spaces in Ottawa. From this research came a tracing of LGBT spaces in the city from 1971 to 1995. With photographs and information largely gleaned from GO Info, a longstanding community newsletter/paper published by Gays of Ottawa (this name would change several times over its existence), I plan on highlighting some of these spaces over a series of posts.

In what was really my first serious archival experience, tracing historical spaces in the city which I live has given me a new perspective on sights and spaces that normally blend into the background of everyday life. I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences. I call it a 'historical gaze', the attempt to picture and formulate past actions in a particular historical geography, and while it may be based on research, I know it is rooted to a certain extent in nostalgia and idealistic misunderstood perceptions of the past and its historical geography. I found that when you actually study spaces and engage with its historical characters (moreso than just visiting explicitly historical spaces ie. forts) their present everyday meaning and image changes permanently. By uncovering (perhaps positioning is a better word...as history is always full of the historian's perceptions) a space's human legacy the space itself seems to become more intimately human than in its present form. Perhaps call it a form of historical fiction. Ooops, sorry for ranting!

To start off the series check out this clip of the first LGBT demonstration on Parliament Hill in 1971. For those who know the name, that's Charles Hill giving the speech. The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives provides a contextual article that accompanies the clip.

For those interested in readings, Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada (Tom Warner, U of T Press, 2002) is an excellent, though unapologetically biased account,  history of the gay rights movements in Canada. Warner makes several references to Ottawa. A portion of the book is available via Google Books. Also, Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile recently published The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation (U BC Press, 2010) that I haven't read but I'm told there is a section on Ottawa. Though not concerned with Ottawa I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't mention a personal favourite article by David S. Churchill, "Mother Goose's Map: Tabloid Geographies and Gay Male Experience in 1950s Toronto" (Churchill, David S. "MOTHER GOOSE'S MAP." Journal of Urban History 30.6 (September 2004): 826-852.) See here for the abstract to the article.


Keep watching for the upcoming posts and I promise they won't all be this long! Perhaps those of you who live in Ottawa will recognize some of the spaces!

Jordan Kerr

Update: I just glanced through my photographs of GO Info from my research and found that I'm missing about 9 years of the newspaper.... (sarcastic) awesome. They were backed up but I think they're gone due to a computer glitch that wrecked havoc on some of my school files. For those who have are ever lost precious research files I know you share my pain!

Update, September 16: Reader Douglas Copp responds:

Saw your post about Ottawa's Queer History, and was glad to read that you had compiled a fair bit of info.

I suggest you contact the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives in Toronto if you haven't already. You may find that they can fill in some of the gaps in your research AND they would probably be happy to incorporate everything you have found into their records.

Thanks for your contribution to telling our stories.

What our contributors do...

...when they are not blogging here. Mary Stokes's new paper noted at the (American) Legal History Blog.  Tho' how she knows so much about "Onatrio" beats me.

Canadian history is where you find it

The lively history blog Historiann celebrates the inclusion of an excerpt from a book by Ann Little (aka Historiann) in one of the leading American anthologies in women's history.  And, who knew, it's a piece about women in New France. Well, New England women in New France, anyway.

She also gets to coin the word "historianthologized," which is pretty good in itself.

HIstorical Encyclopedia

I missed this a couple of days ago, but The Canadian Encyclopedia Online was right to draw attention to the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Canadian Encyclopedia Offline on September 6.

I had one teeny little entry in TCE then. Still do, come to think of it. And it hasn't changed much, except now my text is complemented by hyperlinks, photos, and suggestions for further online exploration.

Which is as an encyclopedia today should be.

In Wikipedia, Dief is the chief again

Today the "featured article" in Wikipedia is a long entry on the Canadian federal election of 1957.

On a quick look, it looks like pretty decent coverage of that event (and indeed, much of its background too). Hmmm, wonder who wrote it? Unlike more contentious or more popular Wikipedia topics, it does not have that rewritten-into-incoherence too-many-cooks flavour. Not yet at least.

Lurker goes public

Greetings, gentle readers,

I am another of Chris's blog 'interns.' I am a doctoral student doing legal history at Osgoode Hall Law School, York U., and long time fan of this blog, and Chris has kindly (?) invited me to contribute occasional guest posts. His suggestions were for reflections on graduate student life and legal history, with the proviso that the posts have to be in some way related to Canadian history, as per the blog name. (A proviso I plan to challenge, or at least problematize, in a future post.)

I confess to some trepidation. I love blogs. I could read them all day long. (Note to my supervisor: no, this is not how I spend all my time.) But to date I have only lurked, with the exception of a couple of emails sent to Chris. (I was one of the snotty readers who told him to use the advanced search option to find entries in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography online.)

When I mentioned my blog fears to a colleague, he laughed, pointing out (correctly) that I am one of the mouthiest people in any class--why be shy about blabbing all over the web?

Why indeed? Is it because of my secret identity as a lawyer--operating with 'an abundance of caution' as the saying goes? But there are lots of lawyers who blog happily--Chris included.

More likely, it's a grad student thing. As a general rule grad students like to proclaim--loudly--on the failings of our betters. We like to talk, and don't like to write, probably because writing makes you an easier target for other sophomoric critics.

Now no doubt this is not true of you, dear reader, if you are, or were, a grad student, but it is of me, I'm afraid to say. But just as we have to pay the piper by presenting our own work at conferences when we would much rather just sit and carp, so eventually do we have to put our ideas in writing and take our punches. That is if we ever want to stop being grad students (in the good way, by a successful dissertation defense.)

Unfortunately, there is none of the funding, or even credentialing (ouch!) for blogging for Chris which makes conference presenting palatable. But like so many difficult things in life, it's probably good for the soul.

And good practice. So here I go, the first day of the rest of my life as a recovering lurker and in hopes of some day being an ex-grad student (in the good way.)

Akenson bait: the Irish prairies

What variations on the theme of land possession drew the Irish to the prairies of Canada, the Scottish to the Appalachians, and the English to Australia and New Zealand?

From a review of an essay collection on the British "land question" at the website Reviews in History, previously unknown to me but noted by Andrew Smith.

Historians in the world

Chronicle of Higher Education's profile of American historian, writer, Dylanologist, and political commentator Sean Wilentz makes me wonder what Canadian scholars could support this kind of coverage, and who would write or publish it if they did. Maybe Tom Flanagan.

Guest Intro & Log Driver's Waltz as nostalgia?

Hello Everyone,

Christopher Moore has graciously allowed me to intern as a contributor to his blog for the upcoming school term. I'm a 4th year Canadian history undergraduate student in Ottawa and I hope to post about once a week on various topics usually having to do with Canadian history. If anyone's interested, I keep a blog of my own on Canadian history, though other topics of interest occasionally find their way in.

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For recent Canadian cultural history exam I was re-introduced to The Log Driver's Waltz, an old NFB Vignette from 1979. For me it brings back some childhood memories from seeing it on TV and is just a pleasant piece of historic Canadiana, regardless of its possible nostalgic aspects.

In the essay I made a surface connection of the film being a nostalgic and romantic expression of the log driving culture in Canada during a time when it was fading out of the industry. Perhaps connected to the same nostalgia that placed a log driving image on the the back of the 1970's to 1980's Canadian One dollar bill?

The observation was a shot in the dark so I'm interested to know if I was onto anything. Would anyone with knowledge on the history of the log driving industry in Canada be able to say yae or naye to this observation/connection?
 

Enjoy and whether I was wrong or not I hope this brings back memories!

Jordan Kerr
http://randomunistudent.blogspot.com/

New year, new contributors

I've been out of school a long time, but I can still accept this week as a new year's beginning. To that end, we have a new feature here. Readers may some new signatures under the posts here from time to time and, with any luck, more variety in the postings. Not that I'm going away....

History of historical fiction here and there

In Britain they think Wolf Hall has made the historical novel respectable. Odd, in Canada it has been respectable long enough that Russell Smith, maybe our best younger writer, is sick to death of it.

Writing about the past is something I’ve been quite stern about in recent years, just because – in this country, anyway – that activity so dominates the literary landscape. The preoccupation with history has always seemed to me to reflect a disdain for the present, as if the present were trivial or corrupt in some way.

There's some history here, as I noted myself in a 2001 introduction to a fiction collection called Story of A Nation. It's not that long ago that the historical novel was very much an outlier in Canadian literature.

In 1993, when Douglas Glover brought out a novel of eighteenth-century loyalty and terrorism, The Life and Times of Captain N. ... a reviewer felt obliged to write: "I'm loath to say that Douglas Glover has written a historical novel, though he has. Wait! Don't stop reading!"

But then Jane Urquhart's Away exploded, and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, and Guy Vanderhaege's Englishman's Boy and Wayne Johnston's Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and Fred Stenson's The Trade, until it seemed that novels about the Canadian past were what all Canada's leading novelists were engaged in... perhaps inevitably producing Smith's reaction against the whole trend.

I don't share Smith's idea that historical novels reflect disdain for the present. A lot of them surely have a kind of autobiography in them (as does much non-fiction history, loath as we are to admit it). Where did here come from seems a legitimate fictional pre-occupation, and it's where quite a few of the novels above take flight.

The deeper problem is how damn hard they are to bring off, I think. Henry James said something about their "fatal cheapness," which he found rooted in the near-impossibility of bringing off "the representation of the old consciousness...of individuals in whose minds half the things that make ours, that make the modern world, were non-existent." Hard enough for a novelist to evoke the manners all around us; how to do it for the manners of vanished societies?

But the real problem with history in fiction is that history is always at bottom an argument about the past -- historians float interpretations of the past, and we look sceptically at them. Is that how it was? But a novel suspends disbelief. If it makes it feel true, it is true. The historical novel is inevitably dogmatic about the past it evokes. We lose all that ability to argue and doubt and revise our grasp of human existence that history offers. Which is, of course, the pleasure of the thing.

Wolf Hall, mind you, does offer a powerful new idea of Thomas Cromwell and where modernity and honour lay in the court of Henry VIII. Hell of a good novel. So's Smith's Girl Crazy.

Update, September 3: Jordan Kerr:

The suspended disbelief of historical novels can be placed on historical films as well. Inevitably, every time a historically themed movie comes out there is a huge outburst about its accuracy. But, as you put, maybe the innacuracy as in novels is part of the experience of consuming the past. The best examples that come to mind are Brave Heart, Titantic, and 10,000 BC.

Update, September 6. Dave McGowan comments:

I’ve just read your historical fiction post and …

I’m always a little upset when people rail against historical fiction. That includes the “romance” branch of historical fiction even though I have no use for it myself.

Yes, I’ve tried to read some of the “romance” variety, and even forced myself through a couple of examples. That was because it was well written and contained interesting views of historical events of which I already had some (perhaps very small) knowledge. In general, however I usually find it far too filled with “sugar” and fear it will lead to diabetes.

In general, however, historical fiction in all its costumes is, for me, the best entertainment available in either book or film.

As to the statement that historical fiction “reflects a distain for the present”… nothing could be further from the truth. Historical fiction gives an explanation, sometimes more than one, of how we arrived at the present. Often times this explanation is no more than a theory since the author must rely for his research from “historical” records. The writer of these records may have had, as most humans do, a serious bias for or against the very subject he was documenting.

And this leads to an important observation you have made. As you have written, “If it makes it feel true, it is true”. This is both strength for historical fiction and a weakness of some history. If an historical record doesn’t feel right it might not be. If people don’t generally act in that way, perhaps they didn’t … or perhaps, since pressures in the past were different than they are today, perhaps they did. On the other hand if the reader of a historical fiction is comfortable with the way the characters act in a given situation, perhaps the author has presented a plausible theory of what transpired.

I have a great deal of difficulty accepting Canadian history as it is presented in our schools and colleges. I find it much easier to accept as presented in Vanderhaege's Englishman's Boy. In the Cypress Hills massacre depicted in Englishman’s Boy there were three groups involved; the Assiniboine, the local traders and the wolfers. Depending on who wrote the “historical” account one of those groups was responsible for the massacre (most often the wolfers) and the other two were either innocent or marginal participants. In most fictionalized accounts they were all guilty of actions which contributing to achieving the resultant deaths.


I can believe the wolfers hated Indians and went out of their way to kill some. That was the general attitude at the time and wolfers had a very bad reputation even among whites. I can’t believe that the Assiniboine were innocent targets. I also think the traders were deeply involved in the hate and the killing. It was part of the times.

Update, September 7: Jordan Kerr responds:

Hi Dave,

Your comment, "I have a great deal of difficulty accepting Canadian history as it is presented in our schools and colleges," made me think of a recent survey of Ontario historical textbooks in the 20th century that I came across....http://activehistory.ca/papers/history-paper-5/

Perhaps it will be of interest.

Cropmarks....

... no, not crop circles left by aliens. Archaeological journalist Heather Pringle explains that crop marks are legit. British archaeologists have been taking advantage of unique weather conditions to find 'em all over Britain this year, and she describes some of the findings.

Does anyone do this in southern Ontario or the prairies, I wonder?