History of magazine writing

Wonder why the writing in so many magazines seems so ... amateurish?  Michael Harris in Medium has a well documented explanation.  It's the pay rate, which has stagnated for fifty years and more.

Beyond the basic numbers, writers also told me about a grab bag of smaller frustrations and indignities that make the economics of their job problematic: checks that arrived on a geologic time scale while the landlord still charges monthly; publications squeezing out reprint, TV, and film rights; editors who assign and fix pay for pieces at word counts they know writers will likely exceed to meet the scope of the assignment.

Harris's material is all American. Canadian experience is less documented but surely worse. The Periodical Writers of Canada changed its name to Professional Writers of Canada years ago, because hardly any of its members seriously working as writers worked for periodicals anymore,

Fort York, Stephen Otto, and the city of Toronto

Fort York has guarded the Toronto shoreline since 1793, but landfill and development have steadily moved the shoreline away from it. In the twentieth century it stood surrounded by light industry and transit corridors that include an elevated freeway. All through the 20th century, groups of historically-minded Torontonians protected it from development threats. It has been a national historic site since 1923.

By the end of the century, with rising property values and more intense planning projects throughout central Toronto, a strictly negative idea of merely holding back development to "save the fort" seemed mostly to emphasize the potential risk to it.

Around that time, heritage activists and planners began a different initiative:  not so much resisting development as demonstrating how Fort York could be an asset to a reshaped waterfront and a re-imagined Toronto. They pitched the idea that Fort York and Garrison Common around it were a key cultural landmark in the city, as well as the largest green space in the densely used area just west of downtown. They laid out plans for how, as the area around it was transformed for industrial and commercial uses to high-density residential development, the Fort and its environs should become the heart of the new neighbourhood, offering community gathering space, pedestrian and bike corridors, recreational space, and cultural value. 

Most of this has actually come to pass. Thousands of apartment and condo-dwellers now live in "the Fort York district," the site's much lauded new visitor centre provides community space, and the green space, newly made accessible with pathways and bridges, has become the community back yard, even as the fort's programming, particularly for the garrison common, has become open to music events, food fairs, indigenous powwows, and other crowd-friendly events.  Preserving Fort York has become an asset not an obstacle to the blossoming of the new neighbourhood around it.

Much of the credit for this goes to Stephen Otto.  Stephen was an Ontario heritage department official, a major scholar of early Toronto and Upper Canada with deep Ontario roots.   He was private, polite, and reserved, but at the same time a formidable activist for creative integration of heritage and urban planning, and a remarkable organizer of talent, energy and money around historical and heritage causes -- Fort York perhaps central among them.  "Stephen is a fine fellow, but very hard to say no to," summed him up very nicely.

Stephen was inducted into the Order of Canada in January in a special ceremony in Toronto, when he was already in palliative care.  He died on April 22, and there is a memorial service at old Toronto's school, Trinity College, on Saturday. 

Who will I go to for little points in Ontario history no one else has at their fingertips? 

Image: Fife and Drum. Friends of Fort York     

J. Keith Johnson (1930-2018), historian of Upper Canada

Archivist, Carleton University professor, and busy historian of Upper Canada/Canada West/Ontario, Keith Johnson died recently. Full obituary here.

His contributions to Canadian history include editing the Canadian Directory of Parliament and Affectionately Yours: The Letters of Sir John A. Macdonald and his Family and his books Becoming Prominent: Regional Leadership in Upper Canada and In Duty Bound: Men, Women and the State in Upper Canada.

I remember Keith as an editor of Histoire sociale/Social History who used to invite me to write reviews on a nice range of scholarly books.  His survivors include Jill Vickers, a founder of feminist political science and former Carleton prof.

Shakespeare's Birthday/World Book Day/Getting Names Right(ish)

It's Shakespeare's birthday.  Also World Book and Copyright Day.

And speaking of words: Tsilhqot'in or Chilcotin? First Nation or indigenous or Indigenous? Cindy Blackstock recommends the Indigenous Peoples Glossary, Second Edition, for sorting out these issues of respect and accuracy.

Chris visits a Canadian grave: Adam Fergusson Blair

At the Lawyers Guns and Money blog, I frequently find myself reading the "Erik Visits an American Grave" feature. Erik Loomis, a prof of American history and pillar of LGM, is relentless in visiting graves of famous and obscure Americans from across the centuries and riffing on the website about their intriguing and often revelatory lives. I'm not nearly so energetic in grave-visiting as Loomis evidently is, but today I'm stealing his gimmick.

Recently in Burlington, Ontario, we happened on the grave of Adam Fergusson Blair beside the 1832 Anglican church of St. Luke's. A plaque salutes him as first President of the Privy Council of the Dominion of Canada.

Blair, a veteran Reform politician, was one of those who refused to leave the confederation coalition in 1867 when George Brown was striving to rebuild the Reform/Tory polarities and John A Macdonald was striving to create the illusion of a big-tent by coopting some Reformers into his election team.

It didn't work out well for Fergusson Blair.  He died in December, six months after Confederation, and John A. offered his seat to Joseph Howe.  The DCB has Fergusson Blair's biography here.

Supreme Court "free beer" decision: good history, good law

I was on my way to a conference yesterday when my phone told me the Supreme Court of Canada had unanimously overthrown a lower court's finding that s.121 of the British North America Act prevents the provinces from taking steps to manage and encourage economic and social development within their boundaries. Since the SCC's position is pretty much what I had proposed in an expert witness affidavit that became part of the case, I was kinda chuffed. (Full text of the decision is here.  And my affidavit is here.)

I'm happy enough that the SCC decision makes not the slightest reference to my evidence -- historians should make history, not law, and the judges start out by rejecting the notion that any particular expert's opinion should overturn settled law.

Still, of all the historical evidence presented to the various courts drawn into this controversy, mine is most compatible with the constitutional vision set out by the Supreme Court: mainly, that the overarching principle of the constitution is a federal one, in which the provinces are responsible governments whose powers and responsibilities cannot be arbitrarily wrenched away, either by a higher level of government or by a few words torn out of context from the constitutional document.

I'm claiming the win. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in the land.

Update, 25 April: Andrew Smith, the principal historical consultant to the losers in Comeau, declares that he has been sustained by the Supreme Court  -- though the lawyers who retained him are pretty clear that they took a shellacking. Smith's blog has also praised and linked to this analysis by legal scholar Leonid Sirota, who also understands what a firm rejection the court delivered to the vision of an all-powerful s.121. 

HIstories of Books and Readers

I had an email the other day from a woman in Virginia. Her ancestors, she knew, had been living around Syracuse, New York, since at least the 1880s. But she recently learned that for the hundred years before that, they had lived in Upper Canada/Ontario, having settled there in 1787 as loyalist refugees whose farmland in the Thirteen Colonies had been confiscated by vengeful American authorities.

Thank you for writing The Loyalists which I just finished reading this week. I enjoyed reading it and learned so much.  ... I did not know until a few years ago that my 18th century ancestor was a Loyalist, nor did I understand what that meant. I greatly appreciated being able to learn so much history from your book.

I wrote back to say how I appreciated how a book I wrote decades ago could still be making friends and providing useful information in such unpredictable ways, and she wrote back:

You will laugh... I bought your book 10 years ago, started reading it, but didn't finish it. So, a couple weeks ago, I started over and read the whole thing quickly.  .... I will learn more about the complexities of what the loyalists faced during the late 18th century. It's so much more complex than what we learned in history classes. 

Authors, that book you cast upon the waters long ago?  You rarely know who might be appreciating it.

Happy World Heritage Day

Yeah, I didn't know it was World Heritage Day, either, but there you are.  Go see a monument.

I googled Heritage Canada Foundation to see what it was doing today, and the first link was the National Trust for Canada, an evolution I still don't entirely understand, though Wikipedia says they are now the same thing.  But it's a pretty website.

Today also, the Ontario Museum in Toronto announces that its new Daphne Cockwell Gallery of First Nations Art and Culture will be permanently open to the public free of charge. The ROM describes this as

part of the Museum’s broader effort to foster greater appreciation of the Indigenous collections stewarded by the Museum, and to support the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. This is also one in a series of long term initiatives aimed at increasing public access to the Museum.

Free public museums -- there's a heritage initiative I could get behind.

Image: National Trust for Canada

Labour History

Howzit, you ask, that the people who hold Tim Horton's franchises can have a union to negotiate terms and conditions with the owners, but the people who hand out double-doubles at the window can't have a union to negotiate terms and conditions with the franchisees?

What, you thought labour relations was fair? But the process may be teaching franchisees and their Great White North Franchisee Association what it is like to go up against the boss.

the Great White North Franchisee Association board said it is “appalled” that Mark Kuziora, who owns two Toronto Tim Hortons franchises, was allegedly told by Tim Hortons parent company Restaurants Brands International in early April that he would be denied a renewal for one of the restaurants at the end of August.

The board said Kuziora had been negotiating with RBI and TDL Group, a Tim Hortons subsidiary, since September and trusted the negotiations were being done “in good faith.”

What, he thought it was fair?

Terry Glavin on British Columbia history

PM Trudeau and Tsilhqot'in representatives

Writer Terry Glavin, always an interesting -- and unpredictable -- writer on British Columbia and much else, has a recent couple of notable pieces of historical journalism in Maclean's, where he is a contributor.

One is a solid backgrounder on the Chilcotin/Tsilhqot’in war of 1864, which led to the hanging of six First Nations leaders Lhats’as?in, Biyil, Tilaghed, Taqed, Chayses, and Ahan. This was the event for which the government of Canada formally apologized in the Canadian Parliament.

The shame and disgrace at the heart of the Chilcotin War’s legacy occurred shortly after 8 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1864, when the war leader Lhats’as?in and several of his comrades agreed to enter the encampment of William Cox, the leader of an expeditionary force of several dozen armed men dispatched by the just-appointed Governor Frederick Seymour, to talk truce. Instead, Lhats’as?in and his warriors were arrested and put in chains.

Seeking a little background on the Chilcotin war at the time of the apology, I was taken aback by how little standard references -- from Wikipedia to the Canadian Encyclopedia  -- had to say. If you still need some of the details behind the apology, this story by Glavin and Maclean's is a place to start.

The other Glavin story covers the remarkable discovery of a set of preserved footprints in Heiltsuk territory on Calvert Island on the west coast of British Columbia.  The 29 footprints, apparently of a man, woman, and child, have been determined to be 13,000 years old. Footprints!

These prints now become part of the growing body of evidence sustaining the theory that movements along the then ice-choked British Columbia coast were among the very earliest human presence in the Americas. Glavin tells the story well.  I was sorry, however, that he framed it as a conflict: the suggestive wisdom of indigenous traditions about early presence against the ignorance of pigheaded scientists.

In fact, the Simon Fraser University archaeologist Knut Fladmark has been arguing for decades that a coastal migration down the west coast of North America, almost certainly using small boats and relying on marine resources  (for an analogy, consider the adaptation of the Inuit to the glacier-bound coasts of Greenland and the Canadian north) was more plausible as a first entry route than the "ice-free corridor" route east of the Rockies. I interviewed Fladmark 25 years ago on the subject, and advances in underwater archaeology, geology, and glaciology continue to shore up his arguments.

So there has been convergence rather than than conflict between indigenous knowledge and scientific thinking for quite a while on this question.  Still, a couple of interesting and well-sourced pieces of historical journalism.

Image:  from Maclean's

Exhibits: General Hunter Shipwreck in VR at Welland Museum

On April 14, the Welland Museum in Ontario's Niagara region, will open the General Hunter Shipwreck Exhibit, featuring the War of 1812 brig General Hunter , which took part in many War of 1812 actions on the Great Lakes before being captured by the Americans at the Battle of Put-In Bay.

General Hunter was wrecked in 1816, still in American service, off what is now Southampton Beach on Ontario's Lake Huron coast.  The wreck was discovered on the beach in 2001 and excavated in 2004.

The exhibit, which continues until the end of December, includes: virtual reality experiences with interactive 3D replicas of the exterior and interior of the ship; videos of the ship in action at the famous Battle of Lake Erie; interpretive panels covering the discovery, excavation and identification of HMS General Hunter; and a specially-constructed replica of the hull. The gallery will also feature a look at other shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. The exhibit is on loan from the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre.

More info here.

History of ideas on the Radio; and Creative nonfiction

Bernie Lucht, longtime Ideas producer at CBC Radio, and now a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, participates next Wednesday evening in

an intimate conversation ... about his work at CBC as the producer of "Ideas", sharing his personal experiences about what goes into producing the admired and engaging radio program.

Lucht's Ideas was always hospitable to programs about Canadian (and other) histories, including several of mine (eg, this one), but also from such luminaries as David Wilson, now general editor of the DCB, Margaret Macmillan, Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, and other historians. Next Wednesday night, as Lucht talks at Ryerson, Ideas launches a two-part "trial" of John A. Macdonald for crimes against humanity (based on a talk previously given at Queen's University). The participants in the trial are all lawyers, icluding Riel descendant Jean Teillet, so the potential for irritating historian-listeners is not low, but there you go.

And while we are booking your time for you, registration deadline approaches for Writing True, the 2918 Creative Nonfiction Collective conference May 4-6 in Toronto. At the conference close I'll be leading a Sunday walking tour of the Toronto neighbourhood "The Literary Annex."

Louis Kamookak 1959-2018, historian

Visions of the North notes the recent death and remarkable life of Louis Kamookak, OC, of Gjoa Haven, Nunavuk, who by becoming a historian of his own people and their accounts of the past, became one of the most consequential historians of the Franklin expedition and its fate.

He guided numerous parties to sites vital to the history of Franklin, Rae, and other key figures, from the days of the Franklin Probe, through to Dave Woodman's searches, the first Parks Canada search with Robert Grenier, the St Roch II expedition with Ken Burton, Ken McGoogan's re-tracing of Rae's surveys, and beyond. He was there for the recent rediscovery of both of Franklin's ships, and was personally brought to the site of HMS "Erebus" by Parks Canada to perform a traditional ceremony of remembrance. His work preserving Inuit oral traditions extended far beyond the Franklin story; he was the central contact for the Inuit Heritage Trust's work on traditional Inuit place names in the region around King William Island (Qikiqtaq), and helped to collect numerous oral histories of all kinds from the Gjoa Haven elders. He was just as much at home with younger Inuit, guiding them on expeditions on the land that retraced traditional routes and knowledge.

Photo from Visions of the North: Kamookak at Crozier's Landing, 1998.