The Politics of Plaquing Toronto

At Active History, Kaitlin Wainwright explores the hows and whys of historical plaquing, with particular reference to Heritage Toronto's upveiling of three "Women of Distinction" plaques honouring Amelia Earhart, Emma Goldman, and Joyce Wieland  -- not women you would immediately associate with each other, or with Toronto (except Wieland), but so what.

The unveiling is in association with the big Berkshire conference on women's history being held here.  And a history explaining the origins of "the little Berks" and "the big Berks" is here.

Worth following: Wainwright's link to Ian Milligan's earlier Active History piece with a nifty digital-geography analysis of the wheres and whats of plaquing.

A piece of my own on the plaquing of history is here.

Update, May 28:  A review of Berkshire conference highlights (Porter Air is one) from a participant.

(Image: Heritage Toronto)

Supreme Historian

"... we find that in the tavern on this site he drank..."

Beverley McLachlin, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada  (now the longest serving chief justice of Canada ever, squeaking past Sir William Johnstone Ritchie a few days ago, having served nearly 14 years  -- and still eligible for five more years) will lead a John A. Macdonald-themed walking tour of Kingston, Ontario, next weekend.

Well, she's a smart person, for sure. Why shouldn't she know history too?  But this tour has been led in the past by Don Cherry, among others, so maybe the bar's not too high.

Mercy Coles sort of, with Shakespeare, the Booth brothers and the Broadway Theatre, New York City

I'm finishing off the transcribing of Mercy Coles' diary from their trip through Ohio and New York back to Prince Edward Island - She writes that they went to the Broadway Theatre [owned by Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth] on November 12, 1864 and saw a 'capital' show [Salon Shanghai if I can decipher clearly].

Image from New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Central Park

Just under 2 weeks later, on November 25, 1864, the 3 Booth brothers - Edwin, John Wilkes, and Junius Brutus Booth Jr performed together for the first and only time, in a one night performance of Julius Caesar, as a fundraiser for this statue of Shakespeare in New York City.
Not only that, but less than an hour into the show, Confederates set fire to the city, including the house that adjoined the theatre. The theater was packed and the crowd were beginning to panic until Edwin Booth stepped forward to calm them. In the end the theater was saved.

Back to Mercy later this week.

Kimberley Arcand: History of Anne

(Kimberley Arcand joins the contributors here with this post.  Welcome!)

As June rolled in and the dusty doors of Parliament Hill were open, the normal political jumbo began to spring from the House of Commons. However, during that poignant week of Parliament, all I could remember was talk about the Royal visit and where William and Kate (now Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) will be going. One particular rumoured place was a visit to Green Gables: the inspiration of the fictional childhood home of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famous character (Canadian) Anne.  Located in Cavendish (not Avonlea) PEI, this home was once owned by David and Margaret Macneil, a distant relative of Montgomery’s. This heritage site is now a representation of the fictional world of Montgomery’s novels representing both the life of the author as well as the character.

During my undergrad I had spent sometime reading about Montgomery (due to my love for Anne) to understand how she along with her characters, including her other heroine Emily of New Moon, played an important role to Canada culture and identity. One reason Montgomery along with Anne and Emily has become a part of Canadian culture is strictly due to the popularity of the novels across the world. As the media talks about the Royal Visit, they highlight that it is Kate’s desire to visit this popular heritage site and that it is because she enjoyed reading the novels when she was a child.

I feel that sometimes the popularity of Montgomery’s novels is still a large reason why she is a part of our identity, rather than an enteral connection to the texts themselves. However, I see a new form of engagement with Montgomery’s Avonlea. No longer just representing a beautiful fictional world, Montgomery’s novels now reflect a historical view and a past culture and Canadian identity. 

Green Gables, which is now a heritage site with Parks Canada, is not just a celebration of a famous novel or two famous Canadians (if you include Anne) but a celebration of Canadian culture at the turn of the century. So like Kate and William celebrate Parks Canada’s Centennial at Green Gables or by the book for your summer reading list! Not only will you get swept away to a different time and place in Canadian history, but understand a past Canadian culture and identity a little better.

http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/pe/greengables/index.aspx

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.

Henry McCambridge guest-blogs: A Look at the History of Kitchener

[Henry, a student and writer in Kitchener, Ontario, otherwise unknown to me, got in touch to offer the site this guestblog. I like the idea of the occasional guestblog, so....]

Situated in southern Ontario, the city of Kitchener was originally known as the Town of Berlin from the year 1854 until it was renamed the City of Berlin in 1912 and eventually Kitchener in 1916. The area where the city would eventually be established had been originally set aside as a land grant to the Six Nations Indians by the British Crown as a reward for their loyalty during the American War for Independence. Members of the tribe later sold off several thousand hectares of land to a United Empire Loyalist, Colonel Richard Beasley. 

Nestled inland, the land proved to be appealing to a group of Mennonite farmers from Pennsylvania. Concerned that they would not be exempted from military service following the American War for Independence; this group of German Mennonites re-settled in Upper Canada in the 1790s. The lure of the freedom to worship as they wished and cheap land was of tremendous appeal. Members of the Sherk and Betzner families, both members of this group of German Mennonites, arrived toward the end of 1800 and established what would eventually become the City of Kitchener.

As more Mennonites arrived in the area they pooled their funds and were able to purchase the remainder of the land from Beasley and formed the German Company Tract. The land was divided into farms for the purposes of distribution.  By 1816 the German Company Tract had become the Township of Waterloo, further encouraging migration of German speaking families from Europe. The area continued to grow throughout the mid to late 1800s, the growth fuelled by area’s religious tolerance. In 1833, the township was renamed Berlin in honour of the German heritage of the local settlers. Within twenty years, Berlin had become the County Seat for the County of Waterloo and achieved Village status.

Due to the industrial knowledge and skilled trades of the German immigrants, Berlin became a significant industrial centre complete with tanneries, furniture factories, button factories and a foundry. Berlin officially became a city in the summer of 1912 and was largely considered by many to be the German capital of Canada. Berlin was not able to escape the anti-German sentiment that swept the country as WWI erupted. Under tremendous pressure to change the name of the city, Berlin became Kitchener in 1916.

The rapid growth experienced by the City of Kitchener led to the need for an orderly City development plan. The Adams-Seymour Plan was finally approved in 1925, featuring a comprehensive zoning system that allowed for distinctive industrial, commercial and residential districts.

Like many other cities throughout Canada, Kitchener was not unaffected by the Great Depression; however, the wide industrial diversification allow Kitchener to make it through the worst of the depression and quickly rebound beginning in 1936. Unlike during the First World War, Kitchener became an integral part of the war effort during WWII.

Growth of the city continued well after the end of the war and by 1965 Kitchener had become one of the fastest growing cities in Canada as well as a leading distribution, financial and industrial centre.

Today the population of Kitchener is nearing the 200,000 mark and the city has maintained a strong business and industrial base while remaining strongly rooted in its original German heritage.

There are several public high schools in Kitchener, including the Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School, which dates back to 1855. A number of new schools were built throughout the 1950s and 1960s to allow for the rapid expansion of the city. In addition, Kitchener is also home to Conestoga College, one of the premier Ontario colleges. A School of Pharmacy has also been launched through the University of Waterloo, with the campus located in downtown Kitchener. The city will also be home to a satellite campus for the McMaster University School of Medicine.

[Homer Watson House image from City of Kitchener website]

Coolest "historic" site ever?

It's 1229 in the woods south of Paris. They are building the castle of Guédelon. I want to go.

Fete de St-Louis at Louisbourg

This blog seem to be developing an 18th century habit lately, but we cannot resist noting that this week marks the feast of St-Louis, more or less the royalist equivalent of Bastille Day in pre-revolutionary France.

At Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, they have plans for military demonstrations, puppet shows, guided tours, theatrical pieces, Mi'kmaw storytelling, and for tonight astronomical observations and a talk about the Marquis de Chabert and the astronomical observatory he built at Louisbourg in 1753, Canada's first.

Unfortunately meterology may be displacing astronomy today. Hurricane Bill is blowing up the Cape Breton coast this afternoon. Vive le roi and batten down the hatches!

Louisbourg slavery tour in the news

CBC took up Louisbourg National Historic Park's project to animate and interpret the history of slavery and black culture in the eighteenth-century town in Nova Scotia. Here's their news item. Radio One's "As It Happens" talked to my old colleague Ken Donovan about it, but it does not seem to be among their podcast offerings here.

Fort Walsh for August 2

May be the dog days of summertime lassitude for most of Canadian history (our friends at HistoryWire haven't posted for a month), but the Rural History and Culture Association of Saskatchewan continues to make hay. Next event in their NWMP Trail summer is August 2 at Fort Walsh.

New Life for the Dead, or at least their resting places

Time was when every religious congregation in rural Ontario needed a church within buggy range. Result: a lot of small churches across the rural landscape. (I was married in one of them, so I notice.)

Today many of those small country churches, if they survive at all, are available for conversion into summer homes, or country restaurants, or just about anything else. The congregation, what's left of it, commutes forty k or whatever to the big church in the local centre. Well, they do it to shop, and bank, and for medical appointments, and to get the car fixed and see a movie, so why not to pray too. It's the dispersed city theory: rural people have all the services city people have, but they have to go a bit further to access them all.

Meanwhile the cemetary just down the road from the abandoned country church -- often it was originally just a piece of field severed from the farm of a generous parishioner, remains behind.

Unless, that is, someone is moved to convert it into rural development.

Jim Coyle in today's Toronto Star covers the Ontario MPP who wants to safeguard the orphaned cemetaries of Ontario and the historical and cultural treasures they contain. The MPP Jim Brownell has been an activist in the Stormont Dundas Glengarry Historical Association and the Lost Villages Society of Eastern Ontario.

Oh, and Coyle reports his bill got unanimous consent at second reading

Premier Danny Williams driven mad by (electrical) power

This is Gros Morne in western Newfoundland, named a World Heritage Site for its pristine natural environment. (Photo credit: Gros Morne Adventures - you should go.)

Okay, now imagine a power transmission line running right through the middle distance of this photo.

Yup, that's the plan.

The terrific Newfoundland blog Bond Papers is on the story. As it says: "That sort of stuff is always good for raising capital and generally creating the image of a place where you’d like to do business."

In related news, National Geographic's story on the Alberta tar sands is being called the "baby seal" moment for that whole development. Hat tip: Canadian Magazines blog.

Shovel-ready? We've been shovel-ready for 200 years!

The two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812 rushes towards us. A network of Ontario citizens' groups and heritage agencies is asking the federal government to allocate $64 million dollars as part of a $189 million initiative to upgrade, develop, and preserve historic sites and related institutions as part of the commemoration.

They are citing the Conservative Party platform commitment to "instill pride in Canadian history and identity" and "ensure that important historic milestones such as the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 will achieve the national recognition they deserve."

Full details of the proposal are available here. The heritage network urges you to contact your political representatives in support.

Franklin is dead, man, he's dead.

This thing about John Franklin, I've never quite gotten it.

Can scores of non-fictions, novels, songs, stories, museum exhibitions, and suchlike be wrong? I suppose not, but they cannot get around the fact that this is the story of a toffee-nosed English twit who committed suicide by stupidity and took 145 crew members with him. It's an English story, not a Canadian one. Try integrating Franklin into a history of 19th century Canada sometime.

And this new effort to solve the Franklin "mystery"? (Um, ah, the answer to the mystery? They died, they all died right there around King William Island, some after eating some of the others. You are welcome, don't mention it.) It turns out to be some insane northern sovereignty quest. The Harper government may be cutting every arts-and-culture expenditure and trying to control whatever artists say, but hey, gotta blow the archaeology and heritage budget in some high-tech search for Franklin (But he's dead, see above) because that will really demonstrate Canadian sovereignty in the rapidly de-icing arctic waters.

But doesn't Franklin's voyage mostly prove that foreigners have always been intent on travelling those waterway? If he could try it in the teeth of the ice, aren't Russians and Yanks and whoever just as entitled now it's a pleasure cruise?

If we want to assert northern sovereignty, would we not be better actually being there and doing stuff and properly administering the terrain?

I can only think of only one really good Franklin book. David C. Woodman published Unravelling the Franklin Expedition: Inuit Testimony with McGill Queen's in 1991. It's a good book because it's about the Inuit, about the people who actually lived there and knew what was going on, and told their children, who remembered. Maybe if we spent the money on an Inuit expedition....

What Brits know of the history of Quebec City...

... now comes from this essay by Montreal writer Mark Abley, published in The Guardian Online. Canadians might learn a thing or two as well.

Late Update: Thanks to Mark Reynolds who pointed out my link was defective ... and found the story nonetheless.

History of Olympic Architecture

The New Yorker of June 2 has Paul Goldberger's review of Beijing's Olympic architecture, and Goldberger notes in passing some of the notable architectural innovations that past Olympics produced: Rome 1960, Tokyo, 1964, Munich 1972, Barcelona 1992.

Conspicuously absent from his list is Montreal 1976.

It now seems that Jean Drapeau was thirty years ahead of his time: he went for a celebrity architect just the way that fashion dictates in the early 21st century. He asked Roger Taillebert to shoot for a masterpiece and gave him a free hand to do it -- it sounds just like Gehry and Liebeskind and the rest. It isn't that Taillebert was unambitious: what we now call the Big Owe has a distinctive profile, an ambitiously innovative use of materials, and that unique retractable roof.

It's just that Taillebert failed. The roof didn't work, the sightlines were lousy, the concrete rotted, and the project as he designed it was almost unmanageable. But of course the celebrity architects of today also fail quite often.

Beaver goes to Louisbourg

Great to see, in the new issue of The Beaver, hitting mailboxes and newstands this week, a vivid and vividly illustrated article called "D-Day at Louisbourg," marking the 250th anniversary of that battle. All the better that it is by my old colleague and friend John Johnston (that's A.J.B. Johnston if you are googling the author) whose book on the subject, Endgame 1758 , appeared last year.

Nice also to see my own book, Louisbourg Portraits: Five Dramatic True Tales of People who lived in an Eighteenth Century Garrison Town [Amazon.ca link]also gets a note.

My own column this month in The Beaver looks at the career of Michael Bliss, recently honoured by a tribute volume, Essays in Honour of Michael Bliss. 'Course if you subscribed, you would have it in your hands already.

Late Update: While I'm shouting out to friends, I should note Ray Argyle also has a terrific article in this month's issue: on the history of ragtime music in Canada. There's more than the Maple Leaf Rag.

HIstory of prime-ministerial graves

The news this weekend that some goons defaced the family mausoleum where Pierre-Elliott Trudeau is buried (they spray-painted "FLQ" and so on) brought a couple of calls from journalists seeking a quick comment. Y'see, among my writings is a little text entitled Grave Sites of Canada's Prime Ministers.

I wrote it years ago on a commission from Parks Canada. Typically of bureaucrats (and I used to be one, so I know how it happens), when they got around to publishing it, they never bothered to send me a copy of my own work. And since I had my cheques, I pretty much forgot about it.

But in fact I now see it's a nice little piece of work, available as a download at http://www.pc.gc.ca/clmhc-hsmbc/pm/pdf/pm_e.pdf. You can read who is the only Canadian prime minister not buried in Canada and who was not amused to have Prime Minister Thompson drop dead while lunching with her. I have to admit I still have never visited the grave of any Canadian prime minister... but from the photos it looks like it could be a lovely tour.

And about the vandalism this weekend? Pretty much a non-story, was my opinion. Every society and every tendency includes some idiots; these ones hardly need the attention.

A word to journalists: I try to help, try to be available even. But if you need a quick quote, sending out an email ("please respond right away!") on a Saturday morning does not really exhaust the search possibilities a journalist should be capable of.

Here's One for the Whole Country: Celebrate the Burning of Toronto

Indefatigable War of 1812 historian Robert Malcomson has a new book, Capital in Flames, about how the Americans torched little York on April 27, 1813.

Robin Brass Studios, the author, and the Friends of Fort York will launch the book at Fort York this Sunday, April 27, 2.30 to 4 pm. No cost if you register in advance by email to fortyork@toronto.ca. Info on the book at http://www.rbstudiobooks.com/

Plaquing Toronto

A Beaver column I wrote last fall on the evolution of the historic-site plaque (cellphone plaquing, art-installation commemoratives, guerrilla midnight plaquing) drew an email from Alan Brown of Toronto. Alan has been photographing every historic plaque in Toronto, and posting the results at www.torontohistory.org. Browseable!