Canadian history wars on the American radar

History News Network is an American website that daily publishes a substantial amount of original commentary by historians, as well as reprints of history-related stories from other publications. It tends a little too much to politics-over-history for my taste. Also it's very Planet America: very much an American worldview that shapes its historical coverage. Nevertheless, il a le grand mérite d'exister, as someone once said in another context.

So it is good to see Ian Rocksborough-Smith, who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley in BC, offering Americans a news report on "Canada's own history war." It's a report on how the Canadian historical profession is grappling with truth and reconciliation questions. It focusses on the Canadian Historical Association's Canada Day declaration and the criticism promptly levelled against it. It provides copious links, and takes note of the "1619" controversy, so as to give American readers some context.

Partisans on either side of that debate may find things to quibble with in the piece.     

New DCB website

Some DCB guy

Go to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography website to check something, and .... aaaaugh, it's all changed. What if I can't find all the things I usually go to?  Do I have to learn a whole new set of protocols? Just when I was on top of the difference between search and advanced search and all that!

Relax.  It's all still there, and seems to be pretty straightforwardly searchable.  And some new toys, too.

Update, June 11  I'm getting to like the new face of the DCB Online more and more -- and realizing how kludgey the old one was.  But Charlevoix offers some thoughtful analysis of the gap that seems to have opened up between the words and the pictures on the new site.

New Osgoode Society website

...is here , with a bunch of new features and functionalities of interest to legal historians,

Cool history watch: the Chart Geek's history timeline

My new friend Matt Baker of Vancouver, the Chart Geek, has drawn my attention to his disquisition on history timelines, examining remarkable examples of the genre from the 1700s to the present, and naturally culminating with his own labour of love, The Timeline of History.

I aimed to combine all of the elements that I liked in the five timelines I just introduced to you. I went with a vertical stream design like Hammond’s but kept the scale equidistant throughout like Adam’s. Like the Oxford chart, I decided to go with a poster format as opposed to a fold-out or multi-page chart. I started with an earlier date than most of the other charts (3000 BC) and, like Nothiger’s, consciously tried to include more on India, China, and Africa. Finally, like Sparke’s, I indicated the shifts in power balance by way of the thickness of each civilization’s “stream”.

Well, labour of love, but not entirely. Matt would be delighted if you decided to order the timeline, very reasonably priced, from Amazon.  As usefulcharts.com, in fact, he offers a wide range of, well, useful charts applicable to all sorts of teaching projects.  I suspect he might take historical charting commissions too.

And if merely useful charts ain't cool enough for you, well, chartgeek.com is mostly devoted to "charts about space, sci-fi, and other geeky things." The "Space Rovers" chart, for instance, puts at your fingertips data about which exploration vehicles have travelled the farthest on either the Moon or Mars.

Whither the history website

This new-ish website on the history of crime and punishment in New Brunswick by University of New Brunswick historian Greg Marquis and St. Thomas University criminologist Michael Boudreau came across my radar recently.

I love it. Legal history, and on the web. Just my cup of java.

Now I will say that Professors Marquis and Boudreau should probably not quit their day jobs to become professional web designers. But definitely solid, well-researched history gussied up with great illustrations (including photos like this oneof a spiral staircase in the St. John County Courthouse by Greg Marquis.) Fascinating case histories and well written syntheses on various topics related to the main theme of crime and punishment.

But I found it puzzling in some respects. Not a lot of meta-information about the project, for instance. I found myself wondering...who is this website for? The information is presented in a literate, sophisticated fashion, relying on the intrinsic interesting-ness of the subject to keep the reader engaged rather than the morbid sensationalism to which crime stories, however historical, tend to lend themselves. A useful general bibliography. But inconsistent footnoting, and no links to or reproductions of primary sources, except for illustrative purposes.

So what is it? It's a bit high brow and lengthy for public history, too 'secondary' to be a terribly useful teaching tool for high school or undergraduate students. Most of the linked entries are anonymous; some items, credited to Michael Boudreau, are more conventionally scholarly, as they include endnotes, but are stipulated not for citation without permission. So not as scholar-friendly as it might be, either.