Advertising Standards Canada PSAs

Last week, Advertising Standards Canada launched its newest ad campaign to promote truth in advertising. The campaign is composed of a number of print and television ads that prominently feature the slogan "Dressing it up doesn't make it true." The majority of the ads are cute, colourful and clever (utilizing almost Pixar-like animation to catch the eye and engage the imagination). While all of them are entertaining in their own right, I've included my favourite below:


If you're interested, the rest of the ASC PSAs can be found here.

According to UWO, I Have Now Mastered the Arts

"I Admit You."

When the Chancellor of the University of Western Ontario held my hands and said those three little words to me this past Friday, it was like music to my ears. In fact, after completing 8 months of course work and a grueling summer internship, the only thing that would have made this moment better was if he had followed with, "...and you're hired" (a girl can dream, can't she?!).

But alas, that wasn't to be. Instead, I begin my job search in earnest today, confident in the knowledge that my time at Western has helped prepare me for a multitude of career paths in history, heritage and beyond (provided, of course, that I can choose just one!).

I don't usually include photos of myself on this blog, but this is definitely one for the record books! Allow me to present UWO's Masters of (Public) History, 2010:


Back row, from left to right: Jordan Goldstein, Dana Johnson, Tim O'Grady, myself, Braden Murray, Tasha DiLoreto, Megan Arnott

Front row, from left to right: Sara Sirianni, Shelagh Staunton, Becca Rahey

Reading the Newspaper with a Public Historian's Eye

Newspapers. I'm my house, they're everywhere. They lay on the floor in my entryway, folded neatly and encased in coloured plastic. They're piled precariously on chairs and stairs by our side door. They overflow the blue recycling bins in the garage. They litter our kitchen table, the family room table and even the living room table. Articles are clipped, highlighted and/or written on and stuck on the fridge, filed away for future reference or slipped under my bedroom door as I sleep. As a three-newspaper family (receiving The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and the Whitby This Week on a regular basis), it's quite possible that we are single-handedly responsible for creating a very large hole somewhere in the Amazonian jungle.

So, this morning when I went downstairs for a cup of coffee and some breakfast, I was not at all surprised to see various sections of The Toronto Star covering nearly every square inch of the kitchen table. Nor was I particularly shocked to see that my father had "conveniently" left the paper open to an article announcing that the "Spadina House [had been] restored to its glory days." Yeah, my father's about as subtle as sledgehammer, but I was intrigued enough to pick it up and start reading.

At first I read the article like I have always read articles of this type: I skimmed the story, interested to learn a little more about Toronto's built heritage (e.g. Spadina House was built in 1866 by James Austin, one of the founders of the Dominion Bank and later, a president of Consumer's Gas Company) and intrigued by the more minute historical details (like the fact that different quadrants of the city used to have designated days on which the muckety-mucks could fashionably receive visitors). I was also mentally adding Spadina House to my ever-growing list of places to visit in Toronto.

But, as I finished reading the article, my inner public historian started to work...

I found myself looking critically at the photograph which had accompanied the article. The photo shows one of Spadina House's newly refurbished rooms in all its glory. With its cheerfully striped furniture, luxurious silk wallpaper and dramatic chandelier, the house looks beautiful and the care that the museum staff put into the new renovations is evident. That said, I couldn't help but cross my fingers and hope that the photographer had restricted herself from using a flash. Heaven forbid we overly expose the new furnishings to intense lighting.

Next, my eyes turned to the title of the article and I just couldn't help my knee-jerk reaction: Glory days? What glory days? Why does everyone always assume that the past was more 'glorious' or simple than the present? And what good does idealizing the past at the expense of the present do for a historical site or for the historical knowledge/consciousness of the public at large? I know, I know... I'm being nit-picky, but that sort of oversimplification drives me batty.

The final paragraph of the article briefly related the types of public programming that the newly reopened heritage site would offer. As someone interested in museum education, I was pleased to see that the site was going to offer three types of tours, "Meet the Austins" for those that are more interested in the history of the family, "It's a Kid's Life" for school-aged children, and a restoration tour for those visitors more interested in the architectural significance of the house and the process that went into repairing one of Toronto's historical gems. It really seems like the staff at Spadina House has thought about their site and their visitors and have made significant attempts to appeal to and service the widest possible audience.

Of course, all of these 'criticisms' are relatively minor and more than a little tongue-in-cheek. In fact, I've only included them in this posting to illustrate a small bit of the thought process which sent me into this metacognitive spiral of a blog post. I have to admit, it's a little disconcerting to wake up one day and suddenly realize that a single year of school has significantly changed the way that I do a task I've been doing since the fifth grade.


* Photograph is for dramatization purposes only and does not represent the actual condition of this blogger's home. :)

Medical Collections Not for the Faint of Heart

Earlier this year my peers and I in the Public History program had the opportunity to examine UWO's Medical Artifact Collection under the instruction of Dr. Michelle A. Hamilton. As all of us can attest, this collection was equal parts fascinating and grotesque; it was amazing to be able to get our (gloved) hands on 19th century medical artifacts and learn how to handle and examine them as true historians and/or museum curators would, but I'm sure few of us can forget the dried blood that remained on the blades of some of the saws and scalpels, even after nearly a century of disuse.

In my position this summer as the Archives Assistant at the Sunnybrook Health Science Centre Archives my first task was to catalogue all of the archive' s photographic holdings. The majority of the collection consisted of aerial views, interior and exterior shots of the hospital under construction and various departments, equipment and staff from the 1970s. To be honest, for the most part the photos were a bit of a snooze. Thankfully, every once in a while there was a photographic gem (like the black and white shot from the 1940s of an Italian prisoner of war who was undergoing physiotherapy after having one of his legs amputated from the knee down) to keep things interesting.

This week, however, I've moved on to cataloguing the archive's Medical Art Collection. While this means a fair bit of wading through past hospital brochures and stationary layouts for printers, it also means discovering some really beautiful and detailed anatomical sketches that were originally commissioned from the hospital's Art Department by doctors for teaching or learning purposes.

My favourite find so far - hands down - is the file of facial sketches that were done for a doctor that was about to undertake reconstructive surgery of a patient's nose. The file contains various reference materials (e.g. Polaroid's of a human skull, anatomical sketches from a textbook of the underlying structure of muscles, veins, etc. in a human face, and photographs of the actual patient before surgery). The artist then used those items to complete a series of sketches of the patient himself, what the patient's skull structure likely looked like and what certain nerve systems, veins and/or arteries looked like. The artist then layered all of these sketches over each other to complete a final sketch of the patient which showed all of these different parts in relation to each other.

After the drawings were complete, the doctor who had commissioned the sketches then added his own notes about the surgery overtop of them, indicating where arteries and veins were layered closely together, where certain systems were buried under deeper layers of tissue and cautioning himself to not "put the incision too close to the margin of [the] nostril."

As the title of this blog posts suggests, the final pieces of the file were considerably more graphic than pen and ink sketches and doctor's surgical notes and definitely not for the faint of heart or the squeemish: included in the file were photographs of the patient taken during the procedure when part of his nose had been removed and immediately post-op when stitches and bruising were evident.

To see the artist's process from beginning to end was fascinating enough on its own, but then it was also really neat to see evidence of the use to which the sketch was put. It definitely added another layer to my appreciation of medical art and how items from the archives could/should be used to educate and engage the public at the hospital. With its combination of art, education and enough of the "grotesque" to fascinate without sensationalizing or exploiting the patient (sometimes a thin line for the public historian to walk), the file in its entirety would make an excellent exhibit for one of the hospital's display cases. In fact, this might be exactly the type of public history-related project that I suggest to my supervisor that I take on by the end of the summer.

We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

[Note: Artwork by P. Cunningham, posted with permission from the Sunnybrook Archives]

Toronto Opens Its Doors

Last weekend 150 buildings of architectural, historic, cultural and/or social significance in the City of Toronto open their doors to the public for their 11th Annual Doors Open Toronto event. This year’s theme revolved around architecture within the city and offered the public a number of opportunities to focus their attention on the craftsmanship of some truly extraordinary local buildings and historic sites. And, if my own sore feet and sunburned head are any indication of the kind of time that everyone else had, I’d say that this year’s event was a rousing success.

In past years I’ve participated in Doors Open events solely as a spectator; clutching the Toronto Star Program Guide in one hand, I’ve targeted an area of the city with plenty of properties within walking distance of each other and set off (usually by myself) to enjoy a day of free sight-seeing, something people rarely take time to do in their own backyard.

This year, however, was a little different than most. As part of my internship with the Ontario Jewish Archives, I volunteered to help out at the OJA’s Doors Open Toronto site, the Pape Avenue Cemetery.

Established by Judah Joseph and Abraham Nordheimer in 1849 on a ½ acre of land on what was then Centre Street, the Pape Avenue Cemetery was Toronto’s first Jewish cemetery. As such, it is the final resting place of a number of the city’s first and most prominent Jewish residents, including Judah Joseph’s own son, whose illness first prompted Joseph and Nordheimer to seek out a more local Jewish burial site (in the 1840s the closest Jewish cemeteries were in Montreal and Buffalo, nearly a full day away by horse and buggy). Unfortunately, over the years many of the cemetery’s early stones, including the one for Joseph’s son, have toppled over and sunk into the ground so that they are no longer visible.

Due to space restrictions in the city, the cemetery was closed to new burials in the 1950s. Since then, the beautiful iron gates which lead to the property have rarely been open to anyone other than the property’s Christian caretaker and a thick cover of ivy on the gates have kept even the most curious Toronto resident from being able to sneak a peek. This year’s Doors Open event marked the first time in decades that the cemetery was open to the general public and as such generated quite a large interest from the public (a mention in both the Globe and Mail and the National Post as a site of special interest didn’t hurt either, I’d assume).

While a number of Doors Open sites allow the visitor to wander freely or provide them with a pamphlet of some sort, Ellen Scheinberg, Director of the OJA and one of my internship coordinators this summer, instead chose to organize a 15 minute tour of the site for visitors. This allowed members of the public to interact directly with or ask questions of knowledgeable volunteers and members of Toronto’s Jewish Community, including a representative of the Holy Blossom Synagogue (which is responsible for the site) and Susan Brown, a local artist and art teacher who was able to speak about the significance and history of the carvings on the headstones.

Throughout the day, my main role was to act as a gopher, helping to register visitors to the site, have them sign legal waivers before they could enter the cemetery and then organize them into manageable tour groups for the guides.

Although my role was a supporting one, it was very interesting to observe and talk to members of the public that came to this event. Through this, I was able to get a feel for the type of people in Toronto that are interested in local history and heritage, especially with that which is specific to the city’s Jewish community. As well, I was able to sit back and notice the types of people who were missing from the cross-section of visitors (mainly twenty-somethings) and think about ways for the Ontario Jewish Archives to engage this section of the population in future events. Finally, the event also exposed me to the realities of running this type of initiative and all of the work that most go into it months in advance in order to ensure that it is successful.

It was a long, scorching hot day, but a fun one nonetheless. I definitely can’t wait to do it again next year!

Facets of Fame

During my meeting with Ellen Scheinberg of the Ontario Jewish Archives this week, she suggested that I may be interested in seeing the Facets of Fame: Portraits of Toronto Photographer Al Gilbert photography exhibit which is currently on display at The Market Gallery in the St. Lawrence Market on Lower Jarvis Street, Toronto. Although the exhibit runs until September 11th, 2010, Ellen suggested that I visit it as soon as possible as a way to expose myself to one of the OJA’s most recent projects and to see first-hand one of the various ways that the archive is seeking to engage the public in unexpected public spaces.

Although what I know about the art of photography could barely fill a thimble, I’ve always admired the work of those who have the ability to look at people, places and things and capture them on film in unique and bold ways. Since my mother also had the day off work, I suggested that she come with me and off we went to see the work of one of the country’s most respected portrait photographers.

The exhibit begins – quite suitably, I think – with the work of Al Gilbert’s father, Nathan, the man who first exposed Al to the world of photograph and taught him the basics of the trade in their family’s photography studio during the 1920s and 1930s. Nathan’s work included dozens of clever family photographs of bar mitzvahs, birthdays, vacations, holidays and everyday life that all seemed just a little bit cheeky.

My favourite photo from this section of the exhibit would have to be the photo in which Nathan layered a photo of himself over a photo of President John F. Kennedy to make it appear as though the two men were having a discussion in the Oval Office. In the days of Adobe Photoshop, this might not seem like a big deal, but when you think about all the work that had to go into creating this absolutely seamless image in the 1920s, the outcome is astounding.

The majority of the exhibit, however, featured more than 75 portraits taken by Al Gilbert over the course of his career and was broken down into sections which included luminaries from Toronto’s Jewish and non-Jewish communities (e.g. Michael Lee-Chin, Mel Lastman, Ed Mirvish, etc.), as well as figures of national and international importance (e.g. Pope John Paul II, Frank Sinatra, Prime Minister Diefenbaker and others). And, under each photograph, the OJA has mounted not only a description of the accomplishments of the person in the photo, but also the techniques and equipment which Mr. Gilbert used to achieve the final product, a two-pronged tactic which, in my opinion, gives the exhibit more depth and appeal to a wider audience than if they had only included one type of detail or the other.

Although a number of photos made me stop and take an extra moment to fully admire them, there was a small handful that simply gripped me by the throat and demanded my attention as true works of art. For example, the black and white photo of jazz legend Oscar Peterson, which was used for the brochure of the exhibit’s launch event was breathtaking. The lighting and composition were simple enough, even classic, but there was something about the way that Gilbert captured every crack in the man’s skin and the light in his eyes that moved me. Another favourite of mine was the one of Ed Mirvish taken in one of his theatres. Mirvish was wearing this really bold striped suit and a more subtly stripped tie in yellows and black and he contrasted amazingly with the pure red of the rest of the frame (the seats, walls and carpets were all the same shade of red, although patterned differently). It was definitely more playful than the Peterson image, but no less striking.

A few of the images (like that of Frank Sinatra and the Pope), I could have done without but I think that was because the rest of Gilbert’s photos were so amazing that I was absurdly let down when they were merely good. Also, I wasn’t always of fan of the photos in which he layered a dignitary overtop of a print of a place which had meaning to them (e.g. combining a photo of Mel Lastman with one of Mel Lastman Square at night or the bishop and his church), but I’m sure that says more about my personal aesthetic than Gilbert’s abilities as a photographer.

The exhibit is free and easy to get to. I highly recommend that anyone living in or visiting Toronto this summer drop by and enjoy the photographs before they disappear back into the archival holdings at the OJA.

Public History is Alive and Well in the Archives

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I’ve always been enamored with museums. As a child my parents made sure to expose both my brother and I to as many museums as possible. And, whether these were traditional or living heritage, large or small, they were a staple of family vacations, day trips and parentally-supported school outings. Occasionally, my parents even managed to schedule museum visits for after games when we’d travel for soccer tournaments (they were sneaky like that). Most of the time, I loved wandering from room to room looking at artifacts and dioramas. And when I didn’t? Well, I still learned something. More importantly, I learned to appreciate the important role that museums play in caring for the history, heritage, culture and values of a place and/or a people.

Even with all that interest in museums, I had never given much thought to archives and the role that they play within a community. In fact, I’m almost ashamed to admit that the first time I ever stepped foot into an archive I was already in my fourth year of university. I certainly never envisioned myself – a scant 8 months since starting the Public History program at UWO – working in one archive and volunteering at another. But, this summer I’m doing both.

The main portion of my internship this summer will take place at the Sunnnybrook Archives (SBA) in Toronto where I’ll be an archives assistant to a graduate of UWO’s Public History program, Phil Gold.

The Sunnybrook Archives exists primarily to collect, organize, describe, make available and preserve records materials of historical, legal, and administrative value to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. As the Archives Assistant, I’ll be working in all areas of the archives, including working first-hand with print and graphic records, and with medical artifacts and other college memorabilia. My primary duty will be to assist Phil with the arrangement and description of the collection (specifically the archive’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs Fonds) according to RAD standards in preparation for the submission of a fonds level description to ARCHAEION. It’ll probably be a tedious and exacting process, but one that I’ll learn a great deal about archival practices from.

Since my contract with Sunnybrook Archives is only part time, I’ll be making up the remaining hours of my internship by volunteering at the Ontario Jewish Archives working on a number of archival and public history projects. To begin with, I’ll be helping organize/work “front of house” activities at the archive’s Doors Open Toronto site this weekend. From there I’ll move onto doing an inventory and some digitization of the archival holdings belonging to R.H. McGregor Elementary School in Toronto in preparation for a more extensive school history section on their webpage and a display for the school’s entryway. I’ll also have a hand in a few smaller projects, including helping to organize the OJA’s summer tours, helping update one of the Holocaust Education Centre’s displays and working on a number of item level RAD-compliant descriptions and digitization of some of the archive’s photographic records.

There are two other major projects that I’ll be working on at the OJA this summer and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to have a hand in both of them. The first is a podcast to accompany the OJA’s Facets of Fame: Portraits by Toronto Photographer Al Gilbert display at the Market Gallery in the St. Lawrence Market (see Facets of Fame blog post). I’ll be responsible for setting up interviews with some of the artist’s subjects for inclusion in the podcast, scanning images from the exhibit and helping to create a script for the podcast (Look Ma, I’m writing for the public!). The second major project that I’ll be working on is the continuation of the OJA’s huge oral history project. The project aims to record the stories of WWII veterans and I’ll be responsible for scheduling interviews, conducting pre-interviews and accessioning the videos once they have been recorded.

The summer’s barely begun and already I’m feeling very lucky to have the opportunity to work with the Director of the Ontario Jewish Archives, Ellen Scheinberg, who has been kind enough to include me in so many of the institution’s public history projects. The wide variety of projects she has schedule for me to help on will surely broaden my exposure and practical hands-on experience with public history in the “real world.”

If I Had a Million Dollars... Camp X Artifacts Up For Sale

The Camp X Exhibit at the Oshawa Airport is full of neat stuff: a dagger hidden in a lipstick case, a fountain pen that shoots poisonous gas and a revolver concealed in a hollowed out book, to list but a few items. As Toronto Star reporter, Carola Vyhnak, points out in her March 4th article, this is the stuff of fiction. In fact, it's exactly these type of gadgets that you might expect to read about in a James Bond novel.

This comparison between fact and fiction is hardly surprising when you consider that Bond author, Ian Fleming, spent part of WWII in Camp X, a spy training facility on the Oshawa-Whitby border near the shore of Lake Ontario.

The collection, which was compiled and largely owned by history buff Robert Stuart, has spent the past 33 years exhibited to the public, most recently in the Ontario Regiment building at the Oshawa Airport as part of the Robert Stuart Aeronautical Collection. Poorly advertised and rarely open, I only discovered the existence of this collection 3 or 4 years ago. Since then school, work, and a year spent in Korea has kept me from visiting the exhibit. And now, the opportunity may be lost to me forever - a pretty harsh lesson in "(s)he who hesitates" for an historian to learn.

On February 24th, historian Lynn Philip Hodgson (mentioned in my February post on the Battle of Bowmanville at Camp 30) contacted local papers after discovering that the entire collection of Camp X artifacts were poised for an internet auction block. Since then, a flurry of controversy has surrounded this usually obscure collection.

Since Stuart's death nearly seven years ago, the collection has been privately owned by his wife, Lois, and his daughter, Deidre, two women who are about to become responsible for selling off a significant piece of Durham Region's (and Canada's) rich wartime history "for personal reasons."

Like many private collections, the Camp X artifacts came together relatively organically over a period of several decades, with many of the pieces attained through private sales and auctions. Other items were accessioned into the collection through donations or long-term loans from veterans or the families of those that had worked at the Camp. Many of these donations and long-term loans were made in good faith in the form of a "gentleman's agreement" and a handshake between Mr. Stuart and the donor. Little, if any, paperwork was ever completed to outline the terms of these transactions.

Now, with the impending sale of the collection, a number of donors and family members have come forward to demand their family heirlooms back. As far as they were concerned, the items were on loan only so long as they were being displayed locally and in a respectful manner; they never intended for the Stuart family to profit off of their history and memories.

Deirdre Stuart has little sympathy for the people who donated to her father's collection. In an interview with the Toronto Star she was quoted as saying, “[i]f you didn’t put it in writing, you pretty much gave it to us... Like, hello? How stupid are people. We’ve had this museum for 33 years. It’s ours.”

Clearly, Ms. Stuart is no gentleman.

Although the loss of local history that would accompany the sale of this collection is immensely disturbing to me and it saddens me to say this, it is my understanding that the Stuart family is well within their legal rights to sell the artifacts however they see fit (provided that they adhere to all applicable laws concerning the sale of cultural artifacts). Public museums are legally restricted from selling artifacts unless they can provide extensive paper records proving their ownership of the item(s) (e.g. a receipt of purchase or a deed of gift). In instances where items are found in a collection but lack proper paperwork, these museums are legally required to keep and care for the artifacts for several decades before they may deaccession them. Unfortunately, private collections are not bound by the same standards. And, since theirs is a private museum, the Stuarts, in the absence of paperwork, have implicit legal right to items in their possession.

Thankfully, it at least seems as if the Canadian government isn't going to let this collection leave the country without a fight. As of March 20th, the Canadian Department of Heritage has "opened a dossier" on the artifacts and is looking into whether some of these items may be able to be protected from international sale under restrictions outlined in the Cultural Property Export and Import Act. For Canada's sake, let's hope this is so. Better yet, let's hope that a Canadian cultural institution (*cough* Canadian War Museum *cough*) steps up and buys the entire collection so that Ms. Stuart is not allowed to break it up and sell the unprotected items piece by piece.

On a local level, Hodgson and other concerned members of the community (including a number of local veterans from the aptly named Sir William Stephenson Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion) have stepped forward to coordinate fundraising efforts in order to save the collection. The Legion is currently accepting donations that will be used to purchase and house the collection permanently in Durham Region (an outcome that I selfishly find most favourable). If the campaign is successful, not only will the collection remain in Canada, but it will remain in Durham Region and on display to the public.

If you'd like to donate and ensure that the collection stays together and in Canada, you can do so by sending the Legion a cheque with "Save the Collection" in the memo section (see their website for more details). You may also want to follow this issue as it develops via the Save the Collection group on Facebook.


Sources by order of publication:

Whitby This Week - "Camp X artifacts up for sale"
The Toronto Star - "Historian fights to keep WWII spy-school collection in Canada"
--- "Veterans families angry over bid to sell wartime artifacts"
Canwest New Service - "Sale of historic espionage gear draws Ottawa's attention"
National Post - "Selling Secret History"

Visualization Tools Revisited

Six months ago I used Wordle to create a visual representation of my blog (see October's Wordle Wordle Wordle). By looking at the word cloud of my labels that was generated by Wordle, it was easy to see that I wrote quite frequently about public history, digital history, UWO, museums, human rights and the Holocaust. None of that is a big surprise when you consider that I'm a student at UWO in the Public History MA Program and that I am taking courses which deal with public history, digital history and museums and that I have a strong interest in human rights issues and the Holocaust.

In that entry, I wondered what a similar visualization would look like in six months or a year. Would it change drastically and reflect new interests and experiences? Or, would it remain the same, reflecting a constant interest in certain topics?

As you can see by looking at the word cloud at the top of this blog post, the visualization has gotten considerably more complex and diverse over the last six months (I have added dozens of new labels to the cloud). However, I would argue that it still largely reflects the initial trends of my blog. The single exception to this relative continuity is the inclusion of new labels which show an increased awareness of and interest in topics relating to local history and heritage (who knew Durham Region had such fascinating history?!).

That's a mildly interesting observation to make, but so what? What can a visual representation of my blog tell you that a quick skim of my labels list cannot? Sadly, I'm afraid the answer is probably nothing.

In October I had a cautious optimism for the use of digital visualization tools as techniques to help with the data mining process. Now, I am thoroughly unconvinced as to their usefulness. It might take me 2 or 3 seconds longer to scroll through the alphabetized list of labels that I have used in my blog since its inception than it does to glance at word cluster like the one above, but it tells me exactly the same thing. In fact, scrolling the list of labels actually saves me considerable time when you consider that I had to first go to the Wordle website and input my data before I could create the word cloud in question. Also, I can't help but notice that the picture that was produced by the generator is now so crowded with new, low-level labels that it has become an eye strain to try and extract any but the most obvious data from it.

In my humble opinion, Wordle and similar word/tag cloud generators may create pretty pictures, but they are a bust as far as their usefulness to the study of history goes.

But what about other visualization tools? Surely I can't paint all tools with the same brush, can I? You wouldn't think so. The esteemed Dan Cohen certainly doesn't. He used different visualization technologies in his research to map whether Americans prayed or watched CNN after hearing about the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. Cohen stands by the fact that it was only through mapping the results of his survey onto a satellite image of the USA provided by Google Earth that he was able to observe that people in rural areas of the United States were far more likely to pray after hearing of the attacks than they were to watch CNN. Conversely, people in urban areas were far more likely to turn to CNN for information and solace than they were to pray.

So it was with this conflicting ringing endorsement by Dan Cohen (digital history guru) and growing personal skepticism that I attended the Historical Geographic Information Systems (Historical GIS) lecture given several weeks ago by Don LaFreniere, a colleague from the Geography Department. Don is a huge fan of GIS and the objective of his lecture was three-fold:

1) To teach us the basics of navigating GIS software
2) To introduce us, as historians, to the potential applications of GIS programs to our research questions and future careers in public history
3) To explain how he is currently using GIS visualization tools in his research process

Extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic, Don did a fantastic job of patiently leading even the most technologically challenged of us through his tutorial. But even Don's enthusiasm couldn't convince me of the usefulness of visualization techniques. In order to get to the point of visualization Don and a team of undergraduates had to spend more than two years compiling a database of census materials from which they drew the information they mapped using the GIS software. For my money, it was the database that was truly the incredible feat, not the mapping we were able to do with the data points. Using the spreadsheets that he had created, we were able to search for specific criteria and filter the overall findings according to our desired specifications. At this point we were able to see all of the relevant details and make (in my opinion) the same observations that we were able to make after applying the visualization tools to the data set.

I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe, as Sara Sirianni suggests in her blog post about the workshop, visualization techniques are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Maybe.

For now I remain skeptical.

Fallout on the Farm: Blueprint for Survival No. 3

Several years ago I came across this thin, yellow booklet on the shelf of a combination antique store/swap shop in Dunnville, Ontario, a small farming community on the banks of the Grand River where my father grew up. Crammed between thick coffee table books on gardening and brightly coloured romance novels, I almost didn't see it. What a shame that would have been! A few minutes later and $2.00 poorer, I was the proud owner of Blueprint for Survival No. 3: Fallout on the Farm (as opposed to Blueprint for Survival No. 1: Your Basement Fallout Shelter and Blueprint for Survival No. 2: Basement Fallout Shelter, a guide for use in the design of new homes).

Produced by the Canada Department of Agriculture at the request of the Emergency Measures Organization in 1961, this booklet is a wonderful encapsulation of early 1960s nuclear knowledge and fears. The book aims to answer several questions about how nuclear fallout will affect Canada's farming communities, including why farmers need to know about the dangers of nuclear fallout, how their crops and livestock may be affected by it, who will warn farmers of an impending nuclear attack, where they should find shelter and lastly, if it will be safe outside after fallout.

Reading it now, the whole document comes across as simplistic and naive. The general consensus of the pamphlet seems to be that in as little as 14 days after fallout, it will be safe to leave your shelter. But, if you have to leave your shelter before that to milk your cows or take care of your livestock, you can safely do so as long as they are in a barn. Just don't forget to wash all that nasty fallout off of your skin afterwards with soap and water! Also, don't worry, it's totally safe to slaughter and eat animals that were left outside during the fallout just as long as you don't use the bones or offal (because that's the only part of them that will retain radioactive materials, you know). And, even though you should be shielded by 12 inches of concrete (or 15 inches of brick or 18 inches of earth) during fallout, peas and beans will be safe to eat because only their pods will be contaminated. Riiiiiiiight.

Reading this booklet, I'm alternately amused and horrified. Knowing what we do now about the outcome of the Cold War and the effects of nuclear radiation and fallout, it's funny to look back and see how "quaint" the understanding of our parent's generation was. On the other hand, it's also incredibly frightening to think about how little they knew about a weapon that had such deadly potential.

I've never come across a booklet like this before or since and I'm constantly thankful for the stroke of luck that helped me find Fallout on the Farm that day in the swap shop. It never ceases to amaze me the kinds of insights an historian can gather when they are able to look firsthand at documents from the past.

Since I'm currently working on an essay for my Understanding Archives course about the Baker-Cox debates of 2001-2002, I found myself considering Fallout in a completely new way: What if I had never encountered the physical copy of this book? What if, to save shelf space, some librarian somewhere had microfilmed this booklet, destroying and discarding the original in the process? Would my experience with the document have been the same?

I'm not convinced that it would have. On the surface the material would have remained ostensibly the same as the physical copy. That is, unless the person doing the microfiliming had carelessly skipped a page or misaligned one so that it cut off the beginnings of each line. Sadly this is a common microfilming error and one that is usually not caught until several years later when some intrepid researcher needs that exact page. By then, the originals have often been destroyed or lost and there is little or no way to rectify the error.

Then there's the fact that microfilm is largely a black and white medium. Many tones of grey and all colour are lost during the microfilming process. In the case of Fallout, much of the greyscale in the sketches would probably have been lost, and thus their effectiveness as visual aids would have been irrevocably diminished.

Also, on a good day microfilm machines tend to make me feel slightly nauseous (something about the text whipping across the screen at high speeds). On a bad day, using the machine gives me a monster headache and makes me feel like I'm on the verge of a seizure. Also, the forward/reverse button on most of the machines are ridiculously finicky - I want to be able to spend my time researching the material I need, not fiddling with making it aligned, focused and readable.

I think, with all of these extraneous things going on, I'd have a more difficult time focusing on the actual document itself than if I were reading the original paper copy. This could potentially affect my observations and thus my conclusions about the source. It would most definitely affect the overall pleasure that I get from reading a primary document like Fallout on the Farm.

Admittedly I have yet to research the Cox half of the Baker-Cox debate, but right now, Baker has me sold. Saving shelf space is not worth the loss of history and aggravation that goes with microfilm.


[Update: While I continue to sympathize with Baker, my own views on the Baker-Cox debate have definitely become more firmly aligned with Cox after completing additional research on the topic.]

"To Infinity and Beyond!" (Or, "Houston, We Have a Problem")

One of the greatest things about studying history is that there is literally a history for everything; if someone has been there, done that or invented whatever you’re interested in, it has a history. Sometimes the discovered past of individuals, events, inventions or movements can find a wide interest base in popular consciousness (e.g. the Titanic, the World Wars, 1960s counterculture, etc). Other times, a few hundred or a few thousand enthusiasts might come together to discuss their love of a particular subject (e.g. Civil War re-enactors, local historical societies or members of the steampunk sub-culture). And then there are those times when it seems like you are the only person in the whole world that appreciates the history of a certain thing...

Case in point:

A few years ago, my father introduced me to the Fisher Space Pen (pictured at the top right of this blog post). In his opinion, this is the greatest pen that has ever been invented. I’m serious. The way that my father loves this pen is akin to the way most parents love their children (except, come to think of it, I can hardly remember the last time my father praised me quite so effusively in front of complete strangers). Anyway, he carries his with him everywhere, never missing an opportunity to loan it to someone. Unfortunately, this also means that he never misses an opportunity to relate the pen’s virtues and its history to the user. Over the years this has been a constant source of embarrassment for me as he extolled the virtues of his Space Pen to everyone from waitresses to my best friend to our optometrist and the entire population of his waiting room.* His spiel usually goes a little something like this:

“Oh, you say your pen isn’t working? That’s a... shame.”

(At this point he gets a gleeful twinkle in his eye as he reaches inside his jacket pocket for the infamous pen.)

“Here, use mine. Neat, isn’t it? It’s a Space Pen. Seriously, it’s the only kind of pen that American astronauts have used in space since the Apollo missions. It’s amazing! It writes upside down, underwater and in -40°C temperatures!”

Now, my father (as a salesman) doesn’t spend inordinate amounts of time hanging upside down in his daily life. Nor does he scuba dive. Nor does he often travel to the Arctic Circle. Why he would need a pen that performs under all of these adverse conditions is simply beyond me.

I just didn’t get the appeal.

Of course, this all changed the day that my father gifted me with my very own Fisher Space Pen. On that day I held this small grey box with a picture of a space shuttle on it in my hands, read the accompanying brochure on the history of the pen, perused the historical facts on their website and was hooked. Now, every time someone asks to borrow a pen, I can’t just grab one from my pencil case at random and hand it over. No, now I deliberately choose to loan them my Space Pen so I have an excuse to launch into my very own spiel about the history of the pen. I’ve tried to refrain, but I just can’t help myself. Spreading my knowledge of the history of this tiny object has become a compulsion with me.

The moral of this post: Unless you’re really interested in the manufacturing history of a ballpoint pen, you might want to ask someone other than a member of the Caughell family the next time you need to borrow a pen.


* This statement may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect.

Note: The Fisher Space Pen is so impressive that there's even an entire episode of Seinfeld ("The Pen") devoted to its awesomeness.

Blurring the Lines Between Fact and Fiction: Can Historical Fiction be Unethical?

If you've read my previous post on historical fiction, you know that I've long been a fan of the genre. Well, I may be more than a decade older now, but my taste in literature for pleasure reading has remained largely the same; I still read almost anything in the genre that I can get my hands on.

For example, I most recently completed Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, a novel about slavery, identity, power and self-determination in the early nineteenth century and found it a thoroughly enjoyable read right from the first page. Overall, I found Hill’s prose powerfully written and his main character both sympathetic and inspiring. I would strongly recommend this book to any lover of good fiction, historical or otherwise.

With Book of Negroes finished, my current novel of choice is Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us. On its most basic level, the book is about the lives of two women, a mother and a daughter, their relationship with one another, and the experiences which have shaped the way that they each view and interact with the world and each other. The narrative of the story bounces between the perspective of Anna, as a young Aryan girl living in Germany during the Second World War, and the present-day United States where her daughter, Trudy, is a professor of German History at an unnamed university somewhere in Minnesota.

The book’s dust jacket hails the novel as “a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame,” a summary which I think is actually pretty accurate thus far (I’m only about half-way finished the book at this point). So far, I’m finding the plot engaging and the characters complicated and flawed enough to be interesting. I certainly look forward to reading each new chapter.

That said, I think that I would have been better off not reading the blurb about the author at the back of the novel before finishing the book. Blum’s author bio states “Jenna Blum is of German and Jewish decent. She worked for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation for four years, interviewing Holocaust survivors. She currently teaches at Boston University and runs fiction workshops for Grub Street Writers.” That’s it, just three run-of-the-mill sentences that pack a lot of punch. In fact, these seemingly innocent details about Ms. Blum’s background are enough to make me, as a student of history, more than a little uneasy.

I’m sure that the details about her heritage were strategically included to legitimize her role as a storyteller whose work focuses on Second World War Era Germany and German history and culture more generally. Some of the issues dealt with by the characters in this book are of a sensitive nature and it’s understandable that the publisher would have wanted to underline Blum’s “authentic” voice as much as possible so that the readers would have confidence in Blum’s ability to speak for her characters. That’s fine. That’s not the part I find disturbing.

What does get under my skin is the fact that Ms. Blum worked for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation for four years before writing this book. This experience, combined with mentioning her current teaching position at Boston University, were undoubtedly her publisher’s way of placing Ms. Blum within academia, a position which many may perceive as giving her more “authority” over the historical aspects of the novel than the majority of the public reading it. A good thought, but Ms. Blum’s association with the Shoah Foundation ultimately leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Fair or not, I find myself wondering exactly when Ms. Blum began conceptualizing her novel and how/if she went about conducting background research for it. For instance, I can’t help but wonder how many of the details of her interviews with Holocaust survivors made it into this novel either consciously or unconsciously. Or, if these survivors had any inkling when they took part in interviews with Ms. Blum how some of their most painful memories might be used beyond the agreed upon Shoah Foundation oral history projects.

Like I said above, it might not be fair of me to question Ms. Blum’s integrity like this without any concrete evidence, but I feel I that have to acknowledge at least the possibility for the exploitation of Holocaust survivors to occur when an historian’s academic work is also reflected in their works of fiction. It all seems just a little unethical to me.

Too Rich For My Blood

In September 2009, our Public History class was introduced to Adam Crymble of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Eve Duchesne of EcoKids and the major group project that we would be working on over the course of the upcoming year: that is, conceptualizing, researching, planning and completing several environmental history lesson plans which would be compliant with the Ontario elementary school curriculum and fit for online display in the teacher's section of the EcoKids website. The idea was to create engaging, informative, interactive and historically nuanced lessons plans that took into consideration both multiple intelligences and different learning styles.

For our part of the project, Shelagh Staunton, Tim O'Grady and I chose to focus our efforts on creating a lesson plan about Samuel de Champlain's contact with the Hurons for the 6th grade Social Science unit on First Nation Peoples and Early European Explorers. It has taken us seven months of blood, sweat and tears, but I think the end result is that our group has put together a pedagogically sound lesson plan for teachers which is engaging for students and accomplishes the stated goals of both of our clients.

But, with just over two weeks until the final project deadline, our group is struggling to put together the copyright permissions for the images that we need to supplement the written materials of our lesson plan. Our difficulties with this aspect of the project are two-fold: 1) since the copyrights for our desired visual materials are held by third-party cultural institutions we are at the mercy of their schedules (which is not nearly as pressing as ours, it seems) and 2) some of the best images are prohibitively expensive and we're being forced to seek cheaper and somewhat less authentic alternatives, a solution we feel has the potential to compromise the integrity of our end project.

Although difficulty #1 is frustrating, it's also understandable - archives and museums are busy, chronically understaffed institutions which likely have more pressing in-house concerns to attend to than completing our image requests. Difficulty #2, however, is another matter entirely.

In order to give our students as much exposure to primary sources as possible, we decided to utilize a large number of photographs of Huron artifacts from the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. Unfortunately, when it came time to get copyright permissions for these items we hit a rather large brick wall: the price of purchasing the permission to show a single image that had already been digitized on a website was $50/yr (or $200 for 5 years). That's INSANE! Since our group originally wanted to use 6 or 7 photographs from the Museum on the EcoKids website indefinitely, that meant that our copyright costs were going to be upwards of $1500 for the first five years alone! That's highway robbery!

Because EcoKids is a not-for-profit organization and we are intending to use the materials for educational purposes, our group approached the Museum of Civilization again a few weeks ago, explaining the situation to them and received a second quote -- this time they were willing to 1/2 their original price, but even that is way out of our budget.

Now we are being forced to seek alternatives to these images, a situation which has the potential to put the integrity of our lesson plan at risk.

What I don't understand is how a national museum, like the Museum of Civilization, can get away with charging a non-profit, educational organization such ridiculously high fees for using images from their collection. Aren't two of the main goals of any museum to educate and serve their public? And aren't the teachers and students who use the EcoKids website considered part of the Museum's "public"? Therefore, shouldn't the rights to these images be more realistically attainable to these sectors of the public?

I'm not saying that the Museum should just give away its copyright permissions. I understand that there were some original costs incurred by the museum in order to photograph these artifacts and a small subsequent cost to host them on the museum's website. But these costs are minuscule compared to the cost of using a single image for a year at the Museum's regular price.

Somehow that just doesn't seem fair.

The Making of a History Nerd: Historical Fiction for the Burgeoning "Buff"

For as long as I can remember, I have been a voracious reader. As a child I read almost anything I could get my hands on, but my favourite was always historical fiction. I can remember many a trip to the library where as soon as I had opened the library's heavy glass doors and stepped onto their truly hideous green astro turf-like carpet, I would make a beeline for the Young Adult section, skimming titles until I had discovered every last book on a historical topic or time period that I could find. In fact, my appetite for historical fiction was so great that it didn't take me long to read nearly every book of this type owned by the Whitby Public Library. (When this happened, I just begged my parents to take me to Oshawa so that I could borrow the books out of their libraries as well.)

Taking a page from previous Public History bloggers Jenna Leifso and Sophie Malek, I wanted to share with you a few of my favourite examples of historical fiction written for Young Adults.

1) Kit Pearson's Guests of War Trilogy (The Sky is Falling, Looking at the Moon, and The Lights Go On Again): It's been well over a decade since I last read these books, but something about this trilogy has stayed with me. The books are set during the tumultuous years of the Second World War and follow the lives of two English children (Norah and her younger brother, Gavin) who are forced by their parents to evacuate their country and move to Canada for the duration of the war. Centering on the coming of age of a female protagonist that was approximately my age when I first read the books and set at least partially in my own country during the historical time period that I have always been most interested in, it is no wonder these books quickly became some of my favourites.

2) Karleen Bradford's The Nine Days Queen: Sophie was a fan, and so was I. This book tells the story of Lady Jane Grey, a young woman who was a reluctant pawn in a chess game played by more powerful men than her. Set in Tudor England, Jane Grey becomes the Queen of England for only nine days before she is dethroned by Mary I and shut away in the Tower of London. If I recall correctly, this was the first book to introduce me to Henry VIII, his wives, and the ensuing struggle between Mary I and Elizabeth I and I have been hooked ever since. In fact, I took a course in 4th year undergrad on Queen Elizabeth I's court. Although a number of other more significant factors played into that decision, my interest in the topic of the English courts probably had some of its roots in my reading of this book.

3) Tie - Ann Rinaldi's A Break With Charity and Arthur Miller's The Crucible: After exhausting my library's WWII historical fiction, I moved on to many other books which prominently featured young female characters. A Break With Charity was my first exposure to the subject of the Salem Witch Trials, a topic which has interested me ever since, inspiring me to read more detailed and accurate historical monographs and to write university level papers on the Salem "witch craze".

It is no secret that traditional history - that which deals with topics such as war, conflict, monarchy and religion - often focuses on old, white men, either as the subject of the piece or as its storyteller. Conversely, historical fiction for young adults - especially books which are geared at younger females - tend to be written by women and focus on young, female characters. They often relate the experiences of middle or lower class families, resulting in a story which is just as likely to feature an extraordinary female at the centre of a conflict or controversy as they are to feature an unnamed witness to the event (an "any woman," if you will). In a lot of cases, these books were my first taste of social history and they had the ability to show me at a very young age the potential that the study of history had.

It might also be interesting to note that reading these books, combined with my subsequent interest in history, has led me to visit both London, England and Salem, Massachusetts to see first-hand the places described in the novels I read as a child. Speaking from first-hand experience, I fully believe that historical fiction has the ability to expose children to history if not in an always accurate or nuanced way, a meaningful way nonetheless. Obviously my understanding of these historical events which I originally obtained through reading these books has been refined, expanded and/or corrected in the years that followed, but the fact remains that this early exposure was critical to the development of my interest in the discipline.

The Future of Publishing

Since September, my peers and I in the Public History program have spent considerable time contemplating the future of publishing in a digital world. Prompted by discussions about Kindles and other e-book readers in our Digital History course, we have often wondered what increased digital technologies means for the historical monograph specifically, and for the book and printed publishing more generally. Some of us (myself, included) have gushed over the ease and portability of e-book readers, but few of us, as staunch lovers of history and the written word, are ready to see printed books phased out entirely any time soon.

Although they aren't ready to do away with hard-copy books just yet, the publishing industry has clearly come on board where electronic publishing is concerned, especially when it comes to hooking younger audiences who may never have known a world without the Internet. In fact, the management team at U.K. educational publisher Dorling Kindersley has used digital media to reach out to students born in the digital era and encourage their love of reading, however they might prefer to consume it.

Watch their ad below:



The medium, the message and the method of delivery are all spot on. Pretty clever, eh?

A House on Talbot Street

Since our historic homes project officially came to a close last week with the installation of the exhibit for ARCC, I thought I would also include my 250-word summary about my property (585 Talbot Street) here as yet another example of how the Public History MA Program at UWO is preparing us to write for the public. It wasn't easy to get 2500 words of research notes into a 250 word summary. I definitely had to leave out salient details in order to create a cohesive blurb, but I think the final product works. You be the judge.

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Built in 1877, 585 Talbot St. became the family home of Laurence Gibson. A successful entrepreneur, Gibson, along with William Yates, was the proprietor of the London Machine Tool Company (est. 1873) which manufactured engines and iron-working tools for machinists, boiler makers and brass finishers. At its peak, the London Machine Tool Company employed between forty to fifty people, making it a significant local employer. In addition to his work as a manufacturer, Gibson also worked as an accountant, an insurance agent and a manager of the Huron & Erie Loan and Savings Company during his lifetime.

The centred gable style of the building at 585 Talbot St. represents a subtype of Italianate architecture which is typical of only 15 per cent of Italianate buildings. The simplicity of this design, combined with the white brick that is characteristic of many of London’s buildings, lends the structure a sense of understated elegance. Typical of the style, the building is largely cubic in shape, has a low-pitched roof with exaggerated eaves and tall windows with gently-rounded tops. Among the building’s most notable features are its intricately carved verge board, elaborate Gothic trusses and the cut stone work of the window crowns. Interestingly, the building only sparingly uses the most common feature of Italianate architecture, paired roof-brackets, to accentuate the top of its pilasters. Considered one of the City of London’s finest examples of the Italianate style of architecture, 585 Talbot St. is an integral part of the area’s aesthetic value and historic streetscape.

First Foray into Exhibit Design

Recently our Public History class put the finishing touches on a major project by installing an exhibit in the Schweitzer Gallery, which is located in the entrance to the Archives and Research Collections Centre (ARCC) inside of the Weldon Library at UWO.

Beginning in September, each public history student was assigned a historic home in the Talbot/Ridout Street area. Our job was to research the historical, architectural and contextual values of the homes, evaluate them according to a numerical rating system designed by members of LACH and present both our findings and our recommendations for the homes at a LACH meeting in December. In addition, we were required to write a 250-word description of the home and its significance that could be used as the text for a walking tour booklet or for a heritage plaque. The culmination of this assignment, of course, was creating a exhibit for ARCC which would highlight our research on some of London's historic gems.

Having never worked in a museum or archive before, this was my first true foray into exhibit design; it was considerably more challenging and time consuming than I had expected it to be.
Thankfully, it was a total team effort and we managed to get the display installed without too many headaches.

Although I am pleased with the end result, there are definitely areas for improvement. For instance, we had far too much text and some of it was repetitive. This could have been solved by taking the time to edit the written portion of the exhibit more carefully. As well, what text we did have needed to be displayed in a larger font so that it would be easier for visitors to read. In our defense, however, our font choices were limited by the amount of text we had and the size of the displays cases that we were using. In such a limited space we could not have possibly gone larger without overwhelming the photographs and further cluttering the design. The aesthetics of the display were also hampered by the numbers, size and type of display stands available for our use (many were already being used in ARCC's other three display cases). Without them it was difficult to vary the height and depth of the mostly 2-dimensional materials.

In an ideal world, I also would have liked to include more items that highlighted how we used the resources that are available to the public at ARCC. From city directories to local histories, fire insurance plans, diaries, artwork, pamphlets, walking tour guides, architectural dictionaries, etc., our public history class relied heavily on both the resources cared for by ARCC and the expertise of their staff. Unfortunately we were once again hampered by issues of space. If we had been given a third case in which to display our work, I am confident that we could have followed through on this aspect more thoroughly.

Controversy Over Heritage Designation Grows

2020 Lambs Road in Bowmanville is the site of the only battle of the Second World War to be fought on Canadian soil.

What would come to be known as the “Battle of Bowmanville” began on Thanksgiving weekend 1942, when hundreds of German prisoners of war at Camp 30 rioted in response to a federal government order that 100 of their highest-ranking officers be shackled. Using a variety of makeshift weapons including jam jars, baseball bats and hockey sticks, the German PoWs seized control of the camp, taking one guard hostage and barricading themselves in the main hall. The three-day standoff ended only after guards stormed the building, using fire hoses and tear gas to subdue the inmates.

While the Battle of Bowmanville isn’t likely to make it into many history books, historian Lynn Philip Hodgson believes Camp 30 to be a critical piece of Canada’s wartime history. Now in a state of disrepair, this collection of 18 buildings in rural Bowmanville is thought to be the world’s last remaining German prisoner of war camp. A small camp, it housed 880 of the Third Reich’s high-ranking officers during the Second World War. Hodgson believes that by containing these officers and denying Hitler some of his most strategic minds, Canada did its part to ensure Allied victory.

This belief has been at the centre of Hodgson’s ten-year campaign to preserve the site and to turn one of the buildings into a small museum.

Sadly, it has been an uphill battle. Over the years Hodgson has faced uncooperative property owners (Kaitlin Group, a housing development company), demolition plans, vandalism, property damage and, most recently, arson that gutted the camp’s administration building and damaged two others.

Fortunately, a new year has brought new progress. Sort of. In January, in the wake of intense backlash, Kaitlin Group offered the Municipality of Clarington a third of the property to develop as a park.

Victory was short-lived, however. A splinter group, led by Clarington councillor Charlie Trim, has emerged among preservationists. Trim believes that highlighting the war history of the site honours the German officers and could offend veterans living in the area. Instead, Trim wants the site to preserve the history of the training school for delinquent boys that occupied the site for the majority of the time from 1925-1979.

But this proposal is not without its own controversy. In fact, members of the community have stepped forward to remind Trim that the school has its own dark past of physical, sexual and emotional abuse that some may not wish to commemorate either.

It appears there is no easy solution for the preservationists in Durham Region. The Municipality of Clarington has the land. Now the question becomes, what are they going to do with it? Whose history should be privileged? Whose buried? Perhaps the answer lies in finding a compromise that would use the site to interpret all aspects of the area’s history.


Notes:

* This post was originally written as an assignment for my Public History class. The focus of the assignment was to learn how to write a 500 word article about history that would engage and inform a public audience. As it stands, this post represents a significantly altered second draft of my original article and includes corrections I made in response to the constructive feedback of Dr. Jonathan Vance and my peers in UWO’s Public History program.

* Although few people remember it, more than 37,000 German prisoners of war once forcibly called Canada ‘home.’ CBC Digital Archives has done a wonderful job of compiling both contemporary and subsequent news footage about German and Italian POWs here.

* To see what Time Magazine had to say about the Battle of Bowmanville at the time, see this article.

* Click here to see Hodgson's proposal for the site.

Creating a WWI Military Records Pathfinder

Our assignment this week in Dr. Don Spanner's Understanding Archives course was to create a one page (double-sided) pathfinder that would be useful to genealogy enthusiasts searching for records of Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) soldiers who served during WWI (1914-1918). The assignment further stipulated that we must highlight only 3 relevant resources and that we must address finding the soldier's full military service record as well as his burial information (if relevant).

The assignment was an interesting one -- not only did it require me to familiarize myself with a number of wonderful archival and genealogical resources on the web, but it also forced me to work on the rather difficult and little utilized skill of technical writing. I had to focus my usually long-winded writing style in order to be clear, concise, orderly and informative. I must admit, writing for a technical purpose is much harder than it sounds. I definitely have a whole new appreciation for those that write How-To manuals after this assignment!

Although it's text heavy, I've decided to post the finished result of my assignment here in the hopes that it might be useful to someone out there in their search for information about their ancestors.

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WWI Military Records Pathfinder

This genealogy pathfinder has been created to help make the search for the WWI military records of your loved ones easier. It will help you to understand where to look and what information is available in the archives and on the web concerning the military records of those who served as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) from 1914-1918.

A great place to begin any genealogical search is through the Canadian Genealogy Centre available via Library and Archives Canada (LAC) (their homepage can be found here).

For WWI military records you will want to consult the First World War topic within the Military section of this website. Here you will find the personnel records of more than 600,000 Canadians who enlisted and served as nurses, chaplains and soldiers during the Great War (1914-1918) as either part of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces or the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and Newfoundland Forestry Corps.

Under the section marked “Canadian Expeditionary Forces” click on the Soldiers of the First World War database and search by surname, given name(s) or regimental numbers. This database is indexed to the personnel records of CEF soldiers and contains copies of nearly 800,000 Attestation papers that have been digitized and made available for viewing online. Once you have located the desired soldier, you can access their full service record either on-site at LAC in Ottawa or by ordering a copy of the complete service file to be shipped to you (further details about both of these options can be found here).

According to the LAC website, a soldier’s full service record should include the following documents: his attestation paper, record of service, casualty form, discharge certificate, war service gratuity, hospital cards, medical history sheet, medical case sheet, temperature chart, last pay certificate, dental history sheet and medical examination certificate upon leaving the service. For help with interpreting these documents and others, please see the How To Read a Record of Service or Casualty Form, How to Read a Memorial Cross Card and How to Read a Medal Card guides available under the Canadian Expeditionary Force section of the website.

Once you have more information about your desired WWI soldier, you may want to revisit the Military section of the Canadian Genealogy Centre’s website and consult the sections on Military Medals, War Diaries and War Graves to check for applicable resources and/or details.

LAC Pathway Recap: Library and Archives Canada --> Canadian Genealogy Centre --> Military --> First World War --> (Canadian Expeditionary Force) Soldiers of the First World War --> Search

A second resource that you may wish to consult when looking for military records is Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) (their homepage came be found here). Under the VAC sidebar you will find a link for Canada Remembers which is a program that aims to “keep alive the achievements and sacrifices made by those who served Canada in times of war and peace.” This program provides a wealth of background information about various wars and battles Canada has been involved in, links to archival documents and film footage, and a number of VAC remembrance initiatives. Those links most applicable to the majority of genealogical searches are the Canadian Virtual War Memorial and the Books of Remembrance.

The Canada Virtual War Memorial contains information about the graves and memorials of 116,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who lost their lives serving their country. This database is searchable by surname, given name(s), initials and/or year of death. A soldier’s record in the CVWM will provide information concerning their military service (service number, age, force, unit and division) and additional information including date of birth, family connections, hometown, a link to view the page on which they have been memorialized in the First World War Book of Remembrance (1914-1922), and any available digital images (including copies of obituaries, photographs, etc.). The CVWM also provides burial information where it is known (often courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission).

VAC Pathway Recap 1: Veterans Affairs Canada --> Canada Remembers --> The Canadian Virtual War Memorial --> Books of Remembrance --> First World War

VAC Pathway Recap 2: Veterans Affairs Canada --> Canada Remembers --> The Canadian Virtual War Memorial --> Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Finally, you may wish to consult the Canadian Military Heritage Project (homepage found here) which contains a large section on Canada in World War I, including a How to Find Your WWI Soldier pathfinder and a link to the CEF Nominal Rolls (which are available for viewing online or download via Archive.org). CEF Nominal Rolls are lists of soldiers that are part of a unit on a particular date (thus they are broken down by battalion and year). The first page of any nominal roll contains a list of officers, arranged in order of rank. Enlisted soldiers are listed on succeeding pages (arranged alphabetically). Nominal rolls show a soldier’s full name, rank, and regimental number. Most of the nominal rolls found on Archive.org can be viewed in a searchable PDF format.

The Canadian Military Heritage Project also contains links to the Courts-Martial of the First World War database (via LAC) and a large list of WWI databases available in partner with The Canadian Great War Homepage.

CMHP Pathway Recap 1: Canadian Military Heritage Project --> CEF Nominal Rolls --> Archive.org

CMHP Pathway Recap 2: Canadian Military Heritage Project --> (Find Military Ancestors) Courts-Martial of the First World War

CMH Project Pathway Recap 3: Canadian Military Heritage Project --> (Quick Links) The Canadian Great War Homepage

Where the Ontario Curriculum Meets Local History

I recently read an interesting article by Ian Milligan on the ActiveHistory.ca website entitled “‘Local Effort Brings Our Past to Life’: Halifax Chronicle-Herald.” The article briefly related the efforts of a Nova Scotian historical association to put out a book of local history and donate it to children in grades 4, 5 and 6 in their area (a similar initiative was carried out by my local historical association several years ago). Using this act of charity as a springboard for discussion on the importance of local history, Milligan posed a number of thought-provoking questions in his article, the first of which being “[s]hould local history have a bigger role in history curriculums?”

The truth is, the role of local history in our curriculum (at least at the secondary level in Ontario) is already well-established. Although we currently only have one mandatory history credit in high school (don’t get me started -- that’s a rant for another day!), it does include a strand entitled “Communities: Local, National, and Global” which explicitly includes the study of local history. The larger description for this strand is as follows:

Communities may be viewed from local, regional, national, and world perspectives. Communities interact with one another through commerce, cultural exchanges, colonization, war, and international agreements. These interactions are the basis of today’s globally connected world. Over time, communities and their interactions have changed because of factors such as changing technologies and patterns of human migration. It is through the study of communities that students begin to understand who they are in time and place.

And, while the inclusion of local history is explicitly laid out in the Communities strand above, there are multitudes of opportunities for teachers to include it when covering the expectations in the other strands (Change and Continuity, Citizenship and Heritage, and Social, Economic, and Political Structures) as well.

Since teachers are legally bound to the curriculum as laid out by the Ontario government, it is not a matter of should but of must; it is part of our responsibility as secondary school teachers to include local history in our lesson plans in order to ensure that all curriculum expectations for the province are being met. The problem is that few teachers do and those that do often don’t do so effectively. Usually, as Milligan points out, the inclusion of local history within the majority of history courses is done on a purely superficial level, achieved by tossing a short anecdote or trivial fact into a larger discussion. Rarely is local history given centre stage.

Perhaps the question that we should really be asking is “how do we, as teachers and historians, go about incorporating local history in more meaningful ways within history curricula?”

I believe that one way to do this is for schools and teachers to allot time not only for discussing history on a local level with their students, but also showing it being done. I realize field trips are difficult and time consuming to organize, but as educators we should be exposing students to local archives, historical societies, historical architecture and historic sites and/or monuments. This type of exposure to local sources of history would fit seamlessly (I think) into the Historical Inquiry section of the curriculum and is therefore easily justifiable to administrators.

At the end of his post, Milligan wonders if local histories are only important when tied into the larger narrative of provincial or national history or, if by approaching local history in this way we are undermining its importance in the lives of everyday people. I think this is a valid concern. But, for now, in a time when high school teachers should be including local history in their lesson plans, but often get away with ignoring it altogether, I think we have to take the inclusion of the topic wherever we can, and build on that.