A Stroll Down Memory Lane

....or, at least along the Danforth.

During some recent downtime at work I stumbled – via a convoluted series of hyperlinks – upon the website for Heritage Toronto, a charitable organization whose mandate is to “tell the stories behind the people, landscapes, and historic buildings that bring Toronto’s neighbourhoods to life.”

One of the ways that Heritage Toronto aims to heighten community interest and involvement in historical, architectural and natural heritage matters is through a series of walking tours that run nearly every weekend from April to October (rain or shine!) and focus on many of the diverse areas of the city. For example, this summer’s offerings include tours of Rosedale, St. Clair West, Leslieville, Thistletown and more. And, although you might occasionally find yourself rubbing shoulders with an MPP or a Toronto City Councillor doing a guest appearance as a walk leader in an area of the city they represent, the majority of walk leaders and assistants seem to be nothing more than local history enthusiasts, making Toronto Heritage Walks truly ‘for the people by the people’.

In addition to the walking tours, the Heritage Toronto website also offers a wealth of features that really seem to embrace the technological goals outlined by the Ministry of Culture for their recent Museums and Technology Fund initiative (discussed in my last post); the website includes a blog that features author commentary complimented by City of Toronto Archival photographs, virtual tours of areas of the city not compatible with large group walking tours and podcasts for self-guided tours. One of my favourite features on the website has to be the Heritage Exploration Map (powered by Google). It provides information for finding archaeological sites, museums, heritage plaques and the start points for all of the heritage walks that are offered by the organization. You can navigate the map by location type, neighbourhood or specific addresses if you already have a destination in mind. Further, clicking on any of the icons on the map will bring up a short blurb on the historical significance of the place as well as a “more” option that will link you to any available contact info for the site and a more detailed map of the area.

Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to take part in a Heritage Walk this summer, my current geographic location makes that a highly unlikely possibility. So, from South Korea I urge you, my readers (are there any readers yet?!) to take some time this summer and enjoy the history in your own backyard. :)

Oh, and if you’re interested, Heritage Toronto offers a wide variety of unique volunteer opportunities for those that are looking to get more involved with the preservation and communication of Toronto’s history. On the front lines, volunteers are needed to both assist and lead weekly heritage walks in different areas around the city and to act as office support staff (especially during the busy periods). But, if it’s more behind the scenes involvement that interests you, the organization always seems to be looking for experienced researchers to research and write scripts for the walking tours, podcasts and virtual tours as well as to further their Plaques Program projects.

A Step in the Right (Digital) Direction

Aileen Carroll, Ontario’s Minister of Culture, recently announced the creation of a new government initiative aimed at encouraging the use of digital technologies in community museums, galleries and archives across Ontario.

The Ministry press release didn’t offer a wealth of information on the new Museum and Technology Fund, but the gist is that the Ontario government will spend $6.5 million dollars over the next four years to match the contributions put forward by community heritage institutions so that they may use new technology as a way to make local heritage more accessible to the public.

Several of Ontario’s nearly 400 community museums already offer an online component to compliment their on-site exhibitions, and this money will be put towards other institutions incorporating similar digital displays as a way to increase public awareness, education and tourism.

While $6.5 million dollars isn’t a huge sum of money when you consider that dozens – if not hundreds – of community institutions will be eligible for partial funding later this summer, the initiative certainly seems like a step in the right direction. The more that we can digitize archives and exhibitions, the larger the number and the wider the audience historians can reach with their work.

I don’t know about you, but I look forward to seeing what the smaller cultural and historical organizations do with this opportunity.

Oh, and in case you ever needed it, I’ve included a link to the Ontario Museum Association’s museum database. The website allows you to browse listings of Ontario’s museums by name, type, city and region. Happy hunting!

And Doesn't That Just Say It All...?

In the summer of 2007, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a few weeks touring some of Central Europe’s most famous cities (Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Munich). And, because my travel partner was also a like-minded history major, the two of us were able to indulge in the local history and culture to our hearts content. Although I enjoyed them all for different reasons, it was the city of Munich that made the most lasting impression on me in terms of how its recent history was being conveyed to the public, both its own citizens and those visiting the Bavarian capital.

On our first afternoon in the city, my friend and I opted for a WWII-themed walking tour (I’m not positive, but I think it may have been billed on the brochure as a tour of “Hitler’s Munich” – insert *eye roll* here). Over the course of the next hour and a half, our guide pointed out dozens of things that peaked my interest as someone concerned with how history is communicated to and understood by the public. Perhaps a future blog will touch on more of these examples, but for now, I want to focus solely on the war monument in front of the Bavarian Parliament Building.

At first glance we barely noticed the monument. Its sandy colour and position (lowered into a hole in the ground and further hidden behind a small hedge) do a pretty good job of camouflaging it from visitors without tour guides as savvy as ours. The shape of the monument also helped to conceal its purpose for being - giant blocks of stone piled on top of each without easily understandable visual clues (like gigantic arcs, bronze soldiers, eternal flames, flags, etc) don’t exactly scream ‘honoring our war dead’ to me. Turns out, you have to go even further down a set of stairs to get inside the monument (hmmm… not-so-metaphorically burying your wartime history, Munich?!?).

Once you are inside the monument, there are two inscriptions carved into the walls in German, the first of which is for those that perished during WWI. Loosely translated it says, “Built for the city of Munich, Bavaria’s brave soldiers – 13 000 heroic fallen sons of the city of Munich.” I find this phrasing pretty typical of the WWI war monuments I’ve seen in the past. Use of the words ‘brave’ and ‘heroic’ show that despite Germany’s position on the losing side of the conflict, there was still a sense of pride in the individual soldiers who had acted honourably while giving their lives for their country. Further, the inscription’s use of the phrase “fallen sons” seems to show the sense of ownership the city of Munich felt towards these soldiers and their actions, just as a parent would have towards a child; they were truly a beloved part of the community and therefore deserving of a monument in their honour.

So, although the physical location of the monument doesn’t automatically convey a sense of nationalism or pride in the part that Munich’s soldiers played in the war, I could clearly see the impact that carefully chosen phrasing can give a monument in terms of the messages about the past that are being recorded for future generations to read and interpret.

Underneath the inscription in honor of those who died during the First World War is the dedication to the soldiers and citizens of Munich who were lost during WWII. Although both inscriptions were written under similar circumstances (that is, the German loss of a world war), the second inscription is markedly different than the one for WWI. Roughly translated, it reads:

“Built in memory of the
99 000 fallen
11 000 missing
6 600 victims of the air war
of the city of Munich
1939-1945.”

The differences between the two inscriptions are striking. Compared with the word choice of the WWI inscription, this one is cold, clinical even. Gone are phrases such as “heroic sons” and “brave soldiers.” In their place are emotionless numbers and one word descriptors. Essentially, the inscription boils down years of hardship and loss, tragedy and horror to a pile of emotionless statistics. Reading the inscription more than 60 years after it was first inscribed, the shame that this phrasing captured was still palpable to me.

What caused this change in the tone of the two inscriptions should be no mystery to anyone reading this blog, but it did bring to my mind the larger question of commemoration. Specifically, how do nations commemorate wars and how does the approach of a nation towards commemoration change depending on the outcome of the conflict? More to the point, perhaps, how does the approach to commemoration change when a portion of the soldiers and citizens of the nation in question participated in or benefited from such a horrific genocide?

I think the inscription that was added to the Munich war memorial following WWII is an interesting example. It strikes me as an obvious attempt by the city’s leadership to distance themselves from the ugly role Munich played during the 1930s and 1940s in regards to the Holocaust. Soldiers are now referred to only as “fallen” or “missing”; no longer are they the beloved “sons of Munich.” They are mentioned, not glorified. At the same time, however, it is clear that the city still tried to honour the sacrifices that their citizens and soldiers had made on their behalf (the fact that Germany had participated in and lost a second world war couldn’t exactly go unmentioned on German soil).

That said, I find the statistics dehumanizing. Presumably there were many people in Munich at the time who disagreed with or even acted against their government’s policies during WWII. I’m sure that they went missing or died in air raids with equal measure to those that supported Hitler and his regime. Perhaps they deserve to be remembered more fondly than they have been?!

I guess the question that I am posing is this: how does one, as an historian, find the balance between acknowledging the loss of the nation during wartime without glorifying the reprehensible actions that the country’s leadership put into motion?

Any thoughts?

[Note: For the purpose of this blog, I attempted to translate the inscriptions as closely as possible. Please be aware, however, that I don’t speak German. :) The translations above are a combination of my tour guide’s efforts two years ago in his second or (possibly) third language and an online translation program that I accessed as I was writing this post earlier this morning.]

What Gordon Lightfoot Taught Me

What do you remember about what you learned in the fourth grade? If you’re anything like me, chances are, not much. One of the things I do remember, however, is that once a week like clockwork, my teacher would have everyone take out these thick, musty-smelling music books that looked like they hadn’t been updated in the last decade and she’d choose a song for us to sing. Now, if you’re even half as tone deaf and “rhythmically challenged” as I am, you’ll be able to sympathize with me when I say how much I dreaded having to sing “Fish and Chips and Vinegar,” “There’s a Hole in my Bucket” and “La Bamba” on a weekly basis.

But I digress...

The point that I wanted to make about my 4th grade music class was not the songs that I didn’t enjoy singing, but the one I did – Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” For anyone unfamiliar with the song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is a folk song about a boat that sank in bad weather on Lake Superior in the 1970s, carrying the captain and all 28 crew members to their deaths. The song was apparently inspired by an article Lightfoot read in Newsweek and (understandably) the lyrics read like an incredibly tragic story. I still remember sitting at my desk in the classroom, examining a black and white photograph of the Edmund Fitzgerald from the text and pouring over the song’s lyrics in order to learn about this piece of maritime history (an aspect of history that I’d never been particularly interested in before). In fact, for the rest of the semester, every time we opened our music books for a new lesson, I would take the time to reread the lyrics of Lightfoot’s song.

To be honest, I don’t recall what first prompted me to think about this particular memory tonight as I sat down to write my latest post; I haven’t thought about that song in years. But I think the fact that this memory is still so vivid after more than a decade just goes to show what potential music has to be a powerful tool with which to educate the public about historical events and eras. As a teacher, I can’t help but think about the ways that this cross-curricular approach to history might benefit students. Songs written about specific events in history, like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or the ones found in the Song Gallery of the Ultimate Canadian History Site, have the ability to teach history to students that might otherwise not engage in more traditional learning methods or to those that identify themselves as being uninterested in the subject as a whole but enjoy music.

That said, I think it is important to approach music about historical events with the same caution that historians would take towards other forms of popular culture such as historical fiction in books and movies. Firstly, we have to be careful not to romanticize history just because of the medium that we are using to communicate to the public with. We should also be aware that the nature of the mediums put limitations on the content. For instance, songs, just like fiction books and movies, face time and space contraints that force artists to pick and choose the details that they are able to include. Lastly, we must also strive to remember that the majority of songwriters (like screenwriters or filmmakers) are not historians and their first concern, therefore, is likely not historical accuracy. Doing some quick research on the Edmund Fitzgerald as an adult and comparing that to Lightfoot’s lyrics, I can see that he took a few artistic liberties with some terminology as well as details of the shipwreck in order to fit the format of his song. These sorts of changes have the potential to be problematic if carried out on a large scale. With this particular song, however, I was able to determine that the changes were relatively minor and therefore the core historical facts remained. As a result, I realize that I did learn about history in a lasting and meaningful way through Lightfoot's music.

In addition to music written about history, I believe that it is also important to consider the impact of listening to music written during particular eras. Listening to music from the time periods you are studying is a great way for a person to get a ‘feel’ for the time. Personally, I can barely imagine what my university course on the 1960s would have been like without the lessons on music or what my Apartheid literature course would have been like without including the protest music of those living in the townships.

It is my hope the in the future recording artists continue to be inspired by both current and past events, drawing on them to write accurate and engaging songs that educate as well as entertain.

Questions? Comments? Statements of brilliance?

Public History (As I Currently Understand It)

I suppose that the natural starting point for a blog about public history would be for me to establish my current understanding of the discipline (however rudimentary that might be at this point). Hopefully I’ll be able to look back on this entry at the end of my year in the Public History program at UWO and see how much course readings, guest speakers, field trips, group projects, class discussions and self-reflection have deepened my understanding of the subject.

According to the Public History page for UWO, public history as a discipline is broadly defined as one that “explores how history is understood by and communicated to the public.” The method of communication to the public can take many forms including, but not limited to, historical fiction in books and movies (an admittedly guilty pleasure of mine), documentaries, museum exhibits or historical sites, websites, archives, video games on historic themes, etc. It is the Heritage Moments that used to run on television during commercial breaks and those blue commemorative plaques on the side of the road in Ontario. It is Doors Open Ontario events and those statues of the dude on the horse that every capital city from here to Europe seems to have in spades.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me to be the innumerable ways that historians try to engage those outside of academia (whose first priority might not be the study of history - blasphemy, I know!) to learn about the past in ways both meaningful and interesting to them as individuals. Emphasis also seems to be on the responsibility of the public historian to communicate their specialized knowledge to an audience in a manner appropriate to their level of understanding.

Well, that’s public history as I currently understand it. It isn’t pretty or detailed, but it is a starting point.

Questions? Comments? Statements of brilliance?