I'm looking forward to the book launch for Helen Forsey's book about her father, Eugene Forsey, Canada's Maverick Sage. It is next Tuesday 6 November 2012 at Trent University in Peterborough. You can get all of the details here.
But if you're too lazy for a single click (we all have those days) then it's at 5PM at the Lady Eaton College Senior Common Room. All are welcome.
Forsey was an incredibly fascinating man. I've blogged about him here, here, here, and and and ... well you get the picture.
Be there!
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Holy F#$! Library and Archives Canada!
In the vein of 'in order to serve you better, we are reducing our services', here's the announcement from Library and Archives Canada on the elimination of the program (the vital, important, dare I say 'Nation Building' program) to loan out LAC material across the country (thanks to Marcel Fortin and Ian Mosby on twitter for this):
End of ILL ServicesInterlibrary Loan (ILL) services at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) will end in December 2012. Users ofLAC's current services should note the following dates:You'd think that a party that has spent so much time complaining about the monopolization of cultural and other resources in Ottawa might have some sense at least of the irony of what they are doing.
- November 13, 2012:
End of loan requests from international libraries.
- November 16, 2012:
End of renewals. All items loaned after this date will be non-renewable.LAC's ILL listserv (CANRES-L) and Canadian Library Gateway also will be archived in December 2012.
- December 11, 2012:
End of loan requests, location searches, and ILL-related photocopying services.
LAC will continue to facilitate interlibrary loan activities among other institutions through the ILL form in AMICUS, and through ongoing administration of Canadian Library Symbols.
Through our modernized service channels, LAC will emphasize increased digital access to high-demand content. LAC is working with Canada's ILL user community in order to inform this approach to accessing the institution's unique holdings
Michael Ignatieff on Harper the potential fascist...
Does the title sound extreme? Perhaps, but read John Ibbitson's column on a recent Ignatieff speech here.
Michael, Michael, why were you not a better politician....?
Michael, Michael, why were you not a better politician....?
Monday, 29 October 2012
Halloween as Drag Show
Dates, dates, and more dates...
From speaking notes of Hon. James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, on announcing the new Museum of Canadian History.
'2012 has already been an eventful year for Canada. This year, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Coast Guard, the 40th anniversary of Paul Henderson’s goal in the ’72 Summit Series, the 100th Grey Cup, the 100th Calgary Stampede, and the Bicentennial of the War of 1812.
Next year, we will recognize the 100th anniversary of Canada’s first Arctic Expedition.
In 2014, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Sir George Étienne Cartier’s birth, the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences, and the 100th anniversary of World War I.
In 2015, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Canadian flag and the 200th anniversary of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth.
And, in 2016, the 175th anniversary of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s birth, the 175th anniversary of the union of Upper and Lower Canada, and the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Canada. All leading, of course, to Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017.'
Ow! My head hurts. But I can't help but notice that he forgot one - ie 1982 - our Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms!
Friday, 26 October 2012
Globe Drive does history, sort of...
The full article is here. But here's the section you might find funny:
7) In what decade did you first get your driver’s licence?
a) The 1930s. I drove down to the office and gave the guy a bottle of Canadian Club. Then he gave me my licence.
b) The 1950s. I went to office and swore not to be a communist or engage in creative thought. Then they gave me my licence.
c) The 1960s. I had it handed to me on a silver platter, like everything else.
d) The 1970s. You had to go to the office and say, “Disco sucks.”
e) The 1980s. I did a line of coke with guy at the Copa. Turned out he worked at the Ministry of Transport. It was excellent.
f) 1990s. I had to give blood and a urine sample. Then an MRI and a personality evaluation. Then I was on triple double secret probation for seven years.
g) 2000s. I currently have a Learners Level 3 Probationary Permit, which allows me to look at cars. I’m hoping to get my Learners Level 2 Probationary Permit next year, which will allow me to drive if I’m accompanied by three adults and an over-bearing step-parent. If all goes well I should get my full driver’s license by the time I’m 65.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Tina Loo on Unfinished History
Tina Loo has a thoughtful post over on Active History, thinking through some of the ways history teaching has changed over the last few decades. It is the death of Eric Hobsbawm that gets her thinking about how his once fresh and exciting ideas (as well as those of E P Thompson and Natalie Davis) have become a little bit 'humdrum'.
She's saying (but for different reasons) the same kind of thing that I wrote in an article called 'After Inclusiveness: The Future of Canadian History.' There I was reflecting on how the once radical calls for change in the profession had, in Canadian history, now become mainstream common sense.
Loo worries that the danger with 'this manifestation of boredom [with once exciting radical approaches/subjects] is that it threatens to foreclose the analysis of power that social historians started.'
I partly share her concern. But I'm not entirely in agreement with the prescription. It seems to me that part of the problem of the 'history from the bottom up' paradigm was that it was all about agency and power, struggle and resistance. In practice it was used by those who too readily assumed that there is/was a simple version of what good historical changes were, about what kinds of power ought to operate, etc. It assumes (though this is only a purposeful, useful generalization) that there is someone in the past with whom we should now identify.
Thinking through my own research from the past summer, I just can't agree. I spent a lot of time reading Conservatives from the late 1940s and 1950s lamenting the changing world in which they were living. To them, Canada was radically changing: we were losing the British tradition, popular forms of culture like the TV were taking people away from reading, the state was increasingly taking on more and more power and was being corrupted in the process. Now, personally, I don't identify with much of this. But I could understand that what their letters were telling me (though not really me, of course, they were writing to others!): for them, the world as they understood it was changing radically.
Yet if we look to the history from the bottom up historians version of the 1950s this is nowhere. We might get some of this from the British World historians - the switch away from Britishness in Canadian identity. But historians who write about this period talk of it as conservative and regressive. Others disagree and find some currents for change bubbling away under the surface (feminists, labour organizers, human rights advocates, etc). Yet none of this really relates to what many Conservative Canadians were thinking in the period. It's the interests of later historians reinterpreting the period for themselves.
In other words, if we are moving on from bottom up social history, and if some of this has lost its lustre, it is not only a question of something being lost. There is also the chance for gain as well, to see what this approach didn't get. And the concerns of Conservative Canadians in the early 1950s are never going to be the stuff of exciting bottom up history. But to think of them as 'the powerful' is equally untrue. Their world really was changing, under conditions not of their choosing. It's what Marx said (men making history but not under conditions of their own choosing) but not what his later historian friends care too much about.
She's saying (but for different reasons) the same kind of thing that I wrote in an article called 'After Inclusiveness: The Future of Canadian History.' There I was reflecting on how the once radical calls for change in the profession had, in Canadian history, now become mainstream common sense.Loo worries that the danger with 'this manifestation of boredom [with once exciting radical approaches/subjects] is that it threatens to foreclose the analysis of power that social historians started.'
I partly share her concern. But I'm not entirely in agreement with the prescription. It seems to me that part of the problem of the 'history from the bottom up' paradigm was that it was all about agency and power, struggle and resistance. In practice it was used by those who too readily assumed that there is/was a simple version of what good historical changes were, about what kinds of power ought to operate, etc. It assumes (though this is only a purposeful, useful generalization) that there is someone in the past with whom we should now identify.
Thinking through my own research from the past summer, I just can't agree. I spent a lot of time reading Conservatives from the late 1940s and 1950s lamenting the changing world in which they were living. To them, Canada was radically changing: we were losing the British tradition, popular forms of culture like the TV were taking people away from reading, the state was increasingly taking on more and more power and was being corrupted in the process. Now, personally, I don't identify with much of this. But I could understand that what their letters were telling me (though not really me, of course, they were writing to others!): for them, the world as they understood it was changing radically.
 |
| Arthur Meighen, still alive in the 1950s but how much at home in this 'conservative' decade? source: www.parl.gc.ca |
In other words, if we are moving on from bottom up social history, and if some of this has lost its lustre, it is not only a question of something being lost. There is also the chance for gain as well, to see what this approach didn't get. And the concerns of Conservative Canadians in the early 1950s are never going to be the stuff of exciting bottom up history. But to think of them as 'the powerful' is equally untrue. Their world really was changing, under conditions not of their choosing. It's what Marx said (men making history but not under conditions of their own choosing) but not what his later historian friends care too much about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)