This summer marks the two hundredth anniversary of the United States’ declaration of war on Great Britain and her colonies (including what eventually became Canada). The bicentennial of the War of 1812 this summer will be the starting point for a number of commemorations, restorations, re-enactments and monument building. The Government of Canada, under current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reiterated its commitment to supporting commemorations across Canada in its most recent Speech from the Throne. Numerous events planned across the country will serve to “perpetuate the identities of War of 1812 militia units,” as well as to demonstrate, in the words of Heritage Minister James Moore, that “This was the fight for Canada.” A public study conducted recently by the Department of Canadian Heritage, however, points out that many Canadians cannot name the three combatants in the war, and argues that it “may not be something that a lot of Canadians recognize or understand.

As preparations for the bicentennial kick into full gear, a simple question may help provide some much needed focus to this apparent amnesia: just whose war was it, anyway? Historians, governments, teachers, and the media are all working to address larger questions around the war and its impact. What were the consequences for aboriginals both during and after the conflict? What about those who refused to fight, on either the British or American side? How did regional, cultural and linguistic differences affect experiences of the war and did they reinforce or conflict with so-called “national” narratives centred on nation building? Can we, in fact, speak of “The War of 1812” or should we instead be considering the many “wars” experienced by those who were swept up in the tumult of the period? How does a consideration of broader experiences of the conflict affect Canadian communities today? Further, how does considering these questions change the way the history of the conflict is taught, both in schools and in other educational settings such as historic sites and museums? Are these broader questions reflected in these settings and in the broader teaching of history?

In the spirit of these questions, the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) Active History Committee, in partnership with The History Education Network (THEN/HiER) and the CHA, has organized a public mini-conference to be held in conjunction with this year’s CHA annual meeting, May 30, in Kitchener-Waterloo. It will engage historians, educators and the general public on a topic that is both timely and of local interest. Divided in two parts, the conference will include sessions on new teaching tools focussed on the war, local tourism and heritage initiatives, neglected legacies of the war and a special evening round table session focussed on the politics and memory of the bicentennial celebrations. In the coming weeks, activehistory.ca will be featuring vignettes written by some of the conference participants.

For the preliminary conference programme:

Active History Mini-Conference Provisional Program / Programme provisoire du mini-colloque de Active History: “The War of 1812: Whose War Was It, Anyway?” / « La guerre de 1812 : à qui était cette guerre de toute façon? »

May 30, 2012, University of Waterloo

Business Meeting – CHA Active History Committee, 1200-1300 Math and Computer Building (M & C) 4042

Session / Séance I – 13:15 -14:45 M&C 2065

Exploring the War of 1812 in an Augmented Reality Game / L’exploration de la Guerre de 1812 dans un jeu de réalité amplifiée

Chair / Animateur : Kevin Kee, Brock University

Panellists / Les panélistes :

Tim Compeau and Adriana Ayers, University of Western Ontario: “Tecumseh: Running and Playing a War of 1812 Augmented Reality Game”

Robert MacDougall, University of Western Ontario: “Lies: Inquiry-Based Pedagogy and Subversive Commemoration for the War of 1812”

Devon Elliott, University of Western Ontario: “Here: Place-Based Computing and Augmented-Reality Technologies for History and Heritage Education”

Session / Séance II – 15:00 – 16:15 M&C 2065

1812 History En Route and on Screen: Route 1812, Public History and Tourism / L’histoire 1812 en route et à l’écran : route 1812, l’histoire publique et le tourisme

Chair / Animateur: Jessica Squires, Library and Archives Canada

Panellists / Les panélistes :

Adrienne Horne, Regional Project Manager, Maria Fortunato, Chair, Western Corridor War of 1812 Bicentennial Alliance

Representatives from the Ontario Visual Heritage Project

Session / Séance III – 16:30-17:30 M&C 2065

Historic Peace Churches in Upper Canada during the War of 1812: The Place of Conscientious Objectors in Canadian History / Les églises de la paix au Haut-Canada pendant la guerre de 1812 : la place des objecteurs de conscience dans l’histoire canadienne

Chair / Animateur : Maurice Martin, President of the Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario

Panellists / Les panélistes : 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee

Jonathan Seiling, “The Experience of Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren in Christ in the War of 1812”

Donald Alexander, “The Quaker Legacy of Conscientious Objection in Canada”

Donald Woodside, “Lobbying Efforts for Alternatives to Military Taxation Arising post-1812”

Evening Event – Co-sponsored with the The History Education Network (THEN/HiER) / L’activité en soirée coparrainée avec Histoire et éducation en Réseau (HiER/THEN)

“Whose War Was It, Anyway?” A round-table discussion / Table ronde « à qui était cette guerre de toute façon? »

7pm / 19h00 – James J. Brown Auditorium, Waterloo Public Library, Main Library, 35 Albert Street

Moderator: Julia Roberts, University of Waterloo

Panellists / Les panélistes :

Catherine Emerson, County Historian, Niagara County, New York;

James Elliott, journalist, author of Strange Fatality: The Battle of Stoney Creek, 1813

Jamie Swift, journalist and co-author (with Ian McKay) Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety (appearing summer of 2012);

Keith Jamieson, Manager, Six Nations Legacy Consortium.

Esyllt Jones, co-editor, A People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada

______________________________

Acknowledgements

The Active History CHA Committee would like to thank The History Education Network/Histoire et Éducation en Réseau (THEN/HiER) for their generous financial support and the Canadian Historical Association for their assistance in extending funding and promotional space for our mini-conference. CHA Programme Chair Heather MacDougall has been most helpful with preparations for the event. Finally, the activehistory.ca editorial committee has been very supportive in providing feedback and logistical support.

Jessica Squires, James Trepanier – CHA Active History Committee Co-Coordinators

Is this the new normal? Let's hope not.

By Ian Milligan

The government claims that Library and Archives Canada needs to be modernized so all Canadians can access archival services. Yet the state of Canada’s online collections are small and sorely lacking when compared to their expansive on-site collections. LAC does need to modernize, and the goal of expanding access beyond just Ottawa is actually a laudable one. But what they’re doing here, under the guise of ‘modernization’, is simply cutting services and diminishing our access to Canada’s past. In this post, I want to show you how small and insignificant LAC’s online collections are, why they haven’t taken them seriously, and that if we’re fighting for better on-site access, we might as well fight for better online access too! They are, after all, despite the rhetoric of LAC and the government, not incompatible in the slightest.

What has been happening? Canada’s archives are under attack. Announcements made on May 1st confirmed that Library and Archives Canada will lose 20% of their workforce, that appointments will be needed to access the reference desk, and the shuttering of the National Archival Development Program. LAC is spinning this as a “new approach to service delivery” and makes the following point by way of justification:

LAC’s service statistics provide a vivid illustration of this digital revolution. Our website now gets close to half a million visits per month. In contrast, LAC’s in-person service hub located at 395 Wellington Street, receives about 2,000 visits per month. These two service points are also trending in opposite directions, with online consultations increasing rapidly, and in-person visits declining slowly but steadily.

Despite rhetoric of modernization and looking forward to the digital era, LAC has been comparatively slow in aggressively preparing for the next generation. It has been pointed out by several people that it will be even slower now that 50% of its digitization staff will be cut!

We need to contextualize LAC’s digital collections. Let’s quickly see what the Library of Congress (LOC) in the United States has been up to on this front. Their print collection is already dwarfed by their newest collection of archived born-digital sources. If each and every one of their 26 million books was scanned and digitized at 8MB per book, the collection would be about 200TB (a figure that you can now conceivably store at home). Just from websites alone, the LOC now has 254TB of data, adding 5TB a month. They’re taking the internet seriously. Library and Archives Canada, on the other hand, only collects a “representative sample of Canadian websites,” notably the government, and has about 7TB of data. While some recent pronouncements suggest that LAC is taking born-digital sources seriously are encouraging and should be celebrated, it is a pin compared to a much larger haystack of archival information.

Firstly, there simply isn’t that much there that has been digitized. LAC has an incredible on-site collection for Canadian historians: be it political history, social history, cultural history, military history, etc. If we go to their “about the collection” page, we see that they have: 71,000 films, 2.5 million architectural drawings, millions of books, 21.3 photographs, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of boxes. In that list I provide, they also note that as of 2007 they had “3.18 million megabytes of information in electronic formats.” Sounds, impressive eh? That’s only a bit over 3TB of data. Presumably that doesn’t include their web archive, which dwarfs that, but it starts to give you a sense of the mismatch in size between conventional and digitized historical sources.

They also don’t take many steps to make their online collections (what they have there) fully accessible to researchers. Canadiana.ca provides an Application Programming Interface (a way for a computer program to talk directly to another computer, and speed up research – and let you do new, cool things with the data). Library and Archives Canada does not.

If LAC was really serious about modernization, if they put more of their collection online in a comprehensive manner, if they were open to new forms of research, and if they didn’t do this at the expense of their on-site collections, this would be a good thing.

But, given the state of their online collections, I don’t see any reason to be happy here.

So, as we begin our fight to Save Library and Archives Canada, taking action by sending letters to the Minister of Canadian Heritage as well as the Librarian and Archivist of Canada, why don’t we also call out for better online services. There’s a kernel of truth to some government pronouncements: all Canadians, not just those who can come in person to Ottawa, deserve access to their national archive. But instead of using that chip as a talking point to justify cuts, let’s actually mean it. All Canadians deserve robust archives, be it on-site or online.

Ian Milligan is co-editor of ActiveHistory.ca and is also a postdoctoral fellow with Western University’s Department of History.

Photo by Gerry Lauzon

At the end of last week, the Quebec government tabled Bill 78 in an effort to end the months of protest over planned hikes to university tuition. The bill sets restrictions on the freedom of assembly and expression, requiring those in protests over 50 people to ascertain that the protest has been officially sanctioned by police and government officials.  The bill also holds student associations, unions and their leaders accountable for the actions of their membership. The biggest problem with the law, like most draconian measures, is that it is vague in its definition of illegal activity and harsh on punishment.  Not surprisingly, countless groups – including some that disagree with the tuition-based protest – have voiced their opposition to it, culminating in a mass demonstration on Tuesday in Montreal.  Below is a translated version of an open letter, written by many of Quebec’s leading historians in reaction to the government’s bill.  It is followed by brief summaries of the posts related to this issue published by our francophone partner site, HistoireEngagee.ca.

Here is the letter:

“In the silence of rejection, the chains of the slave and the voice of the whistleblower are no longer heard.  All tremble before the tyrant.  It is as dangerous to encourage their favour as merit their disgrace.  The historian is charged with the people’s vengeance.  It is in vain that Nero prospers, for Tacitus has already been born into the empire.” – François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe.

As professors and historians who, alongside others, have documented Quebec’s political history, we affirm that we have rarely seen the government commit as blatant an assault on the fundamental rights underpinning Quebec society.

The rights to free expression, to protest, and to assemble are at the heart of our democracy.  These civil and political rights determine our belonging and participation within the life of our political community.  From the struggle of the Patriots during the 1830s to that of the union movement during the Quiet Revolution, these rights were at the heart of our province’s historical transformation; they were central to the fights of women, Aboriginal people and others for political recognition. Our political regime cannot fully claim to be a democracy without the rights enshrined in the Charters.  Democracy requires that citizens have the capacity to exercise their rights.  This is the foundation of law in this country and the primary objective of political struggles since the beginning of the parliamentary system.

The student movement, by its actions over the past three months, has merely taken up the mantle of this democratic heritage. It is unbearable to watch a government using undemocratic practices in response to these protests. The principal function of a democratic state is to guarantee its citizens their rights and freedoms.

Worst of all is the government’s more recent act, Bill 78.  According to the President of the Quebec Bar, this act calls into question the primacy of the rule of law in conflict resolution.  Indeed, in its current form, Bill 78 clearly limits the right of all citizens to peaceful protest. It severely curtails the academic freedoms within the university.  It suspends legitimate legal recourse and reverses the burden of proof by making student associations and unions responsible for the acts committed by others. Finally, it severely penalizes citizens, student associations and unions who do not comply with the provisions of this exceptional law.

In its current form, Bill 78 is a wicked and infamous law.  We call on all those in this country who care about our fundamental political freedoms to mobilize against this aggressive act against our rights and liberties.

This letter has been translated for the benefit of English readers.  I have tried to stick as closely to the original intent of the letter.  To see the original visit: http://histoireengagee.ca/lactualite-en-debat-une-loi-scelerate-et-une-infamie/

**********

Histoire Engagée has covered these protests in fairly thorough detail.  Below is a brief summary of each of their posts.

Why World Class Universities? And who are they for? By Martin Lavallée (May 2)

• In this post Martin Lavallée asks what the Charest government means when it states that tuition must be increased in order for Quebec to have ‘world class’ universities. Finding this term poorly defined in government discourse, he sets out to establish how the government defines this term. Referring to a 2009 World Bank report, Lavallée suggests that the ‘world class’ university is one that targets research that usefully fuels a knowledge economy rather than humanist development.  By the terms set out by the World Bank, universities that are truly world class are primarily English language institutions that focus on technical and technological knowledge. The question underlying these debates is whether les Quebecois support this shift in emphasis.

The Three Braves and the 1958 Student Strike: An Interview with Francine Laurendeau. By Maurice Demers, Annie Poulin, and Pascal Scallon-Chouinard (May 1)

• Daughter of the well-known intellectual and politician André Laurendeau, Francine Laurendeau had a prolific career as a journalist, host and director with Radio-Canada.  Along with Bruno Meloche and Jean-Pierre Goyer, she played an important role in the 1958 student strike, the first student strike in the history of Quebec. For months, those Three Braves had the audacity to aspire to meet with Premier Maurice Duplessis in order to deliver a report written by the striking students. The Premier never acquiesced to meet with “children”. They are the subject of the National Film Board’s L’histoire des Trois.  In this interview she discusses the events in 1958, their impact on her life and Quebec society, as well as their relationship to the current student strike in Quebec.

The Student Strike in the Middle Ages and the Emancipation of the Universities. By Anthony Oddo (April 9)

• Oddo presents an interesting post on the struggle over the intellectual, social and cultural nature of education in 13^th century Paris.  The university, he argues, was formed based on a covenant between the tutor and their students. This privileged relationship often caused tension between scholars, the public, ecclesiastic and royal authorities, leading to both students and faculty boycotting their universities. Although the historical context was radically different, Oddo’s piece demonstrates that the defense of university autonomy, the bond between students and professors and a focus on the common good have been recurring tensions over the centuries.

On Tuition… Again: When one strike hides another. By Louise Bienvenue and Pierre Hébert (April 6)

• Here Bienvenue and Hébert look at Quebec’s recent past, suggesting that the roots of the current situation can be found in a chain of events that began with cutbacks in 1995.  A series of reductions in the university sector led to both government and corporate intervention in university administration. Increased attention to management and performance – demanded by these two broad influences – has led to division between teaching and research, as well as a giant ballooning of university bureaucracy (promotion, development and recruitment). They suggest that these are the central issues that must be discussed in order to properly address the current situation.

A Statement from the Masters and Doctoral students at the University of Sherbrooke about the Debate over Tuition Fee Increases. (April 3)

• This statement from the graduate students at the University of Sherbrooke suggests that the strike represents a debate over the role of education in Quebec society.  They express their support for the strike, suggesting that accessibility to higher education has a direct link to the health and vitality of Quebec society.

Student Free Speech, a Victory Threatened. By Karine Hébert and Julien Goyette (April 2)

• This post looks at student societies from the end of 19^th century until the present.  It notes that up until the Second World War, university students (mostly men) were perceived by both themselves and others as the elite, focused on maintaining the status quo. But by mid-century, due to World Wars and the Great Depression, this group began to conceive of itself as a specific generation and social class that situated itself within a broader provincial and global context, focusing on issues such as liberalism, feminism and socialism. This latter vision of youth culture, the authors argue, was responsible for setting the agenda of the student movement since the 1950s. Today that student voice risks being overwhelmed by the noises of individualism and economics, allowing the government to ignore the student movement and refuse to negotiate.  This path risks a return to the earlier period.

A Brief Look at the History of the Quebec Student Movement to Enrich the Debate over the Student Strike. By Mauricio Correa (March 29)

• In this post Correa draws parallels between the current student strike and the debates that took place over similar issues in the 1950s and 1960s. The piece situates the current strikes in the context of the gains students made in the mid-twentieth century. He argues that current government proposals threaten to reverse the changes brought about by these earlier protests.  Like the striking students in Chile and Colombia, the student movement wants to assure that Quebec’s universities remain autonomous, accessible and state financed. He also compares student action during both events and warns that the students were more united in the 1950s and 1960s.  Although the current student strike has the potential of being very successful, disunity within the student movement risks compromising their goals.

Marching and Angry: The Mobilization of Students and Access to Higher Education in Quebec, 1958 to 2012.  By Martin Paquet

• This is a lecture recorded in February 2012 at Laval University.  Here Paquet discusses the stakes, successes, failures and impact of the student movement in Quebec.

The CHA Active History Committee will be holding elections for one or more coordinators at its annual meeting at the Canadian Historical Association’s annual meeting, scheduled for noon on May 30, 2012 (see CHA programme for room location). Anyone interested in the position can contact the current co-coordinators at trepaj@yorku.ca  for more information.

The CHA Active History Committee acts as the liaison for Active History and the activities of the CHA. In the past it has organized panels as part of the CHA annual meeting, and this year it organized a themed public  conference to complement the CHA,  but it is very much a “make it your own” type role.

The coordinator’s role is defined as follows:
a) It shall be the duty of the coordinators to act as Active History’s public representatives and to liaise with the Canadian Historical Association

b) It shall be the duty of the coordinators to conduct meetings, including a general lunch meeting at the Canadian Historical Association annual conference

c) It shall be the duty of the coordinators to possess an up-to-date version of the constitution

d) It shall be the duty of the coordinators to possess an up-to-date email list
of active members

The Co-Coordinators also lead the coordinating committee which:

“shall plan and organize the functions of Active History.
a) These activities may include, but need not be restricted to the following:
i) a general lunch meeting at the Canadian Historical Association annual conference
ii) conferences, workshops, and other events that promote the goals of Active History.”

This year we chose to organize the 1812 mini-conference; it would be up to future co-coordinators, in conjunction with interested members, to decide what sort of activities beyond the lunch meeting might be planned for the next annual meeting. Potential activities could include a sponsored panel, a workshop, or another mini-conference.

If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else for the position, but cannot attend the lunch meeting on May 30 please contact us (trepaj@yorku.ca). We look forward to seeing you in Waterloo!

Jamie Trepanier and Jessica Squires
CHA Active History Committee Co-Coordinators

This is the fourth in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th.

By Adrienne Horne, Regional Project Manager, Western Corridor Alliance

The Western Corridor War of 1812 Bicentennial Alliance (WCA) is one of 7 regions in Ontario set up by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

The WCA jointly coordinates activities for the bicentennial in the central region of Southwestern Ontario.  The corridor links communities, including the First Nations, from the western tip of Lake Ontario in Burlington running south-west, along the north side of the Lake Erie coastline, ending at Middlesex County.

Our mandate is to ensure broad connectivity to commemorate initiatives that foster the legacy left by the people, history and communities and that align with the provincial commemorative priorities.

Route 1812 is an historic driving trail throughout Southern Ontario highlighting the historic sites and stories from the War of 1812.  This loop of trails leads visitors from Fort York through to Hamilton, Brantford, London, and all the way to Windsor as it merges with The Tecumseh Parkway (red trail).  From Hamilton a visitor may travel through Stoney Creek down to the Grand River and across to the Talbot Trail.  A traveller may also choose to go south from Brantford, following the footsteps of General Isaac Brock to Port Dover; or journey down the Grand River learning how the river system was central to travel and communications.

The map shows the trails of Route 1812. The different colours represent different sections of the route.

DEVELOPING THE TRAIL SYSTEM

Several people had the vision to create a trail that followed the paths taken by First Nation Warriors and the militia and armies on both sides.  So the WCA stepped in to provide the resources to make it a reality.

A committee was formed consisting of local historians well versed in the activities of the war and who were willing volunteers to create the route.  They had to know where the old paths were and the sites along the way.  In all there were about 15 volunteers on the Route 1812 mapping committee. Historic information was the basis for the route, but modern roadways and scenic views were also a factor.  It took a year to develop the actual route.

Then we added the historic sites, museums and points of interest.  This list grew quite quickly.  We wanted to develop the history side of the route first.  We needed a solid base for the content; then we could look at the tourism side of things and marketing of the route.  This project is all about merging culture with tourism; finding that balance between historical accuracy and tourism interest and accessibility.

We used the Google mapping program, as it was accessible by all the committee members.  It has been an excellent source of information for a variety of people.  Graphic designers, mobile app creators, travel writers, etc.  It also allowed the public to see the map evolve over time.

As the route grew, so did the interest.  More activities were added and this in turn caused the route to grow.  More trails were added, more sites were plotted.  More tours were offered, more projects were developed.

The route is now finished in terms of the trails taken.  It could take a visitor an entire summer to travel the entire Route 1812 so the trails have been divided up into subsections for visitors, so they can do sections as they desire.

ENGAGING AND COORDINATING VOLUNTEERS

Working with volunteers can be very rewarding and a challenge.  They are helping you because they want to.  The historians that I found are passionate about the topic and want to share their knowledge. As they came from all parts of the route, we had to always meet in Brantford, as the most central location for all the members.  The historians had a great time discussing the issues and historical accounts to determine the best trail to take and the sites that needed to be marked.  Each member took a small section of the route, so all the areas were well represented.

WORKING WITH MULTI-MUNICIPAL STRUCTURES

As we develop travel packages and eventually road signs along the route, the WCA Steering Committee has acted as a go-between with the WCA and the relevant municipalities, as they have direct access to council offices to obtain support and necessary permissions. Fortunately all the municipalities want to see the route through their area, so cooperation from them should be obtainable.  However, each municipality has their own rules and regulations about road signage and the funding arms want to make sure that these signs will be cared for after the bicentennial is over and the WCA no longer exists.  So our next task will be to secure that municipal buy-in.  They will have to agree to insure the signs and take on the liability concerns and the maintenance of them over the next 10 years.

ENGAGING VISITORS

Through Technology: 

Route 1812 will be accessible through a Smartphone Application.  This app will show the route and all the historic sites.  Information on the sites will pop up on demand.  Stories, music and images will be used to tell the stories of the war as visitors travel along the route.  The app will also include local restaurants, hotels, shops and other tourist sites to visit in the area.

A three part documentary is being created to tell the story of the war in Southern Ontario by the Ontario Visual Heritage project.  Video clips and links from A Desert Between Us and Them: Raiders, Traitors and Refugees of the War of 1812 will be available to the travellers.   They will be able to visit the sites as seen on the film and learned in the classrooms.

Geocaching will add to the fun of exploring this historic route.  This is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers with other participants in the activity.  The containers will be created to tell the stories of the war along the route.  This will be an activity that will last well beyond the bicentennial years and will engage the youth and adventurer travellers.

Through Other Avenues:

Then other ideas started to come.  The Barn Quilt Trails were born out of the Barn Quilts in Wardsville and as the organizers were on the Route committee as well, it was a natural link to expand the Barn Quilts to tell the 1812 story in the Western Corridor along Route 1812.  They tell the stories of the women and communities affected by the war.

Brock’s Walk has gone viral – in the real world; this is a one week event where people can follow Brock from Fort York to Port Dover from August 5^th to 12^th, 2012.  This involves museums, municipalities, volunteers, event planners, and corporate sponsorship.

Tour packages are now being developed along Route 1812.  The focus is on the experience tours.  What can people do?  Join in a quilting bee; help make a canoe; learn how to walk on stilts.

CREATING TRAIL MAPS

The map will showcase the route in a historic backdrop, highlighting the main sites along the way and will include a timeline of the war as it related to events in Upper Canada, along the route.  People can access endless historic information and timelines for the war, so we wanted to stay within the area that the route covers.  This includes the Western Corridor as well as the Southwest region of Ontario (what is the Tecumseh Parkway section of the route).

EXPANDING ROUTE 1812

As the Route grows, more interest is generated.  The Southwest 1812 Region joined their Tecumseh Parkway, which tells the story of Procter’s Retreat from Windsor up the Longwoods Road towards London, to Route 1812 and now we are working on joining other trails throughout the other 1812 regions in Ontario.  If we can coordinate everyone’s trails, Route 1812 should be able to expand to the Maritimes in the east and up north to Sault Saint Marie.

Former National Archives building, Ottawa

By Sean Kheraj

The conversation has been ongoing among Canadian historians for the past few years, especially since the federal government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, altered the contents of the official citizenship guide for new Canadians to place greater emphasis on military history and the monarchy while ignoring or downplaying the country’s history of progressive social policy, multiculturalism, and social justice movements. Many Canadian historians have been concerned that the Conservative Party of Canada is attempting to reinvent the narrative of the country’s past for its own political purposes.

Professor Ian McKay explicitly outlined this case in his keynote address at the 2011 New Frontiers in Graduate History conference at York University. He has also published a complete articulation of this argument in his forthcoming book (co-authored with Jamie Swift) called, Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety. A group of historians recently collaborated to publish the People’s Citizenship Guide: A Response to Conservative Canada in an effort to counterbalance the refashioning of Canadian history to suit the political interests of the governing party in Ottawa.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s recent transformation of the federal budget and his government’s policy of mass layoffs of federal employees has initiated a takeover of the public financing of historical research by the political branch of government. Cuts to the funding of the federal government’s three independent granting councils, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), constitute a total budget reduction of more than $40 million dollars. While the funding to SSHRC is set to be reduced, Heritage Canada has increased its direct control over the funding of historical research directly out of the minister’s office through new program-specific funding opportunities, including the War of 1812 Commemoration Fund and the Diamond Jubilee Community Celebration fund.

“So you think this government is interested in Canadian History?” asks Professor Eric Sager from the University of Victoria in a recent Times-Colonist op-ed, “Think again.” These policy changes affirm the recent argument of Jeffrey Simpson in his Globe and Mail column in which he alleged that “[t]he Conservatives display two-facedness in the telling of history, systematically reducing the role of the informed and the neutral in explaining the country to Canadians, while enhancing the capacity of the government to cherry-pick what it chooses to highlight.” The role of the informed will be crippled through budget cuts like the ones to Library and Archives Canada. According to the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), these cuts “will have devastating effects on our nation’s ability to acquire and preserve its history.”

At first glace this statement may seem like an exaggeration, but the proposed cuts cited by CAUT suggest otherwise:
• the elimination of 21 of the 61 archivists and archival assistants that deal with non-governmental records
• the reduction of digitization and circulation staff by 50%
• a significant reduction in the number of staff that deal with preservation and conservation of documents
• the closure of the interlibrary loans unit

These so-called “austerity” policies have also led to the scheduled closures of several government libraries and archives. And Parks Canada, one the main branches of the federal government that conducts direct historical research, has recently suffered a massive round of job losses.
In short, within the wider Conservative Party of Canada’s ideological agenda to reduce the role of government in the lives of Canadians lies a contradictory policy initiative for direct cabinet control over the financing, research, and production of knowledge about Canadian history. If left unchallenged, this anti-intellectual politicization of history, as Simpson suggests, will result in “a deformed version of the past.”

Sean Kheraj is an assistant professor of Canadian and environmental history at York University. He blogs at http://seankheraj.com

This is the third in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th.

By Ian McKay and Jamie Swift

Warmonger politicians customarily indulge in high rhetoric, attempting to rally the citizenry round the flag and boost the bloodletting. Or when invoking the glories of past wars. The War of 1812 was no exception.

Those who witness war’s gruesome reality often remember things differently, as do many historians.

“It would be a useful lesson to cold-blooded politicians, who calculate on a war costing so many lives and so many limbs as they would on a horse costing so many pounds,” wrote embittered battlefield surgeon William ‘Tiger’ Dunlop, “to witness such a scene, if only for one hour.”

In his 1847 memoir of Upper Canada, Dunlop recalled treating the wounded, often by amputation. The scene he recommended to callous statesmen unfolded in the withering heat of the ramshackle Butler’s Barracks at Fort George, down the Niagara River from Queenston Heights. Flies lighted on the wounded, depositing their eggs so quickly that “maggots were bred in a few hours, producing dreadful irritation…..”

Dunlop worked 48 hours straight before literally falling asleep on his feet. One of the 220 wounded he came upon in a single morning was a gray-haired American farmer whose wife had helped him to struggle across to the enemy side, seeking treatment under a flag of truce. She was a “respectable elderly woman,” her husband either a militia man or a camp follower. She held his head in her lap as he slowly expired.

“O that the King and the President were both here this moment to see the misery their quarrels lead to,” Dunlop recalled her moaning. “They surely would never go to war without a cause that they could give as a reason to God on the last day, for thus destroying the creatures he has made in his own image.”

Dunlop, later a prominent politician and magistrate remembered the military incompetence of poorly planned deployment of medical men like himself as “one of the many blunders of this blundering war.”

Two hundred years later Canada’s Prime Minister remembers the War of 1812 as “the beginning of a long and proud military history in Canada.” Stephen Harper has decided to commemorate the War of 1812 with a $28 million heritage extravaganza, selling what Pierre Berton called a “bloody and senseless conflict” to the citizenry for the simple reason that it was a war. That’s because Harper and his New Warrior supporters among historians, journalists and sundry militarists are attempting to establish war as the pith and essence of all Canadian history.

Military metaphysics, the presentation of war in a pleasing and glorious fashion, are a mere prelude to sure-to-be-much-bigger-and-more-glorious commemorations in the next few years.  The centenary of World War I looms large in the minds of militarists and the far right as they set about priming Canadians for the celebration of Vimy and all the rest. It will romanticize that ghastly spasm of ineptitude in the service of a “Birth of a Nation” story, all the while airbrushing out its incalculable costs.

The celebration of the War of 1812 will cost Ottawa $28 million – enough to operate its recently eliminated Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory for eighteen years. But the New Warrior government has its priorities, among them underlining the importance of yet another milestone in the history of barbarity.

According to Stephen Harper, or more likely one of his hirelings, the war helped establish Canada’s “path toward becoming an independent and free country…. The heroic efforts of Canadians then helped define who we are today, what side of the border we live on, and which flag we salute.”

This though there was no such thing as Canada at the time. The famously undefended border has become a militarized “security perimeter.” And few Canadians are known to indulge in patriotic displays of flag-waving.

No matter. In 2012 Canada is being treated to sanitized glorifications and events designed to attract tourists. In early June the anniversary of the Battle of Stoney Creek will bring scores of re-enactors to suburban Hamilton. There will be music, costumes, games, readings and tours. And certainly musket fire.

It is uncertain whether New York historian Douglas DeCroix’s summary of the dust-up at Stoney Creek will feature in the festivities. The battle, he explained, was “in many ways representative of the War of 1812 in microcosm. The American commanders are captured. The British commander gets lost in the woods. The Americans are technically defeated but retain the field. The British are victorious but they retreat.”

Such is not the message being peddled by Ottawa. Nor will we be reminded how profoundly the British double-crossed their crucial allies. Although Tecumseh is celebrated as a hero, the fact that First Nations  people were the war’s real losers tends to be downplayed. After 1814, with the Treaty of Ghent in which the British negotiators betrayed the native claims, the First Nations came to be treated as “Wards of the State,” not separate entities. And the dream of a kind of native-controlled polity in the heart of North America — to which the British had given their tentative support — was gone for good.

What remains is the war’s curious paradox – reflected in New Warrior attempts to commemorate the American invasion and the violence it provoked. This became clear in early 2003 as a surge of protest against the impending American invasion of another country  had culminated in the largest demonstrations in the history of the world.

Just as American and British troops rolled into Iraq, right-wing zealots in the Niagara region organized a “Canadians for Bush” rally, picking an odd spot for their modest get together — Brock’s Monument at Queenston. The irony seemed lost on the prominent politicians who attended. They included Ontario cabinet ministers Jim Flaherty and Tim Hudak as well as former Canadian Alliance leader and prime ministerial candidate Stockwell Day.

Day’s new boss, Stephen Harper, really did want Canada to follow George W. Bush into a war that would, as so many were predicting at the time, turn into a murderous and catastrophic blunder.

Harper had told a similar, Their-Country-Right-Or-Wrong rally in Toronto that he supported “the liberation of the people of Iraq. Let us pledge today, that in the future, when our American and British friends and our friends around the world take on the cause of freedom and democracy, we will never again allow ourselves to be isolated.”

Pierre Berton, the most successful popularizer of the Canadian story and a notable chronicler of his country’s wars, concluded his two-volume history of the War of 1812 by pointing out that “Political and military leaders constantly used the clichés of warfare to justify bloodshed and rampage. Words like honour…liberty…independence…freedom were dragged out to rally the troops, most of whom, struggling to save their skins, knew them to be empty.”

Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety, by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift, explores these themes in considerable depth. It will be published by Between The Lines Press in May.  Special thanks to Elliot Hanowski.

Image by Radha-Prema Pelletier

By Jessica Van Horssen

So the winter semester is over, and for those of us at Quebec universities, what a semester it’s been! Specifically, McGill University has had its share of drama this year, with strikes, occupations, computer hacking, and demonstrations against the Quebec government’s plans for tuition hikes. With all of these things going on, it’s no wonder one of McGill’s dirty little secrets has been quietly pushed aside.

Attached is the talk I gave at McGill in March about the historic connection between the university and the asbestos industry. University ties to massive, ethically-questionable corporations is nothing new, and certainly not McGill-specific. Quebec’s continued support of the asbestos industry, of which it was once a world leader, is also nothing new. Neither is the public’s general outrage when information on these ties emerges, nor is the public’s gradual loss of interest in this topic, which contributes to the perpetuation of the toxic legacy of asbestos in Quebec, Canada, and the world.

This time around, the outrage and loss of interest began with a CBC documentary that aired earlier this winter and exposed McGill’s Dr. John Corbett McDonald’s relationship with the asbestos industry, and questioned his findings on how Canadian asbestos impacted human health. While it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone funded by the asbestos industry produced reports claiming that the carcinogenic mineral wasn’t so bad after all—as long as it came from Quebec’s mines, of course—what is absolutely frustrating is McGill’s reaction.

McDonald was exposed in the 1970s by CBC Radio and the New York Times shortly after his pro-Canadian asbestos reports were published in well-respected medical journals—the public was outraged then too, but again, forgot about it soon afterwards—and McGill received and processed the cheques coming from the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association (QAMA) to aid in his research endeavors. Despite this, McGill apparently had no idea McDonald’s legitimacy and authority were questionable. Closing ranks around one of their own is a tough habit to break.

Despite their immediate defense of McDonald, McGill launched an internal preliminary review into his ties to the industry, and investigator Dr. Rebecca Fuhrer, head of the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatics, and Occupational Health at McGill, attended my talk in March.

Now, the struggle for the legitimacy of historians amongst scientists is, again, nothing new, although it remains unfortunate, and I hoped that Dr. Fuhrer would be inspired by my talk to look deeper into the evidence. I was glad that during the question period, we got into a nice discussion on ethics, and what defending McDonald and his outdated conclusions, (which were outdated even in 1970 when he published them), says about McGill.

McDonald has won awards for his contributions to public health in Quebec. It seems he also had ties to an industry that was notorious for corruption and deceit. The information McDonald published on this greatly contrasted the conclusions respected members of the global medical community had been making on the dangers of asbestos for decades, and the reason they differed so much is not because Quebec asbestos is safe—although it is safe if you believe that jumping from the 16^th floor of a building compared to the 18^th floor will give you a different result.

On April 4^th, Dean of Medicine Dr. David Eidelman, sent an email to the McGill community to inform us that Dr. Fuhrer’s preliminary report had been submitted and stated that there was no evidence of research misconduct, but that more time and research is needed to assess McDonald’s research “integrity.” What is the difference between misconduct and a lack of integrity? A dilution of accountability?

As predictable as the internal review’s non-conclusion conclusion is, it’s also frustrating. Sure, the general public has once again forgotten its outrage, so the heat is off McGill, but what about the long-term and far-reaching effects of researchers like McDonald, and what about McGill’s role as an internationally respected institution? In navigating McGill’s archives, did Dr. Fuhrer take the time to examine McDonald’s published conclusions within the context of what every medical professional not funded by the industry was saying about Canadian asbestos and health?

Quebec’s asbestos workers were usually kept far away from nosey medical professionals the companies didn’t have in their pockets for fear of what they would discover. There’s a reason they allowed McDonald to study them, and there’s a reason QAMA was head over heels happy over his conclusions. What was that reason? While examining these workers, McDonald made choices on who was important enough to study and who wasn’t—the female workers in the industry certainly weren’t, even though the first recorded person to die of asbestos-related disease was a woman, and reports on the specific vulnerability of women to diseases asbestos causes had been widely discussed in the global medical community for decades.

Did McDonald, a revered researcher and now professor emeritus at McGill, not keep up with the literature on the subject he was rapidly becoming the Canadian expert on? Who else did he overlook in his examination of Quebec asbestos workers? What could possibly make him believe Canadian asbestos was safe? And, of course, WHY?!

The asbestos industry has a long, well-documented history of manipulating medical professionals and medical evidence. Asbestos companies began doing this at McGill in the 1930s. I would love McGill investigators to first ask, then answer, this question: based on his published work, was McDonald a pawn of the asbestos industry, making his bizarre, dated conclusions based on evidence manipulated by companies, or a knave, willingly contributing to the legacy of misinformation and disease in Quebec and around the world in return for funding?

Take some time to listen to my talk. McGill is one of the most respected universities in Canada, and for good reason. However, in defending McDonald and deflecting criticism by waiting for a tumultuous semester to end and the public to lose interest, has McGill itself been a pawn or a knave in the past and present Quebec asbestos trade?

To listen to Jessica’s talk, “Quebec’s Asbestos Industry and McGill University: The Historic Relationship,” click here.

Jessica Van Horssen is a postdoctoral fellow in Quebec Environmental History at McGill/UQTR. She is primarily interested in the ways communities understand and internalize environmental contamination and risk, and the wide-reaching effects this can have. For the most part, she keeps her research to asbestos communities, but these are part of a much larger tradition of global resource towns.

"Pollution" (2008) by Bob August. Licensed under Creative Commons.

By Ryan O’Connor

One of the challenges I confronted while researching my dissertation was figuring out who the founders were of Toronto’s pioneering environmentalist organizations. This might sound like a simple task, but records of this sort are often difficult to find.

Sometimes the records that exist present a one-sided story. In Front Row Centre: A Perspective on Life, Politics and the Environment, former alderman Tony O’Donohue makes reference to his founding of the Group Action to Stop Pollution (GASP) in 1967. While O’Donohue makes the organization sound like a solo creation, an ensuing conversation with James Bacque, the former chief editor at Macmillan Company of Canada, lawyer Joseph Sheard, and their spouses led to a claim that GASP’s genesis occurred during a meeting in Sheard’s living room. To the best of their knowledge, O’Donohue was not at this meeting. All of the aforementioned attended the group’s public launch in December 1967. The following month saw the creation of GASP as a legal entity. The accompanying document was signed by Bacque, Sheard, and three others. So, who are the founders? Would it be the people present when the idea of forming an anti-pollution group was first proposed? Would it be the people attached to the organization when it made its public debut? Or would it be the people who signed the group’s legal charter?

For some, this may seem trivial. That said, this is a country where a small but vocal segment of the population believes Louis Riel deserves to be recognized as a Father of Confederation, even though he did not attend any one of the Charlottetown, Quebec, or London conferences that led to the creation of Canada.

The group at the centre of my dissertation is Pollution Probe, Canada’s first high profile environmental activist organization. Over the years, many of Pollution Probe’s early members have risen to prominent positions elsewhere within the movement. Some have cited themselves as founders of the organization even though they did not join until several months after it began operations. Further confusing the matter is the fact that a small number of its members were officially recognized by the organization as “founders” several years ago. One person that was recognized as such later told me that she was not involved with Pollution Probe until autumn 1970. (Pollution Probe held its first meetings in spring 1969.) As she explained, “I was credited with being there earlier because I think they wanted to say that there were more women involved …. It was a politically correct move to call me a founder.”

The most evident case of historical revisionism within Canada’s environmentalist community is that of Greenpeace. As it turns out, two of the organization’s former members have seen their status as founders publicly renounced. Greenpeace evolved out of the Don’t Make A Wave Committee (DMAWC), which was created to oppose nuclear testing in the Aleutian Islands. In 1971 a crew supported by DMAWC loaded onto a chartered vessel, the Phyllis Cormack, with the goal of sailing into the test site. Traditionally, members of DMAWC and the environmentalists aboard the Phyllis Cormack have been recognized as Greenpeace’s founders. However, Patrick Moore, one of the latter, has noted that various branches of the organization have written him out of their history.  Paul Watson, who was involved in DMAWC as well as the Aleutian campaign as a member of the shore crew, had also been recognized as one of the founders of Greenpeace.  However, in recent times Watson, like Moore, has been stripped of this recognition. According to Moore, Greenpeace is distancing itself from him due to his outspoken support for nuclear energy. Watson, on the other hand, was voted off of the Greenpeace board of directors in 1977, and has since then denounced the corporatization of the organization while adopting more radical tactics in his own work. Recognition as founders of Greenpeace, and the credibility this provides, is a valuable commodity for Moore and Watson. However, it appears that Greenpeace wishes to deny this to figures whose views it disagrees with.

Who, then, is a founder? The definition is up for debate, and apparently varies from organization to organization. That said, two things are clear. Being a founder has inherent value, and there are people who want to control who receives this recognition. It is the historian’s job to be aware of this and to prevent a Big Brother-styled rewrite of the past.

Ryan O’Connor is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Trent University. A historian of Canada’s environmental movement, he maintains a research blog at www.thegreatgreennorth.com.  You can follow him on Twitter: @ryaneoconnor

This is the second in a weekly series of posts leading up to the mini-conference The War of 1812: Whose War was it Anyway? being held at the University of Waterloo on May 30th.

By Jonathan Seiling

It is widely recognized that many Upper Canadians did not demonstrate utmost loyalty toward the British Crown on the eve of the war, or even during the war. Some settlers objected to the war in communities on both sides of the border, whether on pragmatic grounds, or due to “disaffection” and political dissent. Others refused to participate on principle.

In the years leading up to the war economic migrants from the U.S., who had little fondness for British rule, settled amid the Loyalists and came to represent a strong majority of Upper Canadians. This created problems for the defense of the province, just as it now creates problems for those who wish to portray early settlers in Upper Canada as a patriotic collective. We might ask ourselves today: amid this national reflection upon the war, is there adequate public space to commemorate and even celebrate the diversity of political orientations in Upper Canada during the War of 1812? Or should the inconvenient legacy of disloyal settlers, and those who refused on other grounds to fight in the war be merely viewed askance?

Among the diverse pockets of settlers, some resisted the war based on what was then called “scruples of conscience”, referring to the religious beliefs of Quakers, Mennonites and other so-called peace churches. Most of them migrated from the state of Pennsylvania starting in the 1780s and they continued to arrive up to and even during the years of the war. John Graves Simcoe regarded the industrious character of these peace church pioneers, and their general refusal to support the American Revolution, as being eminently suitable for the settlement plan of Upper Canada he was devising in the 1780s. By 1793 the Upper Canadian Parliament enacted militia laws that officially granted exemption to Quakers, Mennonites and a related group called “Tunkers”, which was later renamed “Brethren in Christ.” They were even granted exemption from swearing any oath, something that would put Isaac Brock ill at ease as he redoubled efforts on the eve of the war to summon loyalty. In exchange for a rather steep fee and a willingness to be engaged in noncombatant service, the historic peace church groups were spared militia duty. However, they were neither spared the ravages of war, nor from becoming pulled into the violent fray, often being conscripted as teamsters for hauling supplies.

These three historic traditions in Canada look, and in some ways behave, dramatically different than they did two centuries ago, which is important to acknowledge as they face the task of commemoration. Today there is a small but vibrant Quaker community in Canada, and a large, diverse group of Mennonites, many of whom descended from the original settlements in Upper Canada. The Brethren in Christ have associated closely with Mennonites, but recently, most notably in the Greater Toronto Area, they have developed a new model of churches based on a mega-church-satellite-movie-theatre-cell-group system, which has adapted various communication technologies and appealed to a younger generation with startling growth. All of these groups are racially diverse, with only a minority having any stake in the heritage of their religious group, let alone ancestral connection to the “pioneers of peace” in Canada. The “scruples of conscience” these three groups shared in the 1800s are not a uniformly prominent feature or identity marker today, yet all three groups seek to reflect on the historical legacy of their denominational forbears.

These three groups are nevertheless aware that they are the heirs to the earliest legacy of conscientious objection and war resistance in Canada. As the bicentennial of the War of 1812 approached they began to investigate the details of their experience in the war and to reflect on the nature of that legacy. With two centuries’ distance it is much easier for historic peace churches to rest more on imagined realities and assume greater uniformity among these religious communities than to embark upon a concerted and honest reflection on the details of that experience. Part of the challenge they face is that their histories have received only cursory attention by scholars, particularly that of the Tunkers and Mennonites.

My own role in these processes has been twofold: chairing the commemoration committee of these three peace church groups, while simultaneously working toward writing a general history on their varied experiences during the war.

A joint working group including Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren in Christ called the 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee has attempted to navigate a course which seeks to strike a balance between resisting creating an idealized version of the past for our present edification and admitting diversity among these constituent groups on the eve of the war without encouraging a total collapse of any collective identity and shared experience within or among the three peace churches. This effort to be historically honest and politically sensitive becomes challenging as my research uncovers some fascinating, yet complex, details of the events and actions of the members of these communities. Personal and collective motivations, allegiances and positions, make creating a shared identity a difficult task.

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The 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee has created webpages and a blog, hosted by Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, which provide information about peace church related commemoration activities and facilitate a forum for those who want to reflect on the voices of peace ranging from 1812 to the present: http://ontario.mcc.org/warpeace-1812

The War Resistance in 1812 blog, hosted by Carol Penner, welcomes guest bloggers, comments and links to relevant articles online: http://warresistancein1812.blogspot.com/

Historical markers have been being placed in the Niagara region, with plaques dedicated to the pioneers of peace from the Quaker, Brethren in Christ and Mennonite traditions. The texts of the plaques can be viewed on the MCC Ontario webpages, and these are also available in French translation: http://ontario.mcc.org/historical-markers-french-translations

Jonathan Seiling the is the Chairperson of the 1812 Bicentennial Peace Committee and a research fellow affiliated with Brock University and the University of Toronto.