This post is part of the Tomorrow’s Historians series.

The world always seems to be ending. This past summer, as wildfire smoke hung over much of Ontario, I tried my best to shelve my climate anxiety only to end up reading four-hundred-year-old sources describing similar experiences. No matter where I looked, the world seemed on the brink of disaster.

My dissertation explores environmental crisis and apocalyptic thought in late-Tudor England. I read cheap print—sermons, pamphlets, and almanacs—to understand how strange weather was experienced as an apocalyptic phenomenon. In the last decades of the 1500s, we read of ‘signs and tokens’ — comets, eclipses, severe thunderstorms, double rainbows, freakish snowstorms, and floods. In 2026, we saw one of Canada’s worst wildfire seasons ever. On top of this, extreme heat, flooding, and drought persisted across the country. Readers will be interested in Elbows Up for Climate, an interactive site that maps Canada’s many environmental disasters this year. It is hard not to feel fear and anxiety looking at this map. These reactions, however, are useful to make dynamic what is often presented as static. Because of the catharsis, fear, and wonder that sprang from observing signs in nature, sixteenth-century people read moral warnings and affirmations into them. Understanding their reality helps make sense of ours.

As a historian of the sixteenth century living through ‘unprecedented times,’ complete with climate disasters and large segments of the population living in apocalyptic expectation, I am uniquely positioned to show how precedented our experiences are. In this short essay, I spotlight an earthquake that shook London in 1580, one example from a generation that witnessed environmental disasters alongside political crises, religious reform, and technological advances. Using this case study, I bring the apocalyptic rhetoric I study into conversation with our own contemporary language. This exchange encourages empathy for historical actors we might otherwise view as superstitious or simple. Empathy for the past means recognizing where we can see ourselves by working to understand what is unfamiliar.

On April 6, 1580, an earthquake struck London, England. As buildings shook and stones fell from church roofs, people trembled, fearing what had happened, what it meant, and what would follow. For a populace well attuned to things gone wrong, disorder in nature offered another opportunity to cast dissident religious and political actors as both the cause and the consequence of the topsy-turviness that seemed to characterize their lives. Half a dozen pamphlets published in the days and weeks following the quake convey the many shades of contemporary reaction.^[1] Titles like “A warning for the wise,” “A Discourse of the End of this World,” and “A Shorte and Pithie Discourse…Conferred with that Most Strange and Terrible Worke of the Lord in Shaking the Earth” reinforce how historical actors equated signs in nature with human morality and action.

In a pamphlet published days after the earthquake, Thomas Churchyard wrote:

            “An Earthquake came, with whirling noise as House and Towre should fall:

            A lo[v]ing rode of threatning wrath, sent sure to warne vs all.

            For such a terror did it bring, to e[v]ery honest minde,

            As day of [J]udgement had bene come, with storme and whirling winde.”^[2]

Churchyard’s words remind us that Judgement Day could be terrifying and spectacular all at once. From fear to awe, readers today may be struck by how the 1580 earthquake confirmed for many that the end times were imminent. What struck me, however, was the range of emotions present in these sources, emphasizing the value of a sensory approach. This approach entails paying attention not just to what is said, but to the tone and affect, with the goal of recentering not merely on how contemporaries described catastrophe, but on how they felt.

Approaching the apocalypse as something sensory-driven also helps us grasp how easily moments of disaster were made political. After London’s 1580 earthquake, two children, Mabell Everet and Thomas Gray, died from falling stones. Their deaths were immediately politicized, with one commentator reflecting, “I pray you let no man flatter or falsely persuade himself with a natural cause, or with the mischance of two poor children’s death, for that shall not serve when the time cometh.”^[3] Framing Mabell and Thomas’s deaths as predetermined and supernatural, and then positioning any disagreement with that framing as a barrier to salvation when the apocalypse arrives, shows how commentators can find religious and political advantage where crisis and apocalypticism intersect. Interpreters drew on high emotions to weaponize events and advance their understanding of the world, often ostracizing those who disagreed.

Apocalyptic rhetoric continues to be effective in the modern age because signs can be directed to encourage, neutralize, or dismantle individual and communal anxieties. Following the earthquake, one commentator wrote, “We have had manifold motions, sundry signs, yea, and exceeding examples of His wrath, and displeasure, by comets and blazing stars as lately hath been seen over this City of London.”^[4] Four hundred years later, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the mayor of New Orleans commented, “Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it destroyed and put stress on this country.” As ‘signs’ of God’s displeasure, the earthquake and hurricane signal disorder in nature, opening the door for solutions that are often religious or political.  If God communicates his anger through nature, man might respond by changing his behaviour, morality, and attitude. This presents both great opportunity and danger.

Like our Tudor counterparts, we read nature with emotional and moral glosses. Strange weather and natural disasters continue to be encoded with religious and political rhetoric, giving authors and readers a chance to participate in a narrative that demands and rewards emotional investment. When politicians and religious leaders warn of disaster as a call to repentance, we must understand the calls to action bound up in, and embodied by, this rhetoric. I say this not to diminish the palpable weight sin carries for many, but to acknowledge the psychological and communal implications of demanding shifts in morality, action, and practice, often in apocalyptic terms.

Natural disasters and eco-crises today make the objects of my study tangible. Over the past summer, I researched and wrote under extreme weather warnings. In the three years since I began my dissertation research, wildfires have raged across Canada every summer. As a historical researcher, my anxiety and fear about climate change activate my empathy for those I study. I, too, feel dread looking at the hazy skies; I, too, feel fear and uncertainty radiating off those around me. We constantly wait for disaster, and these events can feel both horrible and cathartic. Experiencing disaster after anticipating it can feel surreal, and the many layers of conflicting emotion offer nuanced insight into how our ancestors thought about and moved through similar catastrophes.

As Gen Zers take to social media to post stories and edits dramatizing ‘apocalyptic skies’ or doomsday scenarios, we are reminded that disaster wears many faces. Despair is often monetized and popularized to signal meanings beyond the environmental disaster itself. I am grateful to live and work in areas relatively unaffected (in a material sense) by wildfires and other climate disasters. I acknowledge the privilege of reflecting on environmental disaster as a tool for historical research rather than a life-altering reality.

Attending to the emotional weight of natural disaster helps us reflect and analyze the past, while also giving us a fuller sense of the many ways our present moment might be understood. Conflicting meanings and experiences remind us of a truth shared with our Tudor counterparts: when things go awry, no single truth holds. Indeed, we must recognize that the framing of what is natural and unnatural itself upholds hierarchies of white supremacy and patriarchy. When we say ‘our world is ending’ or ‘we are living in the end times,’ other dimensions of meaning often lurk beneath.

Where does this leave us? By activating historical empathy and drawing comparisons to those who came before us, we join a conversation across centuries that continues to yield meaning, insight, and warning. My dissertation makes an argument that is still true today: climate disasters are sensory phenomena. The anxiety, fear, and wonder that people carry affect how they negotiate with religious and political meaning. Living through strange weather and hearing neighbours, friends, and media whisper about the end of the world reminds me that we still read nature like a manuscript that warns us about our futures and scares us about our world. Seeing yellow, smoky skies evokes a moral and spiritual discomfort. Even if this feeling does not consciously manifest in theological terms, many of us feel an unquantifiable unease. We are struck by a wrongness that is, at best, cinematic and, at worst, dystopian. Looking at the past reminds us that while climate change may bring new disasters, our anxieties have historical precedent.

Caliesha Harris is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at McMaster University. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation explores the intersection of apocalypticism and environmental disaster in late-Tudor London. Her published work examines the Venetian context, featuring a rare prophecy as evidence of the apocalypse’s political ramifications. When she’s not studying, Caliesha can be found hiking or canoeing and collecting vinyl. She can be reached at harric49@mcmaster.ca

This series was produced within the project Historicizing Our Times: Histories of Migration and Climate in the Digital Space, which is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Accessible resources: Elbows Up for Climate, Early English Books Online, English Short Title Catalogue

[1] See Thomas Churchyard, “A warning for the wise, a feare to the fond, a bridle to the lewd…” London: By John Allde, and Nicholas Lyng, 1580; Arthur Golding, “A discourse vpon the earthquake that happened through this realme of Englande…” London: Imprinted by Henry Binneman, 1580; Abraham Fleming, “A bright burning beacon forewarning all wise virgins…” London: Imprinted by Henrie Denham, 1580; Gabriel Harvey, “Three Proper, and Wittie, Familiar Letters.” London: Henry Bynneman, 1580; “The order of prayer vpon Wednesdayes and Frydayes…” London: by Christopher Barker printer to the Queenes Maiestie [and Henry Bynneman], 1580.

[2] Thomas Churchyard, “A warning for the wise, a feare to the fond, a bridle to the lewd…” (London: By John Allde, and Nicholas Lyng, 1580): Fol. BIIv.

[3] Thomas de Twyne, A Short and Pithie Discourse, concerning the engendring, tokens, and effects of all earthquakes in generall. London: Printed by John Charlewood for Richard Iohnes, 1580. Reprinted in a modern edition by R.E. Ockenden (1936). Acquired from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, 18822 e.20 (6) (Box B000000207720).

[4] Anthony Munday, A vievv of sundry examples Reporting many straunge murthers, sundry persons periured, signes and tokens of Gods anger towards vs. (London: Printed by John Charlewood for William Wright, 1580): fol. CIIIr.

Cartoon by an unidentified grade 10 student from Honolulu, Hawaii, 1961. Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives, Heinz von Foerster papers 11/6/26, box 62, folder “Doomsday Requests PPc Prints, 1960-61.”

In November 1960, Science, one of the leading scholarly journals in the world, published a paper with the sombre title “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.” On that day, according to the authors – American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two of his students – the global human population will have soared so high that it will “approach infinity.” The sad truth was that “Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death. They will be squeezed to death.”[1]

The Doomsday article became something of a sensation. It was talked about in newspapers and magazines around the world, even becoming the subject of a series of Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strips. Yet the very quality that made the essay most irresistible – its bare-faced absurdity – also made it enigmatic. Was it meant as a dire warning of population rise? A satire of postwar demographic fears? A mathematical parlor trick? That von Foerster never broke character – writing spirited defenses of the original article in response to critical letters to the Science editor – and then never wrote about human demography again made it all the more difficult to discern his underlying intent. While the Doomsday article is von Foerster’s claim to fame in some corners of the internet, it is not even mentioned in much biographical work on him.[2]

One could say that the article was perfectly in keeping with von Foerster’s background and interests. He had trained as a magician in Austria before moving to the U.S., and his sense of stagecraft infuses the essay – and ensured he would not give its game away entirely. More importantly, he was a leader in the new field of cybernetics, the science of how systems self-regulate, and the Doomsday article can be seen as a model of cybernetic thinking.[3] Whereas classical economist Thomas Malthus and his modern followers believed that when a population rose, it would inevitably be kept under check by famine, disease, or war, von Foerster saw the human species as uniquely capable of self-organizing – developing medicines and technologies and, above all, coordinating these – to avoid these threats. But this meant that our species could experience hyperbolic growth, carrying us off a mathematical cliff. Far better, then, that we self-regulate with intention, by working to reduce the global birth rate.[4]      

Heinz von Foerster, 1963. Photograph by the University of Illinois publicity department. Courtesy of the Heinz von Foerster personal file.

Yet the Doomsday article is opaque as to what exactly self-regulation should involve for humanity, when it comes to population. For some postwar thinkers, rising human numbers meant the need for reproductive rights and improved birth control for the whole world. For others, whose focus tended to be on the third world and have clear racial undertones, it might mean more draconian measures such as licensing childbirth or eliminating foreign aid. When von Foerster and his co-authors toyed with the idea of a “people-stat” to maintain the global population at a desired level, were they thinking in terms of birth control or coercion? [5]  

Fortunately, Heinz von Foerster left archival papers that provide us behind-the-scenes information about the Doomsday piece.[6] They show, for example, that he and his co-authors originally planned to have it that humanity would “choke” to death on 13 November 2026; “be squeezed” is an objectively clearer – and funnier – mental image. His papers also show that the deadpan nature of the Doomsday article meant that von Foerster himself got caught up in the confusion about it. Science sent him a response to the article that it planned to publish and, believing the letter to be critical, he submitted a withering rebuttal. When informed at the eleventh hour that the letter had been in jest, he scrambled to revise his reply prior to publication.[7]

While von Foerster was thrilled with the attention his article had received – confessing to the Science editor that “I have sometimes the feeling that I am the one who is squeezed to death by the flood of responses” – his files retain very few letters from the general public.[8] But one exceptional piece of correspondence has survived: a long, urgent letter in November 1960 from a housewife from Wolfville, Nova Scotia.[9]

The woman had just read about the Doomsday piece in Time and felt compelled to contact him. She wrote,

if we women of this country, and no doubt others, were allowed to regulate our families and have only the children we wished to, our problem of over population would soon be regulated. In my country as in yours we have no real choice, given half safe birth control methods by our Doctors and then caught in unwanted pregnancies we have no choice, we must bring the child into the world.

She then shared agonizing stories with which she was familiar. A woman who spent her previous pregnancy confined to a wheelchair and afterward begged to be sterilized; she was with child and wheelchair-bound once again. A pregnant twelve-year-old who had been raped by two teenagers. And she herself, with two teenage daughters and a part-time job, now carrying a child once again in middle age. She understood the population crisis not in terms of an abstract global aggregate, but as an epidemic of forced motherhood. She asked that von Foerster might in some way “help to change the law to allow we women the dignity and happiness of bearing the children we want, not being forced by cruel & inhuman laws be the degrading class of state breeding cattle.”

Von Foerster wrote back that he was deeply touched by her letter and agreed wholeheartedly with all she said. He noted that he had been raised in a family that held strongly to the defense of the rights of women. (In an interview later in life, he would recall his childhood in Vienna, sitting beneath the desk of his grandmother, who had published the first European journal on women’s liberation, and listening to her and her friends debate philosophy and feminism.[10]) He promised the Nova Scotian woman that he would use whatever influence he had – “in the reach of my own microscopic radius of action” – to champion the cause of women’s bodily autonomy.

I cannot pretend that this brief correspondence rises to the level of a “Rosebud” moment, which allows von Foerster’s intentions for the Doomsday article to be finally and fully known – but it is compelling that he retained their letters to his death forty years later. There is nothing in von Foerster’s published or unpublished writings to indicate that he saw the population problem as one demanding coercive response. His wager instead may have been that if women were given the freedom to manage their own bodies, humanity would steer itself from disaster. If so, with the global birth rate today less than half the 1960 rate – and with no sign of squeezing in sight – he was proven right.

Alan MacEachern teaches History at Western University. His 2024 book Becoming Green Gables is a favourite of non-existent reading groups and book clubs. 

[1] Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, and Lawrence W. Amiot, “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D., 2026” Science vol.132 no. 3436 (4 Nov 1960), 1291-5. doi: 10.1126/science.132.3436.1291. Quotations from 1291 and 1295. It is impossible to gauge Mora and Amiot’s degree of involvement in the original article, but von Foerster’s personal papers make clear that he alone wrote the responses to the letters to the editor of Science, which were credited to the three of them. 

[2] See, for example, “Heinz von Foerster,” in Magnus Ramage and Karen Shipp, Systems Thinkers (Springer: 2009), 179-87.

[3] On cybernetics and von Foerster’s role in its development, see Ronald Kline, The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015); and Heinz von Foerster, The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics, eds. Albert Müller and Karl H. Müller (Fordham University Press, 2014). 

[4] Alan MacEachern, “Scientists Predicted ‘Friday 13 November 2026’ Will Be Doomsday. Should You Be Worried?,” The Conversation, 30 September 2026.

[5] I have benefited in this paragraph from Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (Rutgers University Press, 2012); and Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Harvard University Press, 2008). The household thermostat was a favoured example for cyberneticists of a technology that allows for self-regulation around a steady state.

[6] A great thanks to staff at the University of Illinois Archives for their assistance in locating, scanning, and sending me relevant material.

[7] Folder “Doomsday Article Rejects,” box 63, 11/6/26, Heinz von Foerster papers, University of Illinois Archives [henceforth, von Foerster papers]; and von Foerster to Graham Du Shane, Editor, Science, 7 March 1961, folder “Doomsday Letter ED Science, 1960-61,” box 62, von Foerster papers.

[8] Von Foerster to Du Shane, 7 March 1961, von Foerster papers.

[9] I have chosen to anonymize the woman here. While it is true that she wrote von Foerster unasked and gave her full name (her husband’s, actually), she makes private disclosures about her family life that she surely would be surprised might be communicated to the world six decades on. Letter to von Foerster, 16 November 1960, and from von Foerster, 1 December 1960, folder “Doomsday Requests PPc Prints, 1960-61,” box 62, von Foerster papers.

[10] Bruce Clarke, “Interview with Heinz von Foerster,” in Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory, eds. Bruce Clarke and Mark B.N. Hansen (Duke University Press, 2009), 26.

Graphic created by the authors. Statue photo from Getty Images.

Throughout their undergraduate studies, history students are often told two things: that their degree is invaluable and that it will likely lead to unemployment. As a result, prospective and new history students are often unsure what the degree can do for them. As recent graduates with Bachelor of Arts degrees in History from the University of Saskatchewan, we wanted to share insights into what we see as the degree’s real potential.

Throughout our undergraduate studies, our cohort of history majors was fortunate to have professors tell us we had the makings of strong graduates and career professionals. However, when we discussed in more detail what we wanted to do with our degrees, our professors’ tone changed. Many of us wanted to go into graduate or professional school. Others wanted public service roles and to leave the academy. Whichever path we eyed, however, our professors told us to be careful about how we intended to apply our degrees. Sobering statements we heard from our professors include:

 “You will be older, poorer, and less happy than your peers [if you do a PhD].”

 “The job market is paralyzed.”

 “What do you want to do with this degree? Think carefully about that.”

Getting such direct statements from professors we looked up to was hard and rather disheartening. It certainly wasn’t encouraging to be told that a career in academia might be unattainable. In sharing the comments, though, we don’t mean to deride the professors who said them. These comments offer real insight into the academic side of the field. Students pursuing graduate studies do face greater financial and career challenges than their peers. The job market for history graduates in the academy is imbalanced, with more candidates than openings. Academia is not an ideal career path for many. The Canadian Historical Association’s 2022 Task Force on the Future of the History PhD in Canada report affirms these facts.^[1] Our peers also alluded to these issues. The joke in our history group was, and still is, that we are unemployable and that our degree will not matter in the long run. In reality, even vacancies for jobs requiring a Bachelor’s degree have declined sharply in Canada in recent years. Thus, this issue is not confined to just grad students.

We do not want to scare those eyeing history as their major, nor do we want to make new history students second-guess their choice. Instead, we share these comments to prepare new and prospective history students for the comments and questions they are likely to face.  Discussing these difficult but real challenges is also essential for anyone investing time and money in a degree.

Our goal is to offer unsolicited advice to history educators on how to better promote the potential of a history degree to prospective and current students. We urge educators to continue sharing the realities of the field. Let students know about the job market, how tough a graduate degree can be, and how they may not work in the field. However, we also urge educators to emphasize what made us love history. Share with students the positives that studying history can bring and how the critical thinking, writing, research, and related skills they learn are transferable to non-history careers. As the CHA highlights in its literature (linked to every history course in USask’s learning management system), history graduates can get jobs—in and outside of the field. They possess valuable hard and soft skills, from research acumen to effective communication and beyond.

These realities lead us to a core ask: share the unique opportunities your department offers. For instance, the University of Saskatchewan’s history department hosts many unique courses and projects which expand or rethink traditional methods of historical analysis. During our studies, students in our cohort built a board game with Dr. Benjamin Hoy, worked in USask’s historical GIS lab or Co-Lab, and learned from Active History’s Jim Clifford about digital tools that help historians reach new audiences and engage with evolving technologies. These experiences don’t discount the traditional lectures and seminars history undergraduates will become familiar with, which also provide vital skills and are exciting in their own right. Still, they do highlight possibilities for history outside the academy.

Of course, your department’s offerings will differ, but help students make the most of what is available. If you offer a digital history course or game-making course, promote them. Teach students how to make maps with ArcGIS, create a game that is both fun and informative, use LLMs for language processing, text mining, and web scraping, and do anything else that could excite them. Beyond traditional history lectures and seminars, courses like these are excellent ways to find jobs after graduation because they form marketable skills. These applied courses build on the foundation of typically structured courses because they cultivate standout skills students can recognize instantly and feel good about having learned.

We also encourage educators to engage more critically with the public. Events such as workshops or public lectures are a fantastic way to show people how exciting history can be. Involve students as well: create student blogs, host colloquia or symposiums, and encourage students to participate in their student journal. These efforts may not convince everyone that the degree is necessarily employable, but they can show its potential and highlight the skills of those who study it. If people sincerely believe a history degree is useless, as both of us did in undergrad, public engagement like this can show that reading books or watching documentaries doesn’t teach the same skills.

Please also support your institution’s history club. When we first started our undergrads, we felt like we were the only history majors at the University of Saskatchewan. We were wrong; we had access to the History Undergraduate Students’ Association (HUSA). Clubs like HUSA help students dispel jokes about unemployment. They help students build community, meet fellow majors, and start to see professors as people. They also provide opportunities, as ours did, to discuss what grad school is like, to learn about possible career trajectories, and to network with professors and history professionals. Meeting and getting to know professors can lead to research or teaching assistantships, help students gain confidence asking for career advice or reference letters, and more. If your institution lacks a history club, help make one. Support it through your department as much as possible. After all, research shows that students benefit academically and socially from participating in these kinds of extracurricular activities.

History is not unemployable. It is not a useless degree. It is certainly not a boring field. As history educators, you know this. So then, share those exciting opportunities and projects. Highlight areas where the discipline can benefit from collaborative approaches, gamified learning, technological support, public engagement, and similar initiatives. Help students find what makes history special and prove why it matters. Give undergraduate students in particularthe chance to share their research, promote their ideas, and teach others. Encourage students to look beyond the academy. Show students that history is more than lectures and books.

Make a history degree sound as unique as it is, and encourage students, tempered with some good advice, to make the most of the skills they learn wherever they end up.

Owen Deis is an M.A. student at Carleton University and holds a B.A. (Hons) and a Certificate in Peace Studies. His research interests focus on material and visual media in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and post-war Germany. He can be reached at ogdeis@proton.me.

Andrew Kelly is a first-year law student at the University of Saskatchewan and holds a B.A. (Hons) in History. Andrew’s research has focused on Canadian legal history, border studies and historical GIS. He can be reached at aj.kelly@usask.ca.

Resources

[1] An insightful analysis of the graduate school process and the job market is also available in Carly Ciufo, Jenny Ellison, and Andrew Johnston, Employing History: A Guide to Graduate School and Navigating the Job Market (Canadian Historical Association and the American Historical Association, 2020), https://cha-shc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/5fa2c7334b719.pdf.

Image by Feimo Zhu. Jiefang Hotel Fragment Page. Artwork © 2026 Feimo Zhu.

What happens when incomplete historical evidence becomes a finished image? How might public historians show these gaps and explain their visual choices in exhibitions and other public displays? Michael Frisch examines how editorial decisions, including omissions, shape the public presentation of oral history. Susan A. Crane discusses how museums can present history in ways that conflict with visitors’ personal memories and expectations.¹ In exhibitions, archival displays, and digital reconstructions, public historians may need to turn incomplete historical materials into visual presentations. These presentations may draw on different sources, but viewers may not always see where evidence is missing or where interpretation is involved. One challenge is to communicate uncertainty without making the presentation difficult to understand. As an artist, my current approach is to examine historical testimonies and archival records through drawing. I use notes, labels, and separate images to distinguish what is supported by the sources, what involves my own interpretation, and what remains uncertain. 

My MFA project on the experiences of Japanese war orphans left in Northeast China after the Second World War became a starting point for answering some of these questions. For my final art portfolio, I drew on fragmented archival records and personal accounts of Japanese war orphans to create a fictional character. I then wrote a life story for this character and developed it into a series of illustrations. Some details about time, location, and family relationships remained unclear in the testimonies and archival records I used. To turn this fictional story into a coherent series of illustrations, I had to arrange events, construct scenes, and imagine details that the historical sources did not provide. Although the story was fictional, the illustrations did not clearly show which elements came from historical accounts and which I had imagined. This made me think more carefully about how to show the relationship between historical sources and my own artistic choices.  

From this experience, I have begun developing an approach to drawing that I call “Drawing-as-Evidence,” working with Aoki Misako’s recorded testimony rather than a fictional narrative. Aoki was born in Japan and moved with her family to Manchuria, where she became a Japanese war orphan after the Second World War. She returned to Japan in 1996, and her recorded testimony was later made publicly available by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. For example, in my first data comic, I added dialogue to a scene about her learning Roman letters, although her testimony did not record the exact conversation. However, I soon realized that readers might mistake these invented words for what was actually said. In the second version, I replaced the speech bubbles with short labels. Even without the invented dialogue, I still had to make choices about how to draw the scene.

Rather than filling every gap to complete a scene, I used annotations, separate fragments, and empty space to help communicate uncertainty and my own interpretive choices. I also used fragment pages to examine individual details from Aoki’s testimony. MSullivan argues that making visual art can be a form of creative and critical inquiry through which artists develop new insights.² Barrett and Bolt’s edited collection examines how knowledge can emerge through artistic practice.³ For example, Aoki recalled using a smaller bucket because a larger one was too heavy, but did not describe its exact appearance. In my fragment page, I used separate drawings, notes, and labels instead of turning the bucket memory into a complete scene. This let me examine the detail on its own, although the drawings still involved my interpretation.

Figure 1: Two versions of visual experiments based on Aoki Misako’s publicly available testimony, 2026. Version 1 (left) uses structured diagrams and comic panels, while Version 2 (right) includes collage, handwritten notes, and more varied layouts. Images by Feimo Zhu. Artwork © 2026 Feimo Zhu.

These two memories are not historically connected. I used the two experiments to test how Drawing-as-Evidence might work under different conditions. With Aoki’s recorded testimony, I could not ask follow-up questions or invite her to review my drawings. In the second experiment, I could work directly with the narrator and receive feedback on my visual choices. In this case, I interviewed my mother about the first time she ate ice cream as a child at Jiefang Hotel in Xi’an, China. During the interview, she described the shape of the ice cream glass and drew a sketch to show what she remembered. When she later reviewed my drawing, she pointed out that the shape of the glass did not match what she remembered. I then looked for reference photographs of ice cream glasses and revised my drawing. I treated her sketch as a record of what she remembered, rather than independent confirmation of the glass’s original appearance. Her feedback made me reconsider my visual choices, even though some details remained uncertain.

Figure 2: Image by Feimo Zhu. Jiefang Hotel Fragment Page. Artwork © 2026 Feimo Zhu.

Figure 2 shows how I tried to make differences in memory and interpretation visible. I placed the memory of eating ice cream at the centre, surrounded by drawings and research notes. At first, I drew the hotel interior and family figures as clearly as the ice cream scene. However, my mother recalled the ice cream in greater detail than the hotel layout or the appearance of the family members. I therefore made the hotel interior and family figures fainter, allowing them to recede into the background. The figures are labelled “Recalled Presence,” while the hotel interior is marked “Artistic Inference.” I also used anatomical drawings as metaphors for sensory memory, rather than as evidence of a specific bodily response. 

In developing exhibitions, archival displays, and digital reconstructions, public historians may need to make their interpretive choices visible to viewers. When presenting history to the public, we might consider which details are directly supported, which are inferred, and which remain unresolved. In my MFA work, I focused on building a coherent fictional narrative. Now, I try to show how I use historical sources, where I make my own choices, and what remains uncertain. For me, a finished image does not need to fill every gap with details the evidence cannot support. Public historians might consider using labels or source notes to reveal and incorporate their interpretive choices into the exhibit itself.

Feimo Zhu is an independent illustrator and visual researcher working with fragmented memory, oral testimony, and archival gaps. Her current work explores how drawing can make uncertainty and interpretation visible in historical research. This article draws on a publicly available testimony and a family-memory interview. Zhu did not interview Aoki Misako directly, and recognized that her testimony contains gaps and uncertainties. In the Jiefang Hotel experiment, Zhu used the participant-generated sketch as memory material rather than verified documentary fact. The participant gave permission for her interview material, sketch, and related visual work to be used in this article. Throughout the project, Zhu distinguished verbal testimony, participant-generated material, artist-led inference, and unresolved information.

1. Crane, Susan A. “Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum,”History and Theory 36 (1997): 44-63. ︎
2. Sullivan, Graeme. Art Practice as Research?: Inquiry in Visual Arts / Graeme Sullivan. Sage Publications, 2010. ︎
3. Barrett, Estelle and Barbara Bolt, eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755604104. ︎

This post was originally published by NiCHE in collaboration with the Indian Act 150 series.

“Sir, We are looking anxiously for your report as to Indian titles both within Manitoba and without; and as to the best means of extinguishing [terminating] the Indian titles in the valley of Saskatchewan…We should take immediate steps to extinguish the Indian titles somewhere in the Fertile Belt in the valley of Saskatchewan, and open it for settlement.”

-Prime Minister Macdonald, 1870, a letter^[1]

Adorned in ancient ripples and sedimentary patterns, Nepean Sandstone warms underneath the morning sun^[2]

Excavated, dislocated, transformed.

On April 12, 1876 the stone swallowed 206 settler Men gathered within its, now, parliamentary shaped walls^[3]

In loud, rumbustious voices the Men declared: THE INDIAN ACT HAS PASSED^[4]

quietly, the stone objected… quietly the stone protested

“the language of stone is difficult, Rock mumbles”^[5]

Unaware they had been swallowed,

the stone spat them out

We are civil Men and a mission of civility has been bestowed upon us,^[6] they conferred.

But, “whatever settlers may say-and they generally have a lot to say…territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element”^[7]

It was decided how the Act will govern Indian Status and Reserve lands:

“Reserves [are] to be held for the use and benefit of Indians”^[8]

“The Governor in council may determine whether any purpose for which lands in a reserve are used or are to be used is for the use and benefit of the band”^[9]

So, it was written: the Crown adjudicates reserve land and deems the lawful possession of land.

Permission must be granted for the removal or transportation of mineral, stone, gravel, clay, soil, trees, saplings, shrubs, underbrush, timber, and cordwood^[10]

Anyone in possession of “anything removed [CONTRARY TO THIS SECTION].. is guilty of an offence” and liable to a fine or imprisonment.^[11]

“We are no longer the sole possessors of our ancestral lands taken by conquest, cessation or as terra nullius…these lands are appropriated in the name of the Crown”^[12]

In whispered voices the 206 parliamentary Men discussed their secret: the settler sense of belonging is tied to a fiction- “the legal regime has reproduced the doctrine of terra nullius in order to give place and a sense of belonging to itself”^[13]

The nation has been created “as a white possession”^[14]

And so, settler parliament responded to MacDonald’s letter:

“Settlers would bring civilization to the Indians”^[15]

They would go everywhere, do everything, be anything.

Every rock, creature, river and tree, theirs to command, to own, unless otherwise expressed.

So, it was written:

Sir, we’ve passed the Indian Act,

we will clear the plains

And we “keep time with the westward march of the nation”^[16]

To the west, there is a river that runs in a dry land^[17]

Where prairie sage carries in the wind

and, after a period of three years, Meadow Blazingstar blooms

782 reserves are established in Saskatchewan between 1874-1906^[18]

By the 1880s the last wild buffalo will be hunted until only “a small remnant” remain^[19]

And so it was written by generations of settlers:

We send you this post card from oskana kâ-asastêk

(“Bison bones were placed [here] by the local Cree and Saulteaux people, who believed that the bison would return to the bones of their dead ancestors, therefore always bringing subsistence for their people” )^[20]

We’ve made new piles: for export, sport, fertilizer and chinaware.^[21]

We’ve ensured that following the Indian Act, the lands have been cleared and “government policy encouraged the death of all bison in order to starve Indigenous people”^[22]

We erected cities and turned grassland to agriculturally productive fields

“These cities signify with every building and every street that this land is now possessed by others; signs of white possession are embedded everywhere in the landscape”^[23]

We’ve destroyed the bison to replace them with cattle and canola

We’ve made “glimpses of wild prairie flowers in bloom… rare”^[24]

150 YEARS LATER a young Indigenous woman walks barefoot along a river bank in Treaty 4 territory

It was written that in life she was a runaway, she looked for trouble. She was lost.

150 YEARS LATER, settlers still declare: she was never where she should be.

The Indian Act says so!

And to the east, that great and ancient Nepean sandstone laughed upon hearing this

Buffalo are back on the prairie

“This special moment marks a significant milestone for our Nation and represents strength, resilience, renewal, and our deep connection to the buffalo. The return of the buffalo is more than conservation it is the restoration of culture, tradition, and a sacred relationship that has sustained our people for generations”^[25]

The woman watches across a sea of grass and the wind embraces her, gently lifting her long hair. She returns everyday and stays until the sky fills with colour

Under the stars she turns back into spirit and instead of writing, she tells the stones “we will create a new world”, so they may mumble her message

With her every footstep the earth recognizes her

every stone, blade of grass, tree and river

And so, it was written: she had never been out of place

no matter how settler doctrine claimed it so

and the buffalo are returning

Author’s Note

This creative non-fiction was written for “The Indian Act 150,” an editorial series by Active History and the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NICHE). I use stylized elements to weave theory, legal doctrine and storytelling to explore the environmental dimensions of the Indian Act. These stylistic elements are inspired by Susan Griffin’s (1978) “The Roaring Inside Her: Woman and Nature,” which makes a poignant juxtaposition between the dominance of man and science within traditional scholarship and the subjugation of nature.

Thus, the assemblage of text illustrates how the Indian Act entrenched meta-narrativizes of the “white possessive” and results in ongoing Indigenous land dispossession. The text is critically constructed using italics, parenthesis and changing font size to signal the relationship between the Indian Act, the land and Indigenous and more-than-human resistances. The result is a disorienting, and dizzying collection of words that mimic the structure of settler colonialism and moves from East to West across Turtle Island

This work is written in memory of my friend, a young Indigenous woman from Treaty 4, who committed suicide in the summer of 2018. In Canada, Indigenous youth commit suicide at a rate 5-6 times that of the general population. These disproportionate rates are connected to the ongoing historical legacy of settler colonialism and legal doctrine such as the Indian Act, which disrupts Indigenous peoples relationships with land, culture and community.

Maren Savarese Knopf is an emerging interdisciplinary scholar and completing her PhD at the University of New Brunswick. Her research interests include settler colonialism, more-than-humans, the environment, and interspecies relationships. Maren is a settler originally from Treaty 4 and uses embodied and arts-based methods to understand the ongoing impacts of colonialism/imperialism in a multi-species world.

This series was produced within the project Historicizing Our Times: Histories of Migration and Climate in the Digital Space, which is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

[1] John A. Macdonald to Adams George Archibald, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba, 18 November 1870, quoted in 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, by Bob Joseph (2018), Chapter 1.

[2]  J.L Kirwan, “Age of the Nepean (Potsdam) Sandstone in Eastern Ontario,” American Journal of Science 261,2 (1963): 108.

[3]  The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Timeline: The Indian Act”, Accessed June 16, 2026, https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/timeline/the-indian-act.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 129.

[6] The Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. “Gradual Civilization Act,” by Amanda Robinson, June 16, 2026, https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/gradual-civilization-act

[7] Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, 4 (2006): 388.

[8] Indian Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-5, s. 18(1).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Indian Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-5, s. 93.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), xx.

[13] Ibid., 16.

[14] Ibid., 22.

[15] Trevor Herriot, Towards a Prairie Atonement (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2016), 36.

[16] Wolfe, ”Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” 399.

[17] Trevor Herriot, River in a dry land: a Prairie Passage (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000).

[18] Sarah Isabel Wallace, “Reserves in Saskatchewan,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2019. Accessed June 16, 2026. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/reserves-in-saskatchewan. para 1.

[19] Herriot, ”Towards a Prairie Atonement,” xiv.

[20] Mary Longman, Ancestors Rising (Regina, SK: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2006), 1.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive, Xiii.

[24] Bev Lundahl, Saskatchewan Dirt: A Pandemic Quest for Connection (Saskatoon, SK: Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing, 2023), 81.

[25] Cowessess First Nations in Davenport, ”Cowessess First Nation welcomes first buffalo calf”, para 5.

In the recent 2026 Québec elections, one topic once again captured the electorate’s attention: immigration. The Parti Québecois (PQ), which formed a minority government, presented twelve points on immigration during their campaign, notably setting permanent targets to roughly 35,000/year—a stark drop from last year’s figure of 60,000. PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon describes this initiative as important to the “protection of the French language, [the party’s] ability to deliver public services, and in terms of housing, and equal opportunities.”^[1]

While this policy presents itself as a response to contemporary concerns, debates over immigration are nothing new for the francophone province. For decades, Québecois have grappled with the complexities of immigration in the context of their national project and perceived standing in Canada. However, this is not simply a two-sided debate. The Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Québec (CTCC), whose statements and policies during the post-war period spanned both support and opposition, complicated the binary between “pro-” and “anti-” immigration. Examining the context and reasoning behind the contradictory sentiments of CTCC leadership and the rank-and-file provides insight and nuance into the development of the immigration debate in Québec.

The union’s periodical, Le Travail, offers a window into this complexity. In these pages, articles appealed to new arrivals by advertising their immigration support services and defending immigrants’ position in Québec society. At the same time, writers criticized government immigration policies and quotas, blaming them for high unemployment rates and the housing crisis.

By the 1950s, the CTCC had undergone reforms that enabled it to tackle the “immigrant question.” At its inception in 1921, the union aimed to be a Canadian organization “with no affiliation to international federations” that organized the country’s Catholic workers. Following the Second World War, however, its mandate shifted under the administration of President M. Gérard Picard and General Secretary Jean Marchand. Under their leadership, in 1947, the CTCC affiliated with the International Confederation of Christian Unions, reformulated its membership requirements, and reframed its religious character. Instead of requiring members to be Catholic, workers simply had to “align their words and actions […] with the CTCC’s guiding principles.”^[3]

The final change came when the CTCC proclaimed its belief in “true political democracy,” a system that Québec historian Jacques Rouillard described as “guaranteeing citizens’ freedoms” and affirming the equality of all humans.^[4] The union’s opposition to any unfair treatment on the grounds of language, nationality, race, gender, and religion thus solidified. In line with this new openness, CTCC representatives attended the National Conference on Immigrant Issues in Spring 1951, held under the auspices of Catholic Action Canada in Montréal. The event’s theme, “They are Our Brothers,” provided organizations with the chance to “familiarize themselves with all aspects of immigrant issues” and equipped them to take “positive and practical action.”^[5] At the end of the conference, attendees unanimously passed a series of resolutions. Most notably, every organization in French Canada was expected to establish a special committee to address the obstacles immigrants faced.

In response to this resolution, Le service d’immigration de la CTCC was founded in 1951, reflecting a commitment to helping newcomers. In the January 1952 article announcing the service’s arrival, union president François Krakowski noted it would be “a massive undertaking to help these people find jobs, adjust to life in the country, and settle their families, especially at a time when many people are either fully or partially unemployed.”^[6]

Le Travail’s writers would go on to write extensively about the service. As per one article, between 1951-52, the CTCC’s service assisted roughly 6,000 immigrants seeking information on “labour laws, wage levels […] and union organization.”^[7] Moreover, according to Krakwoski, the union served workers from a variety of backgrounds, including Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, and Bulgarians. The prominence of migrants from traditionally Eastern Orthodox regions signalled the CTCC administration’s commitment to representing non-Catholics. Furthermore, Krakowski pushed back against the myth of the unskilled immigrant, explaining that professionals, including two female medical graduates from the University of Brussels and army officials, were helped through the service.^[8]

Le Travail similarly positioned itself as a defender of immigrants, reinforcing the union’s humanitarian philosophy. In a 1952 open letter, an anonymous reader expressed frustration that the CTCC helped immigrants while Canadians struggled to find employment. They accused the union of helping “the Russians and the other communists” while they were “waging war on us too” in a xenophobic tirade. Closing the letter off, the authour wrongfully blamed Soviet émigrés of “[killing their] sons” in Korea.^[9]

In response, the CTCC editor reiterated their official stance on the matter, differentiating between supporting immigration during times of high unemployment and helping workers “who [had] been cast into utter destitution here.”^[10] The editorial defended immigrants’ claims to institutional support, writing that they deserved the same aid as any other Canadian. Furthermore, living up to the union’s policy of “real political democracy,” they addressed the readers’ generalization, writing that those they helped were not responsible for developments overseas.

At the same time, the CTCC remained critical of mass migration. The union claimed the federal government brought “poor people here to be unemployed” when they could have “earned an honest living in their own country, where they could have easily waited for conditions to improve.”^[11] According to the union, the issue was not the immigrants themselves so much as it was the government’s policy towards them.

Oftentimes, the CTCC tied its disapproval of federal policy to two contentious issues: the housing crisis and unemployment. Le Travail writer H. G. Howith remained particularly concerned with both matters in 1957, authoring several articles stressing the severity of the situation. In one, he argued that the National Housing Act (NHA, 1956), “designed to help the consumer purchase or build his home,” failed to provide a safety net for Canada’s poor. He warned readers that “with the population increase, and the heavy immigration expected to continue,” the problem would persist.^[12]

Howith’s concerns were not unfounded. In a second article, he stressed how immigrants contributed to increases in both family formations and population. In this context, he reminded the government of their responsibility to help the newcomer, or “the little fellow,” exercise his right to own a home.^[13] He discussed unemployment in a similar vein in his article “Unemployment has Everyone Worried,” where he denounced the Tories and encouraged economic planning and social welfare for the unemployed or other “people of misfortune.”^[14]

During periods of high unemployment, immigration was a central topic of discussion. So much so that the CTCC addressed its role in a February 1958 article titled “L’immigration est-elle une cause de chômage?” Pushing back against xenophobic narratives, Le Travail argued that immigrants created jobs either “in establishing their own businesses or by investing capital in diverse industries.”^[15]

While the union encouraged readers to blame government policy, which it described as “not properly planned,” it occasionally found itself at odds with immigrant workers. This was the case on August 30, 1957, when the CTCC called for an investigation of the placement of immigrants in Murdochville. These calls stemmed from a workers’ strike at Gasper Copper Mines Limited, where management called in strike breakers, many of whom were immigrants of German, Hungarian, and Scandinavian descent who, on August 19, threw rocks at union representatives.

In response to this attack, President Picard demanded the strike-breakers’ “deportation as provided for by immigration law under these circumstances.”^[16] This case highlights the limits of CTCC policy towards migrants. Although the union had previously committed to treating all labourers equally, it drew the line when they mobilized against one another. Moreover, in emphasizing the breakers’ ‘otherness’, Picard highlighted underlying anxieties towards migrants during periods of high unemployment and labour unrest.

The recent elections offer an opportunity to reflect on how Québec has approached immigration in the past. The case of Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Québec is particularly poignant, given that it maintained a nuanced stance on the immigrant question by refusing to fully commit to a “pro-” or “anti-” policy. Indeed, while it criticized quotas and policies in times of high unemployment, union leadership made efforts to draw a line between themselves and xenophobic rhetoric, though not without exception.

It also reminds us of the complexities of immigration discourse. Especially in the Québecois context, where certain parties prioritize language and cultural preservation. While the political landscape continues to change, some ideas do not go out of style. Looking to the future, we can draw on past examples of how to greet new arrivals enthusiastically and help them as they try to find their place in Québec.

Theodore Aretakis is an MA history student at McGill University and is supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. His research focuses on Montréal’s Greek community to explore the phenomena of intra-ethnic conflict and inter-ethnic solidarity among post-war immigrant workers during Québec’s Quiet Revolution. He is currently a research assistant for the Immigrec project and an Active History fellow. 

This post was produced within the project Historicizing Our Times: Histories of Migration and Climate in the Digital Space, which is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

[1] “Plan En Immigration,” Parti Québécois, December 8, 2024, https://pq.org/independance/plan-immigration/.

[2] CCQCA, “Chronique Historique: L’expansion Syndicale (1933-1945),” Conseil Central du Québec-Chaudière-Appalaches, accessed October 24, 2026, https://www.ccqca.csn.qc.ca/2018/04/17/chronique-historique-lexpansion-syndicale-1933-1945/.

[3] Jacques Rouillard, Histoire de la CSN: 1921-1981 (Boréal Express, 1981), 178.

[4] Rouillard, Histoire de la CSN, 176.

[5] « Ils sont nos frères, » Le Travail, 23 March, 1951.

[6] « Un véritable inventaire des problèmes des immigrants, » Le Travail (Montréal, QC), 4 May, 1951. Le Travail, 18 January, 1952.

[7] « Six mille immigrants ont été secourus, » Le Travail (Montréal, QC), 12 December, 1952.

[8] Le Travail, 1 February, 1952.

[9] « Un lecteur nous critique, » Le Travail (Montréal, QC), 15 February, 1952.

[10] Le Travail, 15 February, 1952.

[11] Le Travail, 12 December, 1952.

[12] H. G. Howith, “More and Better Federal Housing Aid Badly Needed,” Le Travail (Ottawa, ON), 2 August, 1957.

[13] H. G. Howith, “The Housing Squeeze Pinches the Low Income Group Hardest,” Le Travail (Ottawa, ON), 23 August, 1957.

[14] H. G. Howith, “Threat of Unemployment has Everyone Worried,” Le Travail (Ottawa, ON), 15 November, 1957.

[15] « L’immigration est-elle une cause du chômage? » Le Travail (Ottawa, ON), 14 February, 1958.

[16] « La C.T.C.C. demande une enquête sur les agissements des immigrants à Murdochville, » Le Travail (Ottawa, ON), 30 August, 1957.

As the teaching of history in Canadian universities seeks to incorporate decolonization, anti-racism, and truth-telling, the work of how to realize these commitments in practice remains emergent. As a Nuu-chah-nulth and a White settler co-teaching team, we delivered a 12-week undergraduate history course at the University of Victoria (UVic) that focused on these commitments. In so doing, we treated relationship and responsibility as essential parts of the work of teaching history at a Canadian university. This post reflects on how relationship and responsibility shaped our pedagogy, describes what we learned in the process, and encourages others to consider how our experience might inform their own teaching. 

We approached those histories from different perspectives. Before we taught together, we were good friends and colleagues that had worked together for nearly ten years on the British Columbia Historical Textbooks (BCHT) collection currently held in UVic Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA).^[2] But we brought different positions, experiences, and areas of expertise to the classroom.^[3] Chaa’winisaks came as a Nuu-chah-nulth educator whose commitments to family, community, law, and the responsibilities of telling history do not end at the classroom door. Pia came as a White settler historian, librarian, archivist, and curator of the textbook collection, with responsibilities for how the sources in her care are described, made accessible, and shared. 

Our friendship helped us stay in conversation, including when classroom conversations were challenging; such as when a student was unsettled, when a historical source reproduced colonial violence, or when the demands of the course exceeded the time for which we were compensated. But it did not make our positions interchangeable, nor our labour perfectly equal. Where appropriate, students could look to Chaa’winisaks to share Indigenous histories, to respond to racism, and to support Indigenous classmates. Pia had responsibilities to intervene in situations where there was racism rather than watch them unfold or assume that Chaa’winisaks would lead everyone through them. It mattered who was asked to explain racism, who was expected to care for Indigenous students, and whose time was understood to be available and when. We had to make those decisions together, as the course unfolded. 

These distinct responsibilities are important to acknowledge because universities often celebrate collaborative teaching and decolonizing education without explaining how such work is distributed, supported, or compensated. We shared one sessional instructor salary for a course taught by two people. Dividing the twice weekly classroom meetings helped us manage some of the work, but planning together, reviewing student responses, intervening when needed, and maintaining relationships did not divide neatly in half. We should not present a course like ours as an inexpensive model for institutions to adopt. If universities want this kind of co-teaching, they need to pay both instructors for the work required and recognize the responsibilities that extend beyond time at the front of a classroom. While our experience offers no universal template, it accounts for the conditions a university would have to take seriously if it wanted to sincerely support this work.  

One practice that helped us make decisions was daa-daa-puh-duh, a Nuu-chah-nulth way of “taking all things into consideration before making a decision.” Daa-daa-puh-duh was explained to Chaa’winisaks by her late grandfather, Chah-chim-sun-up. As practice, this was more than an exercise in gathering student feedback. It required us to notice that people in the same room could experience a story, a reading, or an exchange very differently. We had to attend to those accounts, discuss what they asked of us, and decide whether to change what we were doing. We also had to explain our decisions when a request could not be met.

In both formal and informal ways, we regularly invited students to reflect when they felt engaged, distanced, affirmed, confused, or surprised. We reviewed their responses between classes and returned to themes with the group without identifying individual students. At times we adjusted the pacing, the way we introduced a source, or the space available for discussion. We asked questions reminiscent of those in Stephen Brookfield’s critical incident questionnaire, often used in higher education, but a questionnaire is only a tool for collecting information.^[4] Daa-daa-puh-duh asked more of us. Our obligation was to consider responses, talk with one another, and act accountably. This did not mean guaranteeing comfort; avoiding the uncomfortable is not an organizing principle for teaching the history of racism and colonialism in Canada. We needed to recognize when students were unsettled by the history they were encountering and when the unfolding of classroom conversation risked causing harm. We were still learning how to make these calls together. Daa-daa-puh-duh gave us a way to keep listening after a class ended and to return with a decision rather than assume that the initial plan was adequate.

Early in the term, students completed an assignment called “These Lands.” They researched the histories of the place where they lived, drawing on sources made available by the peoples connected to that place and from other appropriate historical materials that we identified. The assignment asked for more from them than a polished land acknowledgement. Students had to consider whose histories were available, who had produced a source, what it could tell them, and what they still did not know. For many students, this was a confronting task; there was uncertainty and even embarrassment in not knowing. Students were offered the opportunity to revise and resubmit as often as desired. We were careful not to describe a student’s surprise at finding gaps in their knowledge as the completion of responsibility. Rather, it was a beginning.

After the ‘These Lands’ assignment, students were required to complete other tasks including a ‘Library Research Skills’ exercise, and mid-term and end-of-course exams with short answer responses. During the last month of the course, students worked with the BCHT collection held in SCUA. Pia brought students into a Special Collections classroom to work directly with the textbooks.^[5] Students were invited to consider how settler colonialism and related hegemonic narratives were sustained through children’s reading engagement. We asked students to examine what the books said and how they came to claim authority. Prompting questions included: 

• Whose point of view organized the narrative? 
• Who appeared as a subject or a problem?  
• Who was absent?  
• What could students learn from historical textbooks about the schooling of young settlers, and what could they not learn about the peoples being described? 
• What other accounts would be needed before a student made a claim about those histories? 

These questions joined Pia’s bibliographic work with the collection and Chaa’winisaks’s insistence that the people spoken about in the textbooks could not be reduced to the textbooks’ representations of them. Awareness of not reifying stereotypes or omissions was an important goal of the assignment. Student work was overwhelmingly strong. They demonstrated both robust historical research skills and keen understanding of their responsibilities, as emerging historians, to Indigenous communities and to the work of decolonization.  

Daa-daa-puh-duh’s law of “taking all things into consideration before making a decision” informed not just individual assignments but our approach to the course’s wider content. Often, histories of Canada are taught as distant events within a neatly sequenced national chronology, with less focus on relation to the lands where a class is taught. Such approaches can lean towards teleology and even re-colonizing harms. We sought to remain mindful of this risk across the course. Covering over four centuries of history in lands that encompass nearly ten million square kilometers is a considerable task. The temporal and geographical scope of the course was vast. Conceptual topics such as gender, religion, class, or sexuality were highlighted based on region, and often met intersectionally. Topics such as migration, enslavement, racialization, resistance, and dispossession in different regions were introduced to students through primary sources and object-based learning whenever possible. We returned to questions of whose authority defined an event and what changed when the account began with the peoples living in a place. The point was not to attach a local example to every national topic. Instead, it was to ask how a national account had been made and what it left out.

As the course progressed, we saw students ask more careful questions about historical sources and reflect upon their own position as learners and emerging historians. Their assignments and contributions gave us evidence of developing understanding, though we cannot claim to know what every student carried beyond the course. In writing about the course, we have also asked careful questions of ourselves, not least: when a Nuu-chah-nulth approach shapes how a course is governed, how do we write about that without reducing it to a technique that another instructor can lift from the page? We can describe the questions we asked and the actions we took, but we cannot detach those actions from Chaa’winisaks’s relationships and responsibilities and then call the result a transferable classroom tool.

Our experience did not produce a simple recipe but, again, a sense of the importance of relationship and responsibility. Positionalities and local contexts are essential. Co-instructors need to identify whose knowledge is shaping the course and who holds authority to share it. They need time to plan and to respond when the course changes, not just after the course concludes at the end of term. They need to examine what their sources authorize students to say, and they need to pay attention to how race, employment, and institutional status distribute the work between course instructors. Institutions that celebrate this work must support co-instructional work materially. 

We offer this account as two instructors still thinking together about what began to take shape through our work. Friendship brought us into the course. It did not relieve either of us of responsibility for the histories we told, the decisions we made, or the people who were asked to carry the consequences. Yet, by centering relationship and responsibility, we had a foundation upon which to co-teach with care and imagine what was possible.  

Chaa’winisaks is Nuu-chah-nulth and is a continuing sessional in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria.

Pia Russell is a White settler of Danish heritage and a librarian in Special Collections at the University of Victoria.

^[1] Regularly offered in the Department of History, HSTR329A is a 1.5 credit course that is required or recommended for students completing majors and minors in history or Indigenous Studies; students from other faculties and programs often take this as an elective.  Many registrants of HSTR329A go on to take HSTR329B which focuses on the twentieth-century history of race, racism, and ethnicity in Canada.  The fall 2024enrollment included 17 undergraduate students from a range of disciplines including history, political science, Indigenous studies, sociology, and literature. We thank the Department of History at UVic for their strong support when we suggested this course be co-taught.  

^[2] UVic’s British Columbia Historical Textbooks collection is housed in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA): https://www.uvic.ca/library/research-learning/british-columbia-historical-textbooks/index.php

^[3] Chaa’winisaks: I am Nuu-chah-nulth, with family and community ties to Cheklesaht, Kyuquot, and Tla-o-qui-aht. My place in this work comes from my relationships and responsibilities, as well as from many years of teaching and research. When I bring oral histories into a classroom, I am making a decision about what I can share, why I am sharing it, and what I am asking listeners to carry, which is most often responsibility. I do not bring oratory into a course to make a difficult historical subject more engaging.

Pia: I am a White settler of Danish and Scottish heritage, born in Musqueam homelands. I work as a librarian and historian at the University of Victoria (UVic) and curate the British Columbia Historical Textbooks (BCHT) collection in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Work with these materials has made me attentive to what a collection preserves, how it names people and places, and what its records cannot tell us on their own. I regularly teach about the histories of Canada, childhood, education, and the book in the Departments of History, Indigenous Education, and Teacher Education.

^[4] Brookfield, S. (n.d.). Critical Incident Questionnaire. Stephen D. Brookfield. Retrieved September 11, 2026, from http://www.stephenbrookfield.com/critical-incident-questionnaire

^[5] As BCHT’s curator, Pia helped students locate related scholarly and archival sources and ask how these books had been produced, used in schools, and preserved as a collection. Understanding the broader social, political, and economic networks that these books existed in was an important teaching goal.  Students could examine the books as evidence of how children were taught to understand history, while remaining alert to what those books could not tell them about the peoples they described. This research work mattered to the assignment: it gave students ways to question a textbook’s authority and find other accounts before providing their own analysis.  

^[6] These laws are incorporated in UVic’s Indigenous Plan: https://www.uvic.ca/ovpi/_assets/docs/uvic-indigenous-plan-2023.pdf. Qwul’sih’yah’maht, Dr. Robina Thomas, helped lead the renewal of the 2023 plan with its steering circle and many contributors.

By Katie Carson and Tiffany Chénier 

In a pervasive climate of anti-intellectualism and cuts to humanities programs, the decision to pursue a degree in history is an existential one. It is not uncommon for prospective students applying to PhD programs to receive “The Talk.” It typically begins by cautioning that the academic job market remains dire and that it is unlikely you will secure a tenure-track appointment upon completing a degree.  

These talks didn’t end once you received your acceptance letter. The malaise of an uncertain future hangs heavily over graduate students as they try to balance completing a degree with planning for an unpredictable postgrad career. 

The reality that studying history can be an isolating experience adds insult to injury. As a history graduate student, you’re likely to spend many solitary hours doing archival research, analyzing your sources, and drafting your chapters. You might also be the only student in your department studying a given sub-discipline, adding a layer of intellectual loneliness to the equation. Taken together with the grim job market, this isolation makes the decision to pursue a graduate degree increasingly daunting.

And yet, each year, new students embark on this journey.

The significance of this state of affairs is not lost on these students, and it is not lost on your authors. We do, however, want to use this series to start a much less common conversation. 

Why do graduate students stay?

What does it mean to pursue a graduate education in the current climate? To be told you have no future, and then to face that future all the same?

Across the country, graduate students find meaning, personal and professional fulfillment, and community through their studies. Graduate work, while producing a thesis or dissertation, is much more than the final product. It is the culmination of the many connections that make up the graduate student experience. Whether at conferences, the archive, or late-night grading sessions, the mentorship and camaraderie gained throughout counteract the idea that graduate work happens in isolation and instead highlight the collective experience at the heart of our studies. Curating strong relationships remains a constant and immovable feature of intellectual and personal growth. 

Yet, finding and building these vital networks with peers can be a slow process. This is only exacerbated by the large distances between our institutions. As two PhD students studying in Montreal, we are privileged to find ourselves in a city with an expansive academic community fostered by four graduate history programs. Not all graduate students have this luxury. Given the challenges that confront graduate students, it is more important than ever to build strong networks between emerging scholars. Graduate students have much to learn from one another. If we choose to stay, what can we accomplish when we choose to stay together?

To this end, the Canadian Historical Association’s Graduate Student Committee (CHA GSC) is partnering with Active History (activehistory.ca) to organize a bilingual, coast-to-coast series for current graduate students to reflect on their experiences at institutions across the country. We hope this collection will serve as a “state of the field,” shedding light on emerging research and fostering understanding and connection among graduate students, postgraduates, and faculty. This series will contribute to the CHA GSC’s efforts to foster country-wide information sharing and support emerging scholars in a changing academic landscape.

Katie Carson is a senior fellow and lead editor of the Active History team at McGill University. Her current doctoral research focuses on the intersection of transnational labour solidarities and human rights activism in the postwar period.   

Tiffany Chénier is the McGill graduate student representative on the Canadian Historical Association’s Graduate Student Committee. Her current doctoral research examines the global movement of Canadian-generated timber capital throughout the nineteenth century.   

This post was produced within the project Historicizing Our Times: Histories of Migration and Climate in the Digital Space, which is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

As a tour guide, I answer a lot of questions. Some are related to the tour itself, but many are not. Guests ask about my life just as much as, if not more than, they ask about the history of Montreal. I wasn’t surprised, then, when a woman turned toward me one summer morning and asked,

“So, what do you study?”

I’d answered this question enough times to perfect my response. Most guests were looking for small talk, so I kept it brief, including just enough detail to inspire confidence in my competence.

“I’m finishing a master’s degree in modern Canadian history this fall,” I said.  

Guests usually offered a word of encouragement or nod of support in reply, or if they were chatty, an anecdote about a cousin’s husband’s daughter who also had a history degree. But not this woman.

“What are you ever going to do with that?”

Like most history students, I’d faced versions of this question for years. When I decided to study something other than medicine, engineering, or finance, it seemed that everyone—from my relatives, to my coworkers, to my dental hygienist—was concerned that my history degree would leave me without work. Some expressed faith in my choice at first, but lost it once I told them I didn’t plan to go to teachers’ college or law school. When I started my studies at McGill University, I expected professors to be more optimistic, but oftentimes, they painted a picture that was just as grim. The more I heard about rising youth unemployment rates, the AI-ification of the hiring process, and the crisis of the Canadian university, the more I began to worry that everyone was right. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to find a job with my history degrees. Or, to my horror, maybe the Useless History Degree would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I felt lucky and a bit vindicated, then, when I landed a summer job at a not-for-profit museum in Montreal. Not only was I earning a fair wage through the Young Canada Works program, but I was also gaining experience in public history. Maybe this would put an end to the infinite loop of Useless History Degree comments and the self-doubt that accompanied them. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for a woman on her high horse to prove me wrong.

But something was different this time. There was an unmistakable, almost comical, irony to her question. At the risk of sounding obvious, I was doing something with my degree. I was leading a historical walking tour, and she had paid to join it. How could a client of a historical walking tour, I wondered, still view their tour guide’s degree as at best, a dead end, and at worst, a useless piece of paper?

The Useless History Degree narrative doesn’t just speak to the challenges that history graduates, like many young people, face in a competitive and oversaturated job market. It also demonstrates a dissonance between how people think about history degrees and how they engage with them in daily life. This dissonance has pervaded not only how the public and politicians perceive the social and economic value of history, but also the way the academy discusses it. If we are to counteract the Useless History Degree narrative, we need to recognize the myriad ways in which history graduates are involved in public life and consider how and why they’ve adapted to Canada’s hostile economic environment.   

To be clear, history graduates do face a challenging job market. Youth unemployment in Canada is at a historic high. Thanks in part to the rise of generative AI, employers are cutting entry-level positions, making it challenging for young people to break into the job market. At the same time, federal and provincial governments are defunding cultural and educational institutions, making it difficult for people in the humanities and liberal arts to find gainful employment. In Nova Scotia, my home province, protests made headlines when Premier Tim Houston announced plans to defund the arts and culture sector in the province. “These cuts…will devastate us,” explained artistic director Ken Schwartz, “we’re going to lose our jobs.” Meanwhile, PhD students might stave off the effects of a dismal job market for the six to seven years it takes to complete their degrees, but upon graduation, the crisis facing Canadian universities limits their opportunities to work as tenure-tracked academics, a longstanding ambition for these candidates.

Without understating these challenges, history graduates have more success on the job market than the Useless History Degree narrative suggests. A 2018 survey of Ontario university graduates found that six months after graduation, 92 percent of humanities graduates were employed. A quick perusal through the Canadian Historical Association’s (CHA) blog highlights that history graduates find work in many different areas, from archives to nonprofits to video game companies. In short, many people interact with history graduates in their daily lives, they just don’t know it.

Moreover, as the Nova Scotia example demonstrates, the decision to defund arts and culture has little to do with the sector’s success. Premier Tim Houston presented his cuts as a practical, if painful, way to balance the provincial budget, a tired tactic that neoliberals use to pass off their small-state and anti-intellectual ideology as a matter of common sense. But as Sarah Faber, a part-time employee of the Cabot Trail Writers Festival, argued, the premier’s comments are at odds with the economic importance of the arts and culture industry, which is growing faster in Nova Scotia than any other Canadian province and creates “more jobs for every dollar invested than oil and gas, agriculture, or manufacturing, adding $65-billion to the national GDP in 2024 alone.”

Based on my anecdotal experience, I’m not surprised. The millions of tourists who visit Montreal each year are keen to learn about the city’s history and cultural life. My guided walking tour is usually just one stop on their itineraries, which feature visits to the Old Port and various museums across the city. These activities are popular with locals, too. During La Nuit Blanche, for example, roughly 300,000 people seize the opportunity to visit heritage and cultural institutions at night, for free.

It’s not just politicians and members of the public, however, who fail to recognize the value of a history degree. The Useless History Degree narrative has made its way into an unexpected place: the university history department.

To be fair, in my undergraduate classes, professors were enthusiastic. Studying history, they argued, helped students realize themselves while also endowing them with transferable skills, like researching, writing, and critical thinking, to work in the public and private sectors. Once I expressed interest in graduate studies, however, the tone changed. Before even asking about my career aspirations, well-intentioned professors offered the same piece of advice. Skip the degree and head straight for the job market, they said, academia is a sinking ship and there’s no sense in staying aboard just to listen to the music.

It’s no secret that universities are facing a financial crisis, and when it comes to downsizing, the humanities are often the first on the chopping block. Professors are quick to discourage students from pursuing graduate studies in history—especially their PhDs—pointing out that tenure-track positions, the gold standard of academic employment, are few and far between. This is true. According to a CHA report only 58 of the 562 people who received their history PhDs in Canada between 2016-2022 found tenure-track employment, less than half of whom got the position immediately. As a result, many find themselves working precarious jobs as sessional instructors and contract faculty.

While I agree that we should grapple with the perils of the academic job market, we shouldn’t discount the gainful employment that history graduates find outside of the academy, neither to the public or students themselves. Many history PhD recipients find work in the private and public sector, and their career accomplishments are nothing to shake a stick at. Of those 562 people who received their PhDs between 2016 and 2022, for example, 20 found work as civil servants, 23 as private historical researchers, and 21 as NGO staffers. We should advocate for the job security of these history graduates too and listen to them when they say their degrees equipped them with invaluable skills and life experience. We should also, as others have argued on this site, think about how graduate programs might better equip history students for the job market without sacrificing the intellectual heart of the program.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that everyone and their dog should get an undergraduate or graduate degree in history. There are real and prohibitive economic and social barriers to studying history, not least of which are tuition costs and the opacity of graduate funding. I do think, however, that if we are to challenge the Useless History Degree narrative, we need to be more careful and intentional about how we think and talk about history graduates and their impact on society, both inside and outside the academy.

Ultimately, I’m grateful for the tour guest who probed my Useless History Degree. Although her question was familiar, I saw it in a new light, which opened my eyes to the value of my own studies. If I could talk to her today, I’d share these thoughts and hope she could see the value of my studies, too.

But people ask a lot of questions on a historical walking tour, and I have, on average, 250 meters between stops to answer them. So, on that summer morning, I opted for something shorter.

“Maybe I’ll lead historical walking tours.”

Sarah Kittilsen is a graduate student at McGill University and a Junior Fellow with Active History. Her ongoing M.A. thesis examines the history of rural youth clubs in Nova Scotia. 

This post was produced within the project Historicizing Our Times: Histories of Migration and Climate in the Digital Space, which is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Exterior of Woodside National Historic Site. Photograph by the author, December 2025.

Last December I visited Woodside National Historic Site, the boyhood home of Canada’s tenth Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King (WLMK).  It was my first visit to the house since 1998 when I was a public history graduate student at the University of Waterloo. Back then, I wrote a paper on the portrayal of gender at Woodside. Decades later, while sorting through file boxes, I found the paper and wondered whether the interpretation had evolved in the intervening years. I don’t know if it has changed all that much, but my impression of it has.

In 1998, as part of my research, I accompanied a group of eight-year-olds on their school tour. While I got to witness their enthusiasm for the house, not surprisingly, the tour didn’t touch on my own interests. Instead, the emphasis was on portraying “Willie” as a “regular” kid. My assignment fell a few pages short, so I included an experiential analysis of my visit. It is an understatement to say that approach made my professor uncomfortable (he used the word “fretted” in his feedback). Nevertheless, I wrote about how walking through the house made me feel. I was a little disappointed that the house portrayed gender in the familiar ways we would expect of a Victorian house museum. I left wondering is that all there is? This was not a criticism of the staff or the story that was told. Rather, I was frustrated by what I perceived as the limitations of how gender could be conveyed in a Victorian household; 1998 me couldn’t relate.[i]

Prior to visiting in 2025, I contacted Woodside with an ambitious list of interpretive and operational questions. When I arrived, Holly took me on a tour of the house. What was planned as an hour-long visit turned into two. Because Holly knew my interests ahead of time, she pulled out specific artefacts for me to look at. For example, she found an etiquette book on the shelves of the library, showed me a telegram from WLMK to the South Waterloo Women’s Liberal Association, and shared a dance card from a July 15, 1889, party in the King’s parlour.

On this visit, I found myself noticing everything, from the wallpaper and furniture to the dishes and trinkets. In part, this new attention to detail reflects an assignment I developed for a gender and technology course I taught. I asked my students to visit a local museum and write a critique about the portrayal of gender there. Many chose house museums, and several examined the technologies available in the kitchens: pump sinks, cooking implements, sources of heat for heating and cooking, among others. I’m partial to big tent definitions of technology, and my students included some inventive examples. As I moved through the house, I found myself looking for technology beyond the kitchen, trying to see through my students’ eyes.

My second favourite room was the pantry. It’s my second favourite room in my house too. I stood in the pantry taking in the canning jars, dishes, and crocks. Would 1998 Shannon have been as drawn to the pantry? Unlikely. What has changed? For one, I now understand the complexities represented by pantries. They are not just storage spaces, but also workrooms. They are places of privilege and consumption, preparation and preservation, illuminating the skills involved in feeding a household. They are political, spanning from “apocalyptic hoarding” to the “pleasure…and conviviality of the shared table.”^[ii] And, of course, I’m drawn to the aesthetics and organization.

Pantry of Woodside National Historic Site. Photograph by the author, December 2025.

As we made our way through the rooms – kitchen, dining room, library, parlor, guest bedroom, family bedrooms – it was easy to see how a typical gendered portrayal emerges naturally. In my twenties, I was frustrated by what I perceived as limitations. Now I am better able to see pockets of agency within constraints. For example, Holly related that Mrs. King had a wall removed to enlarge the dining room because she so enjoyed hosting. Her sewing tools were in a corner of the library, so that she could be with the family while sewing. I’m also less concerned with evaluating the portrayal of gender in broad terms. I’m more interested in the material environment: how specific artefacts prompt questions we may not otherwise ask, and how we can use such items to help us reconstruct lives.

This played out for me, in particular, in John King’s study (“the library”). On my tour, I was invited “behind the velvet rope.” Holly and I sat at the desk for about half an hour. The deep burgundy and dark wood create a soothing atmosphere, and I was content to linger. As we sat, we talked about which of the furnishings were specific to the King family, which were time-appropriate, and which had been added to fill the space. For me, this was the most impactful part of the tour. I think this reflects Alevtina Naumova’s observations about the Mackenzie House Museum, that the “experience of materiality of the space and objects within it authenticates the story.”[iii] In my previous visit to Woodside, I felt very much like a detached observer. This time, sitting where the family sat, examining artefacts, it was easy to imagine the family gathering cozily on a winter’s afternoon.

William Lyon Mackenzie King’s study, Woodside National Historic Site. Photograph by the author, December 2025.

While my experience of Woodside has changed, the site has also undergone considerable changes, including its ability to welcome visitors. Visitor numbers for Woodside have varied considerably over the years. Flooding, renovations, budget cuts, and the Covid 19 Pandemic have all affected opportunities to visit. Changes to the Ontario school curriculum also require programming revisions for school tours. When I visited Woodside in 1998, attendance figures suggested that visitor numbers had already fallen from an earlier peak. In 1990, there were around 28,000 visitors.[iv] By 1997-1998, that number was recorded as 17,834. In the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the reported figure was 1,083. These numbers point to a significant change in visitation, although they must be considered alongside the site’s availability and operating conditions. Woodside occupies a distinctive space within Parks Canada; it is a relatively small site embedded in an urban community. Its description in Parks Canada materials as an “urban oasis” underscores that relationship.  

This local importance is a long-standing characteristic. A closer look at the 1997-1998 figures shows that of the almost 18,000 visitors, 70 percent were local residents of the Kitchener-Waterloo area. In addition to Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations, they held summer teas, and hosted citizenship ceremonies on Canada Day. In these ways, the house served a community function in addition to its heritage one. Now that the house is only open three months per year, the opportunities to build and sustain community relationships are more limited (the grounds remain open year-round).

Another difference might be the popularity of the King family. When I was doing my MA, Charlotte Gray’s biography Mrs. King: The Life & Times of Isabel Mackenzie King (1997) was tremendously popular; such that theme of 1998 was “the Year of Mrs. King.” The former Superintendent noted that visitors would show up to the house holding a copy of the book and would ask questions about what they had read. In this way, the book gave readers an accessible account through which to connect to the house. Almost thirty years later, how might Woodside create a comparable connection between its history and the public imagination? This year, the calendar includes a murder-mystery weekend, which taps into public fascination with crime. Such interactive programming offers a compelling path forward.

Initially, I returned to Woodside to revisit their interpretation of gender. I can’t say whether the house has changed all that much, but my gaze has. My latest visit to Woodside was one of the more enjoyable museum experiences I’ve had, and the possibility of more bespoke museum experiences excites me. At a time when heritage sites face significant operational challenges, a memorable individual experience is valuable. Whether such experiences can contribute to the long-term sustainability of historic house museums remains an unanswered question.  

Shannon Stettner is a historian specializing in reproductive health and activism, oral history, and lived experience. She is an avid traveller, dog enthusiast, world class putterer, and a regular contributor to Active History. 

[i] For a more detailed analysis of women’s and gender history at Ontario historic sites, see for example, Katherine MJ McKenna,. “Women’s history, gender politics and the interpretation of Canadian historic sites: Some examples from Ontario.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 30, no. 1 (2005): 21-30.

[ii] Michael Mikulak, The politics of the pantry: Stories, food, and social change (McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP, 2013), 21.

[iii] Alevtina Naumova,. “Touching” the past: Investigating lived experiences of heritage in living history museums.” International Journal of the Inclusive Museum 7, no. 3/4 (2015): 1-8.

[iv] This figure was from a draft site management plan cited in my 1998 paper.