History of Toronto's continuing sports dominance

Where's the ball?  Right where it ought to be!

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History of Edith Sheppard

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The obituaries in December 2017 included Ernest Revell , retired University of Toronto professor of Near Eastern Studies and published watercolour artist . He is memorable to me as a child of Edith Sheppard, an early Canadian woman lawyer (called to the bar 1925) who practised for several years with the prominent Toronto firm of McCarthy & McCarthy, and whom we "discovered" during my research in the history of that firm, as noted in the 2005  history of McCarthy Tetrault . A biography of Edith Sheppard which was commissioned by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography  -- but which the DCB has   so far declined to publish -- has long lain among my own archives of lost projects. For those who may be interested, I have included the unedited text below the jump: Sheppard, Edith Mary Peckham , lawyer; born 3 August 1900 at Brul� Lake, Ontario, daughter of Charles Henry Sheppard and Ellen Frances Stocking; married 14 June 1929 at Bombay, India, to Captain Alfred John Revell of...
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History of terror and migration

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Sometimes the old world seems not so far away.  CBC Radio reports on a group of Manitoba Mennonites who took a river cruise to the Ukrainian territories their grandparents emigrated from -- and found themselves gaining access to the KGB reports from the 1930s that documented the arrests, interrogations, probable torture, and executions of forebears whose travails provoked the flight of the survivors to, eventually, Manitoba. "The interrogator kept asking about his counter-revolutionary activities, but my grandfather kept insisting that after his stint in the White Army, he had not been involved in any,� Braun said. �The interrogator responded that they had information that he had been. My grandfather requested the names of his accusers. That statement was not recognized. "After each entry, my grandfather had to add his signature." Braun�s grandfather was questioned again on Feb. 28, 1938. "'You insist on hiding facts from interrogators. Tell the truth,'...
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The accuracy shibboleth in historical movies

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It's a movie A friend suggests that since I'm not a fan of movies about historical events, I will like this essay by British historian Anthony Beevor,  Beevor, with a new book to promote, seeks to shock, I think, by dissing canonical films like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List For a long time now, my wife has refused to watch a war movie with me. This is because I cannot stop grinding my teeth with annoyance at major historical mistakes, or harrumphing over errors of period detail. Actually Beevor's essay makes me grind my teeth, and for the same reason I sometimes claim to dislike dramas about history.  He insists they have to be true -- and the filmmakers insist they are true.  Neither side seems willing to admit that a drama is a drama.  It doesn't have to be literally true; it just has to work as a drama. So Beevor shouts at Saving Private Ryan (okay, he likes the opening slaughter) for not including the British role in D-Day and for offering a melodr...
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