Seasonal Wishes


All my plans for a seasonal wrap up and review seemed to get swallowed up in a swirl of eggnog and reindeer, or something. 

For a little Christmas history to tide you over, I recommend Cayley Bower's at once charming and erudite thoughts on the history of seasonal baking in Canada, recently posted at Active History.

All the best for the holidays.  Maybe that pre-Christmas wrap up can become a year end review.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

History of Edith Sheppard

Image
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...
Read more

Happy World Heritage Day

Image
Yeah, I didn't know it was World Heritage Day , either, but there you are.  Go see a monument. I googled Heritage Canada Foundation to see what it was doing today, and the first link was the National Trust for Canada , an evolution I still don't entirely understand, though Wikipedia says they are now the same thing .  But it's a pretty website. Today also, the Ontario Museum in Toronto announces that its new Daphne Cockwell Gallery of First Nations Art and Culture will be permanently open to the public free of charge. The ROM describes this as part of the Museum�s broader effort to foster greater appreciation of the Indigenous collections stewarded by the Museum, and to support the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. This is also one in a series of long term initiatives aimed at increasing public access to the Museum. Free public museums -- there's a heritage initiative I could get behind . Image : National Trust for Canada
Read more

Notes on the history of inequality and minimum wages

Image
American babies are 76 per cent more likely to die before they turn a year old than babies in other rich countries, and American children who survive infancy are 57 per cent more likely to die before adulthood, according to a sobering new study published in the journal Health Affairs . American teens aged 15 to 19 are 82 times more likely than teens in other rich countries to die of a gun homicide. You have to say, the Republican agenda is working. Meanwhile, here in Canada, how is it that the operators of Tim Hortons franchises have a union -- the Great White North Franchisors Association -- to negotiate with the boss, but the workers cannot seem to have a union to negotiate with the franchisors? And if markets are supposed to work, how is it the franchise system establishes that the boss gets to set the prices while the franchisors have to pay the (rising) wage costs?  Is the role of retail franchising in creating poverty a bug in the system, or more of a feature? The $15 minim...
Read more