Glasstry news

Wonder why the writing in so many magazines seems so ... amateurish?  Michael Harris in Medium has a well documented explanation.   It's the pay rate, which has stagnated for fifty years and more. Beyond the basic numbers, writers also told me about a grab bag of smaller frustrations and indignities that make the economics of their job problematic: checks that arrived on a geologic time scale while the landlord still charges monthly; publications squeezing out reprint, TV, and film rights; editors who assign and fix pay for pieces at word counts they know writers will likely exceed to meet the scope of the assignment. Harris's material is all American. Canadian experience is less documented but surely worse. The Periodical Writers of Canada changed its name to Professional Writers of Canada years ago, because hardly any of its members seriously working as writers worked for periodicals anymore,

Fort York has guarded the Toronto shoreline since 1793, but landfill and development have steadily moved the shoreline away from it. In the twentieth century it stood surrounded by light industry and transit corridors that include an elevated freeway. All through the 20th century, groups of historically-minded Torontonians protected it from development threats. It has been a national historic site since 1923. By the end of the century, with rising property values and more intense planning projects throughout central Toronto, a strictly negative idea of merely holding back development to "save the fort" seemed mostly to emphasize the potential risk to it. Around that time, heritage activists and planners began a different initiative:  not so much resisting development as demonstrating how Fort York could be an asset to a reshaped waterfront and a re-imagined Toronto. They pitched the idea that Fort York and Garrison Common around it were a key cultural landmark in the city, as...

Archivist, Carleton University professor, and busy historian of Upper Canada/Canada West/Ontario, Keith Johnson died recently.  Full obituary here . His contributions to Canadian history include editing the Canadian Directory of Parliament and Affectionately Yours: The Letters of Sir John A. Macdonald and his Family and his books Becoming Prominent: Regional Leadership in Upper Canada and In Duty Bound: Men, Women and the State in Upper Canada . I remember Keith as an editor of Histoire sociale/Social History who used to invite me to write reviews on a nice range of scholarly books.  His survivors include Jill Vickers, a founder of feminist political science and former Carleton prof.

It's Shakespeare's birthday.  Also World Book and Copyright Day. And speaking of words: Tsilhqot'in or Chilcotin? First Nation or indigenous or Indigenous? Cindy Blackstock recommends the Indigenous Peoples Glossary , Second Edition, for sorting out these issues of respect and accuracy.

At the Lawyers Guns and Money blog , I frequently find myself reading the "Erik Visits an American Grave" feature. Erik Loomis , a prof of American history and pillar of LGM , is relentless in visiting graves of famous and obscure Americans from across the centuries and riffing on the website about their intriguing and often revelatory lives. I'm not nearly so energetic in grave-visiting as Loomis evidently is, but today I'm stealing his gimmick. Recently in Burlington, Ontario, we happened on the grave of Adam Fergusson Blair beside the 1832 Anglican church of St. Luke's. A plaque salutes him as first President of the Privy Council of the Dominion of Canada. Blair, a veteran Reform politician, was one of those who refused to leave the confederation coalition in 1867 when George Brown was striving to rebuild the Reform/Tory polarities and John A Macdonald was striving to create the illusion of a big-tent by coopting some Reformers into his election team. It didn...

I was on my way to a conference yesterday when my phone told me the Supreme Court of Canada had unanimously overthrown a lower court's finding that s.121 of the British North America Act prevents the provinces from taking steps to manage and encourage economic and social development within their boundaries. Since the SCC's position is pretty much what I had proposed in an expert witness affidavit that became part of the case, I was kinda chuffed. ( Full text of the decision is here .  And my affidavit is here. ) I'm happy enough that the SCC decision makes not the slightest reference to my evidence -- historians should make history, not law, and the judges start out by rejecting the notion that any particular expert's opinion should overturn settled law. Still, of all the historical evidence presented to the various courts drawn into this controversy, mine is most compatible with the constitutional vision set out by the Supreme Court: mainly, that the overarching princ...

I had an email the other day from a woman in Virginia. Her ancestors, she knew, had been living around Syracuse, New York, since at least the 1880s. But she recently learned that for the hundred years before that, they had lived in Upper Canada/Ontario, having settled there in 1787 as loyalist refugees whose farmland in the Thirteen Colonies had been confiscated by vengeful American authorities. Thank you for writing The Loyalists which I just finished reading this week. I enjoyed reading it and learned so much.  ... I did not know until a few years ago that my 18th century ancestor was a Loyalist, nor did I understand what that meant. I greatly appreciated being able to learn so much history from your book. I wrote back to say how I appreciated how a book I wrote decades ago could still be making friends and providing useful information in such unpredictable ways, and she wrote back: You will laugh... I bought your book 10 years ago, started reading it, but didn't finish it. So, ...

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

Howzit, you ask, that the people who hold Tim Horton's franchises can have a union to negotiate terms and conditions with the owners, but the people who hand out double-doubles at the window can't have a union to negotiate terms and conditions with the franchisees? What, you thought labour relations was fair? But the process may be teaching franchisees and their Great White North Franchisee Association  what it is like to go up against the boss . the Great White North Franchisee Association board said it is �appalled� that Mark Kuziora, who owns two Toronto Tim Hortons franchises, was allegedly told by Tim Hortons parent company Restaurants Brands International in early April that he would be denied a renewal for one of the restaurants at the end of August. The board said Kuziora had been negotiating with RBI and TDL Group, a Tim Hortons subsidiary, since September and trusted the negotiations were being done �in good faith.� What, he thought it was fair?

PM Trudeau and Tsilhqot'in representatives Writer Terry Glavin, always an interesting -- and unpredictable -- writer on British Columbia and much else, has a recent couple of notable pieces of historical journalism in  Maclean's, where he is a contributor. One is a solid backgrounder on the Chilcotin/Tsilhqot�in war of 1864, which led to the hanging of six First Nations leaders Lhats�as?in, Biyil, Tilaghed, Taqed, Chayses, and Ahan. This was the event for which the government of Canada formally apologized in the Canadian Parliament. The shame and disgrace at the heart of the Chilcotin War�s legacy occurred shortly after 8 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1864, when the war leader Lhats�as?in and several of his comrades agreed to enter the encampment of William Cox, the leader of an expeditionary force of several dozen armed men dispatched by the just-appointed Governor Frederick Seymour, to talk truce. Instead, Lhats�as?in and his warriors were arrested and put in chains. Seeking ...

On April 14, the Welland Museum in Ontario's Niagara region, will open the General Hunter Shipwreck Exhibit, featuring the War of 1812 brig General Hunter  , which took part in many War of 1812 actions on the Great Lakes before being captured by the Americans at the Battle of Put-In Bay. General Hunter was wrecked in 1816, still in American service, off what is now Southampton Beach on Ontario's Lake Huron coast.  The wreck was discovered on the beach in 2001 and excavated in 2004. The exhibit, which continues until the end of December, includes: virtual reality experiences with interactive 3D replicas of the exterior and interior of the ship; videos of the ship in action at the famous Battle of Lake Erie; interpretive panels covering the discovery, excavation and identification of HMS General Hunter; and a specially-constructed replica of the hull. The gallery will also feature a look at other shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. The exhibit is on loan from the Bruce County Museu...

Bernie Lucht, longtime Ideas producer at CBC Radio, and now a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, participates next Wednesday evening in an intimate conversation ... about his work at CBC as the producer of "Ideas", sharing his personal experiences about what goes into producing the admired and engaging radio program. Lucht's Ideas was always hospitable to programs about Canadian (and other) histories, including several of mine ( eg, this one ), but also from such luminaries as David Wilson, now general editor of the DCB , Margaret Macmillan, Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, and other historians. Next Wednesday night, as Lucht talks at Ryerson, Ideas launches a two-part "trial" of John A. Macdonald for crimes against humanity (based on a talk previously given at Queen's University). The participants in the trial are all lawyers, icluding Riel descendant Jean Teillet, so the potential for irritating historian-listeners is not...

Visions of the North   notes the recent death and remarkable life  of Louis Kamookak, OC, of Gjoa Haven, Nunavuk, who by becoming a historian of his own people and their accounts of the past, became one of the most consequential historians of the Franklin expedition and its fate. He guided numerous parties to sites vital to the history of Franklin, Rae, and other key figures, from the days of the Franklin Probe, through to Dave Woodman's searches, the first Parks Canada search with Robert Grenier, the St Roch II expedition with Ken Burton, Ken McGoogan's re-tracing of Rae's surveys, and beyond. He was there for the recent rediscovery of both of Franklin's ships, and was personally brought to the site of HMS "Erebus" by Parks Canada to perform a traditional ceremony of remembrance. His work preserving Inuit oral traditions extended far beyond the Franklin story; he was the central contact for the Inuit Heritage Trust's work on traditional Inuit place names ...