Glasstry news

Handsome new issue of Canada's History in my mailbox yesterday. Editor Mark Reid leads with a photo essay on the treasures of Canada's museums: from a bison amulet of unknown age to Dilly Moffatt's hockey stick from the 1830s, from the assassin Patrick Whelan's revolver to Louis Riel's ceinture flech�. Plus an essay on the 1930s dust bowl from Bill Waiser (something of a national treasure himself). And a powerful piece on Canadians' historic ambivalence about immigrants by George Melnyk, himself a child of refugees  (Yeah, him too.). My own column this month is a reflection on R. v Comeau , the "free" beer case in which the role of history and historians in making law (including an affidavit of mine) came to the fore at the Supreme Court of Canada. If you subscribed like you oughta , you'd have it already. Meanwhile, find a newsstand if you can. Update, August 1:   Re George Melnyk's article, Helen Webberley responds from Australia: It is fasc...

Thoughts on history from super-editor Tina Brown, in The Vanity Fair Diaries 1983-1992 , a very entertaining gossipy summer read, though it did make me wish we had a magazine culture in Canada  even slightly like the London/New York one she describes: ... talking to the historian Asa Briggs about Richard Nixon. "I think he will be like Richard III," said Briggs.  Nixon will have his demonology. But also his admirers in every century." [,,,,] I have come to realize that history is only point-of-view journalism about dead people. There is no objective truth about anything. This is what Nixon meant when Henry Kissinger in White House Years says, "History will treat you differently, Mr. President." And Nixon replies, "It depends who writes it." 

Who'd a thunk it?  The Vancouver Sun notes the centenary of the shooting of union leader and conscription resister Ginger Goodwin -- and ends with an glimpse of how nasty and petty provincial politics can be in this country On July 27, B.C.�s NDP government proclaimed Ginger Goodwin Day to mark the 100th anniversary of his �untimely death.� The NDP has also renamed Hwy. 19 near Cumberland Ginger Goodwin Way. A previous NDP government had done so in the 1990s, but the provincial Liberals changed it when they got into power in 2001. Photo: From Vancouver Sun/Paul Rudan Update, August 20 :  I now see that Daniel Francis was way ahead of me on this story .

Going on the road, and blogging is likely to be slim to none into early August. Nibali out:  too much of this stuff! The Tour will have to fend for itself. With Sky asserting its dominance, most of the contending teams decimated by illnesses and accidents to their leading riders, and almost all the sprinters disqualified by their inability to meet rigorous time requirements in the mountain stages, it looks like they will just have to grind on to an inevitable coronation in Paris. I'd still watch as they are hitting the Pyrenees, and in the Tour things do surprise.  But you will have to follow for yourselves this year.

I've caught several episodes of CBC-TV's brief summer series Back in Time for Dinner . There is food history on TV. Okay, it's food history with a fair amount of cheese. This is a pretty soft presentation, very much for entertainment. The series immerses a Canadian family of five in the decor, clothing, technology, fads, and above all the food of six decades one after another, 1940s to 1990s, and it has to move fast and funny. But time and again I was struck by how the program actually did achieve a certain time depth. The horror of the modern family obliged to follow the wartime forties' reliance on organ meats like kidneys ("All I smell is urine!") and other economical (and unprocessed) foods is striking, just as their disgusted amazement at the fifties' enthusiasm for jellied salads is entertaining. But a sense of foreignness is effectively created. Back in Time for Dinner nicely notes how, when  kids went out for snacks and sociability in the fifties ...

No Canadians in the Tour de France this time, instead of the two or three that has become common recently. And Chris Froome's drug-clouded Sky Team favoured to win, and few enough colourful rivals waiting in the wings. All the teams taking on new colours and new names, so it's hard work to figure who is who.  And kind of a dull opening, with many long flat stages that had even the usually discreet commentators talking about "a procession" rather than a race.  I miss Ryder Hesjedal If only for the reputation of Grand Tour cycling, Chris Froome should never have been allowed to compete in this spring's Giro while under investigation for serious drug allegations. I was heartened by the way the Tour de France was about to keep him out -- when the results of the investigation came in. And he was cleared. Not by some dodgy cycling panel but by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, which surely had no reason to go easy or to fudge the results . It looks like Froome, who ha...

I've been meaning to note that the late June announcement of appointments to the Order of Canada included Robert Bothwell, the prolific history professor at the University of Toronto -- and my editor in the Canadian history series he edited with Margaret Macmillan that includes my Three Weeks in Quebec City  (not that that's the reason for the honour!)  Here's Bothwell's career from the Canadian Encyclopedia .  Congratulations! Photo credit:  Monk Centre, U of Toronto.

Since about February, blogger and spouse have been in the process of buying a new home, selling the old home, and organizing a downsizing, a staging, a sale, a purchase, a move, and all that goes with those processes. We actually find ourselves owning both the old property and the new property for a couple more weeks, which means -- this all happening in Toronto -- we are temporarily either rich beyond our wildest dreams, or just more in debt than we ever expected to be at this stage of life. (Mostly the latter.)  It is all remarkably complicated, And time-consuming. Hence the lighter than usual productivity at this blog over the last few months and particularly the last couple of weeks. I don't think a history of this move will be forthcoming.  But several times I found myself reflecting on the history of business organization. We used a smallish real estate agency, about ten people altogether.  We used a local moving company, where the leader of the moving crew had his ...