Local history in Toronto


Went down last night to the launch of Fort York Stories, an anthology of articles from Fife & Drum, the half-newsletter, half-history journal that has been coming from the Friends of Fort York for 25 years. It 's edited by Adrian Gamble, a history Ph.D candidates at York University, and includes articles by, among others, me.


The event made me glad again for the local historical societies I have joined over the years, for while I have never really worked in local history, what I pick up from the people who do very powerfully grounds me in the communities in which I live.

Ground me in politics too:  Friends of Fort York have had a vital part in the revitalization of the Fort York neighbourhood, once a bleak post-industrial mess, now a densely populated highrise community beside the lake, for whom the Fort's green spaces and public facilities are back yard and living room for all the 750 sq foot dwellers.

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

Book Watch: CHA Prizes

Image
The Canadian Historical Association Book Prize has been awarded at the CHA Annual Meeting in Regina.  The CHA website  is still calling it the John A. Macdonald Prize, but you can make your own edits of that if you wish. Anyway it's an stellar list this year, topped by a book that historians are going to continue to read and grapple with for a long time.  Here's the full shortlist, and then the winner.  From the link you can also find all the other prizes -- kudos to Eric Adams and Jordan Stranger-Ross for two awards on a single article! The Sir John A. Macdonald Prize is awarded to the non-fiction work of Canadian history judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of the Canadian past: SHORT LIST in alphabetical order E.A. Heaman, Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917 . Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen�s University Press, 2017. Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure ...
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