Glasstry news

Fred Thorpe, who had a long career with the historical services of Parks Canada and the National Museums of Canada, died recently in Ottawa .  I like how his published obituary gave, among the usual details, a nice precis of his historical research His doctoral thesis at the University of Ottawa , which in turn formed the basis of a monograph on French metropolitan fortification in Newfoundland and Cape Breton [...] argued that the great expense of these works was warranted because they defended the cod fisheries from interlopers (read British) and richly supplied the home market with a major source of protein, to say nothing of supporting the country's dependence on valuable international trades in codfish. This obituary information is considerably more accurate than what you would learn from the current text of the Canadian Encyclopedia 's entry on Louisbourg, which directly contradicts Thorpe's (and my) findings, though.it remains credited to me. I confess I also remembe...

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 ...

I'm half starting to wish I had never started noting the deaths of Canadian historians. There are too many, and lately I seem to know too many of them. Case in point: Blair Neatby, historian of politics, Saskatchewan, French-English relations, and much else, whom I did not know well but never met without pleasure, who died in Ottawa March 11.  I talked to him once for a Beaver column about the Saskatchewan politician and '50s Minister of Agriculture Jimmy Gardiner: Mackenzie King biographer Blair Neatby once interviewed Gardiner at his Lemberg farm. (�He was very down to earth and unpretentious, a genuine farmer.�) Neatby recalls a politician unintimidated by bureaucrats. Neatby�s uncle was a civil servant and deputy minister of agriculture and when Gardiner did not like his advice, he would simply say, �Remember, Ken, I�m the minister.� That attitude shaped Gardiner�s reservations about the Canadian Wheat Board, which he saw as bureaucratic and beyond the control by farm...