This assignment is to make a brief commentary on each exercise. Once all the exercises are done, I have to write a 200 word reflection on the experience of doing this assignment. Each exercise should be also about 200-250 words. My reflection at the end should be about what did you learn about the past, about the nature of historical evidence, and about history around you?
I did exercise #1 and #3 so please do exercise #2, #4, #5 and a reflection at the end.
You will always have to look at my online textbook to do this assignment. The link to my online textbook is: https://opentextbc.ca/postconfederation/front-matter/dedication/
Exercise #2: Documents (Unit 4)
Before there was Google Earth, there was the (very attractive) fire insurance map. In section 4.3 of Canadian History: Post-Confederation theres an opportunity to explore a sampling of these documents. What do they tell you about the variety of Canadian-built environments in the pre-WWI period? Youll find a treasure trove of fire insurance maps at the University of Torontos Map & Data Library and at the Library and Archives of Canadas image collection. Find one from the post-Confederation period, copy the image, and post it to the following interactive image
collector with your answer to the questions posed in 4.3 and your comments. Please take care not to select an index map: get down to the neighbourhood level.
Link: https://mdl.library.utoronto.ca/collections/geospatial-data/toronto-fire-insurance-plans-index/index
Link: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/collectionsearch/Pages/collectionsearch.aspx?q=fire+insurance&start=0&num=50&DataSource=Images
Exercise #4: Documents (Unit 9)
Few PMs have earned a nursery rhyme. Shortly after the last of William Lyon Mackenzie Kings diaries was released, Dennis Lee composed a four-liner that reflected the new, emerging understanding of the inner life of the longest serving Prime Minister:
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Sat in a corner and played with string,
Loved his mother like anything,
William Lyon Mackenzie King.
Section 9.5 of Canadian History: Post-Confederation includes another exercise. Take a look at the example from Kings diaries provided in your textbook, and then go to the documents themselves. In your textbook, read historian Christopher Dummitts take on Weird Willy and the summary of the impact the diaries had on our understanding of King.
Below is a link to the typescripts of the diaries. Once you have taken a look at the typescripts, use the search engine (also linked below) to pick a name or event or idea and see what comes up. Once youve found a page you like, post it below with a few
observations. Consider the following in your post: What is King writing about? What are the date and location? Who is named, and what does he tell you about them? What matters to King? Feel free to make your own observations, so long as youre thinking historically (that is, be mindful of contextKing cant possibly know
in 1916, for example, that he will be Prime Minister one day, nor that there will be a major depression and a second world war).
Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King (typescripts)
Library and Archives Canada: The Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King (search engine)
Link: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/Pages/diaries-william-lyon-mackenzie-king.aspx
Link: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/Pages/search.aspx
Exercise #5: Documents (Unit 10)
Modernity was, in large measure, about efficiencies and stability. Poverty and disorderly housing were not efficient, and ethnic or class differences were often understood to be somehow deviant. Thats why so many poor neighbourhoods were bulldozed in this period to make way for more efficient highways, neighbourhoods
built around middle-class values, and orderly housing. In section 10.8 of Canadian History: Post-Confederation youll find an exercise that introduces you to the photographic record of a Montral neighbourhood on the brink of disappearing. Did
highways or hydroelectric projects or some other marker of modernity cut a swath through your own town or city in the years from 1945 to 1980? Were ethnic or Aboriginal neighbourhoods ever cleared away? Either find and photograph the
outcome of one of these struggles or pay a visit to the Montral archival collection and pick a photograph on which youd like to comment. Post your photograph below, along with your succinct observations.
-For exercise #5, please do the second option that tells us to pay a visit to Montreal archival collection. Here is the link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivesmontreal/sets/72157636912074984
