History News

With 150 years of history come a number of stories, images and successes, and the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) will celebrate all of these with the release of a new book this Alumni Weekend. Milestones: 150 Years of the Ontario Veterinary College includes photos and details from the opening of the first veterinary college in Canada and the United States to today’s OVC. The book will be available for purchase during Alumni Weekend, and later on Amazon.com. Co-authors Lisa Cox, a PhD history candidate, and OVC associate dean Peter Conlon dug through the University archives and interviewed former faculty and donors to find the 150 most interesting stories. “I think the biggest challenge when creating a book like this is to determine the balance between historical and modern,” said Cox. “We’re talking about a school that was so critical to the professionalization of veterinary medicine, so there are many historical achievements. But we also have some great modern successes, so a significant issue is finding ways to integrate both into the book.”
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They didn’t really wear helmets with horns on them, and they weren’t really much taller than other Europeans. The reality of who the Vikings were is actually more interesting than the myths in popular culture. History professor Christine Ekholst explores what we know about the lives, culture and history of Vikings in her new course for third-year U of G students. She taught the course for the first time in the winter 2013 semester: “It was immensely popular; it filled up immediately.” That’s not surprising. Because of movies like Thor and the History channel series Vikings, these explorers have become part of popular culture and sparked interest in learning more about them. There’s lots to learn, says Ekholst.
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Drs. Ian Mosby and Catherine Carstairs of the Department are hosting a groundbreaking conference this June 23rd- 25th: Foodscapes of Plenty and of Want: Historical Perspectives on Food, Health and the Environment in Canada features new research from faculty and graduate students from the department and all over Canada. All are welcome to attend! Please register at: foodscapes2013@gmail.com. Get the program: .pdf

visit http://foodscapescanada.wordpress.com/

The Gay Pride parade in Toronto has often been seen as controversial, but in 2010 it was hit by an unusual controversy when the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid wanted to march in the parade with a banner. Others in the city, including some parade sponsors, argued against allowing the group to participate. The parade committee went back and forth between allowing the group and banning them, leaving many people puzzled and confused by the issue. The controversy still swirls as Toronto readies for this year’s Gay Pride parade on June 30. The Toronto Star reported last week that the activist group plans to participate in this year’s Pride festival. “It’s a really complicated issue and not easy to grasp,” says Guelph history student Nicholas Miniaci. He presented a paper on the topic last semester at U of G’s Middle Eastern Scholars Society (MESS), which is supervised by Prof. Renee Worringer.
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She was looking for feminism, but what she found was fashion – fashion with a substantial dose of Canadian nationalism mixed in. Recent U of G history grad Elizabeth Gagnon chose to study fashion in Miss Chatelaine magazine for her master’s research project “Looking Good, Looking Canadian.” It’s a short history compared to the publication’s influential parent: Chatelaine magazine, which has been published since 1928, was the inspiration for launching Miss Chatelaine in 1965. “Miss Chatelaine was initially aimed at teens,” says Gagnon, who is currently working on a master’s degree in library and information science at Western University, “but by 1970 the target audience had shifted to young women in their 20s. In September 1979, the young Miss was rebranded as Flare: Canada’s Fashion Magazine.”
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On Wednesday, May 8, for the 2nd Annual St. Andrew's Society of Toronto Lecture, the Centre for Scottish Studies presents R. J. Morris:
"Patrick Geddes, Property Developer. Edinburgh 1890 to 1914."
Dr. Morris is Professor Emeritus at Edinburgh University.
The talk takes place in Mackinnon 227 at 3:00 pm. All welcome!! Get the flyer: .pdf

University Research Chair and Scottish History scholar Dr. Elizabeth Ewan will appear at the CommUnity Conversation on the Humanities this April 22. 
from @Guelph: Five of Canada’s leading humanities researchers – all holders of prestigious University Research Chairs at the University of Guelph – will take part in a free “CommUnity Conversation” April 22 on the role of the humanities in culture and community. The timing could not be better, organizers say. Almost every day brings newspaper columns, radio programs, debates or discussions about the “value” of a university education, especially degrees in the arts and humanities, say professors Sky Gilbert and Robert Enright. More and more, researchers are being asked to demonstrate how their work will add “value” to society, usually through commercialization. Read the rest of the story @Guelph. Get the event flyer: .pdf

Since she joined the University of Guelph’s history department several years ago, Prof. Renee Worringer has been “trying to put Middle Eastern studies on the map here, so students can find a cohort of other interested students and faculty. In fact, I think that’s an important part of university: finding people interested in similar topics, so that you can bounce ideas off each other.” There were plenty of “ideas bouncing” over the weekend of March 29 to 31 as Worringer hosted a Great Lakes Ottomanist Workshop (GLOW) at U of G, bringing in scholars from both Canada and the U.S. to discuss topics related to the history of the Ottoman Empire. “The workshop is important to me because nobody else at the U of G is doing Ottoman history,” she says. “It provides an opportunity to take the pulse of Ottoman studies, to see what direction we are going in and what direction we want to go. It’s a huge field – the former Ottoman Empire is now more than 30 countries – and we have a lot to offer.”
Read the rest of the story: @Guelph

For U of G history professor Catherine Carstairs, writing her recently-published journal article about Guelph author Jean Little had some fringe benefits. “I got to re-read some much-beloved books from my childhood, and I got to meet and interview an author I had always admired,” she says. Carstairs had tucked away her memories of enjoying Little’s books when she was a child until she realized that some of Little’s papers were in the U of G archives. “Some of my students were using these resources for papers,” she says, “and I thought there might be more that could be done with them.” She used various archived documents to explore the roots and expression of Little’s ideas about those with disabilities and their treatment by the society around them. As Carstairs explains in her article, published by the journal Histoire sociale/Social History in November 2012, Little was born in Taiwan with scarred corneas and limited vision (she is legally blind).
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The 2013 Scottish Studies Spring Colloquium will be held on 6 April 2012 at Knox College, University of Toronto, from 10:30 am to 3 pm (doors open at 10 am)
Presentations Include:

- Dr. Kevin James (University of Guelph, History), “The McAutocrat of the Victorian Highland Inn”
- Dr. J. Andrew Ross (University of Guelph, History) and Melissa McAfee (University of Guelph, Archives & Special Collections), “Digitising Guelph’s Scottish Chapbook Collection”
- Rachel Redshaw (Independent Scholar), “The Virtual Voice of the Past: The Use of Online Oral Accounts for a Holistic Understanding of History”
- Movie Screening: Singing Against the Silence (2012) Directed by Dr. Michael Newton (St. Francis Xavier)