Historians, archives, and the stories we create Learning about history through archives can help historians expand the way they acquire and interpret information. Cecilia Morgan, from the University of Toronto, discusses how archives have influenced her own research. All historians have archive stories, although not all historians experience the archives in quite the same way. So, it’s fitting to start this article with the oft-quoted line from fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell’s song, Big Yellow Taxi: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.” Or, in my case, not so much gone as (fortunately temporarily) inaccessible. From March 2020 until the spring of 2022, the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus closed the two university archives that hold the two large collections of family correspondence on which my research project – a study of two middle-class settler families in nineteenth-century Ontario – depends.

"Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad: A Transnational History of Stage and Screen Actresses. Cecilia Morgan." Canadian Historical Review, 104(3), pp. 443–444

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Abstract The intersections of gender, travel, and tourism have received much scholarly attention, particularly since the publication of Sara Mills’s Discourses of Differences and Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes. The travel writings and tourist experiences of European and Anglo-American middle-class women have been prominent in the field. Although much attention has been paid to their imbrication in both class and imperial relations, the wide range of women’s travel writing, its multiple layers, and the varied locations from which it was written suggest that no one model of “feminization” can be applied to its analysis. Scholars also have pointed to the gendered nature of work at tourist sites, whether in the provision of hospitality, the creation of souvenirs, and the presence of female guides. The travels of Indigenous and racialized women also help complicate our understanding of nineteenth and early twentieth-century tourist “gazes.” Although less has been written about male tourists that deploys gender as a category of historical analysis, the existing scholarship that does so suggests possibilities for future work.

Résumé:Cet article cherche à comprendre le fonctionnement de ce qui fut longtemps la plus importante agence de voyages fondée au Canada et la toute première agence canadienne-française. Réellement avant-gardiste, la compagnie lancée par Louis-Joseph Rivet s'imposa rapidement à l'échelle du pays pour devenir une référence dans l'industrie du voyage. Proposant des passages sur toutes les lignes maritimes et ferroviaires, elle permit à des générations de Canadiens de partir enfin à la découverte de l'Europe et du monde. En s'inspirant des pèlerinages religieux et des stratégies développées par son concurrent britannique Thomas Cook & Son, l'agence contribue à révolutionner la pratique du voyage de loisir en offrant à ses clients des forfaits abordables sur des excursions de groupe. Cette étude illustre comment Louis-Joseph Rivet et son associé Jules Hone surent tirer profit d'une position privilégiée dans la métropole du pays, de campagnes publicitaires ambitieuses, mais surtout d'un impressionnant réseau de contacts pour hisser leur agence au rang d'incontournable pour la planification de voyages.Abstract:This article seeks to understand the operation of what was for a long time the largest travel agency founded in Canada and the first French-Canadian agency. Truly groundbreaking, the company started by Louis-Joseph Rivet quickly gained a foothold throughout the country and became a benchmark in the travel industry. Offering passage on all shipping and train lines, it allowed generations of Canadians to set out to explore Europe and the world. Drawing inspiration from religious pilgrimages and strategies developed by its competitor Thomas Cook & Son, the agency contributed to revolutionizing leisure travel, offering clients affordable packages on group excursions. This study illustrates how Louis-Joseph Rivet and his partner Jules Hone were able to capitalize on a privileged position in the country's metropolis, on ambitious advertising campaigns, but above all on an impressive network of contacts to make their agency indispensable for travel planning.

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This article explores the writing of Canadian history by members of southern Ontario historical societies from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s. Based on the records of a number of organizations (both mixed-sex and women-only groups) and informed by the work of scholars of commemoration and by those who have explored the histories of gender, imperialism, and nationalism, it examines the dominant historical narratives crafted by these organizations. Stories of the coming of the Loyalists, the War of 1812, and the 'pioneer past' were the most commonly told accounts of the dominion's past, popular with men and women historians alike. In the Ontario historical societies examined in this article, women and men often shared conceptions of gender, nation, and empire; their work was marked by notions of the 'family' of empire, history as a romantic narrative, and Canadian history as that of the 'anti-conquest.' This article also points out that women historians' work must be seen as a means of creating their own historical and national subjectivities, in a period when Anglo-Celtic, middle-class women were beginning to be formally incorporated into the Canadian nation.

This article asks questions about the place of gender relations in the current scholarship on the history of commemoration and public memory in Canada. It surveys the current historiography on women’s work as avocational historians – representations of women and gender – and suggests ways of furthering our understanding of masculinity in the history of public memory. I also raise questions about the role of personal and intimate memories in the history of commemoration and the place of affect and emotion in it and other forms of memory. The article concludes with suggestions for further research into areas such as death and mourning, daily and intimate life, forms of nostalgia, holidays and festivals, and tales of haunting.

"Violence, Order, and Unrest: A History of British North America, 1794–1876. Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim, and Scott W. See, eds.." Canadian Historical Review, 102(2), pp. 338–339