Site Visits, Walking Tours, and Podcasts

The past week was Banting filled, with some mild walking around the city, with just a hint of structuring and editing a podcast.

On Tuesday we as a class visited Banting House, and were given a tour by the museum curator Grant Maltman. Much like I had assumed I knew very little about Banting, or his life, and the vast amount of experiences and contributions he had in his lifetime. The tour made it clear that the project that we are working on with Banting House is going to be beneficial in so many ways. Having a solid collection of research regarding Banting will allow for his story, and his life to be experienced fully and by all of those who seek to learn more about the man who gave the world so much, and is not just simply the "Insulin Man".

Wednesday was another off-campus opportunity for our class. We had the opportunity to go on a historic walking tour called "The Curse of Peg-Leg", and get an understanding of what challenges await us in creating our own. I consider myself a hands on learner and I greatly benefited from actually having, for lack of a better phrase, boots on the ground. Instead of just sitting at home, the office, or in class and listening to the tour, we walked it. We got to see first hand the difficulties that surround navigating a city with seemingly endless construction, and trying to find a small nook so we could stop and actually try and listen to the tour in the designated areas. The tour itself was entertaining and left me wanting to know more. Which to me is what Public History and more specifically short forms of Public History are intended to do. The audience is able to experience a "highlight reel" of some of the key points of the history being presented, and then hopefully left with the notion that there is more to be learned. Deciding on the topic we will be doing for our tour is also something I'll be excited about finalizing (hopefully) soon.


Podcasts are really enjoyable to listen to, especially if you have a long commute like myself, but boy are they difficult to get right. My only experience with audio recordings of history was my contribution to a Virtual Museum of Canada project I worked on in my 4th year of my undergrad. I was tasked with reading WW1 letters written by a Cape Breton soldier, and transcribing them and ultimately helping to layout the narrative that we wanted to share from his letters sent back home. After that was completed, I was asked to lend my voice to this man, this person who was my age a century ago. It was an incredible experience, and I got to know him, in a way. He was actually pretty funny, or unintentionally funny, whether that was a way to cope with what he experienced or just who he was as person we'll never know. But, I went in the sound-booth for 2 or 3 days and recorded takes on takes on takes of this the man's words. They were foreign coming from my voice, but after recording half of what we had selected, I found him. I found this man, who was soft spoken, but knew when he had to show his authority, and who was inherently funny. My only experience was the research leading up to the recording, and the creation of a quasi-script made up of his letters. I never had to do any of the editing and of boy, let me just tell yah that uh yeah I definitely have the utmost respect for audio-engineers, podcast creators, and anyone who finds pleasure in creating audio recordings of any kind.

In my podcast I chose to read a poem, and that poem happened to have some Gaelic in it. As a Cape Bretoner you may assume I know how to speak Gaelic, and to that I say, nope. Big nope. However, it was really fun having to learn how to pronounce even 3 words in a completely different language with Fh's being silent and so on. There are only 3 words in the poem that are in Gaelic, but I actually wanted it to be spoken correctly so I did the research, or to the best that someone can while researching a dead (but being revived) language. I have known a few Gaelic speakers while working at The Beaton Institute, and sat in on Gaelic academics speaking about the language and its revival. If they were to ever hear my attempt I hope they would be proud and even just for fact that I could have just said the words in English, but chose not to.

Keep an eye and ear out for all of the Digital Public History students podcast's that will be getting posted between now and October 2nd.

Daniel