Return to Normalcy

This past week we observed another Remembrance Day, and with each passing year I grow more appreciative of this day and what it means to me and to all people affected by war either directly or indirectly. When studying history I was never particularly drawn to the study of war, and especially not the battles or commanding officers. The only piece of history that surrounded wars that interests me is the people, the stories behind those who went to fight in a war, or those who went as medical support during the fighting. Their stories, and how the war affected them is what would interest me if war was something I would ever like to research, that would be the area I focus on. But, as I was saying I truly never felt that pull towards military history like many others have, and oftentimes I feel in the dark when people are discussing The Napoleonic Wars, The First World War or Second World War, or some other great wars throughout history.

 I think if I had met my family members who had fought in major conflicts, then maybe I would have more of a connection to the study of wars. My Great Grand Father Jimmy Dawson fought in the First and Second World War. In World War One he was living in Scotland and joined the fight as a young man, and for the Second World War he was a coal miner in Cape Breton and went to fight as a member of the Cape Breton Highlanders and as a high ranking officer. And his son (my great uncle) William Dawson fought in the Korean War, following in his father's footsteps in fighting for Canada. He unfortunately was killed on his third day in Korea. I never met these men, and my grandfather never told me stories about them before he had passed away. When I began this blog entry I said that I gain a better appreciation for Remembrance Day each year. I wish I had the opportunity to get to know them and hear how the war had affected my great grand father, and to have spoken to my great uncle before he had enlisted on why he wanted to go fight in the Korean War.

While Remembrance Day was sitting heavily on my mind the past week, I was also focusing on some of my projects and assignments as well. I was able to get to the London Room and find some great information on my heritage designation project, and it gave me an inkling of hope that my property may be able to be designated after all. In Understanding Archives I have prepared for my presentation on a Web Based Research Tool, and I chose www.cbgen.org which I am familiar with and have used it in the past and continue to as well with my current research.

One of the most interesting classes that we had last week was in Digital Public History as we discussed the uses of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for History. The readings we had discussed some of the current practical AR representations in museums and institutions, but as many of us in the class agreed upon, AR seems to be a little behind on its deliverables. The technology is wonderful and amazing, but for practicalities sake sometimes it seems that it is only being used as a gimmick. I think Brendan said it in class, if there is a way to show or represent history without AR then you shouldn't have to use AR as the primary source of edutainment. 

As a week of reflection and project progress comes to an end, I can't help but think of how the next few weeks will go. This upcoming week if I am not on campus I'll be at Banting, or London Life, or the London Room, and I'm willing to bet that is going to become a trend.

This is Daniel bidding you adieu,

Adieu ya'll
City Daniel bids you adieu

Post Prairies Thoughts

Reading week has always been somewhat of a wasted week for me in the past. During my undergrad I would take advantage of the days off by sleeping in and then just doing nothing all day, or at least nothing school related. But, for 3 years of my undergrad I would usually be working during reading week and assisting other students that would be coming into the archive to work on assignments for their classes. However, as I mentioned in my last blog post I went into this reading week with a plan, or a schedule or list of things that I wanted to either finish or make a dent in. And fortunately I did just that, I finished some of the items that were on my list and for others I put large dents in them. And that is in spite of me getting off of my plane to and seeing this.



There wasn't a lot of snow but it was -25 which I was not a fan of.
















For my heritage designation assignment I was able to compile all of the data I have collected so far into one excel file; it is 3 sheets in total but it gives me a focused look at my research so far and is incredibly helpful. I also organized the folder that I made for the project, All of the aerial photos that I had gathered are labeled and accounted for, and I was able to grab good screenshots of the digitized fire insurance plans that were online. When first working with the fire insurance plans I was discouraged because I couldn't find the address that I have chosen for the assignment, so I chose not to take photos of them in the archive. It was an annoyance that I kept finding when looking through many of the different resources at Weldon and in ARCC; my address just was not in the city limits for London and when it was listed there was little information on it. However, I got over the annoyance and have a digitized tiff file of the area of the fire insurance plans where my address should be.

The major dent that I was able to make in my list of assignments and projects was in the final project for Digital Public History. I think I have settled on creating a story map of the major mining strikes of the early 20th century in Cape Breton, and focusing on 2 of the biggest players in the strikes - J.B. McLachlan, a major labour leader in Cape Breton's history, and William Davis, a miner who died during the 1925 strike and the reason why Cape Breton has a holiday named Davis Day or Miners Memorial Day. Those days are to honour Davis and all others who have died in the mines or fighting for the rights of miners. The stories of the strikes have the Canadian military on church steps pointing machine guns at the miners if they cross the town line into Dominion, and mining company police officers being tarred and feathered. Two particular strikes cover a large area of Industrial Cape Breton, or well large in the scale that men were walking for hours to strike and to fight for the rights of the working class. Also, I plan on adding points on the map of all of the former mine sites across Cape Breton, but once again this is difficult because I have yet to find 1 map with all of the locations. Sometimes it will show the seam that they are mining into, or the area in which an air shaft was located to pump air into the mine when the men were traveling kilometers out under the ocean. Locating all of the mines is going to be difficult, but fun because I'll be providing a key resource that will be incredibly useful for my further research one day, as well as other industrial or labour researchers in the future. Another major difficulty that I have run into is that (as mentioned a number of times) technology and I don't get along. So using arcgis is going to be a bit of a learning curve for me, but I'm excited to use it more. From my time using it in class I can tell it will take me a little more time than others to get used to. But, I've begun using Google Earth and started mapping out all of  my points and collecting their coordinates, so hopefully the arcgis component will only take me a few hours to truly get the hang of it.


However, my time away was not all spent working on assignments, projects, or very very basic early cognate research, I was fortunate enough to spend time with my family and recharge my batteries.







Obligatory grain elevator photo from Saskatchewan. I always try and get a photo of a different town each time I'm driving to or from Regina.

Had to go to the lake so I could be around water again, it wasn't the Atlantic Ocean but it sure made me feel back in tune with nature. Also, it was frozen enough for ski-doos to ride on it which shows just how unimaginably cold it is there already. 








Well, that is it from Prairie Daniel back to City Daniel for another 26 days of extreme crunch time. City Daniel is more equipped to deal with crunch time, the prairie life really just makes you want to nap a lot.

I need to find a great way to end these things that nobody else is doing, something outside of the box. Maybe I'll try this.

Onward and Upward Ya'll

Yep, it is a new thing nobody else is doin', nobody at all.

The One From The Prairies

Reading week has just begun, and I could not be happier. I hopped on a flight on Sunday morning and headed out West to visit family. Did not really prepare for snow, but I'm here now and that's great.

I have a plan that I'm sticking to while I'm here which is tackle at least 1 assignment/project a day. I spend a few hours on each on their given day, and I do some general research as well. So far I've gotten the chance to work on the Public History final project for this semester. I've put all of the materials I have for my heritage address together, and have found a couple good online resources. Today, I am going to be preparing for my Understanding Archives presentation that I will have on November 18th.

To my happy surprise I was able to find a map on the resource I will be using to present on, that completely fits with one of the ideas that I want to use for my final project in Digital Public History. It is a map of Glace Bay featuring the various mine locations around the community. Like I had previously mentioned there are little solid resources that I have come across that showcase all of the mines and an approximate location. The greatest resource that I have used a bit in the past is the Louis Frost Notes - https://www.mininghistory.ns.ca/lfrost/lfindex.htm. This website has an "interactive map" that was last updated in 1999, but it is relied upon by many people when researching the mines of Cape Breton. It will be a website that I will be using if I chose to make a map using GIS. Alternatively, I have also been considering creating a story map featuring one or maybe 2 of the major strikes that the coal miners had during the early 20th century. The strikes often began in Glace Bay, and sometimes made their way to two or three communities away gathering more and more miners. But, that is a reading week decision that I will have to decide on.

Last week in Digital Public History we were discussing dark tourism, and there was a dark tourist attraction in Nova Scotia that I had forgotten about until the class was almost over. Nova Scotia, and more importantly Halifax has a major dark tourist attraction that people all over the world travel to N.S. to see. This is especially true since 1997. In Halifax, there are 3 graveyards that have the remains of 150 individuals who died during the sinking of the Titanic. Locally there are tours and attractions that tourists flock to because of Halifax's connection to the famous ship. One of the tours, labeled as "Halifax Titanic Historical Tours", is centralized around the relationship between the Titanic and Halifax. Also ,it provides tourists a look at another dark touristy aspect of Halifax and that is the Halifax Explosion, which was the worst human made explosion before the creation of the atomic bombs. These don't really seem to pair well together, it almost seems like drinking a really great bottle of wine with a plate full of skittles, but to each their own. I think its marketing is more appealing to those seeking a 1 stop shop for Halifax's dark tourist related ship history.

Productivity is what I'm aiming for this week, and I feel like I have plenty of time to take in the awe that is being in the prairies and experiencing the big sky and endless roads and fields. I have a checklist of items that I will be getting to, but that also includes having a bonfire in the backyard so you can't say I'm going to only be working while I'm on my break.

Prairie Daniel signing off