History News

Ruth Redelmeier and her late husband, Francis, travelled to libraries and archives across North America to find information about the original owners of their family farm near Richmond Hill, Ont.

In the University of Guelph’s McLaughlin Library, they found a wealth of archival material about the pioneering Patterson family and discovered a home for their own extensive farm records. Files accumulated during the 60 years that the Redelmeiers

The Middle East Scholars Society is excited to announce their new Facebook group! MESS will be using the page to advertise upcoming events, highlight ME faculty and students (both past and current), and keep people up to date on the general happenings in the group.
Please join our Facebook Group by searching: 'Middle East Scholars Society at the University of Guelph' on Facebook or going to: www.facebook.com/groups/169498816576914/ 
To have something posted on our Facebook page, contact Halette Wilson (wils8060@mylaurier.ca)

On Thursday, October 17, PhD candidate Jodey Nurse will speak at the Main branch of the Guelph Public Library from 7pm to 9pm on "Exhibiting Great Taste and Skill: Women's Work at Fall Fairs

Happily ever after? Not really, says Adrienne Briggs, a recent Guelph history grad. Fairy tale endings are for Disney. To learn about the original and often graphic stories of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and the like, you might look over some of the hundreds of Scottish chapbooks in the U of G library archives.
That’s what Briggs and other students did earlier this year for a pilot project in their U of G history class that will see old-time chapbooks meet modern communications technology.
Chapbooks were popular booklets containing songs, ballads, poems and short stories written for the increasingly literate Scottish masses of the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, says history post-doc Andrew Ross. Between eight and 24 pages in length, they covered such topics as romance, travel, comedy, politics, fairy tales and social customs.
Read the rest of the story @Guelph.

Our own Dr. Norman Smith has won the College of Arts Teaching Excellence Award for Faculty Members, and Jodey Nurse, a PhD Candidate in the Department, has won the same award for Graduate Students. Congratulations to both of them for these well-deserved awards from all of us!

Get ready for another season of the Rural History Roundtable!
The Fall 2013 Series is excited to present:
Jodey Nurse, “‘Exhibiting Great Taste and Skill’: Women’s Work at Fall Fairs in Ontario, 1846-1980.”
Alice J. Hovorka, “The Lives of Women and Chickens in Botswana: Intersections, Hierarchies, and Everyday Lives”
Sean Graham, “A Thousand Miles from the City: Early National Radio and Rural Canada”
Bruce Muirhead, “Dairy Supply Management: History, Challenges and Opportunities for a Resilient and Sustainable System”
Mark down your calendars now, and visit our website for more information about our speakers’ series or ‘like us’ on Facebook. www.uoguelph.ca/ruralhistory/ Get the flyer .pdf

On September 25, as part of the University of Guelph interdisciplinary talk series The Ethics and Politics of Food, Dr. Ian Mosby will discuss his recent research on mid-20th century government nutritional studies in First Nations communities. Dr. Mosby's findings have recently been in the news and raised a public discussion about the ethics of government-funded scientific activity in those years. The talk takes place in MacKinnon 304 from 12:00 - 1:30. Light lunch provided. All welcome! Get the flyer: .pdf

In 1911, Irish dentist Shenstone Bishop petitioned for divorce from his wife, Ethel. He cited adultery – or, as he had stated in a petition filed two years earlier, his wife’s “doings with a gentleman.” When the jury failed to agree on a verdict, the Bishops wrote a deed of separation. Ethel then took rooms in several venues: Dublin’s Imperial Hotel, the North British Hotel in Glasgow and a Belfast railway hotel. In each place, staff members saw her accompanied by a man named Harry Raphael. Indeed, the guest book at the Belfast hotel recorded them as husband and wife – even as Mr. and Mrs. Bishop. Far from trying to keep the affair quiet, they had intended to be seen. They were hardly the first lovers to have selected grand hotels for a not-so-clandestine tryst, says U of G history professor Kevin James.
Read the rest of the story @Guelph

Ian Mosby, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of History, continues to make headlines with his research that shows hungry aboriginal children and adults were used in nutritional experiments by Canadian government bureaucrats between 1942 and 1952. In addition to generating news reports around the country, the research has prompted calls for action. CBC published a story today quoting former prime minister Paul Martin urging the government to disclose all records about the situation. Numerous other articles quote Aboriginal leaders asking for apologies and reviews.

Mosby was featured in the lead story on CBC's The National Wednesday night. The story was also reported in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, on CTV news, CBC Radio's As It Happens, Yahoo! news, and on Global News, among others. The research appeared in the May edition of Social History, published by the University of Toronto Press. A graduate of York University, Mosby researches and teaches about politics, culture and science of food in Canada during the 20th century.

(from UofG newsfeed)