Guardian: "The story of cities"

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by someone123

The problem isn't that the history doesn't exist, it's that the interest isn't there. I don't buy that it's about numbers, either in terms of the scale of past events or the number of people who would potentially interpret those events. What was the scale of Boston in 1776 or Port Royal, Jamaica prior to 1700? The Caribbean is overflowing with dramatic history and most of those islands are tiny.

One musical that's popular right now is about Alexander Hamilton and American history circa 1776-1804. Canada has plenty of similarly important and dramatic historical characters but if they were given a similar treatment Canadians still wouldn't take them seriously. There are many Canadian stories from the past 400 years that could be given a similar treatment.

I have always thought that Americans have a much more charitable and less parochial perspective on their past. You can get somebody in Seattle interested in something that happened in 1700's New England, and easily convince them of its historical significance. But good luck creating something about Quebec or the Maritimes that resonates even in Ontario, let alone BC. Canadians assume that anything that happened in Canada in the past was unimportant. On top of that a lot of them have serious biases against the eastern third of the country and that's the third that has the deepest history and is the richest potential source of stories. So many people are convinced that Quebec is its own separate irrelevant thing, that Atlantic Canada has always been at best a kind of undifferentiated hinterland, and consequently think of serious Canadian history as starting in 1867 or even later.

Great post. Especially the tendency to consider Quebec separate is relevant to this disconnect as that's where most of Canada's early history lies.

I think part of the disconnect is also due to the Canadian national identity, however strong it might be, being contemporary - multiculturalism and the like. Our early history doesn't lend itself to that narrative, from sectarian riots here to Chinese labour out west. At the most basic level, the American identity is from many, one people. That makes their history relevant to their current iteration. In Canada, it's more come as many, stay as many. That makes it harder. There also seems to be more history in the western reaches of the United States - more obviously centuries-old towns and the like. Canada definitely feels newer, even contrasting the Atlantic provinces with the American northeast.

There's also the issue of many (most?) other countries having their greatest population in the area of greatest historical significance. If 25 million Canadians lived between Ottawa and Quebec City today, Canada's history would probably be more relevant.

And, finally, it's all so regionalized and segregated. It's hard to get too excited about Confederation-related history on Prince Edward Island when they didn't even opt to join at first. Other provinces carved out of wilderness. Us brought into the fold, bitterly divided, so recently my oldest uncles and aunts were already alive (and usurping a large part of Canada's creation story, many of the firsts the Maritimes had previously been celebrated for, in the process). English/French. Montreal/Toronto.

[SignalHillHiker]

Rome has the best creation myth, I think. That one is epic. That's a story that can hold a city together.

[MolsonExport]

great link, wonderful for procrastination.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by rousseau

A crucial difference is that California become the material and intellectual locus of the westward expansion project of the postwar American empire. In other words, the sort of destination that Montreal never was nor is.

there was a time when the agents of montreal set upon the continent, overseeing satellites and operations that yawned across a vast plain to snowcapped peaks and a subtropical sea. i can go down and touch the walls of canadien built homes that pepper my region like a shotgun blast 1600 km from quebec. montreal was the alpha to the california omega, and likewise was the opposite to a place far across a sea.

montreal was a continental colossus of the sort that few other cities have or will ever claim in north america.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I would say it got close in Montreal around the October crisis. Had that moment been three times as long, five times as intractable and ten times as bloody, there'd be stories.

My lord would there be stories.

There are a number of people in Canada aged 30-50 who will tell you that their defining moment in their Canadianity was the 1995 referendum. How the country was almost lost, that it was a near-death experience, that they never felt so passionate about Canada, etc.

But Canada being Canada, there was never really a collective narrative built around that and it has never gone much further than individual recollections...

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

there was a time when the agents of montreal set upon the continent, overseeing satellites and operations that yawned across a vast plain to snowcapped peaks and a subtropical sea. i can go down and touch the walls of canadien built homes that pepper my region like a shotgun blast 1600 km from quebec. montreal was the alpha to the california omega, and likewise was the opposite to a place far across a sea.

montreal was a continental colossus of the sort that few other cities have or will ever claim in north america.

There are still that many surviving structures from New France in St. Louis? Impressive. Would you have any examples for us?

I might have to stop there for more than half a day max... sometime.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

The problem isn't that the history doesn't exist, it's that the interest isn't there. I don't buy that it's about numbers, either in terms of the scale of past events or the number of people who would potentially interpret those events. What was the scale of Boston in 1776 or Port Royal, Jamaica prior to 1700? The Caribbean is overflowing with dramatic history and most of those islands are tiny.

One musical that's popular right now is about Alexander Hamilton and American history circa 1776-1804. Canada has plenty of similarly important and dramatic historical characters but if they were given a similar treatment Canadians still wouldn't take them seriously. There are many Canadian stories from the past 400 years that could be given a similar treatment.

I have always thought that Americans have a much more charitable and less parochial perspective on their past. You can get somebody in Seattle interested in something that happened in 1700's New England, and easily convince them of its historical significance. But good luck creating something about Quebec or the Maritimes that resonates even in Ontario, let alone BC. Canadians assume that anything that happened in Canada in the past was unimportant. On top of that a lot of them have serious biases against the eastern third of the country and that's the third that has the deepest history and is the richest potential source of stories. So many people are convinced that Quebec is its own separate irrelevant thing, that Atlantic Canada has always been at best a kind of undifferentiated hinterland, and consequently think of serious Canadian history as starting in 1867 or even later.

In most of the new world, countries tended to expand into hinterlands at least somewhat based on the societal and demographic mould of the heartland area. Yes, there are regional differences in all countries and what I describe does not align perfectly everywhere but nowhere is the disconnect as huge as in Canada between the original French Catholic "Canada" and the various iterations of "Canada" that have come to make up the majority of the country's mainstream zeitgeist (British Protestant, then "multicultural European Christian functionally anglophone", and now "United Nations functional anglophone").

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by lio45

There are still that many surviving structures from New France in St. Louis? Impressive. Would you have any examples for us?

I might have to stop there for more than half a day max... sometime.

i posted photos that i took of a few one day not long ago in the photo threads. ill grab the link.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

there was a time when the agents of montreal set upon the continent, overseeing satellites and operations that yawned across a vast plain to snowcapped peaks and a subtropical sea. i can go down and touch the walls of canadien built homes that pepper my region like a shotgun blast 1600 km from quebec. montreal was the alpha to the california omega, and likewise was the opposite to a place far across a sea.

montreal was a continental colossus of the sort that few other cities have or will ever claim in north america.

All very true. And then there was... the disconnect that I mentioned in my post above.

[Centropolis]

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=220745

at the end.

right across from downtown st. louis (church of the holy family founded in 1699 by canadien missionaries from quebec):



lots of stuff scattered around, especially south of the city and in the old mines district in the foothills of the ozarks. houses that people live in, not museums.


visitstgen.com


wikipedia

and a fortress on the mississippi just south of town...

ameriquefrancaise.org

[Mikemike]

We have plenty of City-stories that could fit in a series like this. These aren't all big nation-defining stories, or even a particularly important event in the city as a whole - the Amsterdam story is about the guy who invented the idea of bike share but never made it work in amsterdam.

I can think of a couple worthwhile stories for Edmonton alone, and a dozen more across the country.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by Acajack

There are a number of people in Canada aged 30-50 who will tell you that their defining moment in their Canadianity was the 1995 referendum. How the country was almost lost, that it was a near-death experience, that they never felt so passionate about Canada, etc.

But Canada being Canada, there was never really a collective narrative built around that and it has never gone much further than individual recollections...

Being from western Newfoundland I feel odd about this whole thing. I grew up learning about things that seemed to happen in throwing distance.

So much of our history was tied to acadia and cape breton.

South Western newfoundland was settled by Acadian and Mik Maq migrants from nova scotia, which itself was directly related to the fallout of the french and indian war(something that doesn't seem that long ago despite predating the american revolution)Around as the same time pioneering english men came to settle this new frontier. Following that there was a relatively large migration of highland scots(from capebreton) moving in the area right around when canada was formed. During ww2 the american's set up camp in stephenville with the airbase(hiring newfies from all over as well). After that a quebec company came in with a paper mill in the post-base fallout, and a hugely influential company dominated the order of things until they closed in 2005. While most people view mill towns as havens of the working class people here saw these guys as an fortunate elite from all over canada and the province itself. Since the mill has closed we've experienced a huge influx of fort macmurray money.

It's a very consistent narrative built up over 200 years, with each part adding to an overall collective identity with each part being as relevant as the next, that is very self focused, if possibly totally irrelevant to the rest of canada.

It's really odd as an adult to see that our very symmetrical influences, American, Acadian, British(largely through cape breton) are so incredibly far from the norm yet I grew up thinking this canadian identity was incredibly obvious.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Toronto has urban stories - Jacobs lived here for many years after all. Her fight against the spadina expressway is noteworthy just as much as her fights against Moses in New York. Others have mentioned Sewell and Toronto's struggles with development in the 1970's. The many cancelled plans of redevelopment, the demolition of have of the St Lawrence for a never built "cultural district", etc. It's there, people just haven't mythologized it.

Toronto's St. John's Ward neighbourhood was like a Lower East Side-style slum teeming with immigrants and the city's poorest residents, almost literally in the shadow of city hall, until it was torn down entirely beginning in the 20s for institutional uses. Home for decades to gangs, racial strife, immigrants, the downtrodden working class, until it was razed by the powers that be. This is Scorcese stuff.

Or Halifax: 2,000 people killed in the 1917 Halifax Explosion, in a rough port city of 60,000. The only large-scale urban violence caused by a world war on North American soil, in a rough port city steeped in the nation's history.

The Red River rebellions, the glorified logging camp that Vancouver was barely more than a century ago, the complex political/religious/colonial relationships of the 16th and 17th centuries between Europeans and Indigenous Canadians.

There's LOADS of drama and myth here. We just can't muster up much of anything more compelling than a Heritage Minute to tell of it.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

On the topic of hydro dams, not sure about the theft angle, but they are a ''thing'' here in Quebec.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T9AqGeQ-QA

Over 10,000 people visit the James Bay hydro project every year. Not bad when you consider they are at the end of two-lane road with few services about 1500 km from Montreal.

I know a number of people who've been there.

In Ontario, the Sir Adam Beck generating station in Niagara Falls probably attracts the most tourist attention and it is a national historic site, but I don't know that I'd say it figures much in the popular imagination. The Pickering Nuclear plant has a Visitors Centre, but I don't think that Candu resonates as it once did. In any event, neither has the accessibility factor that makes it impressive that 10000 people schlep up to James Bay each year.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

there was a time when the agents of montreal set upon the continent, overseeing satellites and operations that yawned across a vast plain to snowcapped peaks and a subtropical sea. i can go down and touch the walls of canadien built homes that pepper my region like a shotgun blast 1600 km from quebec. montreal was the alpha to the california omega, and likewise was the opposite to a place far across a sea.

montreal was a continental colossus of the sort that few other cities have or will ever claim in north america.

The story of the North West Trading Company, its impact on Montreal and by extension much of the rest of the country, the rivalry with the Hudsons Bay Company, etc, etc doesn't play as big a role in the national mythology as it should. Not exactly sure why, but probably has something to do with the collective discomfort at the key elements of our history involving a winning side and a losing side. The transcontinental railway tries to play a role, but it doesn't resonate at a universal level. In any event, its not that the raw material is not out there, it's that for some reason we seem loath to celebrate it.

[ciudad_del_norte]

I've said it on here many times before, but the U.S. has a national narrative that weaves everything together and manages to make local histories part of a national progression.

We don't have that in Canada. There is maritime history. Nfld history. Central Canadian history (typically the standard "Canadian History") there is western history. There is no real story of Canada that links these all together as if all these things happened as part of the path to creating canada today. We don't have the same sense of manifest destiny that makes so much american history relevant as part of a nation building process. Canadian history, to me, always comes accross as fractured. Somethign happened here...something happened there and we all ended up in the same country. In truth much of the european history in north america is fractured and made of fairly independent events and storylines occuring in different places. In the U.S though, they have created a story that might have you believe that all these storylines were part of an inevitable (and obviously progressive) march towards creating a country. In my experience Canadians don't have the same understanding or appreciation for the history in other parts of the country because that link between the attempt to foster a story of Canada and local stories is often kind of weak.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I would say it got close in Montreal around the October crisis. Had that moment been three times as long, five times as intractable and ten times as bloody, there'd be stories.

My lord would there be stories.

But that's the point, isn't it. Despite efforts to mythologize, it was pretty small potatoes in the vast scheme of things. Not that national myths can't grow from pretty small potatoes.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^Oh come on. Look at the police car in that photo. It is EPIC!

We are selling ourselves so short. While we don't mold our stories into a national story these stories are about cities and urban form.

St. John's and the early fires.
The Halifax Explosion.
Regina's founding, location and land speculation.
Winnipeg's Exchange District.
Vancouver's evolution.

These are all pretty interesting stories and have shaped our cities in form and style.

[SignalHillHiker]

We need to make more of those heritage seconds.

Fish!
Potatoes!
Boom!
Fundy!
French!
Finance!
Fur!
Wheat!
Oil!
Logs!

[HomeInMyShoes]

Didn't we have one for logs?

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