stimulating discussion at first Approaching the Past event, Toronto June 16th

On the evening of June 16^th, 21 historians, graduate students and public history professionals gathered at Toronto’s Black Creek Pioneer Village for the inaugural event in THEN/HiER and Active History’s new series, Approaching the Past: A Series Connecting People Teaching History. Guest workshop coordinator Ruth Sandwell began the evening with a brief presentation on the state of history research and teaching in Canada. We then stepped out into a blustery Toronto evening to partake in a tour of several nineteenth-century buildings, led by Wendy Romney, Black Creek’s Supervisor of Historic Programs. Participants then split into groups to examine selected artifacts in two of the historic buildings, and what these artifacts could tell us about the nature of their initial creation and use, the social relationships that surrounded that use, and the priorities and values of the mid-twentieth-century museum curators who used them to tell particular stories about the past. The evening concluded with a lively discussion about reading artifacts as evidence of the wider societies within which they were created and preserved. Thanks to Black Creek for hosting the event, and to event sponsors THEN/HiER and Active History. The next event in the series will be held September 30^th at Montgomery’s Inn Community Museum in Toronto.

For a participant's perspective on the evening, see Active History blogger Ian Milligan's post on the event and the activities involved.