Thomas Peace ActiveHistory.ca Posts, Public History

Does a Single Building Matter? A Case for the Fugitive Slave Chapel

There is a small house in downtown London, Ontario that looks ready for the wrecking ball. If you walk by, it would stand out only for its state of disrepair. A security fence surrounds it.

London’s First Black Church, c. 1848

About a year ago, the London and Middlesex Heritage Museum – of which I am currently the Board Chair – received a letter asking whether our museum would be willing to accept this building as a gift.

My heart leapt at the opportunity.

The London and Middlesex Heritage Museum operates Fanshawe Pioneer Village, a living history museum that interprets the city’s and surrounding county’s histories between 1820 and 1920. This building – despite its state of disrepair – represents histories that remain poorly known and yet were critical to weaving together the fabric of London’s civic life from the time it was built – in 1848 – right through to the present.

Known locally as the Fugitive Slave Chapel, this small building is one of the few tangible connections to London’s early Black community. Built seven years before the city incorporated,

Continue reading “Does a Single Building Matter? A Case for the Fugitive Slave Chapel” →
Thomas Peace ActiveHistory.ca Posts, Public History

Colonialism and the Words We Choose: Lessons from Museum and Academy

This post was originally published on ActiveHistory.ca

About two months ago I was in a local museum with my family learning about the eighteenth century history of the community in which the museum was located. In many ways we had a typical country museum experience. We were met by costumed interpreters and told the stories of the building and the people who lived there. Then we learned about some of the broader historical context. For our guide, the story this museum told hinged on the European settlement of the “savage wilderness inhabited only by Indians.”

As a historian who studies Native communities during the eighteenth century in the places best-known today as Quebec, New England and Maritime Canada, I felt that I had been transported to a different era. Though wilderness remains pervasive, isn’t the noun savage an artifact from an earlier century? And don’t Native people have a history that predates their encounter with Europeans? Continue reading “Colonialism and the Words We Choose: Lessons from Museum and Academy” →

Thomas Peace ActiveHistory.ca Posts

Hands-on History: Are the archaeologists leading the way to a new mode of public engagement?

This post was originally published on ActiveHistory.ca

I have a confession.  As much as I love being a historian, I am not a huge fan of spending most of my day sitting at a desk reading.  Some days I am pretty sure that I can feel my fat cells multiplying and the muscle cells slowly decaying.  Most days I long to literally practice active – blood-flowing – history.  About seven ago, I tried to remedy this challenge by becoming involved in archaeology.  After a couple of brief glimpses into an archaeologist’s world, I found myself challenged by the practices of the discipline and increasingly by the way in which the programs of which I was a part engaged the public. Continue reading “Hands-on History: Are the archaeologists leading the way to a new mode of public engagement?” →