Managed Message: The Culture of Secrecy in Ottawa

There is a lot we do not see or hear about that takes place in the day-to-day operations of the government. We, as the general public, unless actively involved in conspiracy theory and hacking, receive our general information from the media and maybe a few other sources. As such, the information we often receive is the sensationalized stories of outlandish behaviour on the part of the federal government. We hear about how Harper was paying an image consultant (I’ll refrain from any comment as to why this might be). And, of course, there was the Sponsorship Scandal which was brought to the forefront of the public eye when the Globe and Mail, making use of the Access to Information Act, asked for invoices vis-à-vis the apparent payment to an advertising firm, Groupaction Marketing.

Thanks, in part, to such established legislature as the Access to Information Act, the public has the right to request and view any information produced by the governing body that is in the retention of the federal government and subsequently the National Archives of Canada. Thus, the Globe and Mail opened up the proverbial can of worms when they asked for the invoices which led to the Auditor-General’s inquiry into the payments… well, you know the rest.

Sure, the media can often lack a poignant focus. Governing bodies have been embedded in a culture of secrecy for centuries now to avoid members of the media gaining access to information that may paint those in office in a bad light. However sensationalized a story may be, though, just scratching the surface can often result in further inquiry. It’s this deeper scrutiny that many talented journalists do that leads to the more important issues.

However, although such tools as the Access to Information Act, the openness of the Archives as a public domain, and the Accountability Act attempt to create a transparent and accountable government, the reality is we only see what is produced, and even then, what is produced is often only torn away from kicking and screaming public servants. Some would argue that this is a direct result of the attempt to make government more transparent – servants fear that they are losing the anonymity that is involved in operations of governance. Regardless, what is happening is a depreciating respect for the Archives as the national retainer of the collective memory of governance and a growing resistance from the federal government to give more power to the people. By this I mean: the more transparent and accountable the government is, the more knowledgeable we as an electorate become and therefore the more power we wield in deciding who will represent us and how we will be represented.

The federal government, with its myriad of departments and agencies, in the ever-growing world of e-government, is lacking the proper information management to document and manage the day-to-day operations of governance. In the higher departments and especially at the cabinet level, there is an increasing use of oral decision making and the use of personal email accounts to avoid paper trails of decisions and operations that could be potentially viewed by any member of the public. Resisting the Archives, which can potentially house information that may be used to evidence poor decisions made by the government, those in control of the creation of records are deeming these documents sensitive, regardless of its merit, or are simply not documenting actions and decisions to avoid the stain of bad governance.

This is not the ranting of a conspiracy theorist nor am I describing the emergence of a dictatorship on Parliament Hill. However, the withholding of information based on faulty or skewed interpretations of ‘sensitive’ materials or the simple absence of documentation threatens public security, health, the environment and the values and fundamentals of our social fabric as a democratic nation. Stronger information management led by the Archivist of Canada can result in the efficient and effective management of the records produced everyday. Tools such as the Access to Information Act provide us with evidence of the actions taking place within government and theoretically, when documents are missing, note is taken (re: Sponsorship Scandal). We must, as a society, ensure that those in power are creating records rather than avoiding them for fear of public scrutiny. Only a transparent government can truly reflect the ideals of our nation.

This involves a strong faith in the role of the professional archivist. At the national level, the archivist appraises the information coming from the federal government. What is kept will reflect the national memory. If the creator – the federal government – is manipulating or simply not creating information, they are producing a managed message that can have detrimental effects on the history and social memory of Canada.

References and further reading:
Speeches by Ian E. Wilson, Librarian and Archivist of Canada: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/about-us/012-210-e.html

Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada, Annual Reports: http://www.infocom.gc.ca/reports/default-e.asp

Office of the Auditor General: http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/other.nsf/html/200406sp01_e.html

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/04/28/account-060428.html
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=65a7e594-a1c7-4990-8087-ade6e0067d6b
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=cf2b9830-7185-4036-bf8e-f164fca973ca&k=7741

A Digital Savvy History: Interactive and Entertaining

In my digital history course, and in the field of public history in general, ideas of all encompassing digital libraries with embedded metadata that can link the researcher to just about every query with acute detail seems to be just on the brink of reality. When we discus the future of history and what it means to the public, we are constantly in search of new ways to present material – be it in order to strike a certain cohort’s interest, to make it maybe more entertaining, more encompassing, more detailed, more organic, more comprehensive, more personal, more interpretative, and less passive. Ok, breath!

Recently I’ve been discussing the possibilities of presenting history through a sensory stunning display. This, building on the ideas presented by Patrick Stewart, is an immense diorama used in an online interactive advertisement for Halo 3. Handcrafted figurines, machines, and settings, complete with smoke from tanks, explosions, crevices and visions of agony make up this battle/memorial. A linear camera takes the viewer through the display with stops along the way for video mock histories (for the purpose of the game, of course), personal anecdotes, and descriptions of characters, weaponry etc.

Now is where we build further. Imagine this type of setting, but on even more steroids than was given to the simple virtual exhibit to develop such an assemblage of creativity and handiwork. Imagine the possibilities that are presented by such a simple use of a diorama and cameras. But, and here’s the kicker, just for fun (and, of course, with an immense resource base, and as Patrick would put it, with a lot of caffeine) lets start adding on interesting ways to make this more of a total experience.

For an example, I will use the Seven Years’ War in North America – of course, wars don’t necessarily have to be the basis for an exhibit-tour-website-game etc; we could just as easily make this an adventure in the Klondike gold-rush, or maybe a companion to the voyages of Captain Cook, so on and so forth.

Using GIS we could create an interactive map allowing the viewer to search throughout the site to pull out menus on specific times and spaces. Embedded in each selection would be interactive videos - be it actors, animation etc. - telling a specific anecdote, story, or adventure in motion. Within these pull down menus could be search bars that connected the user to a digital library, collections, artifacts, primary sources... Anything and everything digitized and available would be connected and ready, without having to be stored within the site, allowing the site to focus mainly on the Flash, multimedia, and story.

This could be an RPG experience as well. As you move through the map, you move down into a setting, not unlike the Halo 3 interactive ad. Selecting on a character, you would have the ability to manipulate his direction and movement to survey different events. You march with a militia through the interior in real time; you are given examples of what it may have actually been like through animated videos as you cross certain points. All the while, events are progressing throughout the map. Wolfe and his British fleet are slowly moving down the St. Lawrence toward Québec City to attack Montcalm and the French.

Fast Forward to Québec City. You zoom in using GIS to select among a series of positions and times offered. Perhaps you are now a member of the watch at the citadel on the eve of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. There’s the soft hum of a violin in the background, and as you tour through the citadel, you select different scenes to view videos etc. Not only would it be giving a narrative, but it would also allow the viewer to move on a microscopic level to experience a large breadth of information and events. Like a game, you could potentially spend a great amount of time manipulating a character towards an end point, all within the historical framework. Furthermore, at the users disposal would be a vast array of online tools to connect them to existing information.

As you may be able to tell, this would be very complicated and time consuming, to say the least. But, to imagine it and realize the possibility is intriguing.

The possibility to move about a map, like Google Earth, zooming in, selecting a space, then moving about the space on a microscopic level, interacting with characters and artifacts is unending. It could be complete with displays of films - i.e. Canada, A People's History - or games and actions that direct towards a goal that mimics an event – be it social/micro-history orientated or larger.

Like the McCord tool, you can select images, artifacts, maps etc. and add them to a folder or sub-screen (similar to a tools/items menu in a video game) to create your holdings. From here, you can build a profile of items of interest and create a database of intentions that would direct you to areas within the site that are related to the items you’ve chosen.

And, if we’re doing all this, let’s make it a social forum as well. With an RSS feed, you can monitor when someone has posted a comment, link, source, or added new elements. Imagine, and of course it would involve very savvy actors, but the ability to build on the elements within the map to broaden it by both time and space. For example, starting off with just New France, one could develop information on pre-contact, creating such sites as Cahokia or Stadacona. Then, spatially, add more to the west, opening up the canoe routes towards Superior and Hudson Bay. It could be endless, really.

Although the chances of a site like this materializing in the near future are unlikely, the idea summons endless possibilities to presenting history in new and interesting ways. Although some would shudder at the idea of history outside of the traditional and academic mediums, the reality is that many in the public sphere enjoy history on a level that is often in line with entertainment. If history, therefore, can be expressed accurately, complete with interpretations and reflections, then why not embrace and develop mediums that present it in this fashion, not as a replacement to established methods, but as an alternative to the ways in which we access and relate to the past?

Pumpkin Pie and Pioneers: Celebrating Thanksgiving in Canada

What does Thanksgiving mean to Canadians? For me, it’s a time of year where I throw on a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans and take a stroll. With a little red wine or cider I take in the smell of the grapevines in full aromatic bloom and marvel at the colour of the leaves – unfortunately its 27 degrees celcius in my hometown this weekend. But, this is no rant on the effects of global warming or what forces on this planet leave a young person such as myself already reminiscing, “when I was younger, I used to wear a sweater to go outside at Thanksgiving.” No, this is a rant about pilgrims, sort of.

It all began in elementary school. Maybe I had a very different experience in my village, but it was common for the young classes to don little black pilgrim hats made in arts and crafts class. Of course, the little tykes that we were, we thought nothing of it, beyond the fact that somehow Thanksgiving Day was linked to strange Europeans who wore somber black hats with little buckles on the front and shared a wonderful feast with local Indians and they lived happily ever after.

But, before all that and its relevance, ‘An Extremely Brief Synopsis of Thanksgiving in Canada’: The first Thanksgiving to be celebrated in what is now Canada was by Martin Frobisher and his gang of northwest passage seekers in 1578 in Newfoundland. The celebration was, in effect, a thankful meal for the safe voyage across the Atlantic (he never did find that passage). Champlain continued the tradition with the ‘Order of Good Cheer’ during those scurvy days at Port-Royale. However, even before the first Europeans celebrated Thanksgiving, the eastern woodland Natives of North America held large celebratory gatherings in autumn, often to honour the ‘three sisters’ of the harvest - corn, bean, and squash.

The Canadian Thanksgiving is an adoption of the Western European Thanksgiving which was a celebration thanking the Christian God for a (hopefully) bountiful harvest. This celebration, it is claimed, was simply an appropriation of the Pagan/Celtic celebration of ‘herfest’ (linguistic association, anyone?) - a feast celebrating the autumn equinox and again, the harvest. The date that we, as a nation, chose to celebrate Thanksgiving is arbitrary – settled finally by parliament in 1957 to be the second Monday of October. Now, in the United States, Thanksgiving occurs in November and is a celebration of the pilgrims’ first autumn in the ‘New World’ – also, for the fans of the NFL, it’s a day off to watch the traditional ‘Turkey’ match-ups.

So, to return now to the dilemma at hand; are the school systems in Canada blurring the traditions of two nations into one celebration at Thanksgiving? Maybe the powers that be, lost in the debate over the involvement of the Church in the public schools, panicked and decided to teach us the Mayflower and pilgrims story in place of giving thanks to the Christian God of the European tradition (this being one unlikely theory). The Loyalists also brought their own traditions – such as pumpkin pie and the cornucopia – to Canada when they left the Thirteen Colonies during and after the Revolutionary War. Although we share a common history, it is clear that Canada has opted for the European tradition of celebrating and giving thanks for “blessings of an abundant harvest” and in the twentieth century, “for general thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessings with which the people of Canada have been favoured”. The Christian element, outside of the church and participating families, is no longer observed, but the tradition of feast and family is still widely practiced. Why not, therefore, incorporate a piece of Canadian heritage into the celebration – it is a statutory holiday.

Thus, I once again pose the question: what were the pilgrims doing in the curriculum that I was raised on? Is this story still taught? Acknowledging that to some I may sound as though I’m echoing the words of J.L. Granatstein, searching for a national history, but the incorporation of the pilgrims in a child’s celebration of Thanksgiving in Canada may skew their understanding of the country’s history. We are not lacking in a history that demonstrates the adversity, tenacity and courage of settlers who braved this land to establish a new home and tradition. So, when we reflect on the nature of Thanksgiving and what it means in Canada, we can consider many aspects; Frobisher and his frostbitten feet, happy to be alive, Native Americans celebrating the harvest and its link to the spiritual world, and pioneers thankful that the summer’s toil will see them through the winter. This Thanksgiving, tilt your glass to the pumpkin pie of the Loyalists, to the farmers of our past and present and, rather than a pilgrims hat, to the toques of the settlers of this land.

Quotations from: Canadian Heritage, http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/cpsc-ccsp/jfa-ha/graces_e.cfm.
Reference for 'herfest': Baggott, Andy. The Celtic Wheel of Life. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2000.