It is #IndigenousHistoryMonth and this is the story of Alanis Obomsawin, one of Canada's top filmmakers!
Alanis Obomsawin was born on Aug. 31, 1932 in New Hampshire. When she was 6 months old, her family moved to the Odanak Reserve near Sorel, Quebec.
🧵1/5
The family moved to Trois-Rivieres when she was nine. As the only Indigenous family there, she held onto the stories and songs she learned from elders on the reserve near Sorel.
By the time she was in her 20s, she spoke Wôbanakiak, English & French.
🧵2/5
Starting as a folk singer-songwriter, she began to work with the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s.
In 1971, she made her first NFB documentary, Christmas at Moose Factory.
Over the next 50 years, she would make over 50 celebrated films with the NFB.
🧵3/5
Her most celebrated film is Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, released in 1993, documenting the Oka Crisis of 1990.
Her work primarily focuses on the Indigenous experience in Canada. Her most recent film is Bill Reid Remembers, released in 2022.
🧵4/5
Obomsawin has won numerous awards including the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, the Order of Canada, the Glenn Gould Prize and the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. She has also received numerous honorary degrees.
🧵5/5
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
While we tend to think of the K*K*K as something that only existed in the United States, there was a period of time in the 1920s when the group was very large, and politically powerful, in Western Canada.
Let's learn more about this dark time.
🧵1/12
Throughout this thread, I will refer to the group as K3 since the other name may get flagged.
When K3 sprang up in Canada, it was a bit different from the American version.
Rather than focusing on Blacks, it focused mostly on French-Canadians, immigrants and Catholics.
🧵2/12
The K3 began farther to the east in Canada at first in the early-1920s.
In 1926, dynamite was detonated in a catholic church in Barrie, Ontario.
The man caught said he was ordered to blow up the church by K3.
On this day in 1882, The Sherlock Holmes of Saskatchewan, Frances Gertrude McGill, was born.
She went on to influence the development of forensic pathology and solved several unsolved crimes.
Let's learn more about her :)
🧵1/12
Born in Minnedosa, Manitoba, both of her parents died from typhoid fever in 1900 after visiting a county fair and drinking contaminated water.
As an adult, McGill studied medicine at the University of Manitoba. She earned her degree in 1915 and worked in Winnipeg.
🧵2/12
In 1918, she joined the Saskatchewan Department of Health just as the Spanish Flu was raging across Canada.
Two years later, she became a provincial pathologist in Saskatchewan. In 1922, she became the director of the provincial laboratory.
Bluenose was such an icon of Canada that it now appears on our dime.
A champion schooner, she became the pride of Canada.
But then she was sold to work to work as a freighter, and left to rot on a reef near Haiti.
Let's learn more about her :)
🧵1/16
The story of Bluenose begins in 1920 when she was designed by William James Roue to both fish and race.
Initially, she was designed with a waterline length of 36.6 metres, which was 2.4 metres too long for competition. She was redesigned to fix that problem.
🧵2/16
Built of Nova Scotian pine, spruce, birch and oak, her masts were made from Douglas fir.
During the keel-laying ceremony, the Governor General, the Duke of Devonshire, drove a golden spike into the timber.
In all, she cost $35,000 to build.
Sometimes referred to as Main Street Ontario, Yonge Street is one of the most famous streets in Canada.
Running from the Holland River to Queens Quay, the street is 86 km long.
Let's learn more about its construction :)
🧵1/13
In 1793, during the War of the First Coalition, Upper Canada Lt. Governor John Simcoe worried that the United States would attack Canada in support of France. Wanting a more defensible capital, he established York, present-day Toronto.
🧵2/13
With the new settlement, Simcoe planned to construct two connected roads. One would run from York to Lake Simcoe, the other connecting Lake Simcoe with Georgian Bay.
The road from Lake Simcoe to York became known as Yonge Street.
In the mid-1500s, noblewoman Marguerite de La Rocque was marooned on the Isle of Demons in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by her relative who wanted her fortune.
She survived for years on her own before she was rescued.
Let's learn her story :)
🧵1/9
It is not known when or where Marguerite was born. It is believed she was born around 1515 somewhere in France.
Her relative (some sources say cousin, others brother or uncle) Jean-Francois de La Rocque de Roberval was made Lt. Governor of New France in 1541.
🧵2/9
On the voyage over to France with her relative, Marguerite became romantically involved with a man on the ship. Roberval was displeased at Marguerite, who was unmarried, and decided to leave her on the Isle of Demons in the St. Lawrence River as punishment.
On this day in 1918, at 10:58 a.m., George Lawrence Price died after he was shot by a German sniper. His death came two minutes before the end of the First World War.
He was the last Canadian killed in the war.
Let's learn more about him and his life.
🧵1/8
Price was born in Falmouth, Nova Scotia on Dec. 15, 1892. Raised in Port Williams, he was the third child to his parents James and Annie Price.
On Oct. 15, 1917, he was conscripted to fight in the war with the 28th Battalion (Northwest).
🧵2/8
On Nov. 11, 1918 at 4 a.m., his battalion was ordered to advance from Frameries and continue to Havre, securing all the bridges on the Canal du Centre.
They were able to reach their position along the canal by 9 a.m., with little in the way of German resistance.