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Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
So, what I want to direct your attention to is the online comic Hark, A Vagrant by Kate Beaton. Basically, Ms. Beaton riffs on history, mostly Canadian but a fair amount of British and American, as well, in simple-yet-detailed line drawings. The more familiarity you have with the people and events being depicted the better, but many of them are accelssible to anyone who ever saw those Heritage Minute bits during their Saturday morning cartoons, one of my favourite Beaton pieces is a direct take-off on the Heritage Minute depiction of the invention of basketball.
According to the Maclean's profile on her she has no interest in writing a book, but according to her homepage caption a while ago she's actively working on one. In the meantime, it looks like she's published in the National Post fairly regularly, and, of course, she's online. If you like skewed humour and have seen any episode of Canada: A People's History, definitely check it out.
This image is taken from Chester Brown's comic strip biography of Louis Riel. If you haven't read it, you really should. It's available here (scroll down a fair ways).
I like this article by Stephen Marche in this weekend's edition of the National Post. It's mostly about this ongoing conflict over the reenactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, but more broadly its a reflection on how Canadians relate to their history. The part I find particularly intriguing is:
It is good for us to be reminded of our national moments of madness because we have so few. Figures like Riel - Pierre Trudeau was another - represent the country while living outside the values that circumscribe it: quietness, common sense, self-deprecation. We need these figures of insanity to assuage the longing for wildness caged within our orderly, well-regulated society."
You can read the full article here.
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