I Came, I Saw, I Conquered: A History Grad Student’s Guide to Conferences in Ottawa (and not cry).

Whitney M. Hodgins is a Master of Arts Student from Athabasca University focusing on Heritage and Social History. 

In my previous blog post where I discussed “Trading the Hangar for History Panels: A students’ guide to the CHA”, you will find that I was once again missing from my usual spot in the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum. As a Masters Student I took to the stage for the first time academically to present a small piece of my own research as well as a presentation at two different history conferences running back to back in the same day. 

The first conference was the Interrogating Canadian Identities Conference where I presented an original research piece titled, “Erased Identity: Finding the Lost WWI Indigenous Soldiers of Southwestern Manitoba”. The second conference I attended and presented at was the Summer Institute for Oral History and Feminist Ethics with my presentation titled, “Autism, Gender and Memory: Best Practices from the Lived Experience Lens”. I truly enjoyed my time presenting in both conferences because in academia, the main point of presenting research is to seek feedback from peers as well as disseminate your research to them. It offers students as well as academics the ability to constructively critique work being done and to ask questions. Speakers also get the opportunity to take those pieces of feedback to reflect on them and see if they can use that on their research projects. If you want to think of it in another way, like a professor grading an essay and giving feedback, you get feedback in real time from folks in your field of study from all different academic levels and all different institutions in some cases. It’s the literal act of putting one’s feet in the fire from a student’s perspective. 

Additionally, there is a difference between a classic academic conference versus a summer institute; while one might have multiple panels running concurrently at the same time that attendees choose which ones that genuinely interest them, a summer institute is actually providing really focused professional development on skills you might need for an upcoming project you might be working on as well as to connect with those team members working on that project with you. So for the ICI Conference, it was a traditional academic conference where panelists were given 15 minutes to present their research one at a time on a panel that’s themed where you might have similar research topics or outputs. At the Summer Institute, I was engaged in training as well as training others in the field of history on my presentation. The format will look the same with both having panels similar in themed focus and time constraints, but the outcomes are completely different. In academic terms, when we say 15 minutes of fame, we mean it quite literally. This is to ensure that someone also does not go on a verbal tangent and go overtime. There are panel moderators whose main job is to cut us off when we go over, as well as let us know when we are almost out of time. It also acts as a great exercise of getting your main points across and making sure that students and academics understand what you’re doing. 

All historical conference jargon aside, one cannot successfully go to Ottawa without finding the most appropriate accommodations; for myself it was the historic Saintlo Jail Hostel on Nicholas Street in Ottawa. This hostel is famous for structurally preserving its unique Victorian-era jail cells. They had dome-cell ceilings that enable you to be able to hear everything! The jail itself ran from 1862-1972 before it became a youth hostel. Additionally this is the prison where some of Canada’s most infamous prisoners were held. For example, Patrick Whelan who allegedly assassinated one of the Fathers of Confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, was imprisoned and later publicly executed at the prison I stayed at. The cell where I stayed was the cell of Zerephina St. Aumond, who was sentenced to six months in prison for vagrancy after refusing to serve her sentence in a convent. This hostel is also known for being prolifically haunted. I was not scared, nor did I see any ghosts; but I had Archie, my travelling teddy companion that I picked up inside the Tiger Moth Gift Shop to keep me grounded. If you want your very own Archie, visit the Tiger Moth Gift Shop at the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum and get yours today! 

I was kept incredibly busy that entire week. When I was not speaking on my respective conference panels, I was attending other conference panels and taking copious amounts of notes. But there were some major highlights that I would like to share. One of the coolest historical places I went to see was the Preservation Centre at the Library Archives of Canada in Gatineau, Quebec (across the river from Ottawa, Ontario). This preservation centre is the place where a lot of the digitized records I rely on for my research as a student actually get digitized. Additionally they have a preservation block that is climate controlled with a 500-year lifespan on textual documents, audio, video and other materials in their collection. Inside the preservation block, it is almost entirely machine automated. Experts in the field of sound, video, and textual preservation work with sometimes really outdated technology to preserve the remnants of the past for our enjoyment and research. For example, when in the sound lab, we saw the workers using Reel-2-Reel machines that were hooked up to computer monitors to transfer the reels to digital sound files like .mp4 and .mp3.

I also got to visit the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive housed inside the University of Ottawa Library where they house the CWMA’s textual documents ranging from 1977-1992 as well as their published newspaper titled “The Other Woman”. Their collections have a vast collection of artifacts that also represent the vast representations of women’s issues as well as gender diverse expressions as well. A highlight for me was seeing the many different photographs and buttons. These buttons represent the many different campaigns that were held over the years with the CWMA and other organizations. The archive also holds exhibitions within their reading room for folks to get to know the collection as well as learn more about the CWMA. 

After the conference I got to spend an afternoon in downtown Ottawa. I visited the Bytown Museum, located along the Rideau Canal. It was an interesting museum where it discusses the building of the Rideau Canal and eventually the creation of the City of Ottawa. One of my favourite artifacts in the museum is actually a billiard ball that was burned in the famous Ottawa-Hull fire of 1900. This ball that sits in the museum now has a blue/grey colour. I got immediately excited about it because even though the museum had a small description, I knew based on my training at what temperature the ball needed to be at in the fire consistently burning in order to turn that color. The answer…between 500-550 degrees celsius (or around 932-1022 degrees fahrenheit)! I also got to see the Rideau Canal opening and closing for the boats trying to pass through to demonstrate the architectural feat that this canal is. 

Overall, this trip was both an amazing opportunity for learning as well as teaching for the week. I also am a bit of a rare and non-traditional student in the sense that I have been a masters student for only one academic term, to already be presenting a small piece of my research, teaching others about methodology and networking with folks that are to me legends in the discipline of writing and disseminating history. But if anything, it reminded me of the reasons why I got into history and why I still love historical topics and places even after all my time. Regardless, at the end of the day it was great to return to my post after going to Ottawa to do this. So what is next for me? My hopes from these conferences is to continue building my research and dissemination presence, collaborate on future conference panels, as well as potentially conduct future research and publications. The ability to do these things would become a full circle moment for me as a masters student. But until then, I am happy to be back in my spot at the CAPTM.