Free lecture presented via ZOOM and available on Heritage Ottawa's YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

Monuments are reflections of the past in the present. Some are so prominent and imposing that they can’t be missed. Others are hidden away, discreet and unassuming. 

Ottawa is home to over 100 monuments representing national and local figures, histories, and memories. Carleton University professors Tonya Davidson and David Dean have undertaken a scholarly yet highly accessible re-thinking of the roles of statues and monuments in Canada’s collective memory. Join them for an introduction to the area’s monuments in terms of what they reveal about Canadian history, identity and forms of belonging and in so doing, to shed light on them as art objects, as policy dilemmas, and as artistic interventions.

SPEAKERS:

Tonya Davidson is a sociologist at Carleton University. Her research has included analyses of Ottawa monuments, Canadian nostalgia, Canadian popular culture, and understandings of home and lost homelands. Tonya has co-edited two books: Seasonal Sociology (with Ondine Park, University of Toronto Press, 2020) and Ecologies of Affect: Placing Nostalgia, Desire, and Hope (with Ondine Park and Rob Shields, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011). She has also published many articles focusing on Ottawa monuments in journals which include The Public Historian, Space and Culture, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and The Journal of Canadian Studies. 

David Dean is an historian at Carleton University specializing in public history, performance and history, and early modern British history. His most recent book is Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture co-edited with Yana Meerzon and Daniel McNeil (Palgrave, 2020). An elected member of the International Federation for Public History’s steering committee, he co-edits its journal, International Public History with Andreas Etges. David is Co-Director of the Carleton Centre for Public History, leading projects such as Capital History Kiosks and COVID Work Stories. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, locally he is very active in the Workers’ History Museum. 

Tonya Davidson and David Dean are currently working on an edited book, Monumental Memories: A Critical Reading of Memorials, Monuments and Statutes in Canada’s Capital Region, to be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, that will offer analyses of all the monuments in Canada’s Capital Region. This project was supported by Heritage Ottawa’s Gordon Cullingham Research and Publication Fund.   

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR ANDREX HOLDINGS.