Anniversaries are funny things. One particular event on a particular date, with the rest often left in soft focus. It’s understandable that a number of articles focused on the name change’s centenary. Simply put, it was the culmination of a divisive battle drawn along racial lines, which was fuelled by patriotism. You’re either with us […] Read more…

Everything old is new again–sort of It’s easy to talk about the differences between 1916 and 2016 media practice and consumption.  But there’s something I didn’t expect: the similarities between newspapers then and social media today. All a-Twitter Developing stories—the Irish Rebellion, Verdun’s early days or the 118th Battalion move to Camp Borden—were often a […] Read more…

  It’s hard for me to gauge how concerned the average Berliner was with amalgamation and renaming.  Whatever stresses they had probably weren’t too far off what the average Kitchenerite has about current municipal issues. In other words, those who feel they have something to gain/lose are most concerned, but as for the rest: meh. […] Read more…

 It’s sometimes a challenge to write about Berlin’s goings-on in a fair manner. The perennial issue, as I mentioned a few months ago, is source bias. I think I may have jumped the gun on presenting that topic. Why? This month it the divide between my sources widened, and at times, it became difficult to […] Read more…

Late last month, workers in Waterloo unearthed sections of the 200-year-old corduroy road (pictured, above). Early settlers laid logs on swampy ground to make their journeys easier (remember, this area is part of a large swamp). For a few weeks, these stretches of excavated ground became a tourist attraction, as archaeologists, historians, and people with […] Read more…

Last month I wrote about the challenge of addressing my biases when writing Kitchener 1916 Project posts. This month the challenge is what I call “source bias.” I’m reading two English-language dailies for the Kitchener 1916 Project—The Berlin News-Record and The Berlin Daily Telegraph—therein, it’s easy to argue that by not including local German news […] Read more…