High School Outreach

The Department of Historical Studies is active in several outreach initiatives with local high schools and organizations. In the past, events have been held at local schools or at the UTM campus.

Topics that our experts have presented about:

• History of Mississauga
• Living in New France
• How to Read Primary Sources
• Writing History through Ancient Coins
• Ancient Near Eastern Kings and Primary Sources
   

If you would like to visit us or have us host a seminar in your school, please feel free to contact our office!

Grade 10 Students Visit the Department of Historical Studies (March 2023)

On 29 March, the Department of Historical Studies welcomed grade 10 students from the Holy Name of Mary College School in Mississauga. From seeing which resources are available at our library to learning what the history of pizza tells us of life in the post-war GTA, the guests left UTM with a more concrete grasp of the intellectually stimulating possibilities and real-world implications that studying the past can provide for the present.

After the group toured the beautiful greenery and buildings of our campus on a sunny morning, the University of Toronto Mississauga librarian Yayo Umetsubo walked them through the opportunities in the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre. The students considered knowledge accessible via traditional print books and on-line Geographic Information Systems, then also had the chance to explore newspaper archives and tour the Syd Bolton collection of retro video games in our collections with Chris Young, Head of Collections and Digital Scholarship.

Going to Maanjiwe nendamowinan, the students experienced hands-on the work of a professional historian: the close analysis of primary sources. Professors Mairi Cowan and Boris Chrubasik chose a letter by Marie de l’Incarnation and a register of expenses from an Ursuline Convent to paint the picture of what life was like for French settlers in mid-seventeenth Quebec City. By formulating historical questions about these documents, the students learned how to make sound inferences based on each source’s strengths and limitations.

Coming back from a lunch break, the thrilling field trip was concluded with a lecture on the “History of Here” by Professor Brian Gettler. The lecture was constructed around a discussion of two common foods. The first part explored how Mississauga was home to Indigenous communities who built a flourishing economy around salmon fishing in the Credit River, who were later displaced by European settlers in the nineteenth century. The second part of the lecture turned to the arrival of pizza in 1960s Mississauga by the Italian diaspora and how delivery, cookbooks, and media turned it into the familiar meal we recognise today. By investigating the past in the immediate environment of Mississauga, students learned how historical processes shape the present that we often can take for granted.

It was a pleasure to welcome the students from the Holy Name of Mary College School, and the Department of Historical Studies looks forward to continuing conversations with schools in Mississauga and Peel Regions more broadly.

Credit to Arnold Machado da Silva

Read the news item on Holy Name of Mary College School's website!