Storytelling
Narratives can take many shapes, from accounts moulded from historical archives to the evolution of a building.
November-December 2023
Telling stories can be looked down upon – as simplistic, even as distorting – but narratives remain the fundamental way we shape our understanding of the world. Sometimes the narrative is hidden. That obscuring could be deliberate, perhaps, in academic work in order to appear more objective or sophisticated; or the narrative could need to be teased out from physical objects like buildings. Sometimes one narrative is more compelling and overwhelms other, equally important narratives, which we need to make more of an effort to highlight. Sometimes a narrative is fictional, but tells us as much about a time and place as documents do. Whatever its shape, when done well a narrative engages and informs us, expanding our understanding of the world even as it delights our imagination.
The Sneak Peek
Anyone who works on early modern history in Toronto knows Tom and Libby Cohen. They’re emeritus professors at York University who work on Renaissance Italy. But they don’t study the artists, thinkers, and princes Renaissance Italy is known for, but rather ordinary people, largely through judicial records where people facing the justice system told their version of dramatic events in their lives. The Cohens’ particular genius is how they shape these archival sources into compelling stories that show the lives of these everyday people can be as fascinating – and as revealing of insights into history – as those of better-known figures. The Cohens match their engaging writing with a personal enthusiasm and vitality that brings energy into any room and discussion where they are present.
I recently had the privilege of doing some editing for a festschrift – a collection of essays – in their honour, Making Stories in Early Modern Italy and Beyond. In it, numerous historians celebrate the power of telling stories from the archives to illuminate their subject area. “Narrative” history is often considered old-fashioned, but really all historical work is based on a narrative of some kind, even if hidden. Good narrative history – the telling of engrossing stories – is what got me into history in the first place, and is still how most people outside of the academy encounter history, in popular history books. The Cohens remind us that academic historical work can also incorporate storytelling – something that captures the reader and carries them through time to the era being examined – even as it uses it to discover deeper insights about past societies.
The Tidbit
Speaking of historical storytelling, a fascinating article on the JSTOR website recounts how four Haudenosaunee Confederacy ambassadors were treated as “kings” in Queen Anne’s London in 1710. They were there because the English who had settled on the American coast wanted to secure their alliance against the French in Canada. Being treated like kings meant being treated as dignitaries and feted, but it also meant, like European royalty, being on display, having to perform expected roles, and having their portrait painted, in a mishmash of European and Indigenous iconography. (The portraits were later purchased by the Government of Canada.)
When we say they were treated like kings, it’s how they were described at the time, even though the Haudenosaunee didn’t really have an equivalent position. It reminded me of the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who also described the South American Indigenous communities he talked about as kingdoms. It was a way of trying to comprehend quite different community structures within Europeans’ own terms of reference. But it was also a mark of respect and equivalency – a recognition that these Indigenous nations were sovereign and the equals of European nations – which was true at the time in the future Canada and America, where small European populations clung to the edges of the continent they had recently stumbled upon.
It reminded me of a history conference I attended organized by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto in the late 1990s called “Decentering the Renaissance,” that looked at how to consider the European Renaissance from the perspective of the lands that became Canada, including that of Indigenous nations. My thought then was to do what Queen Anne’s government did – to approach Indigenous nations as equal and powerful players in the power struggles and alliances happening in North America in this period, rather than looking back at them just through the lenses of the abuses they would later be subjected to. I’m glad to see this perspective gaining ground.
What’s Up
Being a pedestrian advocate involves a constant dichotomy between two perspectives. On the one hand, the most immediate concern - and the one that most easily gets attention – is safety. Pedestrians are vulnerable, and regularly get hit by drivers. It’s vital to make cities safer for them, and safety issues are the stories most likely to get the media’s attention. This discourse is by necessity negative – expressing outrage at the continuing danger and pointing out the inadequacies of the current situation.
On the other hand, the ultimate goal is to make cities not just safe for walking, but also places people want to walk – to make walking something people are eager to do. It’s vital to elevate the positive side of walking, as well as addressing the negative features. Creating a more appealing walking environment doesn’t have the visceral pull of safety, but it's just as important for creating a great city for walking. And celebrating the joy of walking is as essential for getting people out on their feet as pointing out dangers and how they can be averted.
I’ve recently written two articles on Spacing about walking, one on each side of this dichotomy. The first, triggered by a long-ago safety experience and a recent motion at Toronto City Council, is about what I call the “pedestrian blood sacrifice” – the tendency to only put pedestrian safety measures in place at a location after a pedestrian has been killed or seriously injured there.
The other is inspired by this year being the 10th anniversary of Walk Toronto, the volunteer grassroots advocacy group I helped to found and am still part of. I thought a good way of marking the anniversary would be to look back at 10 good things that have happened for walking in Toronto in the past 10 years. As an advocacy group, it’s natural to focus on the City’s shortcomings, but it’s also important to celebrate the good things the City has done – in part to encourage the City to continue with them.
Quotable
“We are all editing ourselves all the time. And that’s not necessarily oppressive; sometimes it’s wisdom.”
- Pádraig Ó Tuama, “The art of editing”
In a world of social media, we’ve become more conscious of how we edit ourselves constantly. We know we might get some kind of unpredictable and unwelcome reaction to things we put out there. This instinct is often viewed as restrictive – we’re censoring ourselves, we’re no showing our true self. But I think there’s a lot of insight in this quotation. Our self-editing can be a good thing. Not all of our thoughts are necessarily worth sharing. Doing a preliminary sifting and sorting can be worthwhile. How important is this idea to us, for us to share this particular sentiment with this particular audience? Is it something we want to invest the time and emotional energy that may be required? That’s actually a calculation we make all the time, not just on social media but in conversation, in work, in life. Prioritizing is normal. Sometimes we decide the investment is worth it, the sentiment sufficiently important to us – but that’s a decision that’s good to make consciously. It’s no different from editing one’s writing – focusing on what is most meaningful to us, and what is most significant (or delightful) to our audience, rather than drowning the world in a sea of words.
My thanks to my sister Vanessa for sending this quotation.
Pic Pick
This little building on the Danforth is not long for the world. It’s been expropriated by Metrolinx for the Pape station for the new Ontario Line subway. And that’s pretty reasonable – Toronto needs new rapid transit and there’s nothing especially valuable about this particular edifice.
But before it goes, I wanted to appreciate a couple of things about it. First, the simple art deco stylings – the stone highlights in the brickwork around the windows, the proud date-stone that reads “MH 1930” highlighting the little fashioned parapet. There’s a lot of these simple art deco stylings along the Danforth, which was built out in that era, and they add a subtle bit of extra appeal to the street. (There’s a few standout art deco buildings too). I hope that at least some of it gets preserved in some fashion.
The other thing to appreciate is what is sometimes referred to as incremental development. You can see, behind that art deco storefront, the roof and dormer of what looks like a residential house in a different style. Was the art deco storefront (and second floor apartment extension) added to a house in 1930 as the street became more of a commercial main street? Or was the third floor added later to create more apartment space? And that 1930 facade was itself modified by a later tenant or owner to better highlight the hair salon (or perhaps some earlier business) with what was perhaps considered a more “modern” style. Cities are constantly evolving, in small ways like that as well as big ones like the subway station that will eventually replace this building. This modest building reveals the story of the evolution of the Danforth, from residential outpost to local main street to a future dense transit hub.
The Shout-Out
I’ve always wanted to read Tolstoy’s War and Peace but assumed, given its huge size, that it would have to wait until retirement (I did see the 6-hour Russian movie years ago but don’t remember much other than the deliberately absurdist battle scene). But Molly heard about a War and Peace read-along project on Substack. The novel has 361 chapters, so reading a chapter a day over a year covers the whole book – and the chapters are actually quite short, so it’s theoretically not that hard to read one every day. So we’re going to take the plunge (and the Gutenberg project even has a copy of a good translation for free online). It begins on January 1 – if anyone else is interested, you can find out more here:
Whether or not you decide 2024 is War and Peace year, I wish you a happy 2024 full of good stories!