Archives
November 3-4, 2006
Toronto. Mysteries Project promoted at the annual conference of the Ontario History and Social Studies Teachers Association.
October 25, 2006
Montreal. Presentations at the University of Quebec at Montreal by Léon Robichaud, professor of history at the University of Sherbrooke, and historian Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne on the site “Torture and the Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal”.
October 20, 2006
Vancouver. Presentation by Professor John Lutz on “Solving Historical Cold Crimes On-Line” at the conference Canada West to East: Teaching History in a Time of Change (Association for Canadian Studies).
October 12, 2006 to March 25, 2007
Montreal. An exposition at the Centre d’histoire de Montréal about who was responsible for the 1734 fire features the website “Torture and the Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal”.
October 4, 2006
The Mysteries Project submits an Expression of Interest to the Canadian Content Online Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage for a fifth and final phase of the project, which would include three new bilingual mysteries.
September 28, 2006
Anchorage, Alaska. Presentation on the project by Merna Forster, executive director, at the 35th Anniversary Colloquium: Canada in the North Pacific (Association for Canadian Studies in the United States).
September 21-22, 2006
Lincoln, Nebraska. Presentation on the project by Professor John Lutz at the conference History in the Digital Age: Pauley Memorial Endowment Symposium.
September 1, 2006
The Jerome Mystery is featured on the CBC television program The National.
View excerpt on YouTube
August 25, 2006
The Globe and Mail features an article about the project: “Website puts new slant on 143-year mystery of legless man”.
August 23, 2006
The University of Victoria issues a press release announcing funding for Phase 4.
July 2006
Fourth Call for Mysteries Issued. The Mysteries Project invites proposals for more mysteries based on real events in Canadian history.
June 14, 2006
Victoria. The Department of Canadian Heritage approves Phase 4 of the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project! The three new mysteries will be: “Who Discovered Klondike Gold?”, “Where is Vinland?”, and “Jerome: The Mystery Man of Baie Saint Marie”.
May 27-29, 2006
Toronto. Presentation to the Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting: "Solving Historical Crimes: the Research-Pedagogy Connection".
April 27, 2006
Victoria. Official Launch of the site "Explosion on the Kettle Valley Line: The Death of Peter Verigin" and other new mysteries and MysteryQuests in Phase 3. Royal British Columbia Museum.
April 7, 2006
Montreal. Official Launch of the new site "Torture and the Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal" and other new mysteries and MysteryQuests in Phase 3. Centre d'histoire de Montréal.
April 5, 2006
Calgary. Official Launch of the new site "Heaven and Hell on Earth: The Massacre of the 'Black' Donnellys" and other new mysteries and MysteryQuests in Phase 3.
February 15, 2006
Mysteries Project hosts a site-visit team from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
January 17, 2006
Vancouver. Presentation and Booth at the British Columbia Social Studies Teachers' Association Annual Conference.
October 28-30, 2005
Edmonton. Mysteries Project promoted at the National Conference on Teaching, Learning & Communicating the History of Canada.
October 2005
The Angélique mystery is featured in Liaison (Sherbrooke) (PDF), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), and on radio: CHLT (Sherbrooke) and Radio-Canada Sherbrooke.
September 5-12, 2005
Phase 3 of the Mysteries Project is featured in the Edmonton Journal, Calgary Sun, Calgary Herald, Telegraph-Journal (Fredericton), and on CBC National Radio News, Rutherford Show (CHQR 770AM, Calgary) and CNEWS. Also at Macleans.ca, Canoe.ca, Yahoo Canada, Canadian Press and Broadcast News.
August 31, 2005
The Globe and Mail Covers Project: “Student sleuths asked to help solve 1924 murder” by Tom Hawthorn.
August 29, 2005
Media Release: The Department of Heritage and the University of Victoria issue press releases announcing the Phase 3 funding.
August 25, 2005
Third Call for Mysteries Issued. The Mysteries Project is inviting proposals for up to five more mysteries based on real events in Canadian History.
August 18-19, 2005
Toronto. Second workshop organized by TC2, The Critical Thinking Consortium, partner on Phase 3 of the Mysteries Project, to introduce teachers to TC2 teaching methods and to start building WebQuests linked to the Mysteries sites.
August 12, 2005 — Hits Approach 10 Million Last Year
User data for the period ending July 1, 2005 show that this site received nearly ten million hits during the past year, with the average visitor spending about ten minutes per session exploring Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. About 22% of site users stayed even longer, with many learning about the mysteries for more than a half-hour at a time. There were about 300 user sessions on the site each day. While most visitors were from Canada, there was also interest from Internet users in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom.
August 1, 2005
The Mysteries Project is featured on Canadian Culture, which showcases the best of Canadian online content and chooses a few sites every month to highlight. The Mysteries Project is one of the six sites featured in August.
July 13, 2005
Peter Gossage and Carolyne Blanchard are featured in La Presse (PDF) discussing the image and reality of the Aurore Gagnon story.
July 2005
The feature film Aurore is launched in Quebec. Website visits jump and requests for teachers' guides surge ahead.
June 2005
Toronto. First workshop organized by TC2, The Critical Thinking Consortium, partner on Phase 3 of the Mysteries Project, to introduce teachers to TC2teaching methods and to start building WebQuests linked to the Mysteries sites.
June 27, 2005
Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne, co-director of the new mystery "Torture and the Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal", is featured (PDF) in La Presse along with her book Le Procès de Marie-Josèphe Angélique (Libre Expression, 2004).
June 21, 2005
Mysteries Project receives word of funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage to proceed with Phase 3 of the project. The three new mysteries, to be launched in April 2006, are:
Torture and the Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal
When Montreal caught fire in April 1734, suspicion fell on Marie Angélique, a Black slave accused of setting the fire to cover an escape with her White lover, a salt smuggler exiled from France. But if that was her motive, why did she stay to help her mistress save her possessions instead of fleeing. True, she confessed -- but only after torture. Her punishment was to be hanged and then burned. But did she really start the fire? What does her story tell us about slavery, torture and fire in early Canada?
Heaven and Hell on Earth: The Massacre of the "Black" Donnellys
The notorious Donnellys emigrated from Ireland in the 1840s with the hope of finding success in what would later become Canada. Yet, in 1880 the Donnelly farm was burned to the ground. The bodies of James, his beloved Johannah, their son Tom and niece Bridget were in the ashes, the victims of a vicious mob. Another son lay dead in a separate murder the same night. To this day, despite a great deal of evidence (including an eyewitness), no one has been found guilty of the crime. Many had no doubt "who done it", but two trials ended without any guilty verdict. Was this a community taking justice into its own hands when the justice system failed, or was it mob rule terrorizing rural Ontario? Did the Donnellys deserve their fate? Why was there no justice for the Donnellys?
Explosion on the Kettle Valley Line: The Death of Peter Verigin
An explosion on a rail car in October 1924 near Castlegar, British Columbia, took the life of Peter "Lordly" Verigin, the charismatic leader of the pacifist Doukhobor religious community. Eight others were also killed, including Verigin's 17-year-old female companion and a member of the provincial legislative assembly. A host of theories sprang up to explain the explosion. Was it dissident Doukhobors upset with his worldly ways, nativists jealous of the success of the Russian immigrants, agents of the Canadian or B.C. government trying to undermine Doukhobor resistance to public schooling, Verigin's own son, Soviet enemies, or merely an accident? To this day the explosion that rocked the Doukhobor community remains an unsolved mystery, a tragedy that throws an intense light onto Canadians' attitudes towards immigrants in the inter-war era.
January 2005
Mysteries Project submits proposal to the Canadian Content Online program of the Department of Canadian Heritage for a third phase of the project with three new bilingual mysteries.
May 31, 2005
Peter Gossage and Ruth Sandwell, project co-directors, are invited to present the teaching philosophy behind the Mysteries Project to the University of Waterloo Centre for Learning & Teaching Through Technology and the Department of History.
April 15, 2005
Ruth Sandwell, project co-director, gave an invited keynote address to the History of Curriculum Special Interest Group titled "Teaching History: On the Disjuncture Between Historical Practice and Classroom Teaching," April 15, 2005 at the American Educational Research Association annual general meeting, Montreal.
March 31, 2005
John Lutz featured the "We Do Not Know His Name" website in his presentation "Ethnohistory in a Cold Climate: Canadian Contributions to 21st Century Ethnohistory" at the Meeting of the Organization of American Historians in San Jose, California.
January 10, 2005
The Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun featured the Mysteries Project in an article by Janet Steffenhagen, "Mysteries of the Past Become Lessons".
December 2004
Ruth Sandwell, project co-director, published "The Great Unsolved Mysteries of Canadian History: Using a Web-Based Archive to Teach History", Special Issue, New Approaches to Teaching History, Canadian Social Studies, volume 39, no. 2, Winter 2005.
