Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
@wendysmithto.bsky.social
History PhD candidate ABD YorkU. SSHRC doctoral fellow. Ex-journalist. Downtown Toronto. 2014 Heritage Toronto Award of Excellence for my interactive history map of early Toronto. https://parklotproject.com ... My photo is very old.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
when you work at the BPAF but you’re beginning to realize there’s not going to be a successful IPO
September 11, 2026 at 8:15 PM
when you work at the BPAF but you’re beginning to realize there’s not going to be a successful IPO
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Please enjoy my cartoon in today's Toronto Star
September 9, 2026 at 12:09 PM
Please enjoy my cartoon in today's Toronto Star
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
At the top, Lac Ontario identified on a map from 1688.
On the bottom, the announcement in February 1867 that the new province would take its name from Lake Ontario.
On the bottom, the announcement in February 1867 that the new province would take its name from Lake Ontario.
August 27, 2026 at 8:16 PM
At the top, Lac Ontario identified on a map from 1688.
On the bottom, the announcement in February 1867 that the new province would take its name from Lake Ontario.
On the bottom, the announcement in February 1867 that the new province would take its name from Lake Ontario.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
À propos of nothing. Encore une fois.
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, "Partie occidentale du Canada contenant les lacs Ontario, Huron, Erié, et Lac Superieur" (1752)
tinyurl.com/bdf52yx8
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, "Partie occidentale du Canada contenant les lacs Ontario, Huron, Erié, et Lac Superieur" (1752)
tinyurl.com/bdf52yx8
August 27, 2026 at 11:01 PM
À propos of nothing. Encore une fois.
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, "Partie occidentale du Canada contenant les lacs Ontario, Huron, Erié, et Lac Superieur" (1752)
tinyurl.com/bdf52yx8
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, "Partie occidentale du Canada contenant les lacs Ontario, Huron, Erié, et Lac Superieur" (1752)
tinyurl.com/bdf52yx8
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
August 26, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Humanities scholars have been making this argument for years. It is intersting to see a computer scientists at IBM making our point. youtu.be/l-QPwk_f4eE?...
Why AI Makes the Humanities More Important Than Ever
YouTube video by IBM Technology
youtu.be
August 24, 2026 at 10:32 PM
Humanities scholars have been making this argument for years. It is intersting to see a computer scientists at IBM making our point. youtu.be/l-QPwk_f4eE?...
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
civilizational collapse, anyone?
"Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training, and destroying them in the process.
"It’s possible to scan these rare books without destroying them, but cutting the spine makes it cheaper and faster..."
www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
"Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training, and destroying them in the process.
"It’s possible to scan these rare books without destroying them, but cutting the spine makes it cheaper and faster..."
www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
August 23, 2026 at 7:26 PM
civilizational collapse, anyone?
"Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training, and destroying them in the process.
"It’s possible to scan these rare books without destroying them, but cutting the spine makes it cheaper and faster..."
www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
"Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training, and destroying them in the process.
"It’s possible to scan these rare books without destroying them, but cutting the spine makes it cheaper and faster..."
www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Today, we remember an important turning point in history: the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
August 23, 2026 at 5:24 PM
Today, we remember an important turning point in history: the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
"But that is not how ancestral Canadians saw the revolutionaries. They considered them to be terrorist lunatics, given to tarring and feathering their political opponents, torturing them in the streets, and stealing land that did not belong to them."
"But that is not how ancestral Canadians saw the revolutionaries. They considered them to be terrorist lunatics, given to tarring and feathering their political opponents, torturing them in the streets, and stealing land that did not belong to them."
Stephen Maher: Trump is closer to the vision of America’s founding fathers than Canadians think
The patriots who gave birth to the USA were not the heroes that US history shows us
www.thestar.com
July 5, 2026 at 4:05 PM
www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
"But that is not how ancestral Canadians saw the revolutionaries. They considered them to be terrorist lunatics, given to tarring and feathering their political opponents, torturing them in the streets, and stealing land that did not belong to them."
"But that is not how ancestral Canadians saw the revolutionaries. They considered them to be terrorist lunatics, given to tarring and feathering their political opponents, torturing them in the streets, and stealing land that did not belong to them."
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Mark Carney promises to take climate change seriously once every other problem on Earth is solved
Mark Carney promises to take climate change seriously once every other problem on Earth is solved
"Things are tough right now. And as the saying goes, ‘when the going gets tough, quit doing the hard stuff and just cling to what kind of worked in the past.'"
www.thebeaverton.com
July 4, 2026 at 7:31 PM
Mark Carney promises to take climate change seriously once every other problem on Earth is solved
Fabulous.
After creating a visualization of mobility between Canada and the empire, I decided to visualize all of the career mobility recorded in the biographies in the Colonial Office List. (I need to do the same work with the Indian Office List to complete the network.)
June 26, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Fabulous.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Prime Minister Carney says the war in Iran was "worth it".
I want to know who he thinks it was worth it for.
I want to know who he thinks it was worth it for.
June 17, 2026 at 9:27 PM
Prime Minister Carney says the war in Iran was "worth it".
I want to know who he thinks it was worth it for.
I want to know who he thinks it was worth it for.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Ya. This guys got the juice as the kids say.
June 5, 2026 at 11:10 PM
Ya. This guys got the juice as the kids say.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
A good moose morning! www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Man carries trapped moose calf across busy B.C. highway | CBC News
"It's not something you see every day, just some guys picking up a baby moose," a witness said of the encounter, while the man behind it says the moose felt "like kitten fur."
www.cbc.ca
May 30, 2026 at 1:58 PM
A good moose morning! www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
May 30, 2026 at 4:40 AM
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Nobody in graduate school warned you that “the long 19th century” just meant we’d still be doing race science and miasma theory well into the 21st century.
July 5, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Nobody in graduate school warned you that “the long 19th century” just meant we’d still be doing race science and miasma theory well into the 21st century.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Canada's top banker wants to take away your Charter privacy rights to share your information with the US and other "Five Eyes" surveillance countries.
The Lawful Access Act is a breach of our Charter rights and freedoms.
Keep our privacy out of American hands!
The Lawful Access Act is a breach of our Charter rights and freedoms.
Keep our privacy out of American hands!
Federal officials on the defensive as momentum grows against lawful access bill | CBC News
Canada's spy agency says its ability to keep pace with threats and contribute to intelligence alliances will be at risk if the government's latest attempt to pass a lawful access bill fails — a warnin...
www.cbc.ca
May 22, 2026 at 5:23 PM
Canada's top banker wants to take away your Charter privacy rights to share your information with the US and other "Five Eyes" surveillance countries.
The Lawful Access Act is a breach of our Charter rights and freedoms.
Keep our privacy out of American hands!
The Lawful Access Act is a breach of our Charter rights and freedoms.
Keep our privacy out of American hands!
Found myself yesterday driving on a newly red-painted RapidTO lane on downtown Bathurst St. Took a minute to notice TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) was marked on the lane, and another couple to notice I was the only one driving in that lane. Moved over to the car lane and stayed there. #Toronto
May 22, 2026 at 5:27 PM
Found myself yesterday driving on a newly red-painted RapidTO lane on downtown Bathurst St. Took a minute to notice TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) was marked on the lane, and another couple to notice I was the only one driving in that lane. Moved over to the car lane and stayed there. #Toronto
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Most women also had to survive childbirth. Other than that, though, this is one thing that I always talk with students about because it’s something they’ve almost all misunderstood (and been taught incorrectly) previously.
actually assuming they survived to age 5, there were very good odds of living into your 60s and 70s! (just not as good as we have now.) the majority of people who made it to adulthood would see old age. sc.edu/uofsc/posts/...
Old age isn’t a modern phenomenon – many people lived long enough to grow old in the olden days, too
There is a common misperception that long life spans in humans are very recent, and that no one in the past lived much beyond their 30s before now. This is not true. There is physical evidence that pl...
sc.edu
May 20, 2026 at 8:12 PM
Most women also had to survive childbirth. Other than that, though, this is one thing that I always talk with students about because it’s something they’ve almost all misunderstood (and been taught incorrectly) previously.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.
May 18, 2026 at 12:08 AM
I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.
Reposted by Wendy Smith, Historian of Earliest Toronto
Carney's policies are, so far, explicitly anti-Indigenous.
Governments and leaders should be judged by what they do, not what they say.
Governments and leaders should be judged by what they do, not what they say.
If Pierre Poilievre was doing this, there’d be widespread yelling but it’s Mark Carney so 🤷🏼♂️
Again, having regions of Canada without clean drinking water for people is *a national embarrassment* 😡
Again, having regions of Canada without clean drinking water for people is *a national embarrassment* 😡
Liberals are playing legal hardball with First Nations over drinking water - Investigative Journalism Bureau
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is playing legal hardball with First Nations fighting for clean drinking water — and First Nations are fighting back. Interviews and hundreds of pages o...
ijb.utoronto.ca
May 19, 2026 at 1:40 PM
Carney's policies are, so far, explicitly anti-Indigenous.
Governments and leaders should be judged by what they do, not what they say.
Governments and leaders should be judged by what they do, not what they say.