History grad students are reminded that the deadline for voting in the elections for officers to the Graduate Student's Committee of the Canadian Historical Association is June 16th. Ph.D. candidate Selena Crosson is also a candidate for Treasurer of the GSC.

We historians are of course in the business of bending time, but you will need more than usual skill in order to catch last night's broadcast of Long Shadows, the SCN tv series dedicated to the lives and stories of prominent Saskatchewenians. Last night's episode featured the life and story of our own Bill Waiser. Happily, you need only stay up late tonight (and have cable) in order to catch the repeat showing at 11:30 pm.

While we here at What's Up were vacationing just now, word arrived over the newswires that Brendan Kelly, who graduated with High Honours in History, was awarded two convocation awards last week: the Charles W. Lightbody Convocation Prize in History and the Copland Prize in the Humanities. A fantastic accomplishment. Congratulations, Brendan.

Why, it seems as though it was only April 22, 2005 when we congratulated Laura Mitchell (BA hons. 2005) on being accepted into the M.A. program at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. And now here we are again, congratulating her for her swift advance on to the doctoral program there. Well done, Laura!

What's Up's loyal correspondent and founding mentor Peter Scott, retired from the U. of S. and now a roving library internet guru to the world, keeps an eye out for fascinating web resources that the global What's Up community needs to know about. Among his latest gems is Newsfilm Online, planned to be 3,000 hours of British television news and cinema newsreels, taken from the huge collection of the ITN/Reuters archive, is to be made available online in high quality format for teaching, learning and research. Newsfilm Online will, if it does say so itself, be a gateway of unmatched richness to nearly one hundred years of news, from the 1910s to the present day. This demonstrator web site is making some fifty news clips (approximately one hour of material) freely available for downloading to all users. These clips are arranged by theme and decade, and we welcome your comments on any of these. We hope to add more clips to the site in due course. The main delivery of 3,000 hours will be in February 2007. Check it out at: http://newsfilm.bufvc.ac.uk

The George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s. Click on any of the images above to enlarge, or check out the entire collection at: http://memory.loc.gov/pp/ggbainhtml/ggbainabt.html

ProQuest Information and Learning has completed the digitization of the British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers from 1801 to 1900. Parliamentary Papers are considered to be the most detailed primary source for information on 19th-century Britain, its colonies (including, of course, Canada), and the wider world. Have a look at:
http://www.il.proquest.com/pressroom/pressrelease/06/20060503.shtml

Library and Archives Canada has announced the launch of the Census of 1851 (Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). By 1851, the pattern of decennial census taking had been established. Searchable by geographic location, the 1851 Census offers a rich source of information about Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the middle of the 19th century. The digital images within this database are copies of the original microfilm records held by Library and Archives Canada, and are searchable by geographic location only. There are limitations: not all geographic places are covered, and the database is not searchable by family name. Still, the data here can be used to prepare family histories where the family's location is known, and forms an essential base for the history of towns and villages, research immigration trends and a great deal more. Check it out at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/1851/index-e.html

Rob Scott (M.A. 2004) will be moving south from his Alberta base at the end of the summer. Rob has been accepted and offered funding in the doctoral program of the University of Arizona,where he will continue his work on Guatemala. Congratulations Rob!

Slightly belated congratulations to former M.A. candidate Lynda Airriess , who successfully defended her thesis, "'Apuleius' The Golden Ass: Anti-Christian Opinion Concealed as an Ass-Tale" on April 28th.

More timely congratulations to one-time M.A. candidate Jean Ruiz, who yesterday successfully defended her MA thesis on "Civilized People in Uncivilized Places, Nature, Race, and Rubber in Northwestern Amazonia".

John McCannon and Gordon DesBrisay are named in the 2006 Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities (available now at newstands everywhere!) in the list of "Popular Profs" at the U of S, according to "current students".

As if our M.A. candidates had not been in the news enough lately, here comes Jean Ruiz, who will defend her thesis, "Civilized People in Uncivilized Places: Nature, Race, and Rubber in Northwestern Amazonia", in an oral defence to be held Wednesday, May 10 at 9:30 in Arts 710.

Congratulations to Cameron Goodfellow, newly elected president of the University of Saskatchewan Graduate Students' Association (G.S.A.).

Congratulations to our grad students just returned from the University of Regina/University of Saskatchewan Graduate History Students' Conference, held this past Saturday in Regina. Two van's worth of U of S presenters gave papers, including Tom Novosel, “CCF Lost Opportunities for a Provincial Pulp and/or Paper Industry: The Potential for a 'New Empire' in Northern Saskatchewan”; Byron Plant, “Administering the Urban “Indian Problem”: Aboriginal Urbanization and Federal-Provincial Relations after 1945”; Christine Charmbury, “Foreign Indians: Implications of the Dakota Peoples Migration From American to Canadian Territories after 1862”; Rob Morley “Identity, Individuality, Masculinity and Morale in British Pilot Training, 1912 – 1918”; Sarah Person, “Hugo Chavez and the New Latin American Left"; Melanie Racette-Campbell, “Pederasty and the Other in Classical Athens”; Orysia Ehrmantraut, “Reflections on the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church”; Chris Clarke, “Simple Explanations for Individualized Experiences: The Different Voices Within New World Travel Writing"; Cinnamon Pandur, “The Changing Face of Archaeology on Canada's Pacific Coast in the Later Half of the 20th Century”; and Lindsay Manz, “A Soviet Tale: Literary Policy and the Appropriation of Folklore in Children's Literature, 1932-1941.”

History will be well represented at Stepping Stones 2006, the 14th annual graduate student conference sponsored by the College of Graduate Studies and Research and the Graduate Students' Association. The conference is an all-day affair that starts at 8:45 on Wednesday, May 10th in STM 344B. Our very own MA candidate Cameron Goodfellow will start things off at 9:am with an opening address delivered in his capacity as incoming president of the G.S.A., at 9:45 fellow M.A. candidate Chris Clarke will deliver a paper entitled "The Blogger and the Travel Writer: How Today’s Technological Advancement Can Affect Historical Thinking"; and at 11:00 Ph.D. candidate Jason Zorbas will deliver "The Narrative Triumphant: Examining the Lack of Technological and Theoretical Innovation in Canadian Diplomatic History".

M.A. candidates Lindsay Manz, Rob Morley, and Kimberley Bergen were in Winnipeg recently to present papers at the Fort Garry Lectures in History Graduate Student Conference held at the University of Manitoba April 27-29. Lindsay's paper was entitled "A Soviety Tale: Literary Policy and the Appropriation of Folklore in Children's Literature, 1932-1941"; Rob's was "Forlorn Flyboys: Individuality, Masculinity and Morale in the Flight Schools of the Royal Flying Corps, 1912-1918"; and Kimberly's was "I loved my child too dearly: Examing Familial Dynamics through Seventeenth Century Scottish Life-writings". Congratulations to them all.