Caring about the Past Programme

Sara Karn

Sara Karn is a Postdoctoral Fellow for Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future, based at McMaster University. She received her PhD in Education at Queen’s University, and her research explores historical empathy within history education in Canada. Sara is also involved in the Social Studies and History Education in the Anthropocene Network, a project that seeks to reimagine history and social studies education in response to the climate crisis. Her research has been published in journals including the Canadian Journal of Education, Historical Encounters, and Rethinking History. Sara is a certified K-12 teacher in Ontario, and she has taught environmental education for pre-service teachers.

Sara’s presentation will offer a framework of historical empathy for teaching and learning history. This approach can contribute to developing historical understanding, encouraging open-mindedness towards diverse perspectives, and fostering a sense of care to engage in making change.

Anna Pearson

Anna Pearson holds a B.A. (History), B.Ed. and M.Ed. from Nipissing University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at York University in the Faculty of Education and a Professional Associate at the Centre for the Study of State Violence at Nipissing University. Her research is focused on post-secondary education pedagogy and the practice of experiential learning at historical sites of conflict and commemoration. Anna is a French Immersion teacher at Sunset Park Public School (North Bay, Ontario) and was the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2022.

Mélissa St-Pierre

Mélissa St-Pierre is the head of sales, communications, and customer experience at the Huron-Wendat Museum. Her mission is to promote a unique experience to a varied clientele and to highlight Wendat culture by ensuring that communicated information is adapted to a wide variety of audiences in connection with the Museum. 

The Huron-Wendat Museum, inaugurated in 2008, is the national institution of the Wendat people, which ensures the conservation and promotion of their heritage. This presentation will demonstrate how the museum encourages empathy through its mission and values. The unique experience enjoyed by visitors will be enriched with the museum’s new upcoming permanent exhibition, in addition to its commitment to becoming an ecologically responsible organization.

Geneviève de Muys

Geneviève de Muys holds a master's degree in museology from the University of Montreal, a bachelor's degree in history and a certificate in political science from Laval University. In 2007, she received the Roland-Arpin Prize for her dissertation on museums dealing with human migrations. She then held the position of exhibition project manager in various museum institutions in Quebec and France. Since January 2014, Geneviève has been responsible for exhibition projects at the Musée de la civilization (Quebec). Between 2018 and 2022, she worked on the development of a new permanent exhibition on Quebec planned for 2024.

Her presentation will focus on how the museum team established this new permanent exhibition to include the words of people who are often under-represented in this type of exhibition.

Graham Lowes

Graham Lowes is the manager of education and program development at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. He will present on the Witness Blanket — a large-scale work of art. It contains hundreds of items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings, and both traditional and cultural structures from across Canada. Witnessblanket.ca invites visitors to explore objects from the blanket and hear directly from residential school survivors about their experiences.

This presentation will introduce participants to Witnessblanket.ca and discuss how to incorporate a trauma-informed approach in bringing voices of residential school survivors to the classroom. Additionally, educators will learn how to walk alongside their students in taking the next steps on their pathway of reconciliation.

Greg Miyanaga

Greg currently teaches grade 2/3 in Coquitlam, BC, where he has taught for more than 30 years. In 2006, he received the Governor General’s Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History for his work teaching about Japanese-Canadian internment. He later continued this work, writing elementary lessons for the multi-year research project, Landscapes of Injustice.

In his presentation, Greg will talk about how he develops a sense of historical empathy with students by using hands-on, minds-on, and hearts-on learning. Using his experience with Landscapes of Injustice, Greg will describe how he tackled a complex issue — the internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians — with elementary-aged students, helping them to develop empathy, understanding, and advocacy.

Carla Peck

Carla Peck is Professor of Social Studies Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and is the Director of the Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future SSHRC Partnership Grant. She researches teachers’ and students’ understandings of democratic concepts, teachers’ and students’ historical understandings, and is particularly interested in the relationship between students’ ethnic identities and their understandings of history. Select publications include Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories in International Contexts: A Critical Sociocultural Approach, The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education, and Contemplating Historical Consciousness: Notes from the Field.

Magda Fahrni

Magda Fahrni teaches women’s history, family history, and the history of twentieth-century Québec and Canada at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her book Household Politics: Montreal Families and Postwar Reconstruction, was awarded the Clio-Québec Prize by the Canadian Historical Association in 2006. She is also the author of Of Kith and Kin: A History of Families in Canada and the co-editor, with Robert Rutherdale, of Creating Postwar Canada: Community, Diversity, and Dissent and, with Esyllt W. Jones, of Epidemic Encounters: Influenza, Society, and Culture in Canada, 1918–20.