Wyandotte Street signStreet names are among the vestiges of Wyandot history in the Windsor-Detroit area.

Research project to uncover Wyandot history

Windsorites travel on Wyandotte and Huron Church roads, but the true Indigenous heritage behind these street names has been largely lost to time.

Enter UWindsor history professors Rob Nelson and Guillaume Teasdale. Armed with a grant of nearly $25,000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and matching funding from the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation in Trenton, Mich., they plan to put the Wyandot people back on the map locally.

“When one speaks of local Indigenous groups, one refers almost always only to the Three Fires Confederacy, made up of the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie, all Anishanaabe-speaking peoples,” said Dr. Nelson.

But the highly-mobile Wyandot people, also known as Huron, were here in the 1700s as well. When Cadillac founded Fort Detroit in 1701, he convinced members of the Three Fires Confederacy and the Wyandot to settle in the region to supply the French with food. By the 1880s, the Wyandot had integrated into the European population or been removed from the area.

One of the few historical remnants are a few street names whose true cultural importance is not fully understood, Nelson said.

“It’s a historical mystery in the day-to-day experience of non-Indigenous Windsor.”

Nelson and Dr. Teasdale have enlisted Museum Windsor; local Wyandot historian Michael Odette; and School of Creative Arts professors Michael Darroch, Kim Nelson, and Lee Rodney on the project to acknowledge the local history of the Wyandot people.

Together with an Indigenous student from the Wyandot community, they will gather the oral history of the Wyandot Nation. Grand Chief Ted Roll will recruit members of the community for on-camera interviews that will be posted to the Wyandot’s webpage. The interviews will be recorded by a UWindsor film student.

Together with archival research conducted with the help of an UWindsor Indigenous graduate student, the interviews will form part of a history collection that will be presented on both sides of the border in April 2020 and become part of a travelling museum exhibition that will make stops at the Chimczuk Museum in Windsor and the Community Center in Brownstown, Mich.

Nelson said the research team will share the exhibit materials with high school history teachers so they can incorporate the information into their classes.

The federal grant is part of a program to fund short-term research projects that let non-academic organizations and post-secondary researchers access each other’s expertise on topics of mutual interest.

Nelson is an expert in global settler colonialism, including how borders are created to name and recognize ethnicities as well as to divide them. Teasdale is an expert in the French and Indigenous history of the Windsor-Detroit borderlands.

Their research will help the Wyandot reclaim their place in Windsor’s history and give them information to establish a longhouse, museum, and visitor centre at Six Points in Gibraltar, Mich.

“The goal is to co-create and mobilize historical knowledge of the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation,” Nelson said. “This goal will both satisfy the pressing desire of the Wyandot of Anderdon to have their story better known in the Windsor-Detroit borderlands, and it will help meet the University of Windsor’s goal of a call to action for reconciliation with First Nations.”

─ Sarah Sacheli

Nick HectorUWindsor film prof Nick Hector is leading a workshop on editing documentaries, this weekend in Halifax.

Film prof to offer masterclass in editing

University of Windsor film professor Nick Hector is the featured clinician at a one-day workshop presented by Canadian Cinema Editors and Directors Guild of Canada in Halifax on Saturday, July 13.

Hector, a documentary film producer and editor, brings a unique approach and powerful sense of story to the edit suite. Some of his best-known work stems from his long creative relationships with Canadian filmmakers Allan King, Yvan Patry, and Sturla Gunnarsson.

With 30 years of editing and more than 100 films under his belt, he promises to take masterclass attendees through the beats of a film’s life cycle, including putting on the director’s glasses, playing the role of “first audience,” and revealing the story’s spine through a careful reduction process. Using practical advice, editing theory, war stories, and personal journal excerpts, Hector will offer a fascinating look at his working process.

Find details on the event website.

—Susan McKee

image of moon shining on waterA trivia contest offers a prize of two tickets to see “Salt-Water Moon” this week in the Jackman Dramatic Art Centre.

Trivia contest puts tickets to “Moon” within reach

The Northern Bruce Theatre Company is offering DailyNews readers a chance to win two tickets to see its current production of Salt-Water Moon, July 11 to 13 in the Hatch Studio Theatre, Jackman Dramatic Art Centre.

One of Canadian theatre’s most beloved plays, Salt-Water Moon tells the story of two young Newfoundlanders finding their way to love on a charming moon-lit night in 1926.

Performances are set at 7:30 p.m. all three dates. Admission is $20, with a student and senior rate of $15. For tickets or more information, phone 519-564-3601 or email northernbrucetheatre@mdirect.net.

To enter the contest, just send your answers to the following three trivia questions. The winner will be randomly selected from all correct responses received by 2 p.m. Monday, July 8.

  1. What are the names of the two characters featured in Salt-Water Moon?
    a) Mary White and Jason Brown
    b) Melissa Snow and John Mercer
    c) Margaret Smith and James Michaelson
    d) Mary Snow and Jacob Mercer
     
  2. Which of these plays introduced the family at the heart of a play cycle by David French?
    a) Leaving Home
    b) A Doll’s House
    c) Soldier’s Mind
    d) Silver Knife
     
  3. French served as a writer-in-residence at which Canadian university?
    a) Memorial University of Newfoundland
    b) University of Ottawa
    c) University of Toronto
    d) University of Windsor

Contest is open to all readers of the DailyNews. Send an e-mail with your responses to uofwnews@uwindsor.ca. One entry per contestant, please. Note: the decision of the judge in determining the most correct response is inviolable.

—Dana Roe

Jack ZimmermanLancer pitcher Jack Zimmerman has been named a first-team all-American in Division I of the National Club Baseball Association.

Lancer named baseball all-American

Pitcher Jack Zimmerman of the Lancer club baseball team has been named a first-team all-American in Division I of the National Club Baseball Association.

The right-hander went 7-0, including two shutouts and five complete games, with an earned run average of .51 and 72 strike-outs in 55 innings, holding opponents to a .193 batting average.

Zimmerman is a third-year student of civil engineering. Read more at goLancers.ca.

Ram Balachandar (left) accepts the Camille A. Dagenais AwardUWindsor engineering professor Ram Balachandar (left) accepts the Camille A. Dagenais Award at the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in Laval, Quebec.

Professor recognized by national civil engineering society

Civil and environmental engineering professor Ram Balachandar has been recognized for his outstanding contributions to the development and practice of hydrotechnical engineering in Canada.

Dr. Balachandar received the 2019 Camille A. Dagenais Award during the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering’s (CSCE) annual conference on June 14, in Laval, Quebec.

Balachandar’s research focuses on open channel flows and fluid-structure interaction. His research efforts in the area of scour have led to substantially improved design equations. Balachandar has published 150 journal papers, six book chapters, and more than 200 conference papers and is an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering.

The life time achievement award was established in 1981 in honour of Camille Dagenais, one of “the most renowned hydrotechnical engineers in the country,” according to CSCE.

—Kristie Pearce