Shirley Tillotson

My fave political history is the backstories of politicians: the agenda-making and network building worlds of volunteering, fundraising, and policy / interest advocacy. So I'm your dial-a- Canadian-historian on lots of specialist topics. But it's all political history.

My attempt at ALT text for this may be more interesting than the post itself?

Great news. A Riopelle museum now exists in Quebec City. For maximum enjoyment, his palette knife paintings have to be seen IRL. Worth traveling for. Screenshot from JEAN-PAUL RIOPELLE Noyauttage. 1957. share.google/XLqJmk96khYK...

Fascinating, maybe hopeful? The way social media mattered in the Brazil election. Probably not replicable, but worth digging into

If you're part of that (possibilty small?) community that loves real life ghost stories, Canadian historical architecture, and high quality black and white photography, you will understand why I am reposting all of Peter Coffman's skeets these days

What a disaster. Feeling brokenhearted about BC

It hardly needs saying that the Banff Springs Hotel #OughtToBeHaunted. And plenty will tell you it is – by guests who came to an unhappy end, by staff who loved their jobs so much they couldn't bear to leave. If there's a real Overlook Hotel, this must be it. 😱🎃

Thinking about starting a little organization that brings together people who want to read and discuss some old and new books and articles once a week to learn something about the human condition, how to navigate the world, and maybe pick up a few critical skills and relationships along the way.

I think pretty much every building in Dawson City, Yukon, #OughtToBeHaunted. By the ghosts of the thousands who hoped to strike it rich but only struck out. By the ghosts of the dreams that died with them. 🎃👻😱

Dredge mining around Dawson City was an act of extreme violence that chewed up the landscape, extracted the gold, and spat out the rest. Dredge #4 #OughtToBeHaunted, perhaps by the ghosts of the operators who went deaf in the din, and consequently did not hear the news that they'd died. 🎃👻

Appreciating Robert Schiller's writing style in Narrative Economics. Where others call economic sentiment "epiphenomenal," he refers to it as "a bit of silliness." Smart enough he doesn't need the fancy words.

I found useful Spang's concluding description of money as a sort of hinge between economic and political life. Well illustrated in her telling of the assignats story

91 years ago today, William Lyon Mackenzie King was sworn in as PM – again. He died in 1950 and was buried in this surprisingly unadorned grave in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery. 👇 Everyplace he frequented #OughtToBeHaunted. His private life was one long ghost story. 👻🎃

Career politicians get a bad wrap. Most actually just like helping people and trying to make government work! It's the business people going into politics that I don't trust. Why do you think you can "fix" a system you know nothing about!?

In the last few days, I have read with increasing excitement research from scholars in Helsinki, Dubai, Berlin, and Sydney, Australia What a world! (I still remember affectionately the university libraries of my youth. But they feel limited now.)

At age 11, as a Nova Scotia Stanfieldian, I nursed a deep loathing for PE Trudeau. By 21, I considered the NDP to be a bit too far to the right for my taste. This guy doesn't seem to have travelled very far.

I'm also available to be profiled about what I believed when I was 11

I was just dictating some notes to myself about Canadian financial history, and I was happy to realize that, in the 1930s, high-level decisions about inflation were being discussed by a finance minister named Roads (Rhodes) and a banker named Towers. It's a kind of landscape!

In research heaven. Reading an article whose every paragraph is 🤯

Seriously. He's 104 years old. An ornament to the Nova Scotia Museum. Hatched 1922!

I'm going to be one of several local authors, poets, and performers on stage on Tuesday 3 November at the Bus Stop Theatre for an evening of poetry, fiction, and more!

Quite possibly one of the very best historians of his generation (or any generation). If you're not familiar with his work [that's for my non-historian followers], you might want to be...

The US* is pontificating about meddling in another country's politics/leadership? It's insulting enough just off historical examples (Chile, Iran, Indonesia, The Dismissal), but it's particularly insane this year given Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Ukraine, Alberta ...

Classic Raccoon twinkle! Tax me, daddy youtube.com/shorts/ZvYvw...

Far too much of this going on in the neighbourhood chats at election time

A third constitutional question has flipped to "no."

I've sat in NS, watched a regional pattern emerge and have then seen the region's majority preference steam-rollered as the rest of Canada votes. You get to feel like you're winning... and then you don't. For your consideration in the Electoral Grievance Olympics. We won't win, of course 😉

Evergreen solution

at a minimum, a worldview has to be connected to reality before you can appease it

Three of Shakespeare’s greatest history plays in 12 hours! A fundraiser for @halhum101.bsky.social: a marathon reading on Sat, Nov. 21, at the University of King's College, in KTS Hall at the New Academic Building. Details for donors and attendees here: halifaxhumanitiessociety.ca/wars-of-the-...

To the people who are still talking about how Canada is "not taking Alberta seriously" -- what on earth are you talking about? The PM is an Albertan. The leader of the opposition is an Albertan. Our national politics revolve around Alberta's interests and concerns. What else do you want?

From Danielle Smith's address last night. At the risk of being pedantic, it seems worth noting that a) it wasn't a coalition and b) the confidence-and-supply agreement was only in place for two and a half years.

Shocking news, protected bike lanes result in more people riding to work share.google/8asAE1wmfyV8...

I bet he took out 2 Russian data centers all by himself. He's Black Opspspspsps. Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦

I could easily avoid watching the Jerry Springer Show in the 1990s But I recall it being a landmark of sleaze and shock. The phrase "tabloid TV" was was coined for it. Super popular... I hate that I can't so easily ignore today's Springerized US politics

You just go with the floe.

Autumn light, Ottawa skyscrapers. Today, 5:30 PM.

Just saw CBC journalist Stephanie Cram reporting on "what now for the Alberta separatists" I loved that she maintained a slightly pursed-lip, deadpan expression. I can't not roll my eyes.

The story here is that the separatists came in with funding, organization, powerful institutional backing, a pliant and friendly media environment, and ran face first into a brick wall.

Toronto history people (and @sophienadeau.bsky.social), does your knowledge enable you to credibly guess the date of this painting by Stanley Turner? Given his life span and biography, it has to be after 1911 and I'd guess from the 1920s or 1930s. Maybe landmark buildings can narrow it down?