Andrew Farris

2020: A Year Like No Other

ByAndrew Farris January 5, 2021 0 Comments

It's difficult to find anything to say about the year that hasn't already been pounded into cliche. It's been an awful year, a year where everything changed, and a year that laid bare our society's brittleness. A number of news outlets have gone so far as to make the mind-numbingly ahistorical claim that 2020 was the worst year ever (1348 would like a word!). Nevertheless we've all had to...

How Virtual Tours Can Help Museums

ByAndrew Farris December 7, 2020 0 Comments

Virtual tours are not exactly a new invention. They've been around for well over a decade, and many museums have long discovered their benefits: They can let people on the other side of the world explore a collection; let seasonal museums engage with visitors year-round; and captivate younger audiences raised on digital technologies. I don't think anyone quite expected a massive new impetus for...

What Museums Mean to Us (or rather, Me, Andrew)

ByAndrew Farris November 19, 2020 0 Comments

I recently took the Museums For Me survey, and it made me ponder the significance museums have to me and the society in which we live. The dire threat COVID-19 poses to the survival of many museums makes these questions especially timely. 90% of the world's 85,000 museums temporarily shut this year, and UNESCO fears one in eight--some 11,000 of them--may never reopen. If museums are...

A Month of Remembrance

ByAndrew Farris November 3, 2020 0 Comments

Every November 11th people gather at cenotaphs and memorials across Canada to remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in service of the country, but this year will be different. 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the most traumatic event in modern history. This is an important commemoration because that war is now passing from living memory. In...

Reevaluating Canada’s Past in the age of Black Lives Matter

ByAndrew Farris July 1, 2020 0 Comments

This Canada Day we look inward at the way we understand national history of racism, and ask how public historians can change our society for the better. This Canada Day comes at one of the most perilous moments in this nation's history. The jubilant parades, firework shows, and breathless round-the-clock CBC coverage have been tempered by the ongoing pandemic, and given way to virtual gatherings...

Quebec has Landed in time for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day

ByAndrew Farris June 25, 2020 0 Comments

We have an exciting announcement to make! This Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day we’ve launched coverage in Quebec City and Montreal, our first projects in Quebec. They’ve been a very long time coming. We’ve done projects across BC, the prairies and Ontario, but we’ve held off with Quebec until we were fully confident we could offer the tours both in French and English, and were familiar enough...

We’ve launched Sault Ste. Marie coverage!

ByAndrew Farris June 16, 2020 0 Comments

We're thrilled to announce the launch of Sault Ste. Marie in the On This Spot app! It's the culmination of a year long partnership with Tourism Sault Ste. Marie, the Sault Downtown Association, and the Sault Ste. Marie Museum. At the eastern end of Lake Superior, Sault's history dates back millennia--from an ancient gathering place for Indigenous peoples, to a critical outpost in the fur trade,...