Who Says Field Trips are for Kids?

Fridays were made for field trips.  Graduate school generally requires more field work rather than field trips, but then again, public history isn't your regular graduate program.  Our public history group has been tasked with developing an i-phone app tracing the retreat of General Proctor and Tecumseh up the Thames River during the war of 1812, coinciding with the bicentennial of the war next year. As an introduction to this project, we spent the day visiting important sites along the Tecumseh Parkway - all the way from Amherstburg to Thamesville.

A few highlights:

 Fort Malden National Historical Site of Canada

St.John's Church at corner of Brock St. and Sandwich St. in Sandwich, ON

Duff-Baby House in Sandwich, ON

St.Peter's Church - Tilbury, ON

As a foreigner (from Alberta), my knowledge of the war of 1812 and this region is...well...severely lacking. My synopsis of the war before embarking on this project would have gone something like this:

The British and First Nations fought the Americans. 

Laura Secord told warned someone the Americans were going to attack.

The White House was burned.

I think the British won. Go Canada!

Embarrassing, I know.  While today was really just a whirlwind tour short on detailed explanations, I was still able to come away with a tangible sense of the scope and geography of the British retreat and feel more equipped to tackle this project.  

Physically tracing the route the soldiers took all those years ago also highlighted the important benefits of relating history to physical space.  A text can inform me of the events of the war of 1812, but taking that knowledge into a perceptible environment makes history palpable in a way that cannot be achieved through mere study. The experience of stepping into a house where Tecumseh ate dinner, standing in a field where soldiers camped and walking onto a former battlefield can never be understood without engaging with the physical space.  Historical understanding is significantly enhanced through spatial relations.  This may seem like an obvious concept, but it is one I did not reflect upon until I followed the route of the 1812 retreat for myself and connected with the history at an organic level.

It is with this in mind that I am going to approach the creation of the i-phone app.  If we can use the technology to allow its users to imagine the past through an immersion in their environment, I think we will have been successful.