Pathway to the Past - Route 1812

You can put the app on

your mobile device right now!

If you can "get your kicks on Route 66" you can get your history (as well as hotels and food) on Route 1812!  Yes, the mobile app for which my public history class spent all year researching content, is finally available, and it's free!  People have been asking me how they can access the app, and there are a couple ways.  

First, if you have a touch-screen device (any device - Apple, Android, Blackberry - doesn't matter) you can scan the QR code here, and it will take you to the app website.  From there you can put it right on your device.  (If you don't have a QR code scanner app on your mobile device, you can usually download one for free - it's a pretty handy thing to have since QR codes are becoming so popular.)

If you don't have a touch screen device, you can still access the app using a computer.  The app is available online here.  The website will only work if opened in a Google Chrome browser.  (If you need to put Chrome on your computer - you can do that here.)

Article in the Amherstburg Echo
announcing Windsor launch.

I recently wrote a wrap-up of our year-long Public History project, and I mentioned there how the scope of the project had evolved during that process.  The app now encompasses the entire Southwest Ontario region, and includes War of 1812 sites, other tourist attractions, as well as hotels and restaurants for those travelling the Route.  

Our class was still only responsible for the content of the 22 sites we were originally assigned.  So as you go through the app, you can find our research primarily on the sites between Windsor and London (the little black top hats.) The stellar Prelude to War section written by Adriana can be found under the Introduction tab of the app, as well as Sushima's amazing wrap-up, The Aftermath, in the Conclusion portion.  There is also a list of everyone who assisted us through our research and collaborative process (and it is a lengthy one) in the Tecumseh Parkway Development of the Acknowledgements section.

There has been a bit of press surrounding the launch of Route 1812, with events this past weekend in both Windsor and Hamilton.  I was able to attend both, and they were quite different experiences.  

Article in The Windsor Star about
the Windsor launch.

Saturday evening was the Windsor launch.  This event was held at the Mackenzie Hall Cultural Centre.  It opened with hors d'oevres, featuring specially labelled 1812 wine and a blueberry "cannonball" jam.   The official Essex County War of 1812 Commemoration Declaration was read, followed by speakers Kyra Knapp, 1812 Bicentennial Southwest Ontario Region; Jim Hudson, Southwest Ontario Tourism Corporation; Mike Dove, Western University; and Steve McBride, Weever Apps.  As Steve was walking the audience through the app, he also asked me to talk a bit about the sources we used during our research, and how we obtained all the images and audio found on our sites.  Even after the "official" event was finished, I lingered quite awhile speaking with some of the attendees.  We were thrilled to talk to the grade 7 teacher who planned to have her students access the app on their smartphones in class on Monday.  This was just one of the many ways we had envisioned our original app being used!  It was a nice opportunity to finally meet some of the other collaborators face to face, as well as catch up with my classmates who are all busy with internships this summer.  

The Sunday afternoon event in Hamilton has a slightly different feel to it.  Downtown Hamilton was busy with people since it was also an Open Streets day, and the road was closed to car traffic.  There was a VIP reception prior to the official launch, with more 1812 wine and ice cream.  We also had the opportunity to preview the new documentary series by the Ontario Visual Heritage Project, A Desert Between Us and Them.  I'm looking forward to seeing the finished project, which will officially launch next year.  The official Route 1812 launch ceremony took place in the lobby of the Tourism Hamilton Visitor Centre, and there were numerous speakers representing the many organizations and municipalities that collaborated on the project.  I would list them all here - but honestly I can't remember them all!  It concluded in similar style, with Steve, of Weever Apps, demonstrating to the attendees how to navigate the app on an iPad.  Perhaps it was because this event was larger, or due to the fact there was so much else going on around it, but I felt less "a part" of this event than I had Saturday evening.  Still, it was a pleasant afternoon of visiting with classmates and catching up.

Featured in an 1812 Special Section
of the Windsor Star.

The Amherstburg Echo, The Windsor Star, and the Southwestern Ontario Tourism Corporation have all run articles about the app.  It's interesting to see how each organization involved highlights different aspects of Route 1812.  Some tout the boost in tourism it could bring to the area, others delight in the merging of history and technology, but most seem to recognize that the whole project would not have been possible without the hard work and collaboration of many different people.

I was also interviewed for the CBC Windsor radio show The Bridge to talk about our role in developing the content for the app!  They weren't sure when I recorded the interview when it was going to air, and by the time I got the notice I had already missed hearing it!  Oh well, is probably for the best - as I don't care for the way my voice sounds recorded (chalk it up to my nasal mid-western accent...)  However, I did screen-capture the tweet mentioning the segment about our app.

Radio spot on CBC Windsor, The Bridge.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, I will likely be updating any more Route 1812 related news I find.  It's rewarding to see all of our hard work finally reaching the public!

Group Project - War of 1812 Smart Phone App

(Note: I started this blog post on April 24, the day we handed in our final project, as per usual life got in the way, and as a result I have just now finished it!)

This morning, I handed over the final draft of our public history group project.  A good portion of our time this academic year has been devoted to the development of content for a War of 1812 Historical and Commemorative Smart Phone App.  This project has certainly been a learning experience, and not just about local history related to the War of 1812.

A little background about the project:  We partnered with the War of 1812 South Western Ontario Region, Tecumseh Parkway Committee, and Western Corridor Alliance to produce a regional smart phone app.  Our portion was to provide the historical content about Procter's retreat from Fort Amherstburg in the fall of 1813.  This included researching 22 sites from Amherstburg/Windsor area to London relating to this campaign which culminated in the Battle of the Thames where Tecumseh was killed.  To make the project a bit easier to manage, we were divided into four groups of three, and each group was given a selection of geographically close sites.  (My group had all the sites in the Amherstburg/Windsor area.)

Tour of 1812 Sites

We started by taking a bus tour of most of the sites last fall.  We were accompanied by representatives from South West Ontario and Tecumseh Parkway, to give us some background on the area and the 1812 sites (as much of this was new to us.) We learned how after the Battle of Lake Erie, the armaments from Fort Amherstburg (present-day Fort Malden) were used to outfit the HMS Detroit, leaving British General Procter low on supplies and with little choice but to retreat from the approaching Americans lead by General  Harrison and Commodore Perry.  The leaders of the First Nations alliance, most notably the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, did not wish to retreat.  However, retreat they did, up the Thames River, until the two sides met on October 5, 1813 at the Battle of the Thames, just two miles outside of Fairfield.


It was a significant victory for the Americans, seeking revenge for what they considered the River Raisin Massacre.  It was also quite a blow to the First Nations - whose leader Tecumseh was killed during battle - and the British.  General Procter found himself court-martialed the next year as result of the retreat and the battle, effectively ending his military career.  (This has been your cliff-notes version of Procter's Retreat...)

Once the groups were decided and sites assigned, we commenced our secondary source research.  Books such as Glenn Stott's Greater Evils: War of 1812 in Southwestern Ontario, Sandy Antal's A Wampum Denied, and George Sheppard's Plunder, Profit, and Paroles: A Social History of the War of 1812 in Upper Canada were passed around the office, and each small group hunted for resources pertaining to their particular sites.  

We started to visualize what we wanted the app to look like, and how we hoped people would use it.  Grand visions of interactive time-lines, moving maps, and fancy interfaces left many of us feeling overwhelmed and in over our heads at first.  As we started to scale back and just concentrate on our content - developing an interpretive plan, and coming up with a narrative - the project started to seem more manageable.

After turning in our secondary source research report, we had an opportunity to talk with the company we were told would probably be handling the technical side of the app.  We had been contracted for content, they were taking the content and creating the actual app.  Reality set in as restrictions on images, audio, and video became a reality.  But at least now we had a framework we could work in.

Image from Windsor Community Museum

Following the winter break it was time for primary source research.  My group made plans in January for a trip back to Amherstburg and Windsor to spend the day at the Windsor Community Museum, as well as visiting the sites we hadn't had time to stop at on our first tour.  The visit to the museum was extremely helpful in acquiring many of the images that were ultimately used in the app.  We also spent many afternoons going over the resources at Western's Archive and Research Collections Centre, and hours pouring over digitized documents and images from Library and Archives Canada, National Archives and Records Administration, and the Library of Congress.

We turned in our carefully detailed primary source research reports, and it was time to start writing.  Hours of research now had to be summed up into 300 word text boxes with images and audio.  For some of us, keeping it short, sweet, and to the point was not easy.  We had to discuss with others what they were writing as well, to make sure not to waste precious words repeating ourselves.  Along with the 22 sites, we had also decided to address some of the themes we found reoccurring throughout the research, such as farming, transportation, and family participation during the War of 1812.  It was also necessary to provide an introduction, not only to the war, but also to Battle of Lake Erie to put the retreat in to context (as it is all about context...), and have a conclusion to the retreat and the war itself.  

Mock-Screen Shot for First Draft

Once assembled, this first draft needed to be edited.  We were taking content  about 29 different sites and themes, authored by 12 different people, and making it into one cohesive narrative.  That was a very long weekend for the group leaders and editors...


During the time between the first and second drafts were were thrown a curve-ball.  The partners had contracted an entirely different company to create the app.  The technical framework with which we had been working was going to change.  Work temporarily paused, and we knew that new specification from this company could change some of our plans.  How many images would there be per site?  What were the format requirement for the audio and video?  Was there a limit on the number of sites?  These were all important questions we had to address before we could start ordering digital copies of our images, paying for the rights to use them, and record our audio.

After a Skype call between our team, the partners, and Weever (the app company) we were all - for the most part - on the same page, and we kept working toward a final draft.  Weever was eager to start adding content as they were planning on a launch date in May, but we were still waiting for feedback from the partners on our second draft.  I had been serving as a large group facilitator, and I lost track of the number of email sent with images and audio.

Final Draft PowerPoint

Finally, I sent the last of the content to Weever, and gave Professor Mike Dove a hard copy of our final draft, along with a final budget and permissions for all of our images, audio, and video.  It is hard to express the relief that followed.  


There have been a few changes since turning in our final draft.  We were sent a temporary link to the app in progress, which I opened to discover our sites had been combined with dozens more in the south west Ontario region.  It had been decided rather than to do several small regional apps, to just do one large app.  This meant that while our narrative was still there, it was a bit lost among all the other sites.  There were also some edits that needed to be made to the content, and missing captions (which provided information about where we got our content - which was sometimes a condition of permission to use it.)  These issues are being addressed, and I look forward to having a final product I can proudly show to prospective employers when I start interviewing for a job this fall.

Like I said at the beginning, this whole process has been a learning experience.  Those of you who know me, know that I take great pride in my work, and like to have control over the process (that may be what lead me to the role of large group facilitator...) as well as the final product.  I had to keep reminding myself, especially toward the end of the project, that we were just providing the content.  It isn't solely our app, we were contracted to work on it.  

This also became part of one of the biggest lessons I learned about graduate school - it isn't always about the product, sometimes it's about the process.  Is this project what I envisioned it would be when we started? No, not even really close.  Did I learn a lot in the process?  Absolutely.  I researched in archives, made contacts with local historians, sought permission to use images, work on maintaining a project budget, wrote historical text for public consumption, leaned how to be flexible in a contract position, lead group meetings, and with my small group presented our project at a national conference.  So regardless if the end product is what I thought it would be, it was certainly a successful one!


Stay tuned for the Route 1812 app!  As soon as the final app is available I will be sure to let my faithful readers know!

Road Trip Plans!

It's only two days and counting until Adriana, Laura, and I hit the road and head to the National Council on Public History/Organization of American Historians 2012 Conference!  Things are a flurry of activity in the public history room of requirement as the semester comes to an end, and we all rush to finish papers and projects so as not to have them hanging over our heads during the conference.

We've already mapped out our drive, including meal breaks (breakfast at Cracker Barrel after we cross the border, lunch at the original Pizzeria UNO in downtown Chicago.)  We also hope to spend a couple hours walking around downtown Chicago - we even found a free app for walking tours.

We also have some plans for sightseeing in Milwaukee.  Adriana found a statue of the Fonz that we're going to check out.  Laura heard about a unique spy restaurant, for an evening when we feel like a night on the town. When we have some down time, I'd like to head over to the Historic Third Ward district and check out the Milwaukee Public Market.

I have a feeling that it is going to be a busy five days, as these are just the things we would like to do outside of the actual conference.  There is plenty in the conference program to keep us busy.  As I mentioned in my last post about our plans, I will be attending the speed networking session, new members breakfast, women in history luncheon, and serving as a volunteer at registration on the first day of the conference.  I've been looking over the sessions trying to decide what to attend, and there are so many choices!  There are times when it would be nice if I could be in three places at once!

I am looking forward to meeting new people (and seeing old friends - one of my fellow 2009 interns from the Baseball Hall of Fame is going to be there!)  I received notice of my mentoring match and will be meeting up with Mary Rizzo of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities on Thursday evening.  I'll also have a chance to mingle with fellow grad students on the Riverwest Bus Tour - which I'll be reviewing for The Public Historian.

Stay tuned for more road trip and conference updates! 

"Aaaaay, it'll be a great trip!"