What do you have against Canadian history?
That’s the question Conservative MPs are getting ready to ask opposition MPs. When the House of Commons Heritage Committee decided last week to hold a thorough review of Canadian history, they knew criticism was sure to follow.
The Conservative government’s commemorations of historical events and its funding cuts to important historical institutions such as Library and Archives Canada have created a continuous small froth of controversy. This was especially so around the commemorations of the War of 1812, commemorations that turned out, despite some riveting TV commercials that seemed to be channelling Mel Gibson, to be less “yee-haw!” and more “ho-hum.”
The Heritage Committee has given itself an eccentric mandate, including investigating how Canadian history is taught in schools (both primary and post-secondary), a review of federal, provincial and municipal programs designed to preserve history and heritage, and an assessment of the overall way Canadians can access their history including, rather randomly, the official recorder of Parliament, Hansard.
Cue the critics, and the obvious response: education isn’t a federal responsibility. This was NDP MP Libby Davies’ line of attack in Parliament on Friday. Yet the attack just elicits the rejoinder: What do you have against Canadian history? Or, to put it in Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq’s words: “We have been very clear about wanting Canadians to reconnect with their proud history and heritage.” Who can argue against this? It’s like saying Mother’s Day is too commercialized. Do you want to be the one not to send flowers to the person who gave birth to you? Canadian history, at least in this attractively general form, is mother’s milk. You can’t but be for it.
The reality of Canadian history is more complex, fraught and divisive. My guess is that no one in Parliament really wants to talk about Canadian history, probably not even the NDP, given its strong base of support in Quebec.
There is no single Canadian history, and Thomas Mulcair’s party sits astride the greatest dividing line of them all in how those histories are understood. Mulcair made headlines last week by criticizing the Supreme Court of Canada for failing to fully investigate allegations of impropriety by former chief justice Bora Laskin in the lead-up to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982. It may have played well in Quebec, but Mulcair will only earn himself enemies in the rest of Canada for these comments.
The Conservative government isn’t especially interested in investigating the complexity of our history either. After all, here was a minister speaking of our “proud history and heritage.” Sounds good.
But this is from the same Conservative government that also, to its credit, officially apologized to aboriginal Canadians for the Residential Schools disaster. Not much to be proud of in this history of abusive colonialism.
The Heritage Committee’s plan to review our “proud” heritage sounds like a simplistic counterpoint to a common stereotype about Canadian history today. This is the view espoused by Jack Granatstein in his book, Who Killed Canadian History? He claimed that too much history today is focused on the injustices in our past. School teachers, professors and bureaucrats need to do more, he argued, to celebrate the history Canadians can be proud of. Granatstein is right that we shouldn’t just teach “shame on you” history; but neither should we just whitewash injustice in a celebration of heroes and patriotism.
The last thing we want is another version of the Citizenship Guide fiasco. When the Conservative government rewrote the Canadian Citizenship Guide several years ago, it threw out or downplayed many of the Liberal achievements in Canadian history and replaced them with heaps of military history and a celebration of the Crown.
Some activist academics responded by publishing their own citizenship guide. Yet if the Harper guide was all “rah-rah” Canada, the academics’ guide was a decided downer. Reading it, you’d wonder why anybody would want to come to this country.
For a large number of Canadians, “our” history isn’t ours; it’s somebody else’s. For much of the past, this land we now call Canada was aboriginal space, a colony of France, or a vast if sparsely populated part of the British Empire. Canada didn’t officially exist until 1867 and for a century after that, many Canadians still thought of themselves as British subjects. During this time Canada was decidedly white, and almost exclusively and vigorously Christian. It didn’t look anything like the Canada we know today. That’s what makes Canadian history fascinating — the exotic differences in what people thought and how they lived, the odd echoes of familiarity, and the fascinating and bumpy route between then and now.
It would be nice if the Heritage Committee could actually allow for a real inquiry into Canadian history. Such an investigation would be wide-ranging, and rambunctious. It wouldn’t just be limited to the smattering of topics that the Heritage Committee is suggesting.
The committee would have to speak to a great many more people — and different kinds of Canadians — than it is planning to. It might also come to some surprising conclusions.
On this last front, and on most of the others, I’m not hopeful. And I don’t have anything against Canadian history.
Christopher Dummitt is an associate professor of Canadian history at Trent University. He writes at the Everyday History blog, christopherdummitt.blogspot.ca.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Christopher Dummitt
That’s the question Conservative MPs are getting ready to ask opposition MPs. When the House of Commons Heritage Committee decided last week to hold a thorough review of Canadian history, they knew criticism was sure to follow.
The Conservative government’s commemorations of historical events and its funding cuts to important historical institutions such as Library and Archives Canada have created a continuous small froth of controversy. This was especially so around the commemorations of the War of 1812, commemorations that turned out, despite some riveting TV commercials that seemed to be channelling Mel Gibson, to be less “yee-haw!” and more “ho-hum.”
The Heritage Committee has given itself an eccentric mandate, including investigating how Canadian history is taught in schools (both primary and post-secondary), a review of federal, provincial and municipal programs designed to preserve history and heritage, and an assessment of the overall way Canadians can access their history including, rather randomly, the official recorder of Parliament, Hansard.
Cue the critics, and the obvious response: education isn’t a federal responsibility. This was NDP MP Libby Davies’ line of attack in Parliament on Friday. Yet the attack just elicits the rejoinder: What do you have against Canadian history? Or, to put it in Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq’s words: “We have been very clear about wanting Canadians to reconnect with their proud history and heritage.” Who can argue against this? It’s like saying Mother’s Day is too commercialized. Do you want to be the one not to send flowers to the person who gave birth to you? Canadian history, at least in this attractively general form, is mother’s milk. You can’t but be for it.
The reality of Canadian history is more complex, fraught and divisive. My guess is that no one in Parliament really wants to talk about Canadian history, probably not even the NDP, given its strong base of support in Quebec.
There is no single Canadian history, and Thomas Mulcair’s party sits astride the greatest dividing line of them all in how those histories are understood. Mulcair made headlines last week by criticizing the Supreme Court of Canada for failing to fully investigate allegations of impropriety by former chief justice Bora Laskin in the lead-up to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982. It may have played well in Quebec, but Mulcair will only earn himself enemies in the rest of Canada for these comments.
The Conservative government isn’t especially interested in investigating the complexity of our history either. After all, here was a minister speaking of our “proud history and heritage.” Sounds good.
But this is from the same Conservative government that also, to its credit, officially apologized to aboriginal Canadians for the Residential Schools disaster. Not much to be proud of in this history of abusive colonialism.
The Heritage Committee’s plan to review our “proud” heritage sounds like a simplistic counterpoint to a common stereotype about Canadian history today. This is the view espoused by Jack Granatstein in his book, Who Killed Canadian History? He claimed that too much history today is focused on the injustices in our past. School teachers, professors and bureaucrats need to do more, he argued, to celebrate the history Canadians can be proud of. Granatstein is right that we shouldn’t just teach “shame on you” history; but neither should we just whitewash injustice in a celebration of heroes and patriotism.
The last thing we want is another version of the Citizenship Guide fiasco. When the Conservative government rewrote the Canadian Citizenship Guide several years ago, it threw out or downplayed many of the Liberal achievements in Canadian history and replaced them with heaps of military history and a celebration of the Crown.
Some activist academics responded by publishing their own citizenship guide. Yet if the Harper guide was all “rah-rah” Canada, the academics’ guide was a decided downer. Reading it, you’d wonder why anybody would want to come to this country.
For a large number of Canadians, “our” history isn’t ours; it’s somebody else’s. For much of the past, this land we now call Canada was aboriginal space, a colony of France, or a vast if sparsely populated part of the British Empire. Canada didn’t officially exist until 1867 and for a century after that, many Canadians still thought of themselves as British subjects. During this time Canada was decidedly white, and almost exclusively and vigorously Christian. It didn’t look anything like the Canada we know today. That’s what makes Canadian history fascinating — the exotic differences in what people thought and how they lived, the odd echoes of familiarity, and the fascinating and bumpy route between then and now.
It would be nice if the Heritage Committee could actually allow for a real inquiry into Canadian history. Such an investigation would be wide-ranging, and rambunctious. It wouldn’t just be limited to the smattering of topics that the Heritage Committee is suggesting.
The committee would have to speak to a great many more people — and different kinds of Canadians — than it is planning to. It might also come to some surprising conclusions.
On this last front, and on most of the others, I’m not hopeful. And I don’t have anything against Canadian history.
Christopher Dummitt is an associate professor of Canadian history at Trent University. He writes at the Everyday History blog, christopherdummitt.blogspot.ca.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Christopher Dummitt
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