History ain't dead, it just smells funny

The 25th Anniversary of "Who Killed Canadian History?"

By

James Pew

“It is now clear that school boards and municipal councillors, mayors and premiers are the ones who truly killed history. The current tone was set by Justin Trudeau and his cabinet early in their mandate as they removed Hector Langevin’s name from the building that houses the Prime Minister’s Office.”¹ - Patrice Dutil

The replacement of principled truth-seeking scholars rooted in evidentiary and empirical processes of knowledge production, by un-principled ideologically oriented moral-grandstanding opportunists is a very real and tragic thing that is occurring in Canadian education. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to distinguish between the two types of academics, especially for those who pay little attention to such matters.

But this is an extraordinarily unique and unprecedented thing which is happening in the northern part of the western hemisphere,  “(Canada) must be one of the few political entities to overlook its own cultural traditions - the European civilization on which our nation is founded - on the grounds that to do otherwise would systematically discriminate against those who come from other cultures.”²

Historians no longer simply piece together the various fragments of source documents, media releases, and public statements made by relevant figures in their various historiographical inquiries. Instead, they feel the need to include moral instruction, often without amply expanding on or exploring the context around which past circumstances or conditions may have arisen. This phenomenon was seen in the actions of British historians and British Officers (who acted as historians) in WWI. This is not a new thing. My long-form essay Israel, A Promised Land covers this strange Western habit of self-deprecating morality.

25 years ago, Canada’s most prolific historian, J.L. Granatstein published a controversial best-seller called Who Killed Canadian History?. In that work, Granatstein asserts that the rationale for the history taught in Canadian schools was political, not historical. And sexism and racism were being taught, not history. 

In the postmodern era, the priority of vast areas of history teaching and historiography, and Granatstein is far from the only academic who noticed this, transitioned from evidence and facts, to morals and emotions. Western oppression became the source of historiographical obsession. And the practice, which has shaped Western historiography since at least the turn of the twentieth century, of injecting moral judgements adjacent to facts and timelines, became entrenched. 

This has happened because important areas of historiography, and historical pedagogy, have been subsumed into social sciences. My 9 and 11 year old children do not have a history class. What they learn about history, which isn’t much, is in a class called “social studies.” My son, who is in grade 6, and who was never previously taught anything about the Holocaust, is learning about Nazis Germany’s persecution of the Jews in the most obscure way. His introduction to the Holocaust included a lesson pertaining to the MS St. Louis, a passenger ship carrying 907 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazis persecution that was refused entry into Canada in 1939.

The ship's Jewish passengers were safely returned to four European countries, but tragically 254 were later killed in the Holocaust.³ A terrible outcome. Indeed, one of the rare dark stains on Canada’s otherwise quite exemplary record of offering sanctuary to refugees. But if Canadians at the time had known that refusing entry to the MS St. Louis would result in the cold-blooded murder of 254 innocent people, would they have allowed entry? A question not raised in my son's class.

As well, what Canadians knew or didn’t know about the genocidal ambitions of the Nazis did not come up in my son’s classroom discussions. Indeed, that would be too complex and nuanced for 12 year old’s. They also did not discuss conditions in Canada at the time that may have played a role in the consequential decision to turn away the MS St. Louis. Nor did they mention the Evian Conference, which occurred the year prior to the MS St. Louis’ ill-fated arrival to Canada.

The Evian Conference of 1938 was held in the French resort town of Évian-les-Bains. There were 32 participating nations, including Canada, who were “to seek, by international agreement, avenues for an orderly resettlement of (Jewish) refugees from Germany and Austria.”⁴ Shockingly, at the close of the talks, none of the nations involved had offered to accept any Jewish refugees. 

From the London Spectator (1938):

"If the Conference has not been a complete failure, it has achieved little to boast about, all the States sympathizing and none desiring to admit refugees . Even the United States, as prime mover, offers no more than the quota."⁵

My son did not come away from his class with an impression that Canada was not alone in its reluctance to accept refugees. This, and other such lessons, seem as if they are designed to implant a sense of revulsion over Canada’s past failures, instead of patriotism over its achievements and victories. What a disservice to young Canadian learners. 

This cherry-picked event from history, which doesn’t really deal with the Holocaust, but assumes kids will appreciate related events that occurred over the backdrop of the Holocaust, is doubly misleading in that it presents Canada as a racist country hostile to refugees, before establishing that the opposite was (and is) overwhelmingly true throughout the arc of Canadian history up to the present. 

It’s not even clear if my son took away from the lesson that Hitler was the far bigger villain, compared to his “racist colonial” country of Canada.

Clearly, Canada eventually let in Jewish people, and people from all ethnicities. We became the world’s first multiculturalism, and our large cities are among the most cosmopolitan and multicultural places in the world. This needs to be established first for young learners of Canada’s story. Clearly established, before one starts teaching the exceptions to the rule. But my son is getting some weird blend of oddities presented as introductory material to larger subjects which hold historical conclusions opposite to the ones the cherry-picked exceptions portray. It only makes sense that these exceptional events are selected deliberately for political, not educational, reasons.

Twenty-five years ago, Granatstein wrote of Canadian schools, “The material taught stressed the existence of anti-Aboriginal, anti-Metis, and anti-Asian racism, as well as male sexism and discrimination against women, as if these issues were and always had been the primary identifying characteristics of Canada…The history taught is that of the grievers among us, the present-day crusaders against public policy or discrimination. The history omitted is that of the Canadian nation and people.”

Who Killed Canadian History? also criticized the teacher-curated practice whereby early exposure to Canadian history is random and discontinuous concerning time periods and individuals, and “without much regard for chronology.” Exactly what I have been experiencing with my kids, decades after Granatstein identified the problem.

Late last year The Hub published a series of essays and podcasts which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Who Killed Canadian History?.  The following paragraphs cover some of that discourse.

According to historian Patrice Dutil, who defended Granatstein in his 2023 piece, Granatstein “feared that history was deliberately misread to clobber majority populations for the errors of their great-grandfathers.” Even so, the weakness of Who Killed Canadian History?, in Dutil’s view, was due to Granatstein’s blame of “the anonymous bureaucrats” which “let the politicians off the hook by not naming any of them.” 

I have never met Professor Dutil, but I admire his work greatly, and I’m convinced we are soul brothers:

“The cost of not knowing history is much deeper, in my view. It creates a real disquiet and robs the community of its ability to find nuance in any dispute. Indeed, one could argue that the incoherence of a vast array of policy areas in this country — from cultural and global affairs to housing and homelessness — can be explained only by a general loss of historical consciousness.” Patrice Dutil

And, the following powerful words are well worth keeping in mind:

“Canada is not in a state of post-nationalism but is rather a place of hiber‑nation — a country that has fallen asleep and forgotten its past.” - Patrice Dutil

Ontario history teacher, Rory Gilfillan made the following poignant comment:

“The consequences of this ideology are now being reaped. We have repeatedly told a generation that, unlike their great grandparents, they can’t handle anything—and then have recoiled in disgust when it turns out they can’t. We have insisted that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, our country is bad and then lament the fact that most people can’t be bothered to vote anymore. We’ve been left with what Granatstein characterized (citing the famous 20th-century political scientist Gad Horowitz) as ‘the masochistic celebration of Canadian nothingness.’...It is not without some poetic justice that we now have an identity synonymous with an American-owned franchise that peddles tepid coffee and a multinational corporation that sells watery beer.” 

The Hub editor, and Historian Sean Speer discusses “the book’s thesis that the growing insularity and parochialism of academic historians and a broader retreat from a popularized history of the country represent negative developments that in the ensuing quarter century have contributed to Canada’s attenuation, complacency, and lack of common purpose.” 

History teacher, and author of the book Being Prime Minister, J.D.M. Stewart feels that “universities have eschewed political history and continue to dig down ever deeper into niche topics with limited value to helping Canadians understand each other.”

Historian David Webster, who clearly spends the majority of his time with his head placed inside a hole, covered over in sand (to where the neck meets the shoulders):

Not surprisingly, a historian and social studies educator at the University of British Columbia didn’t like Rory Gilfillan’s take:

Perhaps the most frustrating commentary came from the historian Thomas Peace who believes that no one killed Canadian history and we should simply move on. In Peace’s mind, Who Killed Canadian History? was “a divisive book that shaped the so-called History Wars of the late-1990s and 2000s.” Peace has that habit where he dismisses scholarship he doesn’t like (apparently, arguments that blames activists for anything), and attempts to convince his readers that this “bad” scholarship is guilty of the dismissals, instead of the truth - Peace is the dismissor! 

Here is a comment he made about my colleagues in the Indian Residential School Research Group, whom I assure readers, they do not dismiss evidence or facts, on the contrary, they unearth the type of evidence and facts that Peace likes to “dismiss” (to use his word):

“Political scientist Tom Flanagan feels similarly about the history of residential schools. His Indian Residential Schools Research Group (IRSRG) claims to be ‘a response to poor standards of research and reporting on the residential school system.’ A summary of this group’s views has recently been published in the book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools). According to journalist and IRSRG board member, Barbara Kay, this book ‘will stand as a testament to our era’s shameless abandonment of intellectual integrity in the service of divisive, anti-science, hate-laundering principle of ‘decolonization.’ Again, you can see the trite dismissal of scholars whose work does not align politically with the IRSRG project.”

Sorry TP, the only trite dismissal, is yours. Thanks for plugging our book though!!

I asked a friend and Canadian high school teacher for his thoughts. For obvious reasons he chose to remain anonymous:

“To be a history teacher in Canada is to understand self-censorship, fear of misstep and revisionism that so many other teachers must have felt behind the iron curtain. It is to see that decolonization is based on lies but to understand that truth is dangerous.”

When great teachers, like my good friend Jim McMurtry, refuse to self-censor, when they put children and the truth first, they get cancelled and humiliated. It is surprising that after Jim’s well publicized illiberal firing from his school in Abbotsford B.C., that any historians, like Thomas Peace et al, still feel that everything is fine with the teaching of Canadian history, and that the rest of us who feel it isn’t are just silly paranoid right-wingers who should get over it. Sorry Thomas, not going to happen.

___

Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Double Standard on Indigenous Violence

BREAKING NEWS: James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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1.  Past Imperfect | Literary Review of Canada (reviewcanada.ca)

2.  Preface to the Expanded Edition (2007) Who Killed Canadian History? (Pg Xii)

3. MS St. Louis | The Canadian Encyclopedia

4. The Rape of Palestine (Pg 489)

5. London Spectator (Issue of July 15, 1938)