1867 competes with
1812, 1608 and 1982 as
‘founding’ dates in
Canadian history
“I’m convinced that the reason people are putting 1812 in
there is because of all the visibility its gotten over the
past year — otherwise I don’t think you’d ever get that
percentage describing it as one of the founding events,”
said ACS executive director Jack Jedwab.
BY RANDY BOSWELL, POSTMEDIA NEWS JUNE 24, 2013
Jedwab suggested, though, that the heightened sense of
the War of 1812 as a foundational moment in Canadian
history may be fleeting, particular as the country ramps
up its focus on the Confederation story — including key
constitutional conferences in Charlottetown and Quebec
City in 1864 — leading up the 2017 anniversary.
Some critics have accused the Conservatives of using the
War of 1812 anniversary to advance a “warrior nation”
reshaping of Canadian history that favours military
struggles over peaceable achievements in the national
narrative.
“By the time we get to 2018, after the inundation of the
150th (anniversary),” said Jedwab, “the 1867 result will
go back up again — which would be yet further testimony
of how political events shape our understanding of what
these founding events are.”
Fully one-third of Quebec respondents surveyed (33 per
cent) said the 1608 birth of New France, recently
highlighted during the 400th anniversary of Quebec City,
was the most important founding event for the country.
Fathers of Confederation at the Charlottetown
Conference of 1864, showing Canada's future first Prime
Minister John A. Macdonald, seated centre front
Photograph by: Handout , Postmedia News
As Canada approaches the 150th anniversary of
Confederation in 2017, a bare majority of citizens
considers the 1867 deal struck by Sir John A. Macdonald
and his fellow architects of the BNA Act the “founding”
event in the country’s history, according to a new
national survey.
While 57 per cent of Canadians credit the Fathers of
Confederation with the seminal act of nation-building, the
War of 1812 — fought more than a half-century before
the union of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, but currently the focus of a contentious series
of bicentennial commemorations strongly promoted by
the federal Conservative government — is now seen by
15 per cent of the population as the event “most strongly
associated” with Canada’s birth, shows the poll
commissioned by the Montreal-based Association for
Canadian Studies.
About 44 per cent of Quebec residents chose
Confederation in 1867 and just six per cent identified the
War of 1812 as the key moments, the lowest results for
both of those dates among the country’s provinces or
regions.
Notably, a significant proportion of younger Canadians —
15 per cent of those aged 18 to 24, or more than one in
every seven — ranked the 1982 patriation of the
Constitution and simultaneous adoption of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the No. 2 nationbuilding moment after Confederation.
The 30th anniversary of that occasion was conspicuously
downplayed by the Conservative government last year,
prompting criticism from former Liberal prime minister
Jean Chrétien, justice minister in the Pierre Trudeau
government that spearheaded the ’82 agreements.
The web-panel survey of 1,500 Canadians was carried out
by Leger Marketing from June 10-12, and has a margin of
error of 2.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
Respondents were asked: “Which of the following years
would you say is the most strongly associated with the
founding of Canada?” They were offered several options,
and the nationwide results were as follows: 1867
Confederation (57 per cent), War of 1812 (15 per cent),
1608 founding of New France (12 per cent), 1982
patriation of the Constitution (seven per cent), 1763
Royal Proclamation ending the Seven Years’ War (five per
cent), 1774 Quebec Act (three per cent), 1837 rebellions
and 1931 Statute of Westminster (each about one per
cent).
The Conservative government and a host of other
stakeholders across Canada — including universities,
heritage groups, municipalities and museums — are
currently planning ways to celebrate the upcoming
sesquicentennial of Confederation on a scale similar to
the 1967 centennial, which coincided with Montreal
hosting that year’s “Expo” world fair and sparked a
powerful surge in Canadian nationalism.
Heritage Minister James Moore has promised to lay the
groundwork for a major, nation-wide binge of patriotism
in 2017 and has already announced the planned renaming
of the Gatineau, Que.-based Canadian Museum of
Civilization — and the revamping of the the “Canadian
Museum of History” to better showcase Canada’s
progress and achievements since 1867 — as the country’s
flagship project for the 150th anniversary of
Confederation.
A second section of the ACS survey tapped Canadians for
their views on the thorny question of which groups or
regions should be seen as the principal “founders” of
Canada.
There is, in effect, no consensus when it comes to the
“longstanding debate about the founding partners” of the
country, Jedwab stated. He noted that the idea Canada
was founded as a “partnership between British and
French” is the “closest thing to an agreed-upon
narrative,” but even that No. 1-ranked response garnered
only 29-per-cent support among Canadians.
Albertans (39 per cent) and British Columbians (37 per
cent) had the most strongly held view that Canada was a
bicultural creation of the British and French.
About 26 per cent of respondents said Canada was best
described as a country founded as a three-way
partnership between French, British and Aboriginal
Peoples, while 23 per cent viewed the nation mainly as a
compact between the four provinces involved in
Confederation in 1867.
Residents of Manitoba and Saskatchewan were most
likely to see Canada as the product of a tripartite, BritishFrench-Aboriginal arrangement (34 per cent) and least
likely (12 per cent) to see it as founded by the four
Confederation-pact provinces of New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, Quebec and Ontario.
While just three per cent of those surveyed said Canada’s
main founding partnership was between Catholics and
Protestants, about 12 per cent opted for a more ethnoculturally specific listing of founders that included
Aborginal, French, English, Irish, Scottish and Acadian.
Jedwab said he believes that the main constituent
communities of so-called “British” Canada at the time of
Confederation — specifically Irish, Scottish and English —
were recognized at the time as distinct players in the
population and continue to resonate as important
ancestral associations for many Canadians today.
He noted that in the 2011 census, nearly as many
Canadians identified themselves as having Scottish (4.7
million) or Irish (4.5 million) roots as there are people in
the present-day populations of Scotland (5.3 million) and
Ireland (4.6 million) themselves.
The fact that “Canadians of Scottish origin are closing in
on the numbers of Scots of Scotland,” Jedwab said,
“might instill pride in (Glasgow-born) John A. Macdonald
were he with us today.”
© Copyright (c) Postmedia Network Inc.
Boswell, R. (2013, June 24). 1867 competes with 1812, 1608 and 1982
as ‘founding’ dates in Canadian history. Retrieved April 22,
2015, from
http://www.canada.com/life/1867+competes+with+1812+1
608+1982+founding+dates+Canadian+history/8572618/story
.html