WHAT IS CANADA: EXPLORING THE QUSTION OF IDENTITY
Objectives: - to identify and explore popular concepts of Canadian identity and nationalism.
- dispel the popular illusion that our history is boring and dull
- by looking at our past, students can realize a mutual understanding of people, events,
and other regions.
The following excerpts and suggestions from a variety of books may help guide your thinking.
In its broadest sense history is the study of the past. In non-literate societies, people passed
down oral traditions from one generation to the next, with each generation fashioning the story to
meet the needs of the time. When -written language was invented, history became fixed in texts. At
first professional historians focused on political and military events.
No matter how meticulously researched, most academic histories written before 1970 either
ignored or treated unsympathetically, women, people of different races, and issues relating to private
life. Working-class women and men and members of ethic groups who were not English, Scottish, or
French would have learned little about their forebears from reading Canadian history.
Another reason for the narrow focus is that history was written by a small elite of educated
white men to be read by others like themselves. Their interests understanding turned to war and
political developments in which they and their peers participated; and their interpretation was
usually from the point of view of the people who dominated such events. History of the Canadian
Peoples
Conrad- Finkel-Jaenen
Canadians worry more about their identity than most other peoples in the world do. Many
Canadian and non-Canadians believe the "Canadian fixation" is vaguely ridiculous. But our concern
has deep roots and is anything but ridiculous. It has to do with our very survival beside the most
powerful imperialist nation in history. Our history is a matter in tension, a matter of dialectic.
Canadian Identity Robin Mathews (1988)
When I compare our two peoples I do not intend to make individual comparisons, only to
demonstrate that, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, we have our own distinct identity
and our way at doing things and that part of that identity is our tendency to constant selfexamination. Pierre Burton
Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada, which the mere
presence of the United States has produced. We're different people from you and we're different
people because of you....
Living next to you is in some ways is like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly
and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.... It
should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada should project itself as a mirror
image of the United States.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
Topics for analysis:
- the critical issues facing Canada as a nation sharing the continent with the United States.
- the separate but interrelated pattern of historical development of Canada and the United
States.
- the major controversies and historians conflicting interpretations of events in the study of
Canadian history. Example- Louis Riel, The Valour and The Horror (dramatized documentary), etc.
- the causes of major events in Canadian history and the relationship of events in time.
- the historic relationship and continuing problems between Canada's two founding European
peoples, the French and the British.
- the struggle between strong centralized authority and regional forces
- the common shared experiences of the Canadian past which have transcended regional,
economic, social, cultural, and linguistic differences.
-the value of historical study fostering intellectual growth.
-the need for greater tolerance and understanding between the two founding peoples, the
French and British, in Canadian society.
- that Canada is continually being reinvented by being rewritten.
- there is no such thing as the Canadian Identity, we are no different than Americans.
- heroes as symbols of national pride and identity are absent in our traditions.
- survival is our forte and our destiny.
- Canadian author Margaret Atwood has described the Canadian- U.S. border as the longest
one-way mirror in the world when Canadians look at the United States
- the old version of Canadian history as a dull, dry, story of past politics and changing
governments is almost a faded memory. Rediscovering Canadian History
Paul Bennett
- in 400 years many people have taken physical things from us and there is a cry from my
people north and south of the border. Give us back our heritage.
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