Canadian Historians – Agents of Unity or Disunity?

Canadian Historians - Agents of Unity or Disunity?(f.1) Since 1980, Canada has gone through three very divisive referenda, the patriation of the constitution, and the Meech Lake process in attempts to redefine federalism, Quebec's place inside or out of Canada, and relations between the citizen and the state. During these debates of vital national importance Canadian historians, with a few notable exceptions, have been rather silent and certainly have not played the role of interpreters of the Canadian identity as had the preceeding generation. This silence has been sharply criticized by Michael Bliss (1991 - 92) who argues that national history has been abandoned in favour of more locally focused studies centring on region, class, ethnicity and gender and sees this as one of the symptoms, if not the cause, of the sundering of Canada. Bliss's article raises fundamental questions about the nature of history, its practice in Canada, and the relationship between the scientific study of history and its dissemination in the general public. Has there ever been an integrated national vision of Canada's past? Has Canadian historians' work become so narrow that it has no relevance for the wider public? Is the scientific study of history compatible with an active participation in political debate? Canadian historiography has never been unified, and the two linguistic traditions are as different from one another as from foreign historiographies. No consensual view has ever existed that could reconcile all Canadians. The most evident manifestation of this lack of unity is the existence of two linguistic solitudes, as Carl Berger (1976) noted: Canadian history omits any systematic consideration of French - Canadian writing. The two language traditions have, in historical thought as well as in other non - political spheres, occasionally touched and intersected, but in general they have been preoccupied with the backgrounds of two rather different 'nations.' The treatment of different regions is also contentious, with central Canadian dominance often suspected and feared. The Atlantic region, for example, perceives itself as neglected and has some cause for this perception. In volume five of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (those who died between 1801 and 1820), people active in those four provinces were under - represented in comparison to Ontario, with about 25 entries per 10,000 population as opposed to 40. The Canadian Centenary series showed the same bias, with four volumes on Quebec and Ontario from the Conquest to 1857 as opposed to one for Atlantic Canada. This lack of a unified vision is reinforced by the fact that education is a provincial jurisdiction and Canada, unlike most contemporary societies, has not had a national debate about the meaning of our country's history. As the Globe and Mail's Record Gwyn recently commented, the media shies away from discussing such matters because there would be no national audience. In English Canada, the main thrust of traditional political history was the peaceful evolution under the stewardship of great statesmen of British North America from Colony to Nation within the context of the British Empire/Commonwealth. Canadian experience was defined in how it differed from that of our southern neighbours, retaining British institutions in the creation of a democratic state without revolution. The historians that Berger analysed were profoundly nationalistic, but their nationalism can often been seen as a mere extension of British imperialism. Writing in a time when the Tawney - Weber thesis was in fashion, there could be no doubt of the superiority of Anglo - Saxon, Protestant values; French Canada was portrayed as a cultural and intellectual backwater. With the notable exception of W.L. Morton, historians of this era lived and worked in southern Ontario. During most of their careers, the centre of their world was a dour Calvinist town peopled by descendants of British immigrants: 85 per cent of the population of Toronto was of British origin and almost 80 per cent was Protestant from the 1920s to the 1950s. …

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