It’s unlikely that Canada was born on the bloody slopes of Vimy Ridge or in the cockpit of a Halifax bomber flying straight and level through flak bursts at twenty thousand feet, but Granatstein was right: the stories we tell matter, and the ones we teach to our students (and certainly the ones we don’t) at best generate indifference and at worse encourage self-loathing.
As nationalist historians and conservative scholars have slowly yet steadily vanished from campus, the new historians’ ability to defend their ideas and perspectives has atrophied. What’s left are empty claims of bad faith, misinformation, or denialism.
gathered some of our favourite contributors here to nominate some Canadians they thought made a positive impact, no matter how big or small, on Canada and the world in 2023.
If Granatstein’s ideas and arguments were already dead by the time that his book was released, the intellectual currents that he identified have moved so fast in the subsequent quarter century that even his biggest critic hasn’t been able to keep up.
The broader shift toward “sociological” history education is an approach that rejectes narrative in favour of relativism and heavily thematic learning.
This week’s Hub Roundtable discusses the controversy over the congressional testimonies of three major American university presidents on the presence of antisemitism on university campuses. They also discuss the 25th anniversary of J. L. Granatstein’s famous book, Who Killed Canadian History?, and its legacy and ongoing relevance.
It is not that often that a book published in Canada resonates 25 years later, but Jack Granatstein’s Who Killed Canadian History? is as relevant today as it was in 1998.
In the past decade, as Canadian educational institutions have attempted to grapple with this country’s complex past, the teaching of Canadian history has undergone a shift toward “decolonization.” Now, historians…
Immigration has not been a major dividing line in Canadian politics. But the consensus on the issue may be changing. New data from the Canadian Century Initiative finds that there has been a significant increase in Canadians who believe that Canada has too much immigration.
What if we could build a common identity, inculcate a shared national vision, and address some of our economy’s biggest challenges all at once? Eighteen-year-old Canadians should be required to perform a mandatory year of service in the military or caring for seniors or children.
