Canadian History X

by RAF KATIGBAK

Shortly after publishing last week’s column “Secretly Canadian,” where I delicately outlined how little Americans seem to know about how we do things in the Great White North (i.e. pretty much the same, but with an accent), the following email appeared in my Inbox:

Howdy!

Be careful... I’m American, and I betcha I know as much if not more about Canada than you do :-)

In reverse order, and without looking it up, how many Prime Ministers of Canada can you name?

I just got 8 out of the past 9. Then for premiers of Quebec, I get 5 out of 8.

And wasn’t it just last month that you were raving about Taco Bell? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I just sense some jealousy.

Hope all else is well.

—

Zeke

Zeke’s Gallery

And while I have to argue with my good Mr. Zeke that I consider Taco Bell a force of nature whose power could never be claimed by any one single nation-state or contained by a topographic boundary, I would also have to concede to his main point: most Americans may not know so much about Canada, but Canadians don’t really know that much either. How many of you, dear readers, can take up his challenge naming Canadian political leaders in reverse chronological order? I must say I tried and thought I had fared well, until I realized that William Shatner’s captaining of the Enterprise doesn’t count.

Why is it that I know as much, if not more, about American history than Canadian history? Is it because my generation grew up on American Sesame Street, and that I dreamed about hanging on an American inner-city stoop next to a Puerto Rican couple, a deaf New York city librarian and a green guy living in a garbage can?

Or was it because the main requirement for teaching Canadian history and social studies seems to be either a voice that sounds like gravel in a coffee grinder or a monotone cadence so hypnotic that you could put a fully tweaked meth addict to sleep.

Here’s the painful truth: American history is sexier than Canadian history. Now I don’t mean “sexy” in an “I would love to see Betsy Ross and Harriet Tubman in a tag-team interracial Jell-o gangbang” kind of way, but that American history is presented in a manner that appeals to our natural gravitation to myths and legend. Where Americans celebrate their heroes and their rugged individualism, Canadians like to celebrate the collective and how we all hold hands and chant together in unison and solve the world’s problems with a pat on the back and a piping hot cup of good feelings. Which is nice if you’re into a happy mosaic of cultures living in harmony, but for kids trying to learn our nation’s past, this translates to catching some zeds during Mr. Arthurson’s third period lecture about the Grand Trunk Railway.

We need to find out that there’s more to Canadian history than the cringe-y cardboard acting of those “A Part of Our Heritage” shorts—which often just left me feeling like, “Yay! We invented basketball and Superman! Guess who took those ideas and actually ran with them? U-S-A, U-S-A!”

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We have a great history, and it’s just as dramatic, exciting and fucked up as America’s. We need to shake up our history classes in the same way that Lyndon B. Johnson grabbed Lester Pearson by the collar and shook the shit out of him after Pearson’s anti-Vietnam speech (Google that shit—cr-iz-azy).

Did you know John A. MacDonald was a complete drunk and a bit of a jerk? Did you know how I discovered this? Reading Chester Brown’s comic strip biography of Louis Riel—possibly the most entertaining Canadian history book I ever read. It’s a book that should be essential reading for every Canadian kid, if anything, just to get them in touch with this one idea: history is about people, not lists of dates and facts. It’s made up of stories involving imperfect humans that sometimes do crazy shit.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca