The Unwritten Rules of History
Three young women wearing knitted sweaters seated on a bench in the snow. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton in the middle. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. 1965. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
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If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I was recently talking about the Louis Riel podcast episode from Stuff You Missed in History. This blog post is based off of that original Twitter essay.
Special thanks to Krystl Raven, Catherine Ulmer, and Melissa Shaw for their help reviewing this blog post, and also to Krystl Raven and Adam Gaudry for reading recommendations on this subject! Finally, a big thank you to my friends on Facebook, who insisted that I needed to write this post.
As I was getting ready for bed the other night, I received a notification that a podcast that I occasionally listen to, Stuff You Missed in History Class, had a new episode. I clicked over to see what it was, and immediately felt uneasy. The subject was Louis Riel. Not that there is a problem with the subject, but in most cases, the history of Louis Riel is handled poorly.
I do want to make it clear here that I’m not trying to pick on Stuff You Missed in History Class. To be fair, the hosts of the show do not claim to be historians. And the show is not intended to be academically rigorous. It is for entertainment value, though the hosts do try their best to be accurate and provide a list of their sources.
However — and it is a big however — I believe that they failed in their due diligence to ensure that they accurately and fairly represented this particular subject, especially given the sensitive and political nature of it. And I know they can do better; I’ve listened to some great and well-sourced podcast episodes from this show (like their series on Redlining or their “Unearthed” episodes!) But, if you’re using a public platform to explain and disseminate information about history, the onus is on you to present your information accurately and fairly.
This blog post is not a re-telling of the history of Louis Riel. Rather, I focus on some of the major errors in the podcast episode and the ramifications of these mistakes. You may think that this is just another historian griping about some non-historians being inaccurate about random obscure facts that no one else cares about, but perpetuating certain dominant historical narrative can do great harm.
Inauguration de c première rame du métro à la Canadian Vickers, en présence notamment du cardinal Paul-Émile Léger et du maire Jean Drapeau. Août 1965. VM94-Md19-006. Archives de la Ville de Montréal/Inauguration of the first metro line at Canadian Vickers, in the presence of Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger and Mayor Jean Drapeau. August 1965. VM94-Md19-006. Archives of the City of Montreal. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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*Danielle Robinson get the credit for coming up with this title! She’s hilarious. 😉
So, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you know that this year Canada is celebrating it’s 150th birthday. While July 1st is technically the day that Canada was “born,” governments at all levels as well as a range of institutions have events planned for the entire year. I’ve mentioned a couple of these on various roundups, like the Canada150 series that many newspapers are running, featuring locals who made significant contributions to Canadian history.
All this sounds great, right?
So why is it that so many historians (and others) are endlessly grumbling about Canada150? Are we all killjoys? Do we hate Canada? Are we secretly lizard-people planning to take over the world? While I can’t comment on the last question 😉 I can tell you that no, most historians aren’t killjoys, nor do we hate Canada. But there are very important reasons why Canada150 is a very problematic campaign. So in today’s blog post, I’m going to talk about a few of the reasons why many Canadian historians start gnashing their teeth whenever someone brings up Canada150.
“‘The rebel maid’ – Montague F. Phillips will be presented by The Vancouver Opera Society under the direction of Jas. C. Welch, First produced in London England in 1921.” 19121. AM54 – Major Matthews collection. City of Vancouver Archives. (This is a “snipe,” is a glass lantern slide that would be shown in a movie aside from the film and/or trailers. This snipe was used in movie theatres in Vancouver during the 1920s.)
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Welcome back to our monthly series, “Upcoming Publications in Canadian History,” where I’ve compiled information on all the upcoming releases for the following month in the field of Canadian history from every Canadian academic press, all in one place. This includes releases in both English and French. To see last month’s releases, click here.
Mount Grady, Mount Burnham, village of Nakusp, and Rothwell Bay on Upper Arrow Lake, as seen from above Rothwell Point, on January 9, 1963. Arrow Lakes Historical Society, 1999-019-6 CC by 2.0
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Erickson, Glen E., “Tillicum posing with balloons in front of Canada Place (1986),” City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver Centennial Commission fonds AM1576-S6-12-F45-: 2011-010.2719 CC by 2.0
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