J.L. Granatstein | ||||
Canadian historian, former Professor of History, York University, Director-General of the Canada War Museum, author of more than 30 books including Who Killed Canadian History (1998, Harper Collins) | ||||
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| Click here for an essay by J.L. Granatstein | ||||
| The key to understanding our civic institutions, British history, as been eliminated from the classroom because the British are seen as just another ethnic group deserving of no special attention. from "History as Victimology" in Great Questions of Canada, Rudyard Griffiths, ed., Stoddard Publishing, Toronto | ||||
| The Canadian experiment, for all our current preoccupations, has been one of success, not failure. from Who Killed Canadian History | ||||
| Talk of separatism, and not only in Quebec, is in the air. The nation is fragile indeed, and one reason for this lamentable state of affairs might well be the lack of a history that binds Canadians together. It is not that we do not have such a history. It is simply that we have chosen not to remember it. Feb. 01, 1998 - from Who Killed Canadian History | ||||
| History is important ... because it is the way a nation, a people, and an individual learn who they are, where they came from, and how and why their world has turned out as it has. We do not simply exist in a contemporary world. We have a past, if only we would try to grapple with it. History teaches us a sense of change over time. History is memory, inspiration, and commonality - and a nation without memory is every bit as adrift as an amnesiac wandering the streets. History matters, and we forget this truth at our peril. Feb. 01, 1998 - from Who Killed Canadian History | ||||
| The values and traditions of Canadian life should be force-fed to [immigrants]; history should be explained in ways that demonstrate how and why we have regularly settled our disputes without force, how our political system has functioned, and why we have on many occasions gone to war or joined alliances, not for aggressive reasons, but to protect our democratic ideals. Those are the reasons immigrants come here, after all. But do we teach this past to our newcomers? Not a chance. ... Instead the history that is taught focuses on Canada's many sins: Canadian racism, Canadian sexism, Canadian abuses of human and civil rights - these are all studied at length in a well-intentioned, but misguided, attempt to educate children about the need for tolerance. Aug. 28, 1999 - from "A politically correct history leads to a distorted past and a bleak future", published in the National Post newspaper | ||||
| Our teaching of the past ... focuses on victimology ... Sometimes these tales [of historical abuse] are accurate, but only sometimes. Not everyone was or is a victim, despite the clamorous legal claims of the present. Aug. 28, 1999 - from "A politically correct history leads to a distorted past and a bleak future", published in the National Post newspaper | ||||
