First Drafts: Eyewitness Accounts from Canada's Pasts

David E. Smith is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan. He is the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents, The Invisible Crown, and Republican Option in
Canada, Past and Present.

The 250 “eyewitness accounts” that constitute First Drafts begin
with the Vikings in Vinland and conclude with a report by Christie
Blatchford on the 2002 Olympics. The eyewitnesses—poets, priests,
politicians, explorers, authors, aristocrats, and others—speak of war
and peace, prosperity and depression, freedom and restraint, disaster
and courage, and much more.

The language of First Drafts is taut, not turgid, as befits the events
and persons who are its subjects. In “Riel’s Last Interview,”
Nicholas Flood Davin describes his subject as a “genius manqué.” In
“A Communist Goes to Jail” (1931), Frederick Griffin says of the
trial of Tim Buck (leader of the Canadian Communist Party) and his
compatriots: “Their character was not in question, merely their ideas
and ideals.” As they filed from the court “only a wave of Buck’s
hand showed that they were really men and not ideas who were going to
jail.”

First Drafts is more than the sum of its tales and tellers: Canada’s
story emerges out of this cacophony of voices. What the editors make
clear, and for this their readers give thanks, is that Canada is not the
product of some sanctioned narrative but the creation of individuals
(high and low) who, by these accounts, were articulate and literate and,
most of all, independent.