A History of the Canadian Peoples

J.R. Miller is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan,
the author of Skyscrapers Hide in the Heavens: A History of Indian-White
Relations in Canada, and co-editor of the Canadian Historical Review.

University of Manitoba historian Jack Bumsted has abbreviated his
two-volume university history text to produce this treatment, presumably
aimed at a more popular audience. While the briefer version has its
strengths, shortcomings and errors will probably limit its appeal to
either a general readership or students.

The primary virtue of A History of the Canadian Peoples is its balanced
coverage of the history of Canada. Although there is a strong emphasis
on the 20th century—the first quarter of the book covers the period to
the end of the War of 1812, while the second takes the reader to
1918—geographically and thematically the volume is remarkably
even-handed. All regions of the country get respectful attention, and
the author’s careful balancing of political, economic, social, and
cultural history in each chapter is impressive.

Other attempts at providing comprehensive coverage are less successful.
Bumsted proficiently surveys scholarly knowledge on Native peoples to
the latter part of the 19th century, but his treatment of First Nations,
Métis, and Inuit declines in depth and perception thereafter. For
example, he gets the role of First Nations in the 1885 Northwest
Rebellion wrong, in spite of a significant body of recent literature
that demonstrates conclusively that Native leaders neither intended to
nor did join the Métis in their insurrection. Twentieth-century
coverage of Native peoples tails off, and when Bumsted does attempt to
deal with them—as in a section on constitutional challenges in the
late 20th century—he is not very successful. Also noteworthy in his
section on Native peoples and the constitutional future is the absence
of any reference to the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

Bumsted’s treatment is also marred by some howlers. Toronto was not
“sacked by the British” during the War of 1812. John A. Macdonald
was an important figure in the Liberal–Conservative Coalition—not
the “Liberal-Progressives”—in 1854. The British North America Act,
as Ontario Premier Mike Harris found out in 1998, did not leave
“education completely in the hands of the provinces.” And, finally,
prairie farmers in the late 19th century “preferred to purchase land
from companies set up by the great corporate” beneficiaries, not
“benefactors of government land grants.”

In spite of some commendable comprehensiveness, A History of the
Canadian Peoples falls short of the goal of providing a satisfactory
history of Canada in a single volume.