First Contact

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

The Canada: A People’s History series features large-format books
printed on glossy stock with many pictures. They are designed for a
generation of students whose sources of choice are graphic, kinetic,
oral, and electronic. The texts frequently refer to the related video
versions of the series found in school AV departments.

They are also a product of the current conviction that history must
have present relevance if it is to be selected by educational consumers
from the vast choices laid out in the buffet of studies. First Contact
discusses the most recent contacts: land claims and self-government.
Explorers and Pathfinders presents a half-page photo of William Shatner
as Captain Kirk, and devotes two pages to Canadian achievements in
space. Rebellions concludes with the controversy over Aboriginal fishing
rights, the status of Quebec, the emergence (or modern manifestations)
of terrorism, and the merits of evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary
process. This pedagogical imperative is reinforced by defining
situations that will encourage student role-playing.

The series is also the most recent statement of Canadian conventional
wisdom. Aboriginal people are victims of settler rapacity and the time
to settle accounts has arrived. Multiculturalism is virtually a Canadian
invention and perhaps its greatest achievement. The progressive
(liberal) instinct is good; the conservative (tory) instinct is bad. Why
be satisfied to create one nation (that, after all, is an American
ideal) when on can have many First Nations and a Quebec Nation as well?
Given the project’s objectives, the three books reviewed here are
excellent examples of their type, replete with the most up-to-date
methods and resources, striking covers, arresting pictures and nicely
trimmed “sound bites” (segments of text). All are recommended.