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Transcript - Who Killed Canadian History? 25 Years Later - w/ J.D.M. Stewart

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Table of Contents

Ian Van Harten (00:01.794) All right, JDM Steward, it's good of you to be here.

James Stewart (00:06.83) Thanks for having me on Ian.

Ian Van Harten (00:09.935) So why don't you just introduce yourself a little bit and let people know a bit about who you are and what you do.

James Stewart (00:17.909) Well, I have been a high school history teacher for 30 years. I actually recently retired from teaching history itself. But I guess, you know, the career story is that I've always loved Canadian history and I decided to get into teaching and felt that that was a great way to try to teach kids about the beauty of history, teach young people about

the country and what it's all about. along the same lines as while I was teaching, started to, I mean, I've always been a writer since I was a kid. You know, it's interesting when you talk to people and you see what are the things in your life that have actually carried a narrative arc since you were a young person. And those are generally pretty important things to a person. And for me, certainly Canada has been part of that.

Canadian history has been a part of that and so has writing. And so I've also done some writing and my first book came out in 2018 and it was called Being Prime Minister. And I don't know, maybe we'll talk a little bit about that book later. But I've always done a lot of freelance writing in newspapers and other forums to write about Canadian history and political figures and sometimes sports history. So I'm a teacher and I'm a writer and

I live in Toronto as I have for 25 plus years.

Introducing Granatstein's 'Who Killed Canadian History?'

Ian Van Harten (01:52.738) Great. So, so yeah, so we're going to be talking about this book by Jack Granitstein, Who Killed Canadian History, which is about how little most Canadians know about Canadian history and some problems with the way it's being taught. And some other topics too that we'll be getting into. But I'm wondering as a way of getting us started, if you can kind of pick up on what you're saying and talk a bit more about what got you interested in Canadian history.

James Stewart (01:59.041) Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ian Van Harten (02:21.26) in the first place, especially since so few people apparently do get interested in it.

James Stewart (02:24.567) Good.

James Stewart (02:28.181) Yeah, well let me pick up on a couple of threads here. First, your mention of Jack Granitestein's book, Who Killed Canadian History, which came out in 1998. And at that time in my life, I was actually teaching history in Panama. I did a couple of years overseas. And I wrote Jack Granitestein a letter when the book came out. And I said, know, what a great book this is. I really agree with you.

And he wrote back to me, and I still have a copy of the letter. Because he wrote back to me, he said, what the hell are you doing in Panama? We need you back here in Canada. And so I always kept that letter on the bulletin board of my desk at school. I guess part of my feeling about Canadian history and really even maybe we want to call it Canadian sovereignty, Canadian identity.

When I was growing up as a teenager in the 1980s, felt that Canada has always suffered from this lack of identity and a great Americanization in the way we viewed the world, the way we viewed our own country. And I think one of the reasons I wanted to get into teaching Canadian history was to teach what our story was so that people knew what our perspective was as opposed to, you know,

everybody would know George Washington was the first American president, but no one would know who the first Prime Minister of Canada was when they were a kid growing up. And so I wanted to fight against that. And I just feel that if a country really wants to understand itself and to have an identity, you need to understand the history of the country. So I think that's part of why I went to be a history teacher. And I started my teaching career in 1994.

Granite Steen's book comes out four years later. And it was right at the beginning of my teaching career, and it really animated it for my entire career. In fact, I would use quotations from his book. At the beginning of the school year, you would have a night where parents would come in and find out what are the courses that their children are taking, what are they all about. And so when I would present to them that, I'm to be teaching your child Canadian history.

James Stewart (04:50.037) and I'd have a little slideshow and I would always have a quote from Granitestein's book, the one about, you know, a nation that doesn't know its past is like somebody walking around, like an amnesiac walking around the streets. just, don't know who they are. So that's why I got into teaching and that's sort of how Jack's book has always touched me.

Ian Van Harten (05:06.574) Hmm.

Has Canadian Historical Awareness Improved?

Ian Van Harten (05:14.798) Hmm. Well, yeah. So let's get into some of the topics that he raises in this book. The one of the big ones is just the massive amount of ignorance that exists amongst Canadians about Canadian history. And so he, he cited a bunch of surveys and data that, that came out to kind of verify, verify this. But as you say, the book came out in 1998. That was a little over 25 years ago.

James Stewart (05:27.607) Thank

Ian Van Harten (05:42.53) Morning, if you can speak to what's the state of things now? Has anything changed? Has it gotten any better?

James Stewart (05:48.919) It's good question and it's hard to know the answer in a lot of detail. I guess I would say the short answer is that not a lot has changed. So not a lot has changed because we still are fighting the battles of trying to get Canadians to know more history. The same number of provinces that required a high school Canadian history course, there's been no improvement in that regard.

I think in some way the positive side of things I think is that I think we're a bit more aware of the importance of Canadian history now, but we just haven't done enough. We haven't sustained that effort over a long period of time. Let me give you a couple of examples. So Jack's book comes out in 1998, which as you say is more than 25 years ago.

I think the fact that we're talking about the book 27 years later speaks about the impact of that book. But in 2001 is when CBC's Canada, People's History comes out. And this was a landmark television series that millions of Canadians watched and it got used in a lot of high school history courses. Now, unfortunately, I mean, this is another interesting place for

for you to investigate or some of your listeners to investigate. You can't watch that series anymore. CBC doesn't make it available. They don't show it on their network and they don't post it on CBC Gem. So I'm sort of going off on a few tangents here, but this is the way I think your long form podcast can go. But I think your original question was how are things different from 1998 when the book came out? So in some ways they're the same. We're still having the battles. We still don't think Canadians know enough about their past.

But there at least have been efforts. There have been efforts to improve historical knowledge. And then, you know, every once in a while something comes along, and in this case it's the threats from the United States make Canada 51st state. All of sudden Canadians have sort of done a reflective moment and turned inward and wondered, actually we're not American and we don't have to take all of their cultural

James Stewart (08:15.595) offerings and we have a history of our own that's worth celebrating. We have a culture of our own and so there's this moment right now where I think we're trying to grasp onto a little bit more about who we are. And if you think about the importance of history, which is Granite Steen's main point is history is important and it needs to be taught. And of course, I think anybody would agree with that. But you think about,

Don't you think you could understand today's moment quite a bit better if you had a decent understanding of Canada-U.S. relations? So history is a great tool for us to help understand the present.

Teaching Canadian History: Chronology vs. Themes

Ian Van Harten (08:57.742) Yeah. So let's, get into how it's being taught in schools when it is being taught. And so Granite scene describes this shift where I guess, traditionally, maybe it was taught content, historical content was taught chronologically to give a sense of here's where we came from and here's how we got to where we are now. And, and so there's been a shift away from this because of what he

calls modern educational theory to where instead they're pulling out themes almost in isolation to highlight certain topics or certain ideas or aspects about Canadian society. And so maybe you lose this sense of cohesiveness in terms of where we came from. So can you talk maybe a bit about why this change would be done? Like, is there something wrong with teaching history chronologically?

James Stewart (09:29.612) Yeah.

James Stewart (09:57.855) No, there's nothing wrong with it. But it is a debate in history classrooms, or at least among teachers. Are we going to teach it chronologically? Are we going to teach it thematically? And I think some of the, I don't know all the theory behind it, but I guess some people think that students can learn better if you have information packaged in a theme.

and maybe it allows you to highlight different things more than other things. Because when you do unfold a curriculum chronologically, which is the way I would advocate, it should be done chronologically and I always supported that. Although to be honest, I did some periods in the post-war era, I would often teach that thematically because, do we have a problem?

Ian Van Harten (10:51.075) sorry, I kind of lost your audio, but I think you're back now. So yeah, you can keep going.

James Stewart (10:56.247) Okay, so I would say occasionally I would teach thematically because it sometimes can be useful to get through a large amount of material if you chunk it out into themes. So sometimes using both methods can work, but there are some people who think chronology is just bad and I don't know what the reasons are. Sometimes teachers are always experimenting with new

new ways of doing it. think maybe the thought was maybe that chronology was kind of boring. do know what's really important, Ian? And you could probably speak to this because you were a high school student and took grade 10 Canadian history. Presumably, if you grew up in Ontario, you would have had to take it. It kind of, in a way, doesn't matter if it's going chronologically or thematically. What's really important is how good is your teacher? So

A really gifted teacher is going to make history really exciting and interesting no matter how it's taught. So my first priority wouldn't be chronology versus theme. It'd be how good is the teacher? So we've to put that on one side here as well. But if you just make a straight choice, I'm to say the world unfolds in a chronological way. History unfolds in a chronological way. And that is the best way to try to understand the aspects of cause and effect.

is by looking at things in chronology. So I think my vote would go for chronology for sure.

The Role of Teachers in History Education

Ian Van Harten (12:31.246) Well, so can you speak more a bit about, so if it's really the teacher that matters more, and I think I agree with you on that. Is there something that can be done to increase the amount of good teachers versus bad teachers that we have in schools?

James Stewart (12:39.381) Right. Good.

James Stewart (12:50.679) Yeah, yeah, that's, know, there is a lot that can be done about that, by the way. There should be things done about it. But let's just pick up on the teaching thread for a minute because, you know, it's just, it's so important because the teacher will inspire the student to learn X, Y, or Z. And I think that does trump things a lot more than chronology versus theme.

James Stewart (13:18.283) But here's the other thing that's kind of important here is that I knew there was another point that I wanted to make and it lost me, but now it's come back, is that the teaching of history has changed a lot since 1998. And I think that's really important for anyone who is engaging in the debate about Canadian history, if we're just talking about what's happening in schools, is that teaching has improved a lot

in the last 25 years. I think in the pre-2000s, there was a lot of really bad history teaching happening. And I think that's where the bad rap for chronology came from, is just writing stuff on the board and going from year X to year Y. Now we're a lot more engaged.

And what's really important in terms of history and in terms of teaching it is the tools that you use. Are you using primary sources? Are you making connections to current events? Are you trying to engage the interests of your students? So the whole pedagogical aspect of Canadian history is a very important and separate question from what's going on in the public sphere about how important we think it is.

We should never underestimate the importance of teaching in this question.

Skills vs. Content in the Classroom

Ian Van Harten (14:47.566) Cause part of me wonders too, sometimes, you know, when you learn math, you, you do drills and you just kind of repetition and you drill it into your brain that, know, three times four is 12 and three times five is 15, et cetera, et cetera. And, know, cause Granite scene writes about how there's cultural capital that we, we need in order to read a newspaper or understand current events.

And a lot of that comes from learning history. so part of me wonders, you know, do we need to just drill into our, into students, you know, here's important dates, here's important things that it's part of our, it's in our minds and it's, it's in our memory. And so we kind of can call it up and know about it that way, but maybe that's too boring or too uninteresting.

James Stewart (15:38.729) Yeah, I wouldn't advocate for drilling history into anyone. It makes sense for things that are meant to be wrote, like the times tables, but for history, the way to do it is to capture interest and get people exploring. know, no one's gonna be, people aren't gonna remember everything they took in...

in grade 10 Canadian history, and I don't think they really have to. But if they can develop a familiarity with the content, if they can recognize something about the First World War, if they're reading a newspaper article sometime later, that's going to be good enough for me. We want to develop, remember we're getting now into the whole skills versus content debate. History is a big part of it is teaching skills, very important ones. Research.

evaluation of events, considering bias, critical thinking, writing. There's some very important, you know, constructing narratives. There's some very important skills there. There's also some very important content. And so another one of the debates in the history world is do we emphasize skills or do we emphasize content? You where do we find that beautiful balance of the two?

And later in my career, I became less beholden to the content. Not to say that I didn't think it was important because I still would base my lessons on significant content. But what I became more interested to do was

cultivate in my students an interest in the subject. Because if you cultivate an interest, you know, they carry it with them. If you bury it or you make it terrible, that's the end. So I think I was pretty successful in cultivating the interest for my students, but that's what I became more interested in doing. So when you come to history class,

Ian Van Harten (17:32.504) Mm-hmm.

James Stewart (17:48.863) you leave the class going, had a good time. And I learned something as well. So we're sort of veering off into pedagogy and history classrooms a little bit more than maybe you were expecting. But on the other hand, most people's engagement with history is the one that they had in grade 10. And I can guarantee you if they had a boring, crappy teacher, they probably don't like Canadian history. If they had a teacher who was

pretty exciting and interesting and made it relevant for them. Maybe they still like history of those people. Where did you fall on that spectrum?

Ian Van Harten (18:28.518) Ian Van Harten (18:32.302) Probably, my grade 10 history wasn't great. And that's no beef against the teacher, but it didn't leave me fired.

James Stewart (18:40.961) whose name is... Right, right, right. And what do you think the reasons for that were? Was it because the teacher didn't seem to care? Or was it that you just weren't ready for history? Like, what do you think it was?

Ian Van Harten (18:58.584) Probably, I think I wasn't ready for history, but you know, even saying that, think probably the right teacher could have met me where I was. but so my experience, the teacher we had was, he was very concerned that history not be boring. And so he didn't want to just take notes on the board or just talk about something that happened. Everything was kind of, it had to be a presentation that we did, or it had to be something we're watching or.

And so we came away kind of, and maybe there, there would have been a good way to do that too, but it came away with, I don't really, I didn't come away with learning. Like these are things that happened in Canadian history. was just a bunch of random presentations I had to put together.

James Stewart (19:44.279) Right, That's fair. mean, every classroom's a little bit different. Every experience is a little bit different. And as long as the teacher was trying to do the best that he or she could, then I guess that's all we can ask. But for you, the experience wasn't as good as it needed to be.

Commemorating the Book’s 25th Anniversary

Ian Van Harten (20:07.014) yeah. I mean, I'm here now. I like, I got interested eventually. So, but maybe we can, we can pick up on that, in terms of other people that, that helped inspire that. But, there, there's another aspect I, hopefully that we can try pick up on here. So you helped during the, when it was the 25th anniversary of the book, you helped commemorate that.

James Stewart (20:15.253) Right, good point.

James Stewart (20:26.283) Yes.

Ian Van Harten (20:33.762) by organizing, helping put together a series of articles for the hub. And one of the contributors there was a fellow historian of yours, Christopher Dummett. And he wrote an article there. And I'm wondering if I can just read a quote from one of the articles he wrote and get your response to it. So here's Christopher Dummett writing for the hub. Anecdotes of oppression are the new national narrative.

James Stewart (20:38.358) Yes.

Is Canada’s New Narrative Too Negative?

Ian Van Harten (21:02.86) A conception of Canada as merely a settler colonial nation steeped in a racist history whose people have been oppressed and whose even ostensibly positive policies like official multiculturalism hide exclusionary tendencies. This is the new Canadian story. What say you, James?

James Stewart (21:25.653) I think there's some truth to that for sure. And there's a lot to try to figure out about it. So some of this relates to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when that report came out in 2015, which forced a major reckoning for all of Canada to deal with the residential schools crisis and the treatment of our Indigenous peoples.

since Confederation and before, but I'm just going to speak since Confederation just to give us a starting point with the birth of Canada as a country in 1867. So that forced a lot of difficult reckonings that were long overdue and necessary. At the same time in 2015, there's a new government that comes into town, led by Justin Trudeau, and

for whatever reason he thinks that Canada needs to apologize a lot for its history. And so this caught kind of the zeitgeist, it created a zeitgeist of the time that Canada was kind of down on itself and its leadership was leading the way. If you remember during the years of, let's take Jean Chrétien as an example, he was always talking about how great Canada was.

Stephen Harper would celebrate Canada and its achievements. And I think every Prime Minister should celebrate Canada and its achievements. At the same time, of course, we do have to recognize in the expanse of Canadian history that there have been difficult moments for the country as well. Unfortunately, that narrative just got a little too strong and I think people were afraid to push back on it.

because there could be ramifications for your position at the workplace or you might get called out on social media. Bad things could happen if you were trying to stand up for a cause that wasn't seen as the right cause at the time. So now you can see that the narrative is starting to shift back a little bit on this.

James Stewart (23:51.691) And I think we misrepresented the story of Canada during that period, and think that's what Christopher Dummett is getting at. Because there is no...

There's no one narrative of Canadian history, but the best one is the one that has a balance to it and that acknowledges the regrets and the failures of the country, but also acknowledges the achievements of Canada since its inception, because there are plenty of them. For some reason, when we've taken this view of Canadian history that Canada was mostly bad and

mostly needs to apologize for things.

people seem to have forgotten that actually Canada is one of the countries that everybody in the world wants to come to. And so if Canada is so really terrible, then why does everybody still want to come here? Canada is actually a remarkable achievement. And we're not all good. Maybe we did a little bit too much of that at some points, but we've achieved a lot as a country.

we still have lots of things to continue to improve, just like anybody. I always would sort of speak to my students and talk to them about, I always tried to make them think of Canada, I would use the metaphor that Canada is like a person, or Canadian history is like a person, or Canada is like a person in that. No person is perfect. There's gonna be mistakes made in the course of a person's life. And you atone for those things.

James Stewart (25:37.303) But you're always trying to get better. I think the history that was being told that Christopher Dumblet is referring to, I don't think that was really an accurate reflection. So it was a trend of the time, that period, 2015 to, I don't know, 2023, 2024, I'm not sure where we're gonna put the end on it. That'll be an interesting one to reflect on as the years go on.

Ian Van Harten (26:06.222) But do think that period is over now?

James Stewart (26:10.463) I wouldn't say it's over, but I think that there are starting to be some pushback against it. know, there are people speaking out against things a little bit more. There's books coming out. There's a story named Patrice Dutille who wrote a book about Sir John A. Macdonald that came out last year that kind of tries to set the record straight about some of the things that were happening during his period in office.

I think we're trying to get a more balanced approach right now.

Moral Judgments in Historical Interpretation

Ian Van Harten (26:45.944) Well, it kind of leads me to another question, which is, is there a moral component when it comes to discussing or studying history? And is it important to identify and condemn immoral things that happened, and conversely to point out positive moral actions that we want to praise? Or does that kind of moral lens only

prevent us from really understanding and stepping into what it was like in the past.

James Stewart (27:18.92) I think the moral judgments are always happening. They happen in our life, it happens in history. So it is important to look for...

morals in history. You have to point out things that were wrong and you have to have discussions about things that were wrong. When things get, when things go awry is when we say, I can't believe that that's how they acted. And when you start to project your own values from 2025 or the whatever period, you the period of now,

If you try to project your values that we hold dear today and say that people in 1885 or 1910 or 1935 should have been acting as progressive as we are, then that's not appropriate. That's not really historical. But of course we make judgments. There's bad things that happened in history. There's people who made poor decisions. There's people who made racist decisions, like all the bad things, racism, sexism, classism.

Lots of bad things have happened in history and we need to try to understand why they happened and learn from them. And we have to piece it as part of the whole puzzle and see how it fits on a line of progression or regression as the case may be. But I would just underline that we don't want to try to shake our fingers and say,

people of the 1930s, bad people, or people of the 1870s, bad people. They're doing what they are with the things that they understand at the time. But it is very hard in sort of a philosophical way, I think, for people to get themselves out of their present and try to imagine themselves in 100 years ago or 130 years ago.

James Stewart (29:23.605) because you would not be the same person. We are products of our times. So it's not like you're going to go back and be running around in 1895 and being a progressive person. No, you'll be very much shaped by the times in which you live. And so I think it's really important for us to understand that people are shaped by the times in which they live. That doesn't necessarily make those people would make, they acted differently from us.

That doesn't make them bad people. Some people were bad, not just by living in those times does that make them bad. Do see what I mean?

Ian Van Harten (30:01.846) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, I wonder too if part of the difficulty is if it feels like making a moral compromise if you make the effort to try to understand something that is really immoral. Like say if you want to understand the idea behind residential schools and try to understand that, you know, what how people who are architecting them were thinking and maybe that that makes me feel like

Yeah, I'm compromising my morals to try to even look at things from their point of view. I wonder if that makes it more complicated.

James Stewart (30:38.519) Well, history is complicated, that's number one. Number two, I always thought that it was kind of a virtue to try to understand somebody else. So to try to understand another period, to me that seems like a virtuous thing to do as opposed to a moral thing to do. I can see why people might say, well, if you understand why something bad has happened, then you must be bad yourself. Well, that doesn't make any sense if you ask me, but that's what some people probably think is true. So ultimately, our job

And does take, like understanding history takes quite a bit of understanding and patience and setting aside some of your own present day values. But that's one of the great challenges is to try to figure it out. Like how did that happen? Why did that happen? What were the other competing factors? And remember, like,

most of history is just people doing things and people are complex figures and we want to try to figure them out. That's probably why a lot of people are drawn to history is because of that human element of thinking, would I have done the same thing if I was in that same position? I don't know. The goal is understanding. The goal should never be trying to

take out some sort of punishment or make some morality point. don't think... Understanding history isn't about making a point or a moral lesson necessarily, but it is about trying to understand things and then explaining. Explaining, not moralizing. Explaining. There's a lot of moralizing in history right now.

Ian Van Harten (32:34.83) Hmm.

James Stewart (32:35.625) In some ways it can't be helped. I don't think that's a terrible thing, but you just have to be careful with it. What happens in today's world, as you probably know, that there's rushes to judgment, there's a wish for simplicity and simple answers, when in fact, if you look at your own relationships, your most important relationships in your life,

They are probably very complex. know, relationships with your parents that have gone on for a long time. These are complex relationships. History is very complex too. And there's a lot of moving parts. efforts to try to make it seem black and white are misguided, if you ask me.

The Role of Popular Historians

Ian Van Harten (33:26.625) Mm-hmm.

Um, let's move, move out of the, kind of, um, the educational sector a little bit and start looking at history as it's presented in public. And one thing, so one aspect of this is the role of popular historians. And so if, um, thinking back to when you were talking about, um, teachers that help inspire you to be interested. For me, Pierre Burton was, was that teacher. Um, so I think these.

James Stewart (33:44.075) Hmm

Ian Van Harten (33:56.844) the popular historians play an important role. there's Pierre Burton, there's Peter Newman. There's a few comic books that have come out too, like Chester Brown wrote one on Louis Riel. That was kind of cool. There's the People's History documentary series that you mentioned. So these things are legitimately popular and help educate the public about Canadian history. So there's an important role, think, here. Although Jack Granitstein kind of writes about

some tension between popular historians and academic historians, and maybe one is kind of sneering at the other. I don't know if you can speak more to that, but can you just say more about the role of popular historians when it comes to teaching about Canadian history?

James Stewart (34:44.533) The popular historians are really important and I think you mentioned a few of them. Pierre Burton, I read lots of Pierre Burton's books. I met him once, which was great. And actually, I should tell you story. So he wrote a book called Vimy, as you know. Came out in 1986. And Story of Vimy Ridge. Well, don't you know it? My first child was born.

on the anniversary of Vimy Ridge on April 9th. So I threatened to give him the middle name Vimy. But my...

Ian Van Harten (35:21.427) I think.

James Stewart (35:26.251) Should I start that story over again? Should I start the story over again? You can cut it up and put it back together,

Ian Van Harten (35:27.891) there you are. Yeah, if you don't mind.

James Stewart (36:14.103) Right. Okay, so I'll start the story about Pierre Burton over again because you can just splice it back in, right? Okay. So I should tell you story about Pierre Burton. You know he wrote a book, Vimy, it turns out my son was born on April 9th, the anniversary of Vimy Ridge. So I wrote a letter to Pierre Burton and said, you dear Mr. Burton, know, believe it or not, my son was born on April 9th.

Ian Van Harten (36:19.118) Okay. Yeah, for sure.

James Stewart (36:43.529) I'd love to have a signed copy of your book." So he wrote me back. And I've still, got the letter framed. It says, Dear Mr. Stewart, congratulations on your Vimy baby. And then he says, you know, go get a copy of the book. If you send it to my office, I'll sign it and send it back to you. So that's what I did. And so my son has a signed copy of Vimy by Pierre Burton, dated just a few months after he was born. So Pierre Burton was, you know,

so important to building up our identity and understanding of Canadian history. You mentioned Peter C. Newman. He's probably the greatest writer of them all. I'd give my left arm to be able to write sentences like he could. He's tremendous. you know, Granite Steehan has written so much. Now, he's an academic historian, but we still have popular historians writing books. People like

Charlotte Gray, Alan Levine, a lot of journalists are doing it. John Ibbitson wrote a book on Stephen Harper. He wrote a book on Diefenbaker and Pearson as a dual biography. So it's great to see that these kind of books are being written. The academics, I think, are focused on things that are a little bit less popular.

Probably our best academic historian, you know, I'm just going off the top of my head, but Tim Cook is one of our best. Now, he doesn't work at a university, he works at the Canadian War Museum. But he writes lots of books about Canadian military history, and they're well read, they sell thousands of copies, and they're excellent pieces of scholarship and writing.

So it's important to have these folks. I've always been inspired by all the people that we've mentioned. Plus, a couple of American historians that I love, like Jill Lepore, who wrote a great American history book a few years ago called These Truths. And Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote the famous book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals. She's a beautiful...

James Stewart (39:07.639) historical writer. So thankfully we have some of these writers. I don't know, not all of them are popular historians. A lot of them are just writers who write books, journalists who write books. But we certainly need them because they know how to tuck into a vein that, writing in a way that's accessible for people, which is really important. The academics, Granite-Stein criticizes them.

for being a little too esoteric 25 years ago. And I think to some degree that's still quite true.

Writing Canadian History Today

Ian Van Harten (39:44.898) Yeah. Well, you mentioned you've written a book, being Prime Minister, and I believe you have a new one coming out in the next few months. Could you talk maybe a bit about what it's like writing in this space of popular history?

James Stewart (39:54.54) Yeah.

James Stewart (39:59.755) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well I like it, I guess. I mean, as much as people can like writing, writing's pretty hard. I think it's important. So I think number one, think it's important. It's important to have books about Canadian history that are gonna tell a story that needs to be heard and that people will be interested in it. So here's an example. The book of mine that...

James Stewart (41:18.911) We still need to have books about Canadian history that are being published, that tell our stories, and that people are interested to buy them and read them. So, my book, for example, is the first, the one that's coming out in September 2025. It's the first new history of Canadian prime ministers in 25 years. That's a whole generation.

The last book that came out that was a history book on Canadian Prime Ministers was 1999 and it was written by Jack Granitestein and Norm Hilmer. The one before that was Michael Bliss's book, Right Honourable Men, came out in 1994. So it's been 25 years since we had one of these books. So I'm glad to be able to be the person that is writing it, but I wish we had more. Let's take a guy like

Wilfrid Laurier. There hasn't been a biography of Wilfrid Laurier, a scholarly one, like an important one, for 60 years. 1965, there's been a few smaller books, know, 150 pages here, 200 pages there, but nothing magisterial for one of our greatest prime ministers. So to me, that's a problem.

So in terms of writing in this space, it's important. But remember, you don't make any money. You can't just go, I'm going to write history books. And that's how I'm going to make my living. The only people that are doing that, well, Pierre Burton did it. Peter C. Newman did it. Tim Cook might be able to do it because he sells enough copies probably. But he's a historian. his income is backstopped by being a historian at the Canadian War Museum.

The only reason I could do it was retired teacher. it's not, this is a problem of publishing. It's not just history. That's just the problem of publishing in Canada, period. But I'm glad to be able to do it, to write this book, which I think is going to be an important one.

History as National Inspiration or Propaganda?

Ian Van Harten (43:30.142) let's try another, another topic here that I'm curious about. And that is history as a source of inspiration and national vision. So this is kind of connected with popular historians because a lot of books kind of feed into these bigger, grander narratives. And, and so we've seen some examples of, of history being invoked in this way, recently, like in the, during the pandemic.

I remember Justin Trudeau mentioning this was our World War II. And so we have to kind of respond similarly and to get through this. And even more recently with the conflict with the United States, you're hearing more invocations of the War of 1812. And oh, didn't we burn down the White House that one time. And so I'm kind of curious about this way of using history.

Because it seems to me, you know, that there's, can be used sure for propaganda and someone can just use this for their, feed their own agenda. But, but there's also an equal negative way of using it, which is sort of, it leads to the creation of a romanticized ideal that's not rooted in reality. So, so yeah.

James Stewart (44:50.412) Mm-hmm.

Ian Van Harten (44:55.662) I'm kind of giving you a lot to respond to here, but I'm wondering if you can speak to this a little bit, in particular, the way that Canada uses history for this, for inspiration and what that might say about how healthy our relationship is with our past.

James Stewart (45:13.835) Well, I think you have to be careful if, you know, Margaret McMillan wrote that book, The Uses and Abuses of History. And so you can use history to propagandize. You can use history, you can use it to propagandize both in favor of something you're trying to argue or to try to denigrate, you know, as weaponizing it in a way. So you have to be careful about history.

You know, there are things to celebrate in Canadian history, and I think that's okay to celebrate. But I think what you don't want to do is just use it as some sort of way of...

James Stewart (47:32.989) know, Margaret MacMillan wrote a book called The Uses and Abuses of History. so, history can be used to propagandize and paper over things. can be used to propagandize to... Well, you can make history almost say anything you want. And so you do... you have to be careful not to just let history become some cheerleading thing that papers over problems. The whole... like the point is to tell the truth.

And sometimes the truth is about reckoning with things that have gone wrong in your country. Other times it's about celebrating your achievements. So it just can't be all one and not the other. You know, when you talked about 1812,

That's reminding us of a period we had in our history where Canada wasn't even a country then, but the country we call Canada today was fighting back against the Americans. So you don't want history to be a propaganda tool. That's not what history is. It is about explaining. It's about a search for truth. It's about trying to understand. So those are the goals.

And as we reach back into history, it's to help us understand today better. It's not to try to kick somebody down. It's not to try to make us seem better than somebody else. That's not what it's about.

Ian Van Harten (49:13.966) Like, did you have any response when you heard those recent invocations, like during the pandemic or with the War of 1812 stuff? Like, do think it was kind of lame or what?

James Stewart (49:27.703) You know, the War of 1812 stuff was probably... It's almost like a little cliche thing, like a little prop you grab in a theater. The Harper government made a big deal of the War of 1812. They got criticized for it. But it was the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, and it kind of... I didn't have a huge problem with it. It did remind the country that there actually was a history before 1867. There was...

you know, military operations happening here is probably not a terrible thing if it got people to go into their history books a little bit more. In terms of the pandemic, people were saying, this is our World War II again, it's kind of like, you know, people grab onto things in history to try to, it's like something that semi-stable that gives you a little bit of a support to try to understand. It's about trying to understand again, right? And so,

When people are making comparisons, usually they don't really make a lot of sense because they need to actually be really well thought out first. So when people are saying, this is our World War II, well, what they're really trying to say is, this is a really big deal. And it's affecting the whole world. And our lives might change. And the government's going to be getting involved. And people are dying. They're not dying on the battlefield.

But they're just reaching for ways to try to cope and understand. They're not always accurate. But it's okay if people try. But that's another reason why you have to be always very aware and arm yourself with facts and understanding. Because what happens, and this is what happened in I think the case with Sir John A. Macdonald and Ryerson and the taking down of the statues and everything is people were saying a bunch of things and

It was like maybe half true at best. But if you don't know any better, you can just listen to the loudest voices and you just think that they're probably telling the truth.

How Do We Fix the Problem?

Ian Van Harten (51:34.807) Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, let's kind of, we'll wrap things up here with one last question. I'm just wondering, so what do we do? You know, with the, have this problem with Canadians, a lot of Canadians are ignorant about our history. it's not always taught very well and it's politicized and

James Stewart (51:50.166) Mmm.

Ian Van Harten (52:06.542) There's so there's many problems that grand scene laid out way back in 1998 that that are still around. So I'm wondering if you can offer some, some guiding principles or some ideas that could maybe help bring us towards a more healthy relationship with our history and help promote the education of history.

James Stewart (52:26.997) Well, it's true to form for you, Ian, to ask like a really big question that would require a really long answer, but we'll see what we can do to unpack it. I think...

There's a number of things that have to be done. And we didn't even talk about the Library and Archives Canada, which is the storehouse for Canadian history. It's not well funded. I don't think it's well run. I don't get the sense that the people there are trying to make history as interesting and accessible as possible. So I'd love to see a revitalization of Library and Archives Canada.

In terms of teaching,

The debate for a long time has been about how can we get more Canadian history in the schools? And this is a legitimate and important question. There are only five provinces that require a high school course in Canadian history. It's Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Manitoba, and British Columbia. All the other ones just have a mishmash of social studies, geography, economics, civics.

I mean, don't get me started on civics. know, people don't understand how the government works either. That's another story. But I think we need to say, okay, why are we not having at least one high school Canadian history course in every province in the country? That battle's been talked about for decades. I don't know how you solve that problem. Nobody seems to want to. I don't know. There's a lot of inertia in education.

James Stewart (54:15.253) So that would be one place to start. It's also hard because education is a provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution, you can't say we're going to have a national program. I'd like to see some money spent on making Canadian documentaries again, because let's face it, I'd love to see more books being published on Canadian history, and there are some.

and there are some publishers like Sutherland House works really hard to try to publish Canadian history. But visuals are where you're going to find a lot of eyeballs. how about some sort of program, like I'd like to be the Minister of Canadian Heritage, which I think is now called the Minister of Canadian Identity or something, but I'd like to see some serious money spent on trying to make documentaries about Canada's past. Because

We did a decent job of it for a number of decades, but I think we're in like a history time warp. What's the word? Black, a memory hole. We're in it to use Orwell's term. We're in a history memory hole since basically, I don't know, 1985. You know, you don't see a lot of new things coming out about Canadian history. Let me give you an example. And this is sort of history related, but also entertainment.

There was a several part sort of docudrama made about Mackenzie King in the the 80s. There's also one on Wilfred Laurier. When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, by 2002 there was a two part four hour miniseries on the Trudeau years with Colm Fior playing Pierre Trudeau. Within two years they had this CBC thing.

Well, Brian Mulrooney has been dead for a year, just over, and I haven't heard anything about the two-part Brian Mulrooney series because, you know, there's a lot of drama in history to be told by telling a good story about Brian Mulrooney and his history. There's so many different things we could be making documentaries about, and I'd like to see that happen.

James Stewart (56:35.05) And I would say the sort of demarcation point is that 2001 series, Canada, a People's History, which came out in 2001, and then we've hardly done anything since then. teaching at the provincial level, publishing, making films, library and archives, Canada.

Just as another example, you used to be able to search the Mackenzie King diary online. It had its own dedicated website and you would just put in the date and it would spit out the diary for that day. Now they moved it into some omnibus research place on the website and it's very unuser friendly and it doesn't spit out the pages in the same easily accessed way. And that's just another example of

of not making history easy and accessible. The Library and Archives Canada Web, they also took down their website dedicated to Canadian Prime Ministers. I don't think that was very smart either. So we've got lots of problems and it's kind of discouraging that 25, 27 years later we're talking about Jack Granite's book and I'm here saying to you, we still have a lot of problems and we're still fighting these battles.

Ian Van Harten (58:01.944) Hmm.

James Stewart (58:02.027) But thankfully there are people willing to fight them. Because if we didn't, then we'd be really snookered. And so we're lucky that we still have people who care about the country and who want to teach the history. I mean, there's a lot of dedicated teachers out there who are trying, there's a lot of dedicated teachers out there who are trying to teach Canadian history. But everything, it's a battle, which is...

one that I fought for 30 years and still fighting in other ways now. So I'm going to keep fighting.

Ian Van Harten (58:42.211) Right on.

James Stewart (58:43.221) Yeah, yeah.

Ian Van Harten (58:45.614) Well, James, you've given us a lot to think about and it's been great talking to you and I appreciate the work you're doing and thank you for doing this.

James Stewart (58:57.205) It's my pleasure, let me ask you a question though, Ian. I know you're the questioner, but I can't help it. As a former teacher, I like to ask questions too. But what's your view of the issue? Where do you see the debate going, or what bothers you about Canadian history right now, or the state of?

Ian Van Harten (59:00.593) sure.

Ian Van Harten (59:23.848) I, what bothers me,

So I kind of sense.

that very few people care. And, you know, just as an example, as kind of a barometer for testing this, I always feel like I'm a bit naive in my expectations. But when the recent election was starting, I kind of thought this is a big election and this is a big deal. And this is a big moment for Canada, an election that will kind of be remembered because there's a lot going on.

James Stewart (59:37.109) Mm. Mm.

Ian Van Harten (01:00:05.042) And I think there was a relatively high amount of, of engagement, but I just found the amount of, I was, I was sort of let down in terms of the, the opportunity there was there for some debate and some discussion and some engagement. And I found that it was lacking. I, and so yeah, that's kind of one example of.

where I'm coming from or how I see it maybe.

James Stewart (01:00:36.757) Yeah, apathy can be really dangerous. that's why when I sort of ended my remarks by saying I'll keep fighting, which I will. And I think it's important that people who have passions and causes that relate to the country, they have to keep fighting for them because I don't know who said it, but...

Ian Van Harten (01:00:41.966) Mm-hmm.

James Stewart (01:01:02.295) countries like Canada, don't just exist once you create them. You actually have to keep fighting for a country like Canada because it's an improbable nation, given its geography, ethnicity. And so you have to keep nurturing Canada and telling the stories and building an identity. It's hard, but you have to keep doing it.

Ian Van Harten (01:01:27.672) Mm-hmm. Yep.

James Stewart (01:01:31.051) Well, I appreciate you giving me the chance to talk about Canadian history for an hour. That's pretty good.

Ian Van Harten (01:01:38.028) Yeah, no, was, this was awesome. So hope we can do it again. Yeah. Thank you so much.

James Stewart (01:01:42.207) Sure, for sure. Thank you. Thank you.

#transcript