This is Article #12 -- Canadian History and Culture. Who can believe it? Where have we been? Where do we go from here?
Where have we been since March, 1999? What have we covered so far? 1)Women's Rights (Nellie McClung) 2)First Nations Issues (Big Bear movie) 3)The Constitutional Monarchy 4)Hockey Culture 5)The Pre-Canadian Enlightenment 6)Summer Culture 7)Back to School! 8)Canada/Quebec Relations 9)1899 10)Multiculturalism 11)Y2K.
From this list you can see that I have chosen the History-as-Issues approach rather than the more traditional History-as-Timeline. Timelines are available elsewhere. Check out our many archive and museum links. My goal is not to retell oft-repeated facts but rather to choose important people or events from the timeline and to suggest, or to encourage readers to think about, how these people and events impact our lives today as citizens of the Canadian democracy. Facts applied, as the basis for opinion and action. How different our world would be had not women like Nellie McClung fought to win recognition for women's rights to vote, for our rights to Personhood in law? That's why I wanted Culture in my column's title. Because culture for me is the way we live and work together today. History is part of culture, but not all of it. On the other hand, pop culture, what happens today and tomorrow, is/will all be part of history. History is the past; culture is the present built upon that past, with tendrils, tentacles, umbilical cords waving into the future.
So, what issues have we not looked at? What are tomorrow's headlines? I plan to do another pioneering woman article, perhaps as a lead-in to a survey of Canadian painting. The most glaring omission to me seems to be the need to look at the adversarial position, the push and pull, between federal and provincial levels of government. I also want to write about Louis Riel and Metis rights. Canadian - American Relations. The Labour Movement. The Environment. Canadian Literature. (Welcome to the new CanLit column written by Paula Kirman.) Perhaps Homelessness or the Social Safety Net. Children's Rights. Canadian Identity. But everything I write is ultimately about Canadian identity. That, for me, is the joy of it.
Where to now? Although many readers submit [Much appreciated!] comments and links to me directly, I would like to see more reader interaction in the discussions. I'm not sure how to encourage this. Shorter articles? More pictures? A discussion-opening question with each article? Any suggestions?
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