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Re-writing Canadian history

By G.D. Maxwell History is rarely anybody’s favourite subject in school. I’m not sure why but if pressed, I’d have to lay the blame at the feet of most of the people who teach the subject.

By G.D. Maxwell

History is rarely anybody’s favourite subject in school. I’m not sure why but if pressed, I’d have to lay the blame at the feet of most of the people who teach the subject. Somewhere between deciding they like history enough to want to teach it and actually getting the chance to make good on their dream for, oh, let’s say a decade or so, their passion withers and dies and they spend most of the rest of their careers going through the motions.

Sensing this malaise, their students barely ramp up enough enthusiasm about the subject to stay awake. Memorize dates and places and people. Remember who invaded whom. Ponder the five most significant lessons of the Industrial Revolution. Watch filmstrips of grainy black-and-white archival footage of soldiers on a faraway battlefield.

I don’t know why history is so universally loathed, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact history has already happened. It’s fixed, kind of like math. Two plus two always equals four and the English always wup the French on the Plains of Abraham. No suspense. No drama. No new frontiers to conquer. All you can do if history’s your bag is wait for something to happen or dig a little deeper and muddy the waters about whether William Lyon McKenzie King was really a wacko or not. Ho-hum.

In 22 years of schooling, I only ever had one history teacher who was still turned on about the subject. Well, at least part of the subject. The U.S. Civil War to be exact. In 10 th grade American History, we blew right past the pilgrims, gave short shrift to the Revolutionary War, Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark and industrialization of New England. The first 200 years of American history took about two weeks.

Then everything changed. Walking into the classroom on the day the Civil War started, every inch of blackboard on all three walls filled with blackboard was covered in a diorama of chalk. The siege of Fort Sumter was laid out in painstaking detail. We studied it for several weeks. Ditto Bull Run, Manassas, the Battle of the Hemp Bales, Shiloh, Manassas and Bull Run redux, Antietam, Gettysburg, the fall of Richmond, and many more minor skirmishes. Each clash was drawn in greater detail than the last. The ebb and flow of each uncivil encounter, hour by hour, day by day, was explained and tied into the psychological shortcomings or strengths of the generals directing them. It was fascinating stuff taught by a man all-consumed by events over a hundred years old but still fresh in his mind and now, in ours.

When the year ended, the other American History classes were well into World War II and the Roosevelt legacy. Mr. Form’s class didn’t yet know for sure how the Civil War ended. But we were riveted by it. Willing to sign on for summer school just to find out how Sherman and Grant would finally trap that wily Robert E. Lee.

The problem with history being intrinsically dull and history teachers being even duller is that it kills the natural inquisitiveness kids might have about what happened before they arrived on the scene. And that’s a shame.

It’s a shame not just for the chestnut about those ignorant of history being destined to repeat its mistakes but because, on a more contemporary note, they never seem to have been taught what a complete and utter fraud Brian Mulroney was as Prime Minister of Canada. Their total lack of historical grasp was abundantly clear last weekend when what remains of the Progressive Conservative party met in Toronto to select a new leader to replace Joe Clark who, contrary to popular belief, is still alive.

Taking leave of their senses, the organizers of the convention allowed – invited even – Muldoon to speak. There he was, all smarm and silver hair and chin. Strutting and gloating, stroking his ego and taking swipes at the Liberals, jousting with the ghost of Presto Manning and looking for the world like a man who’d left a party on top instead of near ruin.

And the younger PCs ate it up. Go figure.

Winston Churchill – or Oscar Wilde, I often get them confused, having never gotten past the Civil War in history class – said a man under 35 who isn’t a liberal has no heart, and a man over 35 who still is has no brain. It would appear the younger wing of the Progressive Conservative party has neither.

They praised Muldoon as a wise elder statesman. They believed in his hype almost as much as he seems to. Many voiced the desire to see him lead the party again.

Lead the party again? Once you’ve led a political party, Canada’s oldest political party no less, a party who you’ve led to two majority governments, once you’ve led them over the precipice into political purgatory, where pray tell are you going to lead them if they’re so stupid as to give you a second chance? Total oblivion?

Pushed along by a viable – viability being in the eye of the beholder – western party, fuelled by the failure of Meech Lake, the general loathing of the GST, a strong contingent of anti-NAFTAites, small ‘c’ conservatives who couldn’t believe a Conservative leader would run up record debt and deficit during the longest sustained period of economic growth the modern world had ever seen, and a whole lot of regular folk who just cringed to see the prime minister of Canada blatantly toady up to the president of the US, the post-Muldoon Progressive Conservative party was reduced to holding caucus meetings in a Mazda Miata. Nice legacy, Bri.

So like the attempted resurrection of Dick Nixon, Muldoon’s back. He’s dismissive of the Chretien Liberals for, in the eyes of some, making Canada irrelevant on the world stage. So what. I’m not so sure at times like these irrelevance is a bad thing. Given the choice of being BMOE – big man on Earth – and having a national economy that’s finally looking more like a going concern than a candidate for bankruptcy, one more philosophically aligned with the rule of law than the rule of the jungle, and one that pays at least passing homage to nurturing human capital, I’ll take the low profile every time.

Canada’s blessed with two sustainable advantages. First, it’s a country with incredible, untapped natural wealth, resources of increasing value in a world of increasing scarcity. Second, it drew the lucky card when it comes to location. Whatever relevance Canada has or may have in the future owes more to living in the shadow of the US, though that relationship sorely needs some stroking.

At the end of the day, Muldoon’s legacy will be this: He was out-conservatived by a Liberal. It’s gotta hurt.