The field of history does not seem to be doing well in Canada these days. We have polls on Canada Day or Remembrance Day indicating how little Canadians know about pivotal historical events. Historica Canada, formerly the Historica-Dominion Institute, found that only 37 percent of Canadians knew that July 27, 2013, was the 60th anniversary of the Korean War ceasefire (the “forgotten war”); that 32 percent do not know about Laura Secord and her importance to the War of 1812; and that 44 percent believe that Canada entered the Second World War after the United States. In many universities, history undergraduate enrollment is declining, perhaps as part of the general crisis of the arts, but also possibly because of this trend toward ahistorical thinking. Firsthand, I encounter undergraduate students who sheepishly explain that Canadian history bores them.
And if there was any doubt that...
Ian Milligan is a professor of Canadian and digital history at the University of Waterloo, as well as a founding coeditor of the website ActiveHistory.ca. His first book, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers and New Leftists in English Canada, comes out this summer with University of British Columbia Press.
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