Canada: A People’s History by Mark Starowicz (review)

Visual History Reviews ~ Canada: A People's History. Executive producer: MARK STAROWICZ; director ofresearch: GENE ALLEN. Parts l-4: 'When the World Began,' 'Adventures and Mystics,' 'Claiming the Wilderness,' and 'Battlefor a Continent.' CBC 2001 In the first four episodes of the cac's Canadian history project, we are introduced to 'an era ofdaring' in which 'pathfinders and pirates' set out to 'claim a continent' and build a new society with 'courage, determination ,' and (since we are slightly cynical modernists) 'sometimes folly.' The production, as an impressive number of television viewers will attest , is beautifully photographed, lavishly produced, and grandly ambitious . The first four parts take us from the peopling ofthe continent by Aboriginals to the Quebec Act with a storyline that is firmly rooted in what becomes central Canada. It is also a storyline strongly reminiscent ofthe historiography offorty or fifty years ago, with echoes ofFrancis Parkman. War and discovery are the central motifs as heroic explorers, battling nations, and courageous settlers make a place for 'us' today. There is nothing from the works of scholars like Louise Dechene, Allan Greer, or Cole Harris to tell us about life in Montreal or on a seigneurie. Nor is there any evidence of socioeconomic patterns as interpreted by Fernand Ouellet and his successors. And curiously, although the series title and promotional material have emphasized that this is a series about ordinary people, not the prominent few once celebrated in historical writing, we meet relatively few ofthose ordinary people and certainly have no sense of what their daily lives might have been like. The story ofthe Seven Years' War, which is told in episode four, is dominated by the story of international politics, strategies , and outcomes; battles are fought between armies, not by individual men, and it is not until the Plains of Abraham that distinct human beings emerge from the smoke ofthe battlefield. Visual History Reviews 747 While producer Mark Starowicz is clearly aware that French and English , Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal have different perceptions of past events, there is nothing here of the historiographical debates that animate historians. Certainlythe producers are commendably concerned with accuracy, particularly in the meticulous reconstruction of costume and place, but there is an underlying assumption that historical reconstruction is essentially a matter of collecting the facts, understanding them correctly, and presenting them with as little editorial content as possible. 'Getting it right' was a central concern. Ofcourse, the writers did not always succeed. One ofthe most notable examples is a segment in episode four that trots out an elaborate version ofthe old claim that the British sent smallpox-infested blankets to defeat the Aboriginal inhabitants ofthe Ohio Valley. Although the story has circulated widely as indisputable, no careful researcher has been able to find conclusive evidence ofits veracity. For general audiences, the series seems to have been a considerable success. While there were complaints that Aboriginal peoples were depicted primarily as savage warriors and some grumbling in Quebec that these episodes were too generous to the British, most viewers were enthusiastic in their excitement of discovery: 'Gee, I didn't know that!' Many professional historians seem to have tuned out, however, bored by the funereal music and the soporific narration. Why were people who find Canadian history sufficiently fascinating to sustain a life's work so unresponsive to this production? And why has Starowicz been so critical of professional historians for, among other things, their 'narrative cleansing' ofCanadian history? The answers lie in fundamentally different understandings of the purpose of historical study. For university-based historians, the central question driving historical research has been 'why?' Why do Englishspeaking and French-speaking Canadians continue to see themselves as two solitudes? Why do regional animosities persist? Why have we still been unable to find an accommodation with Aboriginal peoples? Why do gender inequities continue to exist? The old national histories ofCreighton or Lower no longer satisfy, in part because we see so little national /community consensus in our time. But for many other people, history is not about explanation; rather, it is a form of entertainment, escapism, and even consumerism. Certainly, storytelling is far more entertaining than complex interpretive discussion, and Starowicz has astutely recognized this audience...