"Canadian history is more interesting than you think" →
I was interviewed for this article, I think, because I make comics and jokes so I was supposed to bring The Good Times and laffs and stuff. I don’t think I delivered. We didn’t talk about Diefenbaker.
This seems like an argument, not for more accuracy, but for more ‘awesomeness’ in how our history is taught, and while I think Canadian history is endlessly fascinating, I rankle at the idea that what we really need to do is celebrate more awesome violent and terrible stuff and gaze out the window wishing we were cool enough to have had a civil war, too. Yeesh.
A quote: “Canadian history is full of oppression and genocide and forced labour and all the exciting things that other national histories have”
It’s not the notion that we should teach the unsavory aspects of our history that I disagree with, of course we should, everyone thinks we should. It’s not that I don’t think we’ve been presented with whitewashed narratives - too many Canadians think of something like slavery in Canada and puff up about how swell the Underground Railroad was without any clue about the life of someone like Marie-Joseph Angélique. And it’s not that I don’t think the underbelly of history is interesting, we all think that. It’s that those things are totally radical that strikes the wrong chord, and usually leads to some pretty terrible retelling of events.
I’m not a teacher or a scholar, but this article, it just didn’t sit well with me. I made it my job to poke fun at history in comics, sure, but schools and museums are a different ballgame.
And if you want museums to be interesting, for gods sake, stop cutting their funding for once and give them some money. They work with what they have, which is not much.
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I can only imagine how sexy my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents must’ve felt during their enslavement — not to...
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Thanks to Kate Beaton for this totally reasonable and anti-racist view of how history should be (and isn’t being)...
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