canadian history and the development of the north american west: myth and memory

Canadian History and the Development of the North American West: Myth and

Memory

Dr. Christopher HerbertColumbia Basin Collegecherbert@columbiabasin.edu

Canadian Heritage,Canadian History

Canadian Heritage, Canadian History

• Heritage: Nationalistic celebration of oft-mythic past

• History: Seeks to understand the past, warts and all

Unforgiven (1992)

Heritage Minute (ca. 1991)

The Mythic Canadian West• Non-violent and orderly• Strong, fair police presence• Natives treated with fairness• Diverse immigrants welcomed

The Origins and Settlement of Canada

Jacques Cartier1534, 1535,1541

Samuel de Champlain,Quebec (1608)

The Fall of New France• 1754 – 1763, Seven Year’s War• 1759, Quebec falls• 1760, French resistance collapses • Treaty of Paris (1763)• Quebec Act (1774)

1791: Upper and Lower Canada

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching

- Thomas Jefferson, 1812

- Lord Durham

two nations warring within the bosom of a single state

The Durham Report (1838)• Amalgamate Upper and Lower

Canada (implemented)• Responsible Government

(implemented very slowly)

Red River

Confederation, 1 July 1867

Patterns of Canadian History

• Quebec v. Anglo-Canada Tensions• Fears of U.S. Aggression• Focus on the West

Nationalism and the West• Anglo-Ontario• Racist and anti-Catholic• Progress, assimilation, and

nationalism• Métis

Red River Settlement

Louis Riel1869 Resistance,1870 Exile in U.S.,1885 NW Rebellion,1885 Executed

Battle of Batoche, 1885

Clearing and Settling the Prairies

7 November, 1885

Native Policy• “peaceable agricultural labourers” • Small plots of land• Biologically incapable of being

capitalists• Use starvation as tool• Reservations as “incarceration

centres”

Clifford Sifton,Minister of the Interior,1896 – 1905

[the] stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half–dozen children

The Last Best West

An Open Door?• Racially “undesirable” groups

discouraged or blocked• Poor and ill discouraged or blocked

“The same act which excludes Orientals should open wide the portals of British Columbia to White immigration.”

Doukhobors

Sons of Freedom/ Freedomites

Tourism, Myth, and Multiculturalism

America, Quebec, and Canadian Culture

The Massey Commission, 1951

• American cultural influence• Serious, uplifting, educational

content

Quebec• Parti Québécois (PQ), 1968• Official Languages Act, 1969• Policy expanded to multiculturalism,

1971

Immigration• Points-based immigration, 1967• Immigration Act, 1976

The New Canada• Multiculturalism, official

bilingualism, and immigration reform

• Peaceful, tolerant alternative to the United States

Canada Today

Conclusions• The importance of the Canadian

West• Stories matter• Those stories have been

disproportionately written by, and benefit, Anglo-Canadians