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dashadashahi's review
4.0
In Commemorating Canada: History, Heritage, and Memory, 1850s-1990 (2016) Morgan looks at numerous ways Canadians commemorated and understood its historical past. Morgan analyzes a variety of topics. In the second chapter, Morgan illustrates the role of historians, largely “amateur” ones, who crafted narratives that emphasized the success of British values and traditions in Canada. French Catholic nationalists were also memorialized, mostly, men who represented Catholic values such as family, language, and nationhood. These histories often focused on genealogies as a means to locate and legitimize people’s connection to Canada. As the middle-class grew and other nations, such as America, took to shaping a selective memory of the past to unite their nation, public history took on more forms including historical societies, pageants, and monuments. Ontario’s monuments, in comparison to Quebec’s, were often of secular figures and focused on three themes: loyalist migration, the War of 1812, and the pioneering identity. These narratives often glossed over the nuanced realities of the past. Similarly, monuments erected after the First World War, often funded by the local community, emphasized the Christian nature of the “everyman” soldier and the worthwhileness of their sacrifice. Such emphasis on Canada’s “peacefulness” made reinforced that Canada’s young men did not die in vain and unified most of the nation despite the contradiction between ideas of peace and participation in the war. The creation of Parks Canada and the Heritage Sites and Monuments Board brings out more fully the role of the state in “official” forms of commemoration. Although Morgan makes clear that federal jurisdiction in “protecting” or “restoring” certain sites remained limited due to provincial, local, and private interests. Indeed, the tension between putting up plaques and restoring decaying sites created different ideas of how to shape Canada’s historical narrative. Morgan demonstrates how state and local actors shaped ideas of Canadian heritage and how this changed, or did not change, over time. Increasingly, Morgan notes, those marginalized in Canada’s heritage have the social and political currency to make their voices, and histories, heard and complicate Canada’s grander history. It is clear that Canadians have and continue to care about their history.
kristamccracken's review against another edition
4.0
Solid introduction level text to the history of commemoration, memorization and heritage designations in Canada. The public history angle used in the book is particularly well done.
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