He's probably still sore that the US lost the war.
The war of 1812 was the only war ever between the US and Canada, and Canada
won!
janet paterson wrote:
>
> O Canada, tedious and history-free
>
> U.S. writer says our past lacks civil wars, 'memorable atrocities'
>
> Wednesday 6 September 2000 - One of the most influential newspapers in the
> U.S. has dismissed Canadian history as forgettable, saying this country has
> never fought a civil war, never produced a great world leader -- and never
> committed any "memorable atrocities."
>
> The front page feature in the Washington Post, written by the Post's
> outgoing Canadian correspondent, Stephen Pearlstein, appeared in
> yesterday's editions.
>
> Its publication has left Canadian academics disturbed by the contention
> that history is nothing more than blood and might.
>
> "I think it is simply nonsense," said Jack Granatstein, one of the
> country's eminent historians. "We have a different path than the United
> States, and one that I at least think is rather better."
>
> Carleton University history professor Blair Neatby said the relative merit
> of Canadian history depends very much on how the subject is defined.
>
> "If history is wars and confrontation and winner-take-all decisions, then
> we don't have much of that," he said. "But if you think that history can be
> a record of individuals arriving at decisions through consensus,
> negotiation or through the political system, then we have a pretty long and
> commendable record."
>
> The Post article examined the fragile Canadian identity and the possibility
> that the country could be swallowed by the United States within 25 years.
>
> Mr. Pearlstein highlighted the growing economic, political and cultural
> links between the two countries, then suggested that Canada's resulting
> identity crisis has been deepened by its brain drain and the defeat of
> Quebec nationalism.
>
> "Having beaten Quebec nationalism into remission and marginalized French
> language and culture in the process, English Canada has begun to face the
> disquieting reality that nothing so characterizes its identity as the
> absence of a distinctive national identity," writes Mr. Pearlstein, who
> spent two years in Toronto.
>
> "Over the years, Canadians might have coalesced around a shared sense of
> history but for the fact that they have so little of it they consider worth
> remembering. The country never fought a revolution or civil war, pioneered
> no great social or political movement, produced no great world leader and
> committed no memorable atrocities. As one writer put it, Canada has no
> Lincolns, no Gettysburgs and no Gettysburg addresses."
>
> Mr. Granatstein said that view of history fails to appreciate the
> importance of compassion and compromise, hallmarks of the Canadian experience.
>
> "You might think it a great history to settle the West peacefully, instead
> of having Indian wars," he said. "You might think it a great history to
> form, with continuing difficulty, a bicultural society or to create a
> multicultural society. You might think it's a great good thing that a
> country has never fought an aggressive war, but only helped its friends.
> Those things are to my mind triumphs for Canada."
>
> Mr. Granatstein argued that John A. Macdonald's achievement -- knitting
> together English and French Canadians, Catholics and Protestants to found a
> nation in 1867 -- compares favourably with the work of George Washington a
> century earlier. He also suggested Canada's longest-serving prime minister
> and its wartime leader, Mackenzie King, "looks very good by comparison"
> with any American president of the 20th century.
>
> University of Toronto professor Michael Bliss called Mr. Pearlstein's view
> of history uninformed.
>
> "That's a juvenile approach to history: to say that only certain great and
> terrible things are worth remembering," Mr. Bliss charged. "History is
> vastly more complicated than that, and our reasons for remembering it are
> more complicated."
>
> For his part, Mr. Pearlstein said in an interview yesterday that his
> intention was not to diminish Canadian history but to highlight the fact
> that Canadians know little about their past.
>
> "I don't know whether it (the article) diminishes Canada," said Mr.
> Pearlstein, who has returned to Washington as an economics writer. "But if
> you were to give a world history course outside of North America, I'm not
> sure how often Canada would come up. Does it come up in American history
> courses? No."
>
> Even in Canada, he noted, it's possible to graduate from high schools in
> three provinces without ever studying Canadian history. "It is isn't true
> nothing happened there, but history does not seem to be a unifying factor
> there," he said.
>
> Mr. Granatstein, a longtime promoter of mandatory history credits in high
> school, agreed with the sentiment: "It's sad that Canadians don't know much
> about their history and seem to be more stirred by Mel Gibson fighting the
> American Revolution in a mythical way than they would be by watching a film
> about the Canadian West being settled peacefully.
>
> "In a country that worries about being swallowed by the Americans, our
> history is something we can use as a defence, a buttress," he said.
>
> Mr. Pearlstein said he enjoyed his time in Canada, particularly travelling
> through the French parts of the country, and liked Canadians "but for some
> of their anti-Americanism."
>
> Andrew Duffy The Ottawa Citizen
> http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/000906/4095652.html
>
> janet paterson
> 53 now / 44 dx cd / 43 onset cd / 41 dx pd / 37 onset pd
> tel: 613 256 8340 url: "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/"
> email: [log in to unmask] smail: POBox 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada
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