Canadian History and the Development of the North American West: Myth and Memory Dr. Christopher Herbert, History, Columbia Basin College Supplement: http://www.slideshare.net/k12studycanada/canadian-history-and-the-development-of-the-north-american-west-myth-and-memory-supplement

1. Canadian History and the
Development of the North American
West: Myth and Memory
Dr. Christopher Herbert
Columbia Basin College
cherbert@columbiabasin.edu

2. Canadian Heritage,
Canadian History

3. Canadian Heritage, Canadian History
• Heritage: Nationalistic celebration of oft-mythic
past
• History: Seeks to understand the past, warts and
all

4. Unforgiven (1992)

5. Heritage Minute (ca. 1991)

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

7. The Origins and Settlement of
Canada

8. Jacques
Cartier
1534,
1535,
1541

10. Samuel de
Champlain,
Quebec (1608)

12. 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)

13. 1791: Upper and Lower Canada

14. The acquisition of
Canada this year, as far as
the neighborhood of
Quebec, will be a mere
matter of marching
- Thomas Jefferson, 1812

15. - Lord Durham
two nations warring
within the bosom of
a single state

16. The Durham Report (1838)
• Amalgamate Upper and Lower Canada
(implemented)
• Responsible Government (implemented very
slowly)

17. Red River

18. Confederation, 1 July 1867

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

20. Nationalism and the West
• Anglo-Ontario
• Racist and anti-Catholic
• Progress, assimilation, and nationalism
• Métis

21. Red River Settlement

22. Louis Riel
1869 Resistance,
1870 Exile in U.S.,
1885 NW Rebellion,
1885 Executed

23. Battle of Batoche, 1885

24. Clearing and Settling the
Prairies

25. 7 November, 1885

26. Native Policy
• “peaceable agricultural labourers”
• Small plots of land
• Biologically incapable of being capitalists
• Use starvation as tool
• Reservations as “incarceration centres”

27. 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

28. The Last
Best West

29. An Open Door?
• Racially “undesirable” groups discouraged or
blocked
• Poor and ill discouraged or blocked

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

32. Doukhobors

33. Sons of Freedom/ Freedomites

34. Tourism, Myth, and
Multiculturalism

40. America, Quebec, and
Canadian Culture

41. The Massey Commission, 1951
• American cultural influence
• Serious, uplifting, educational content

43. Quebec
• Parti Québécois (PQ), 1968
• Official Languages Act, 1969
• Policy expanded to multiculturalism, 1971

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

45. The New Canada
• Multiculturalism, official bilingualism, and
immigration reform
• Peaceful, tolerant alternative to the United States

47. Canada Today

48. Conclusions
• The importance of the Canadian West
• Stories matter
• Those stories have been disproportionately
written by, and benefit, Anglo-Canadians