Myth stakes

The August-September issue, with its theme of re-examining the past, was as advertised by editor-in-chief Mark Reid: painful.

The headline story by Charlotte Gray, an apologetic rewrite of her excellently written 2010 story from Canada’s

History magazine, was painfully underwhelming. She had already provided a very balanced viewpoint documenting the tragic consequences from the Indigenous perspective in 2010.

The most disappointing aspect of the story was the character assassination of Pierre Berton as a “mythmaker.” The Klondike was not a “myth,” and neither were Berton’s stories. I have a great-grandfather who brought home gold nuggets from the Klondike and subsequently built a sawmill in northern Alberta that supported our family.

Books like Berton’s Klondike are national treasures, and it is a shameful act to diminish authors unnecessarily or tear down history just to provide a different perspective.

Pierre Bourret Sherwood Park, Alberta