What’s happening to our history?
I taught Canadian history at the University of Alberta for 35 years until 2005, when I retired to write All True Things: A History of the University of Alberta 19082008.
When I joined the history department (now history and classics) in 1969, there were seven full-time professors teaching Canadian history. That number rose to 12 by the mid-1970s as the department became one of the leading centres for the study of Canadian history in the country. More specifically, the University of Alberta was the place to study the history of Western Canada and Alberta.
This remained the case until about 10 years ago, but recently there has been a precipitous decline in the number of Canadian history specialists at the University of Alberta. By the end of this year, the department will be down to three full-time and four part-time Canadian historians.
The contrast with other Canadian research universities of comparable size and reputation is instructive. University of British Columbia has nine Canadian historians, Queens has 10 and York 12.
This is an alarming development for a university that aspires to be one of
If we do not research and write our history, we will revert to the situation of a century ago when we tended to think of our national existence as a footnote to the history of Britain.
the best in Canada and the world.
If this university was located in the United States or Germany or China, it would, of course, be absurd to argue that it must have strength in Canadian history. It would be like arguing that it is imperative we teach the history of Sweden, say, or Argentina or Morocco.
But Canada is where we live, and like other small countries that only intermittently influence the course of world events, we cannot import our history.
If we do not research and write our history, we will revert to the situation of a century ago when we tended to think of our national existence as a footnote to the history of Britain.
More recently, many have viewed the Canadian experience as a minor appendix to American history.
If there is more to our past than either of those things, its exploration must come largely from within. The University of Alberta needs to accept its responsibility for this task.
When I was writing the history of the University of Alberta, one of the themes that emerged was that from its beginning in 1908 the university saw its mission as twofold — to bring the world to Alberta and to interpret Alberta to the world. Over the years it has done a consistently excellent job with the former and has a more uneven record on the latter.
The faculty of arts should be the part of the university that has the closest ties to the community. It should be the primary interpreter of our art, music, literature, society, politics, and history.
Regrettably the faculty has been a long way down on the university’s list of priorities in recent times and by ignoring opportunities to connect with the community, it risks cutting itself off from its greatest potential source of support.
For most of the last half century anyone wishing to study the history of Alberta or Western Canada came here for graduate study. As of the end of 2013 there will be no one in the history department specializing in the history of Western Canada, much less Alberta, in the 20th century.
This Canada Day seems like the time to raise this issue.
In four years, Canada will mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation. The federal government has already begun preparations to mark the occasion.
Over the next four or five years we can expect a great deal of national debate about our political and constitutional evolution, particularly given the fact of a separatist administration in Quebec (there is, by the way, no longer anyone in the department to teach the history of French Canada) and the Harper government’s move to an elected Senate. Both those issues are deeply rooted in the history of Confederation.
Will we content ourselves to being merely observers of these crucial discussions?