Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Discover Canada to be corrected, politically?


To be politically corrected?
Peter Van Loan, the unsavory Harperian attack dog, has reinvented himself ... as a historian, or at least a twitterstorian.

Rumours that the Liberal government was planning a rewrite of the citizenship orientation book Discover Canada provoked Van Loan to denounce a "Liberal war on history." To fight it, he launched what has become a daily tweeting of Canadian historical events, Tory-slanted (heavy on John A. and the monarchy) but mostly just random historical moments and anniversaries.  Such as:




Sadly, Van Loan may be sort of right about Liberal history. Sources suggest that politicos in the Immigration Ministry are working on tweaks to the Discover Canada text -- as written some years ago by political types in the previous government's Immigration Ministry.

I'm not against edits and tweaks to the material in the booklet that is intended to orient immigrants preparing to seek Canadian citizenship. But the government has historians and researchers capable of doing this.  Canadian history, particularly official history, ought to be depoliticized as much as possible. Historians being asked for input on the latest rewrite should not cooperate without assurances that professional rather than political standards are being maintained in the process

 
Follow @CmedMoore