Recasting History by Monica MacDonald

Author:Monica MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2019-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

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The One Big Story: Canada: A People’s History

Canada: A People’s History

The 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty struck fear into the hearts of many Canadians. The first referendum in 1980 had been decisively defeated. But, in the interim, following the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, and the creation of the Bloc Québécois, the sovereignty movement had gained momentum. This became starkly obvious to the federal government and the “No” side after Lucien Bouchard, former federal Canadian cabinet minister and charismatic leader of the Bloc, assumed leadership of the growing “Yes” campaign as referendum day approached. Canada ultimately won the day, but the puny margin that allowed the country to stay together created widespread anxiety and uncertainty about Canada’s future.

A CBC television series on the history of Canada, produced jointly by the English and French networks, would boost morale and inject into the Canadian psyche a sense of pride and security about the country. As Canadian history programs on CBC television had already shown, nothing speaks to national unity and identity like the idea of a shared past with defining events, heroes, and symbols. The CBC would create the definitive national narrative and wrap it in a compelling television package. It would be a much needed trophy with which to substantiate claims, much as The National Dream had done before it, that the CBC was doing its part to “contribute to a shared national consciousness and identity” as it was set out in the new Broadcasting Act, 1991.1

Canada: A People’s History has generated considerable scholarly review, but none has placed it within the tradition of Canadian history programs on CBC television.2 Even with the great changes in the written history of Canada, the themes, subject matter, and interpretations show clear continuities with the earliest days of CBC television. Yet the presentation, specifically the dramatic conventions and the use of written and oral testimony, show striking changes. Like the makers of The Valour and the Horror, the senior team in charge of A People’s History stressed their series as a work created by journalists, following a set of principles used in professional journalism. Yet A People’s History was a linear narrative, beginning in the pre-contact period, with dramatic sequences at its core. It could not and did not always follow journalistic principles, at least as the producers understood them. One member of the executive team further described the series as not a “historians’ history” but a “people’s history,” following the advertisements of the series as told by those “who lived it.”3 But it was not told by those who lived it. A People’s History was told by the narrator, reading from a script based on secondary sources and only supported by the real words of people who had lived it.

The year 1995 also marked the beginning of another investigation into the fortunes of the CBC. The aim of the Mandate Review Committee (also known as the Juneau Committee), chaired by former CBC president Pierre Juneau, was to review the mandates of the CBC, the NFB, and Telefilm.

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