This is heritage day in Canada. No, you didn't miss a paid holiday. This is not Good Friday. It's just a day.
But the day gives a chance to salute two organizations that have become part of the fabric of Canadian historical awareness.
One is the Heritage Canada Foundation (www.heritagecanada.org). Many years ago I actually worked for a few months for the Heritage Canada Foundation in a handsome old-house office in Ottawa's Centretown. But I mainly want to notice it for the extraordinary achievements it has made in making heritage conservation important in this country.
The foundation launched the idea of Heritage Day, for one thing. More important, it's been there on the ground in scores of towns and cities across the country, giving practical advice and pulling together expertise and money and citizen willpower. The Foundation has actually demonstrated that conserving heritage architecture is good economics, good public policy, and good cultural policy too. It has made a difference, and it deserves a good deal of the credit for the fact that we think differently about architectural heritage than we did 25 or so years ago.
The other organization is the Historica Foundation (www.histori.ca) founded a few years ago to promote knowledge of Canadian history. Its principal backers are the Bronfman Foundation of Montreal (originators of tv's Heritage Minutes) and Lynton "Red" Wilson, a Nortel millionaire with a powerful concern about the state of the country and its knowledge of itself.
Today Historica runs The Canadian Encyclopedia, the best online source of information about Canada. It runs the Heritage Minutes. It has a website full of historical stuff.
Mostly, Historica focusses on history education. Frankly, I'm not sure that is so wise a strategy for a history foundation. Not that education is unimportant. But sometimes Canadians fall into the error of thinking history is for kids and if we ram enough of it into them when they are young, the country will be saved. If we want to promote respect for our history, my sense is we need to work to ensure that adults respect history as an adult concern, a cultural richness to appreciate as much as music or sport or any other cultural pursuit.
Education is a $40 billion a year commitment in Canada. That's a big ship to turn around. Historica is the richest historical foundation Canada has ever seen, but I fear it could spend itself dry on the education system, and the next day the education system would be barely changed and hungry for more. A much smaller foundation, the Dominion Institute, has shown what a splash can be made by targeting lively history-centered campaigns at the public, the media, and the opinion-makers.
Maybe I'm wrong about the difficulty of influencing the educational system. Historica has certainly done some nifty things, and I'm glad it's there. This morning it was histori.ca that reminded me of Heritage Day, in fact.
So here's to Heritage Canada Foundation and Historica. Check them out.
