Canada: Story of Us: "Here's a shocker: Loyalist Laura Secord was born in the US."
John Doyle of the Globe and Mail looks at the CBC's Canada150 project "Canada: the Story of Us," and sighs:
An opportunity has been missed with this glossy, featherweight, politically correct concoction.
...What we create in art, popular or lowbrow, is actually the real “story” of us. But for grown-ups, which Canada: The Story of Us clearly is not.The best the CBC can do for history during Canada150 is the local franchise of an international project that has previously done American and Australian version. I had some glancing contacts with some of the local staff in 2015, and, though they were well-intentioned (and constrained), I was not left eager for more involvement. ('Course I was pretty sceptical of "Canada: A People's History" too, and was rather pleasantly surprised.)
"Canada: The Story of Us" premieres Sunday night on the CBC Newwork. Doyle does notice that there are a lot of actors and not many historians of Canada in the program, but if critical reaction follows his, it will be "historians" who take the rap, most likely.
