Patrick Watson (1930-2022) and Irving Abella (1940-2002) RIP, two different historical practices

No one in the last fifty years introduced more Canadians to glimpse of the history of Canada than Patrick Watson, who died the other day at ninety-two. Watson, quite apart from his glittering career as a pathbreaking broadcaster and documentary filmmaker, was also the inventor of the Heritage Minute.  Tell me you -- and your family, and your friends, and you kids -- have not seen them a million times.

I profiled Patrick Watson once. He told me the germ of the Heritage Minute was his time as a juror on a one-minute film festival held in association with Montreal's Expo 67.  He came away with a sense for how much could be achieved in a very short film. When the Bronfman Foundation sought his advice on a Canadian heritage-promotion project, he instantly said "one-minute movies" He would insist on movie techniques for the Heritage Minutes, even at great expense: strong production values, good acting and costuming, high-quality lighting and sound, original music, even the use of 35 mm instead of TV film. Above all, he insisted on what he called "compressed narrative" -- a very brief story that  could stand, even benefit from, repeated viewings.

A quite different historical life ended almost simultaneously with the death of Irving Abella, deservedly known as the author of None is Too Many, the history of Canada's resistance to Jewish refugees before and during the Second World War. None is Too Many was not only groundbreaking scholarship but also perhaps unmatched in Canadian historical scholarship for its direct impact on public policy and social attitudes.  Its publication influenced the Canadian government to accept the Vietnamese "boat people," which set a pattern for expanded Canadian welcome and acceptance of refugees.  

Beyond None is Too Many, Abella was a productive labour and social historian at York University from his start there in 1968, the author of Coat of Many Colours, a history of Jews and Judaism in Canada, and the founder of the first program of Jewish studies at a Canadian university.