The Canadian Institute for Historical Education, referred to in a recent post below, sent out a New Year's message less combative than its Christmas one. They invited a number of recent contributors to their History Matters podcast to suggest favourite history books. One of their guests, Sean Conway, the retired Ontario politician and sage on all things CanPoli, was kind enough to focus on my own political history writing:
Sean Conway: “I’m going to recommend two books by the same author, Christopher Moore; they’re not recent but they’re very, very good. The first one was published thirty years ago: 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal (1997); and the second one, Three Weeks in Quebec City: The Meeting that Made Canada (2015), deals with the really important Quebec Conference of 1864 that laid the foundation for what became the British North America Act.
"What I like about Chris – he’s such a talented guy – is that he takes you through complicated things but you see it through the lens of the participants, and not just the menfolk, because many of the principals brought their spouses and daughters. Donald Creighton once said that history is the record of the encounter of character and circumstance; I completely agree with him. These two books by Christopher Moore humanise that story in a way that gives you the didactic benefit – you learn something – but you think, well, maybe we Canadians aren’t as dull and boring as everybody thinks we are.”
Thank you, Sean! I do note that the contributors invited by the CIHE comprised seven men and two women, and no indigenous or minority scholars (though contributor Charlotte Gray salutes one, Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii), the author of Valley of the Birdtail).
