Jeopardy has been having a reunion of former champions, and the combined talent has been running up big numbers by knowing the answers -- rather, knowing the questions -- to EVERYTHING.
Until last night, when the contestants included all time Jeopardy master Ken Jennings and more recent long-run competitor Austin Rogers, and the answer given was: On this date in 1867 the Dominion of Canada was proclaimed.
Who knew the right question? Crickets. None of the competitors responded. Host Alex Trebek, good Canadian boy, was indignant, and the contestants laughed ruefully. Can't expect anyone to know that!
Hot Docs, a very substantial documentary film festival, is currently running in Toronto. Just to look at the program will convince, or remind, you for the ambitious, challenging, provocative, thought-provoking films being made all the time on just about every subject you can imagine.
That's my beef with The Story of Us, ultimately. Why do television programmers accept that pretty much every mainstream CanHist program is, you know, pablum? Sure, The Story of Us has some vivid filming, some dramatic scenes, some intriguing vignettes. Having watched a few episodes -- they are all online now -- I'm not hating it. I'm just not very engaged, and I'm glad to have had no responsibility for it.
But even a disappointing program, it turns out, can stimulate discussion. Following last week's program that touched briefly on Treaty 6 and Canadian expansion on to the prairies, the CBC organized another online discussion to expand on the television program. It's actually pretty terrific. It gives us three lively, articulate indigenous panelists -- the great educator Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, western archaeologist Eldon Yellowhorn, and TRC commission director Ry Moran -- in conversation with an indigenous host, CBC broadcaster Duncan McCue.
When I was approached as they assembled the panel, I stressed that I'm not a treaty-history expert and I would not participate unless there was an indigenous majority. In fact, their choice to assemble an all-indigenous panel was brilliant. They may be talking to us, but there is a comfort level evident among the panelists that would be at least different with even one non-indigenous participant "representing" majority culture.
Listen to Eldon Yellowhorn mentioning the history of indigenous smoking, and McCue responding: "Did they leave any advice about quitting?" Or Métis Ry Moran speaking of discovering the colonial oppression experienced by his Scots ancestors -- in Scotland. Yellowhorn even acknowledges that Canada150 is a story worth telling (something a lot of mainstream history profs seem to have trouble with!); it's just that so much else has been ignored.
And that is before they get to their vigorous, well-informed, and at times even optimistic discussion of the treaty relationship.
"This is change, actually happening right now," says Ry Moran, reflecting briefly on the shape of the panel.
Also, a couple of days ago Cassandra Szklarski wrote a widely circulated Canadian Press story quoting me among others on The Story of Us. It's a good piece, but I'm squirming at a part where I seem to be dismissing John English and Bob Bothwell as "any old historian." It's not a misquotation, but I did mean it as a comment on the filmmakers' attitudes, and not any kind of denigration of two historians I admire and would listen to anytime (and who are not much older than me, either!)
J’ai regardé ces épisodes et, à l’instar des autres critiques, j’ai été scandalisé par le résultat. Les séries télévisées historiques ne font jamais l’unanimité, mais celle-ci donne l’étrange impression d’avoir été faite pour diviser. Et pour fausser la vérité.
[I watched these episodes and like other critics, I was shocked. Televised history series never please everyone, but this one gives the strange impression of having been made to cause division. And to falsify the truth.]
I haven't got myself to watch "Story of Us" yet, but I'm not sure all of Girard's criticisms are soundly based. He picks up on a complaint that early Acadian settlement is neglected, but a TV show is not a textbook or an encyclopedia. It is going to leave a lot out, and the selection needs to be judged on balance. And he's pretty exclusive about who can film history.
On ne badine pas avec l’histoire. C’est sérieux, l’histoire.... Quand je dis que l’histoire est sérieuse, cela veut aussi dire qu’il faut laisser l’histoire aux historiens.
[You don't mess around with history. History is serious, When I say history is serious, that also means you have to leave history to historians.]
Leaving most of the commentary on "Story of Us" to popstars and celebrities is a bit wierd, I agree. But "22 Minutes" messed around with history big time the other night in a Canada150 special (just a clip or two online so far). They are not historians. As far as I'm concerned they can mess around with history anytime.
But the doubts are not all francophone, for sure. Douglas Hunter:
This may surprise the CBC, but we have actual fur-trade historians who can say amazing and informed things about people in the fur trade. https://t.co/obTk0oXo5t
Heritage Canada has nine new Canada150 ads up on YouTube and some at least in regular
rotation on your screens. I dunno, I kinda liked this one.
But Andrew Coyne's quick review here:
I’d enjoy those Canada 150 ads more if a) they hadn’t snubbed George Brown and b) they weren’t so clearly part of the Tory re-elexn campaign
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) October 19, 2014
Someone promptly responded that there is indeed a George Brown episode among 'em. Right. But it's pretty dire. "I was premier. Twice. [?] But I got tired of it, so I joined John A. Macdonald. Then I died."
Update, October 24: James Muir, from History and Law at the University of Alberta, writes: "I agree, the Brown
video is dour, but not much more than the others. They actually make for a
decidedly uninteresting set of videos. A bunch of men standing on their own,
not moving, lit from behind (usually) and describing themselves as if
they are ghosts reflecting on their lives and deaths
Ugh."
That thing about the bell plundered from Batoche in 1885 and stored in a legion hall in Millbrook, Ontario, until it was, ah, returned to the Metis nation and restored to Batoche. Seems maybe it's actually the bell of Frog Lake? CBC DocZone has a doc on the subject tonight. Preview here
And whatever the status of the bell, it may be an interesting primer on the issues of 1885.
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