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No state is a moral entity, none are holier than thou, whatever is said for them: that is one thing we teachers must know.
Philip Rieff
We do not all fit together as identical pieces of some great legion; our myriad differences make the whole of our society more resilient and durable, also richer and more dynamic.
Charles Taylor
To put it differently, any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly.
Michel-Rolph Touillot
Historical polemic has a distinguished pedigree. At its best, it not only provokes by addressing important issues but also raises the level of debate by illuminating them with a sustained angle of vision.(f.1) It can also serve less noble purposes. If it does not seriously engage the subjects it attacks, it can misrepresent, distort, and be merely destructive. Dr J.L. Granatstein's book Who Killed Canadian History? proves to be just such a work in the way it characterizes the Canadian historical profession and its scholarship.(f.2)
Polemicists are always, of course, on the side of virtue, and Granatstein is no exception. As director of the Canadian War Museum and author or editor of almost fifty books, he has assumed the role of champion of Canada's true national history -- the story of people who have done great things together in the past and share a commitment to a common future. His vision of the Canadian past is very much a history of national accomplishment, and those who lose sight of this vision do so at their common peril as Canadian citizens. Unfortunately, in his view, the great majority of Canadian academic historians have relinquished their public duty.
In speeches, articles, and previous books, Granatstein has seen fit to tell Canadians that Canadian academic historians have for the most part abandoned their national past, but nowhere has he done so more stridently than in Who Killed Canadian History? Comfortably ensconced within the academic community, he says, they have turned their attention away from important national issues; steeped in a civic complacency that only a tenured position can afford, they have overwhelmingly opted to pursue their own idiosyncratic research; fuelled financially by government research grants, university historians...