Portland Public Library

Canadians and their pasts, the Pasts Collective, Margaret Conrad, Kadriye Ercikan, Gerald Friesen, Jocelyn Létourneau, Delphin Muise, David Northrup, and Peter Seixas

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Canadians and their pasts

bibliography

862544736

the Pasts Collective, Margaret Conrad, Kadriye Ercikan, Gerald Friesen, Jocelyn Létourneau, Delphin Muise, David Northrup, and Peter Seixas

What role does history play in contemporary society? Has the frenetic pace of today's world led people to lose contact with the past? A high-profile team of researchers from across Canada sought to answer these questions by launching an ambitious investigation into how Canadians engage with history in their everyday lives. The results of their survey form the basis of this eye-opening book. Canadians and Their Pasts reports on the findings of interviews with 3,419 Canadians from a variety of cultural and linguistic communities. Along with yielding rich qualitative data, the surveys generated revealing quantitative data that allows for comparisons based on gender, ethnicity, migration histories, region, age, income, and educational background. The book also brings Canada into international conversation with similar studies undertaken earlier in the United States, Australia, and Europe. Canadians and Their Pasts confirms that, for most Canadians, the past is not dead. Rather, it reveals that our histories continue to shape the present in many powerful ways

Introduction: Canadians and their pasts -- History in public -- Everybody's doing it -- The problem of trust -- Family history in a globalizing world -- Collective remembering in three Canadian communities -- Places and pasts -- Immigration and historical memory -- The presence of the past in international perspective -- Conclusion: making history -- Appendix 1: short form questionnaire -- Appendix 2: how we did the survey