The Dawn of Canadian History : A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

The Chronicles of Canada #1

by Stephen Leacock

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: History, Canada, Nonfiction

51 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

Stephen P. H. Butler Leacock, FRSC, was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist. Between the years 1915 and 1925, he was the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world. He is known for his light humour along with criticisms of people's follies. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour was named in his honour.

Wikipedia article.

Reviews

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harken ye to the very dawn of mankind!

...in Canada.

There's no "big bang", no great revelations, just a few minor ones, which are interesting in their own right. I'm always happy to read and reread about the Norsemen in America stories of which maybe one day we'll know the whole truth. I hoped for and expected more about the Inuit culture, but didn't get much here.

Just when I was about finished I discovered the author, Stephen Leacock died in 1944. I looked this up because I was beginning to notice that some of the information in this book was only marginally correct or flat out wrong (The most obvious example: he was of a time in which misinformation was spread about the ancients believing that the world was flat.) That cast doubt upon everything I was reading and I felt I had to be on my toes. However, that's not a bad thing. We should all be more cautious about what we're reading (I'm looking at you, people who get their politics from memes posted to Facebook!).

Regardless, there's plenty of solid history here about Canada's beginnings and I feel I have a slightly stronger grasp on the subject, and it's written in a readable style, which can't always be said about histories.

[Žygimantas · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5 If you are not familiar with Canadian history and want to know its roots, it's quite a good choice. This book was first published in 1915, which means you have to be aware of popular ideas in academia and their thinking during that time. The author promotes evolutionist theory and sees natives as "exotic" and backward. Most of the info. now would sound completely different, or ridiculous. Despite that, it's an easy read. For me, it was quite interesting to see how people imagined the same things 100 years ago. In overall, I don't regret listening audiobook version. Sometimes it was annoying, but it's very short.

[Jenn C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written originally in 1914, this slim volume is the first in a 32-part series on the history of Canada. Since it was written a hundred years ago, it unfortunately carries both the prejudices of the time and the constraints of what was known. That being said, the writing is wonderful and is a joy to read. This is what makes history enjoyable. I was able to read an original copy that my library carries, bound in red leather and about the same size as a kobo mini. Just the tactile sensation of reading it was worth it.

[Kai (CuriousCompass) · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of 1919 typical racism in here BUT also damn the author LOVES metal smelting and doesn't think highly of anybody who isn't into it which was funny.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a book I would recommend to anyone. The author's rather racist opinions of Native Americans is rather disgusting.

[David Anusontarangkul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned some things about Canada. I didn't know how historical it was with the importance of its geography.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its ok

Its a good book for people to learn about Canada and some of the animals that are in the north.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good info in this book, but it is woefully written. NEEDS EDITING!

[Marco den Ouden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Leacock is most widely known as a humorist but he was also an academic. He studied economics under the renowned Thorstein Veblen. He subsequently was a Professor of Economics at McGill University. And he also was an historian of note.

This short volume chronicles the prehistory of Canada leading up to the voyages of Jacques Cartier. The first chapter looks at primordial times, the formation of the earth from a "fiery molten mass" to the development of Canada's geographical features as we know them today.

The second chapter, Man in America, looks at various theories of how indigenous Canadians and indeed, indigenous tribes across the Americas came to be. The third chapter, The Aborigines of Canada, goes on to look at the various aboriginal tribes and nations of Canada from the Algonquins to the Iroquois and more.

The next chapter looks at the earliest explorers making their way to Canada's shores, the Norsemen, who preceded Columbus by 500 years. The fifth chapter looks at the Bristol traders, which looks at the exploits of John Cabot and his sons.

The final chapter looks at the forerunners of Jacques Cartier which includes the Portuguese such as Vasco da Gama, the Corte-Reals, and Juan Verrazano. After these voyages the east coast had been mapped and explored to some degree. This laid the groundwork for Jacques Cartier who sailed beyond the coast up the St. Lawrence River.

For a book first published in 1915, it includes a lot of detail and is an entertaining read. How accurate it is in light of the passage of over a hundred years is open to question, but my take is that it is more accurate than you might expect.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has an annotated bibliography of all the exploration that went into the various visits and landings in Canada and North America, but I found its notes regarding the various aboriginal tribes and racism against the savages entirely too casual given the obvious paucity of knowledge about them more than a century ago (you’d think they’d know more but I’d wager still that on any given subject, a standard had not yet been attained). I thank subsequent scholarly practice for requiring *serious* writers to become better researched and a lot more circumspect about parroting popular sentiment about unpopular subjects/people. I was disappointed that such a celebrated Canadian writer indulged to that degree in the harsh attitudes of his times and wouldn’t be surprised if his name comes off a certain university building as a result. I’m not saying this to be enlightened (though I am) or politically correct (which I am only by concession) - I don’t like to judge earlier humans for cultural mores we have today and cultural and social dynamics are hard to reckon with. But I still require humans to be sensible in their own choices and most perpetually fall short of that. It annoys and disturbs me when they do. Words here about the aboriginals were thoughtless and unkind.

[Shelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eww.
Of course the geologic theories will be outdated. That was OK, and historically interesting.
The sections covering native Americans were awful. They started as bad, but tolerable due to time period. Then they became worse as the blind assumption of superiority (in part due to the time in which the book was written) was no longer held in check. Perhaps these sections would be useful as an example of the rank misunderstanding of genetics and the gross assumptions possible in cross cultural failure?
The section on the Vikings was interesting.

[Léo Bourdon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite frankly, I thought I was being open minded by trying this book on indigenous people since it was written so long ago. But I couldn't get passed the author depiction of those ”uncivilized” and primitive Indians. He spent quite a significant amount of time talking about the various ways the Europeans reached Canada, particularly the Vikings. That's very good, but what about the Indians? Right, they are uncivilized and primitive.

[Debi Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very little Aboriginal history was reported and what was there was white male supremacist hearsay. Very disappointing for an author of such distinction. However, it is an insight into the beliefs that were being taught in 1914 at the time of writing and is an education to us as to what non-aboriginal thinking was. The fact that I was so horrified by what was said is a sign of the current times.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Matthew in 1597, led by Giovanni Caboto, was the first European ship to land on the mainland of North America since Bjarni Hrafnsson navigated along its coast and Lief Ericsson landed on it in the early 900's.

[Lucia Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good until it devolved into uneducated and racist nonsense

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow is this dated. Overall, it was interesting, but it was a struggle to see (with my modern mind) to the way he wrote about the "savages" of the Americas. And of the very naive view of evolution where humans were at the "top." And the lengths he went to explain how people could have accidentally sailed across the oceans to originally people the American continents. I'm quite curious about the actual history of Canada but the biases of the writer make it difficult to know what is really true and what has been filtered through a Euro-superior lens. Still, it is interesting to see how men (lets be honest, it was always men) of the past saw people of the earlier past.

[Grant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Being a big Leacock fan, I picked this up hoping that some of Leacock's intelligent wit and charm might have made it into this little history of early Canada. Unfortunately, Leacock phoned it in on this one. A terribly dry summary of early Canada to the time of Champlain, it comes complete with the casually racist language of the early twentieth century in the sections concerning First Nations peoples. Leacock is unable to express a single original thought at any time during the history. Best avoided.

[manka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Některé kousky byly báječné. Některé byly slabší. Ale když si vezmu, že jsou to dílka kolem sta let stará, tak to na čtyři hvězdičky prostě je.

Mimochodem, zajímal by mne anglický originál, neb překlady jmen do češtiny byly dost dobrý.