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Le Livre Noir Du Canada Anglais 3
Normand Lester, a journalist with Radio-Canada (the French-language equivalent of the CBC) stirred up a hornet’s nest when he revealed that the federal government had secretly funded television’s Heritage Minutes which, in his view, provided a sanitized version of our shared history. He was subsequently, controversially, let go. The Black Book of Canada is his impassioned defence of his native province and an implicit repudiation of the anglophone media’s unfair, yet all-too-common attacks on Quebec and Quebecers.
While English Canada may think itself a “just society,” in this highly controversial book – which sold 50,000 copies in French – Normand Lester chronicles English-Canadian intolerance: the expulsion of the Acadians; Lord Durham’s anti-French policies; the hanging of Louis Riel; R. B. Bennett’s funding of anti-Semitic publications; and the internment of Japanese Canadians in the Second World War. Lester argues that the myth of two equal, amicable co-founders of the nation, a myth actively promoted by the federal government over recent decades, ignores the fact that there will always be two incompatible national histories.
While English Canada may think itself a “just society,” in this highly controversial book – which sold 50,000 copies in French – Normand Lester chronicles English-Canadian intolerance: the expulsion of the Acadians; Lord Durham’s anti-French policies; the hanging of Louis Riel; R. B. Bennett’s funding of anti-Semitic publications; and the internment of Japanese Canadians in the Second World War. Lester argues that the myth of two equal, amicable co-founders of the nation, a myth actively promoted by the federal government over recent decades, ignores the fact that there will always be two incompatible national histories.
- GenresNonfiction
349 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2002
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 4, 2016
The author builds up a case that shows how English-speaking Canadians have persecuted the French-speaking population from even before the Conquest in 1763. Throughout Canada's history, the British colonial powers have repeatedly tried to remove this troublesome population of former French nationals that does not want to disappear from the face of the Earth quietly.
I thought at times the author was piping his own horn. There are definitely places where he reads much more into what some writers are saying than a normal person would. But one cannot deny the documented historical events that show dogged determination of WASPs in getting rid of everyone else.
Like Michael Moore, you must take this book with an appropriate amount of salt. It is an opinion piece by its author and one must read it in that light. Nonetheless, the work is very well documented and is a great refresher course in Canadian history, even if it focuses on all the not-so-great aspects of it.
I thought at times the author was piping his own horn. There are definitely places where he reads much more into what some writers are saying than a normal person would. But one cannot deny the documented historical events that show dogged determination of WASPs in getting rid of everyone else.
Like Michael Moore, you must take this book with an appropriate amount of salt. It is an opinion piece by its author and one must read it in that light. Nonetheless, the work is very well documented and is a great refresher course in Canadian history, even if it focuses on all the not-so-great aspects of it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review