Why write a history of Canada?

Canada is not the most glorious country in the world.  It has minimally shaped the course of history and continues to minimally shape current events.  Its history is not the longest, the deepest, the most bloody, or complex or entertaining.  Most people have very little idea of what goes on inside this massively, mostly empty landmass. 

The logical move from this introduction would be to go and answer the question in the title or why write (or study) the history of Canada, but instead I'm going to break it down into two sub-questions to provide you my answer: why history, and why Canada? 

Why history?

Why spend time on history at all? As I see it there are 3 main reasons to study history. First, and perhaps most importantly, history is entertaining.  History is fun.  It is interesting, in a healthy way.  Like exercise, which can be at the same time fun and good for our physical health, history can be fun while being good for our intellectual health.  Rather than spending our time watching TV or playing video games, which might be entertaining, but rarely leave us a better person at their conclusion, history can help us develop mental models of the world and allow us to think more clearly about the present and the future, because of the next reason:

History is counter-factual.  Insofar as history purports to tell us not just what happened in the past, but why it happened, history inherently has to rely on counter-factuals to make its arguments.  It is the process of historical counter-factual reasoning, and the engagement in the dialogue that makes history a healthier form of entertainment compared to most other forms.  These counter-factuals can be about the mechanics of our society - If Caesar had not been assassinated on the ides of March, no civil war would have erupted, he would have invaded Parthia, which would have changed the balance of power in the middle east, and changed the course of history - or about the story and evidence of the past itself - if Caesar's will had been forged, as Marc Anthony would claim, why is it not recorded that he denounced it at the public reading of the will, when it is said that he was present? Indeed, almost any counterfactual can be generated for any type of history, which leads to the third reason in favour of history:

History is cross disciplinary. The counter-factual nature of history can lead to textual arguments, but also psychological, sociological, economic, technological, anthropological, and archaeological arguments etc.  Perhaps only economics rivals history in its breadth of applicability.  Through learning history, we can learn and engage with so many other disciplines of learning, all while being entertained.  Aside from exercise, there is probably no better form of healthy entertainment on which we can spend our time.

Why Canada?

But then why study the history of Canada compared to all other histories?  Why spend time and energy focusing on Canada rather than Rome, Britain, the United States, or India? To be honest, I cannot recommend spending time learning Canadian history above Roman, or British, or US history (I'll demure on India) - those histories which provide a much greater scope, and which have contributed to shaping the world in a way that Canada has never done should be overall more important for any student of history to know.  However, it is precisely the fact that Canada has done so little to shape the history of the world that can make it instructive, if not uniquely important.

Canada is the scion of two of history's greatest shaping forces - Britain and France, and the little brother of a third such force - the United States.  Its history is a story as much of people reacting to the changing shape of the world around them as it is of people making their own history.  For 400 years, almost every major trend and event in world history has impacted Canada, from the age of exploration and colonialism, the rise of European empires, to the enlightenment, the Atlantic revolutions, the industrial revolution, the world wars, the end of the age of empires, the cold war, and the dawn of the information age.  Canada has at best played a minor role in these periods and events, but has always managed to keep itself near the leading edge of the events and kept abreast of the changes.  It is a country with a fairly well documented history as literacy has been historically high, and so the textual record is good.  

Canadian history is a small mirror onto world history, and a lens into the psyche of mankind, and the changing world of the past 400 years.  I have an ambition, only privately declared until now, over the upcoming two years to start a podcast on the history of Canada.  The idea is to create a narrative podcast documenting the major events in Canadian history until the present day in the vein of The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan.  Much research must first ensure, but keep your ears tuned, and in the meantime, get your Roman, British, and US history listening out of the way to be well prepared for The History of Canada Podcast.