Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

H I S T O R Y
To the Past
History Education, Public Memory, and
Citizenship in Canada
Making the Voyageur World
Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade
Carolyn Podruchny
Edited by Ruth Sandwell
Recent years have witnessed a breakdown in consensus
about what history should be taught within
Canadian schools; there is now a heightened awareness
of the political nature of deciding whose history
is, or should be, included in social studies and history
classrooms. Meanwhile, as educators are debating
what history should be taught, developments in
educational and cognitive research are expanding
our understanding of how best to teach it. To the
Past explores some of the issues surrounding what
history education is, and why we should care about
it, in the twenty-first century in Canada.
Originally broadcast in the fall of 2002 on the
CBC Radio program Ideas, the lectures that comprise
this volume not only address how history is
taught in Canadian classrooms, but also explore the
meaning and purposes of history more generally.
Contributors show how Canadians are demonstrating
a new interest in what scholars have termed
‘historical consciousness’ or collective memory,
through participation in a wide range of cultural
activities, from visiting museums to watching the
History Channel. Canadian adults and children
alike seem to be seeking answers to questions of
identity, meaning, community and nation in their
study of the past.
Ruth Sandwell is an assistant professor in the
Department of Theory and Policy Studies at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto.
Voyageurs are highly visible today as colourful caricatures
in popular culture and history. They adorn
the labels of beer bottles, the sides of U-Haul vans,
and web sites. Winter festivals in Minnesota and
Manitoba commemorate their legend. By placing
them squarely in the centre of fur trade and labour
studies, Carolyn Podruchny’s Making the Voyageur
World frees voyageurs from their mystique as picturesque
historical cartoons through a detailed analysis
of their unique occupational culture.
Voyageur life was shaped by the men’s shared
roots as canadiens and habitants, as well as their
encounters with Aboriginal peoples, and the exigencies
of their jobs – they traveled constantly
through varied landscapes and social worlds.
Voyageurs numerically dominated the Montreal fur
trade, formed kin ties with Aboriginal women, and
settled in the northwest to raise their families. By
examining their lives in conjunction with the metaphor
of the voyage, Podruchny reveals not only the
everyday lives of her subjects – what they ate, their
cosmology, rituals of celebration, their families,
and above all, their work – but underscores their
resonance in history as well as in the Métis communities
they helped found.
Carolyn Podruchny is an assistant professor in the
Department of History at York University.
Approx. 120 pp / 6 x 9 / October 2006
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-3891-3 / 978-0-8020-3891-3
£32.00 $50.00 E
Paper ISBN 0-8020-3814-X / 978-0-8020-3814-2
£14.00 $21.95 C
Approx. 347 pp / 6 x 9 / October 2006
3 maps, 7 tables
Paper ISBN 0-8020-9428-7 / 978-08020-9428-5
$29.95 C
CANADIAN RIGHTS ONLY. CO-PUBLISHED WITH UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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