A Step Past Revisionism

Abstract

Since the 1970s, Quebec historians have taken a revisionist approach to the province's historical writing, but a transition occurred in the 1990s and post-revisionism became the vanguard. Quebec's print media industry had been ignored by revisionists because it did not support their thesis. This study uses post-revisionism to demonstrate the limits of the revisionist approach by analyzing how the print media were modernized in Quebec. It begins by chronicling Quebec's and Canada's media historiography, and then the Canadian media industry and early twentieth-century Quebec history is addressed. Finally, reformers and publications that laid the foundation for the modern print media industry in Quebec are examined. As it shows, post-revisionism gave a chance for a less restrictive history of the print media industry to emerge.