Celebrations and History on the Prairies

Abstract

Celebration orders history by selecting some events, themes and individuals for recognition but not others. On two occasions within a quarter century Alberta and Saskatchewan have examined their past during province-wide celebrations of their golden jubilees (1955) and diamond jubilees (1980). Spatial and temporal comparisons of these events reveal an array of differences in attitudes, values and practices between the two prairie provinces. A subsidiary theme of the paper is that during the same period cultural initiatives by the federal government, beginning with the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (Massey Commission), have prompted a provincial cultural response, which by 1980 had become part of the phenomenon of “province-building.”