Selling Canada to Canadians: collective memory, national identity, and popular culture

Abstract

Two media endeavours, the Heritage Minutes and the CBC documentary Canada: A People's History, hope to serve as a corrective to Canadians' lack of interest in their history and to bolster national identity. However, the producers do not want to appear propagandistic in a country where there is conflict about what the shape of the nation should be. They accomplish this by appealing to the “on the spot” authority of journalistic representation and the emotional immediacy of dramatic story-telling. They also emphasize the multi-cultural and multi-perspectival nature of Canada's past. Ultimately these efforts exist within a larger narrative about the “story of Canada,” where events of the past are framed in terms of their contribution or relevance to the present shape of the nation-state. In this way, these programs reveal their purpose and, as collective memory scholars might predict, press the past into the service of present aims.