Thirty Years After: Canadian History in the Universities of the United States

Abstract

n• 1927 Professor Reginald G. Trotter of Queen's University conducted an inquiry into the extent of formal courses on Canadian history and allied subiects offered in the universities and colleges of the United States. He reported his findings in the Canadian Historical Review in September of that year. Since then a world depression a d a world war, an extensive international police action, and the creation of a politically polarized world, have quickened American interest in other nations. American i stitutions of higher learning have grown at an incredible pace during the three intervening decades, tudent enrolment has quadrupled, and new courses have proliferated accordingly. Feeling that the time had come for a new assessment of the status of Canadian history in the United States, the present writer, in the spring of 1958, undertook to repeat Professor Trotter's inquiry. For a fuller view of the extent of academic nterest in Canadian history, an inquiry into libra holdings, textbook sales, and graduate studies was included. This survey is limited to instruction at the post-high school level. American primary and secondary school students receive some instruction in the history and geography of Canada,• but qualitatively this instruction generally leaves much to be desired. It often has been demonstrated thatthe average American high school student knows litfie of Canadian affairs. 2 Since none of the courses in Canadian