What role does history play in contemporary society? Has the frenetic pace of today’s world led people to lose contact with the past? A high-profile team of researchers from across Canada sought to answer these questions by launching an ambitious investigation into how Canadians engage with history in their everyday lives. The results of their survey form the basis of this eye-opening book.

Canadians and Their Pasts reports on the findings of interviews with 3,419 Canadians from a variety of cultural and linguistic communities. Along with yielding rich qualitative data, the surveys generated revealing quantitative data that allows for comparisons based on gender, ethnicity, migration histories, region, age, income, and educational background. The book also brings Canada into international conversation with similar studies undertaken earlier in the United States, Australia, and Europe.

Canadians and Their Pasts confirms that, for most Canadians, the past is not dead. Rather, it reveals that our histories continue to shape the present in many powerful ways.

Margaret Conrad has taught several generations of students at Acadia University and the University of New Brunswick. A longtime advocate of Planter Studies, she has also published several general histories of Canada and Atlantic Canada.

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Kadriye Ercikan is a professor of Measurement, Evaluation, and Research Methodology in the Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia.

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Gerald Friesen taught Canadian history at the University of Manitoba from 1970–2011. He has written several books, including The Canadian Prairies: A History and Citizens and Nation, and is co-author of Immigrants in Prairie Cities. Former president of the Canadian Historical Association, he was an advisor on CBC-Radio Canada’s television series Canada: A People’s History. He lives in Winnipeg.

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Jocelyn Létourneau is Canada Research Chair in the History and Political Economy of Contemporary Quebec and a professor in the Department of History at l’Université Laval.

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Delphin Muise is an emeritus professor in the Department of History at Carleton University.

D.A. Muise's profile page

David Northrup is associate director of the Institute for Social Research at York University.

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Peter Seixas is the director of the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness and a professor and Canada Research Chair in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.

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‘It is safe to conclude that Canada is not facing a national crisis of ignorance when it comes to our history. The authors of Canadians and Their Pasts have done us all a great service by proving that it is time to retire that tedious old cliché.

Geist summer 2014