Heritage Minutes don't show struggle for social change as much as they should (Canadian Dimension, April 2025)
- Tom Monto
- Apr 8
- 3 min read
Canadian popular history suppresses memory of activism
The silencing of histories of collective struggle in popular memory
helps to naturalize the social stigma around activism
David Jefferess (Canadian Dimension, April 2025)
... Only 11 of the 102 Heritage Minutes produced since 1990 address histories of activism, compared to 12 that focus on sports and 19 on war. Of those 11, only three allude to how people worked in community to struggle for social justice: the underground railroad, a veterans’ campaign for housing, and a depression-era hospital that is presented as an initial step towards universal health care. The others focus on the individuals who helped establish pensions, women’s suffrage, and penal reform, for instance. As romanticized tales of individual perseverance, these vignettes simplify histories of struggle and also hide the way these efforts towards the welfare state, as Loreto argues, served the interests of white Christian Canadians.
In the Canadian Museum of Human Rights’ (CMHR) “Canadian Journeys” exhibit, a series of alcoves acknowledge difficult histories such as the internment of Japanese Canadians and the Residential School system. These displays are juxtaposed with exhibits presenting Viola Desmond’s challenge to segregation in Nova Scotia or the adoption of same sex marriage rights.
While the museum presents histories of violence and oppression as shameful chapters in Canada’s past, resistance to injustice is presented, overwhelmingly, through stories of inspirational individuals, or “upstanders.” In the words of the CMHR, “An upstander is a person who recognizes injustice, knows their personal strengths and uses those strengths to create change.”
Past histories of social movements tend to be more acceptable than current activism. But popular history is constructed in ways that limit depth and nuance. As Angela Davis notes, in North America everyone has heard of Martin Luther King Jr., but they typically only know that he “had a dream.” The CMHR’s focus on iconic “upstanders,” like King, Desmond, or Malala Yousafzai, presents social change as the result of the resilience, compassion, and courage of exceptional individuals.
Davis argues that such a focus limits our ability to recognize the “collective subject of history that was itself produced by radical organizing.” She emphasizes the way a “collective consciousness” emerges within the context of organized social justice struggles, allowing “social realities that may have appeared inalterable, impenetrable… to be viewed as malleable and transformable.”
The CMHR is not devoid of stories of social movements, such as the current temporary exhibit, “Love in a Dangerous Time: Canada’s LGBT Purge.” But the museum’s permanent galleries focus more on the abstract ideal of human rights and detailing historical violence than on examining the collective action that exposed and challenged that violence.
As the CMHR’s promotional videos reinforce, the museum’s purpose is to inspire visitors with stories of individual resolve rather than educate them about the accomplishments of organized communities [and organized sections of the population].
Actual histories are more valuable than hockey analogies
Of course, archives and histories of struggles for social justice do exist. Neigh’s books and Talking Radical Radio provide one example. Canadian Dimension has been a crucial site for chronicling these movements. And there are many more. But it takes some work to find them, especially as popular forms of history in Canada provide such limited impetus to think about history in terms of social movements. And that makes standing up for social justice all the more daunting.
It is not in the interests of governments or the corporate donors of the CMHR (including banks, mining industries, and telecommunications) to educate the public about histories of resistance to power. Further, as university crackdowns on Palestinian solidarity encampments reveal, protest continues to be discredited by legacy media and criminalized by the state. Indeed, the struggle to ensure the ability to strike, dissent, and fight injustices is, as ever, a crucial one.
Yet, the silencing of histories of collective struggle in popular memory is helping to naturalize the social stigma [against] activism.
Ironically, faced with the threat of annexation from the United States and the intensified shift to the right in Canadian politics, with all of the damage that will do to the land, [to the project of] building a right relationship with Indigenous peoples, worker rights and more, Canadians are desperately in need of [the inspiration that could come from] knowledge of [Canada's] histor[y] of protest and activism.
Feel-good slogans such as “elbows up,” martialling fantasies of developing a nuclear deterrent, or consumer initiatives to “buy Canadian” will not go far in building a collective consciousness that will move us toward something more than a romanticized status quo that only ever benefited the few.
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