Is it time for our charter to be re-ratified

[Wilber]

This guy gets it.

"Chief Clarence Louie, Osoyoos."

FORT McMURRAY, Alberta

Speaking to a large aboriginal conference and some of the attendees, including a few who hold high office, have straggled in.

"I can't stand people who are late, he says into the microphone. Indian Time doesn't cut it. "

Some giggle, but no one is quite sure how far he is going to go. Just sit back and listen:

"My first rule for success is Show up on time."

"My No. 2 rule for success is follow Rule No. 1."

"If your life sucks, it's because you suck."

"Quit your sniffling."

"Join the real world. Go to school, or get a job."

"Get off of welfare. Get off your butt."

He pauses, seeming to gauge whether he dare, then does.

"People often say to me, How you doin'? Geez I'm working with Indians what do you think?"

Now they are openly laughing ... applauding. Clarence Louie is everything that was advertised and more.

"Our ancestors worked for a living, he says. So should you."

He is, fortunately, aboriginal himself. If someone else stood up and said these things - the white columnist standing there with his mouth open, for example - you'd be seen as a racist. Instead, Chief Clarence Louie is seen, increasingly, as one of the most interesting and innovative native leaders in the country even though he avoids national politics.

He has come here to Fort McMurray because the aboriginal community needs, desperately, to start talking about economic development and what all this multibillion-dollar oil madness might mean, for good and for bad.

Clarence Louie is chief and CEO of the Osoyoos Band in British Columbia's South Okanagan. He is 44 years old, though he looks like he would have been an infant when he began his remarkable 20-year-run as chief. He took a band that had been declared bankrupt and taken over by Indian Affairs and he has turned in into an inspiration.

In 2000, the band set a goal of becoming self-sufficient in five years. They're there.

The Osoyoos, 432 strong, own, among other things, a vineyard, a winery, a golf course and a tourist resort, and they are partners in the Baldy Mountain ski development. They have more businesses per capita than any first nation in Canada.

There are not only enough jobs for everyone, there are so many jobs being created that there are now members of 13 other tribal communities working for the Osoyoos. The little band contributes $40-million a year to the area economy.

Chief Louie is tough. He is as proud of the fact that his band fires its own people as well as hires them. He has his mottos pasted throughout the Rez. He believes there is no such thing as consensus, that there will always be those who disagree. And, he says, he is milquetoast compared to his own mother when it comes to how today's lazy aboriginal youth, almost exclusively male, should be dealt with.

Rent a plane, she told him, and fly them all to Iraq. Dump 'em off and all the ones who make it back are keepers. Right on, Mom.

The message he has brought here to the Chipewyan, Dene and Cree who live around the oil sands is equally direct: "Get involved, create jobs and meaningful jobs, not just window dressing for the oil companies."

"The biggest employer," he says, "shouldn't be the band office."

He also says the time has come to get over it. "No more whining about 100-year-old failed experiments." "No foolishly looking to the Queen to protect rights."

Louie says aboriginals here and along the Mackenzie Valley should not look at any sharing in development as rocking-chair money but as investment opportunity to create sustainable businesses. He wants them to move beyond entry-level jobs to real jobs they earn all the way to the boardrooms. He wants to see business manners develop: showing up on time, working extra hours. The business lunch, he says, should be drive through, and then right back at it.

"You're going to lose your language and culture faster in poverty than you will in economic development", he says to those who say he is ignoring tradition.

Tough talk, at times shocking, given the audience, but on this day in this community, they took it and, judging by the response, they loved it.

Eighty per cent like what I have to say, Louie says, twenty per cent don't. I always say to the 20 per cent, "Get over it." "Chances are you're never going to see me again and I'm never going to see you again." "Get some counseling."

The first step, he says, is all about leadership. He prides himself on being a stay-home chief who looks after the potholes in his own backyard and wastes no time running around fighting 100-year-old battles.

"The biggest challenge will be how you treat your own people."

"Blaming government? That time is over

Osoyoos is a favorite spot of ours. We have stayed in their campsite several times and it is one of the best private sites in the area. Their winery and golf course are also first class.

[Catchme]

Perhaps you should have really read the book and heard what he was sayiing? Instead of taking an erroneous notion of superiority from it

Diamond's primary thesis is that there's no inherent superiority among any racial or ethnic groups, and that the often-tragic failure of other races to resist expansion by other peoples was largely a matter of bad luck

.

"Our failure to domesticate even a single major new food plant in modern times suggests that ancient peoples really may have explored virtually all useful wild plants and domesticated all the ones worth domesticating," Diamond writes.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/07/intellectual_ga.html

First: It is a thesis not supported absolutes, though it has some very fine points, none of which support your premise of European superorit over anyone.

mentioned his theory of the underdevelopment of China to Dr Kent Deng of the LSE's Economic History Dept., and he felt it was an implausibe explanation. Similarly, Diamond's explanation for the failure to domesticate indigenous African animals was criticised by the reviewer for the London Review of Books, a zoologist.

Second:

Resistence to disease, does not make mental superiority or any other kind of superiority of self over another human. The link is to a semi peer review of the book, you might gain some actual insight into the book from it.

Third:

You do understand he was speaking about Eurasia, do you not? He was not just speaking about Europeans. The whole entire Asian content is included as being more "technologically" advanced.

Why? Why did Europeans conquer Peru, Mexico, Ghana, and Australia? Why didn't Incas, Aztecs, Ashanti, or Australians conquer Eurasians. That is the question that Jared Diamond answers.. And his answer can be summed up in one phrase: "seeds, germs, size, and guns." (Note that the answer is not "guns, germs, and steel"--a phrase that is more euphonious but less meaningful.)

Eurasian societies acquired a key advantage relative to other societies because of seeds.

Eurasian societies acquired a key advantage (relative to other societies) in their resistance to germs.

The relatively advantageous biological endowment of Eurasian societies was then reinforced because of the size of Eurasia.

And the relative edge possessed by European societies was then amplified to overwhelming proportions by guns.

Agricultural started in the ME, NOT Europe, and indeed it seems that Africians were just as good at Agricultural as were the Eurasians.

Those who invented agriculture in the Middle East were fortunate in another area. Eurasia had lots of large animals, and lots of large animals--aurochs, boar, ancestral sheep and goats, horses--that could be domesticated. Successful domestication of large animals gave a further boost to Middle Eastern productivity, and allowed still higher population densities. Moreover, living in close proximity to animals gave Eurasians both the epidemic diseases that were to devastate the populations of the Americas, Oceana, and Australia when contact came, and the resistance to those diseases.

Technologies invented in the Middle East (and elsewhere in Asia) then diffused over the entire great continent. Moving east or west from the Middle East one encounters roughly similar climates for long distances. Thus a pattern of agricultural technology that was good and productive in the Indus Valley had a good chance of also being useful in (say) Spain. The size of Eurasia meant that there were many different groups of people who could invent new technologies. The long east-west axis of Eurasia meant that invented technologies could then diffuse.

By contrast, technologies invented elsewhere had a difficult time diffusing across oceans, or through ecological barriers within which technologies ceased to be of use. Corn took several thousand years to diffuse from Mexico north across the desert to the Mississippi Valley, in large part because corn selectively-bred for Mexico germinates too early and takes too long to grow for it to be of any use in Missouri. The llama never made it north from the Andes to the Valley of Mexico. The inhabitants of New Guinea and of Australia were on their own, able to draw only on the technologies they could invent by themselves. Because their population was low, and because one head was less than two, the growth of their technology was low.

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/...amond_guns.html

And truthfully, guns did not help Europeans that much in what is now the USA either, they tipped the scales in the end, but they had to decimate food stocks, pass out germ ridden blankets, feed First Nations poisoned alcohol, and exterminate whole villages of women and children. This was of course after they exploited them for their knowledge, skills and abilities.

And gun warfare, played NO part in Canada's destruction of FN societies and culture what so ever.

Also, no matter how hard you, whire doors, and argus, try to depict 1st peoples of the Americas as savages eating each other, does not make it fact.

[White Doors]

Oh boys...

Mayans were pressing clay tablets to record their history about 1500 years before the "Gutenburg" printing press was invented. Scientists have even confirmed that the clay pots recorded sounds from the era. Can you say sound recorder?

clay tablets? you are seriously comparing that to the printing press?

ok...

Discovery of the new world and the first to communicate back and forth from it?

The "New World wasn't discovered. It was bumped into first by Scandinavians and then much later by good old Chris Columbus lost on his way to China.

exactly what I said... Care to read what I wrote again?

I take it you mean "painting"? Of course art for the sake of art wasn't available to Europeans in general and was mostly reserved for the elite of European society. But painting for records for the people, now that is well documented around the Americas and the use of earthen pigments still outweighs the volatile heavy metal paints that killed most of the European artists.

You really are quite daft eh? Big deal, neanderthals made cave paintings. that doesn't denote an advanced culture my boy.

The Maya had aqueduct systems long before the Europeans ever knew what they were. Besides that is another technology invented by brown people form the Middle East.

Uhhh.. The Romans?

Boy are you ever dumb. Up until the Europeans came here to the Americas, their hygiene was despicable. The rich Europeans only bathed once a year and the poor ones hardly ever in a lifetime. In contrast the practice of daily bathing was common in Iroquois society. And as for human wastes, the Europeans and their descendents are still pissing in our drinking water and crapping on our food. The natives were far advanced - including having indoor bathrooms and sweat lodges built into longhouses. Human wastes were place far away from the water and food crops.

yeah, me smart. So the iroquois had plumbing did they? funny that hasn't turned up in any archeological digs.. LOL

Invented by an American long after he learned form the Indians.

So the Indians are really the one's who invented the Internal combustion engine?

Ok then...

Invented by a brown fella, a Greek. Where is the steam engine today, huh?

Uh.. Greece is in Europe. Consult a globe for verificaiton. That reminds me. Representative Democracy. A greek invention. thanks!

The Mayans had telescopes long before the Europeans. The oldest polished lens was found in South America it is still ranks as being more highly polished than technology can achieve today.

So the mayans had a refracting telescope before the Europeans? Link please.

As to the rest of this tiring pathetic mythicsim you subscribe to, the majority was invented by people OTHER than Europeans. You see historically Europeans were either drunk (because they had to drink wine and beer due to pissing in their water), stoned on rye ergot they ingested in the grain, or just plain conquered people who had no time to invent much of anything. What they did have is a penchant for violence and so they stole most of the inventions discovered elsewhere and put them to use. In comparison to Native people of the past, Europeans were well behind in the technological race and if it hadn't been for the Huns or the Egyptians mingling with them it is highly likely that Europeans would still be in the dark ages. I would be careful about boasting too much. Historically Europeans were filthy, dumb and starving people. Is that what you are defending?

You really do need to read more rather than relying on your xenophobia to give you an answer to things you haven't a clue about......

haha - golden! Me with the xenophobia? I haven't referred to a race of people as dirty or dumb - that was you. Replace that word European with 'black' and see how outlandish you are.

Besides, all my assertions are based on fact, not hate.

See this link for even more!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology

I see that our high schools need to teach history more often.

Amazing how deluded people can become of history when they have an agenda to promote.

Here's some more:

Compass

Rotary grindstone

Heavy Plough

Horse Collar

Horse Shoes

magnets

Mechanical clocks

stern mounted rudders

The idea of the Quarantine

Soap

Streel Crossbow

Tidal Mills. Wind Mills

Wheel barrow (with the all important WHEEL of course)

LOL

[White Doors]

Diamond's primary thesis is that there's no inherent superiority among any racial or ethnic groups, and that the often-tragic failure of other races to resist expansion by other peoples was largely a matter of bad luck

.

QUOTE

"Our failure to domesticate even a single major new food plant in modern times suggests that ancient peoples really may have explored virtually all useful wild plants and domesticated all the ones worth domesticating," Diamond writes.

Exactly! thank you! I never said anyone was dumb or stupid.

You inferred that.

My contention is the European society was much more advanced than First nations.

No one asked me WHY. you were too busy calling me names.

Makes it hard to have an intelligent conversation doesn't it?

I'm glad that you finally agree with me on this issue catchme.

In other words, tell me where I said WHY it was this way.. I;ll save you time. you can't because I didn't.

I know far lefties feel they have to not like caucasians (why I don't know) but I was just staing facts and i get tarred and feathered as a racist.

You and posit have to ask yourselves why that is.

Diamond's book explains WHY and I agree 100% with him. You never asked me WHY because you weren't interested in learning WHY.

[Catchme]

White Doors said:

Roman's are not Europeans? Rome is in Italy fyi. Check out a globe for verification.

Check out the Roman empire, there was no Europe when it was around, LOLOLOL There were many differing types of peoples.

For that is what you have below and you are taking personal ownership of as if it was you who did some of those sorry can't be done unless you trace every genetica line and moreover you are not even correct with many of them. Nor do they support any notion of superiority of persons.

I'm taking personal credit? haha ok, whatever helps your sleep at night.

Well you seem to derive a sense of superiority because of it, so that is taking ownership yes.

Apparently, peoples of the pacific were sailing all over it from one length to another of course, if you had any ineterest in truths you would've have researched your claims.

They sailed it, sure - but they had no advanced trade routes like the Portugese for example.

Of course they did, from the outhern most regions of south america to the northern most regions of north america and both continents from east to west.

FN's had their own sophisticated culture art work, music long before.

obtuse much? There are also cave drawings in France that are 13,000 years old. Not quite the renaissance in my opinion...

Again, you have failed to read links and do any reserach about their art work, pottery, building and infrastructure systems. In fact, I do not believe you have actually read the book you are speaking of.

They were extremely well versed agrarians who had diverse crops.

Yes there are numerous examples where they farmed until the land was turned fallow and simply moved on to the next arable land to repeat the process.

So you know they used to let the land rest and then go back to it. Advanced agriculture in other words.

Those were not invented until way after NA inhabitation.

Sorry, did you have a point to make here?

Of course it is the point that mixing of cultures has brought about technologies, after both pre and post contact.

They did not have small pox in NA/SA until white man brought it to them.

Ever wonder why the 'White man' had a natural tolerance to this? it was because the 'white man' had advanced domesticatuion of animals millenia before FN's did. Small Pox is a disease of cows and pigs.

They had the animals to domesticate they were long ago extinct here and were not re-introduced until after contact. How can you domesticate that which you do not have? Moreover, they were advanced hunters and gathers, and this in itself is hugely significant. If they were not future settlers to NA could not have survived.

It may actually have more to do with close proximity to rats, vermin and filthy living conditions as anything.

European society was Much much more advanced then the FN's were and that is a fact. They continued this dominance for hundreds of yeara after first contact as well.

Eurasian society was more "technology" advanced because of Asian gun powder and steel forging.

[White Doors]

See?

You are trying, in vain, to paint me as a racist:

Second:

Resistence to disease, does not make mental superiority or any other kind of superiority of self over another human. The link is to a semi peer review of the book, you might gain some actual insight into the book from it.

I never said any 'race' was superior. Never even brought it up. What I did say was that European SOCIETY was much more advanced at the time than FN society. That is a fact.

[White Doors]

Check out the Roman empire, there was no Europe when it was around, LOLOLOL There were many differing types of peoples.

You do know that Europe is a geographical location do you?

you are making yourself look silly here.

[White Doors]

They had the animals to domesticate they were long ago extinct here and were not re-introduced until after contact. How can you domesticate that which you do not have?

Yes. The natives hunted them to extinction. As I said, I never said WHY.

I believe all humans are equal. You got all fired up and tried to paint me as a racist. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[White Doors]

Moreover, they were advanced hunters and gathers, and this in itself is hugely significant. If they were not future settlers to NA could not have survived.

cite?

Eurasian society was more "technology" advanced because of Asian gun powder and steel forging.

They were for a time. Europe caugth up and passed them and the Islamic peoples as well in the late middle ages.

[Catchme]

See? You are trying, in vain, to paint me as a racist:

Second:

Resistence to disease, does not make mental superiority or any other kind of superiority of self over another human. The link is to a semi peer review of the book, you might gain some actual insight into the book from it.

I never said any 'race' was superior. Never even brought it up. What I did say was that European SOCIETY was much more advanced at the time than FN society. That is a fact.

No, I am not trying in vain to do anything other than say you are incorrect. Nor am I painting you as anything but ill informed.

most advanced = superior

The opinion you are holding about "more advanced" is spurious and biased, particularily when you insist at not looking at truth and facts regarding FN's, and even regarding the book you are thinking you are citing or using for evidence. Then with listing all the things you did, that you appear to think denote a more advanced status, that were invented long after contact, casts its own long shadow on your motives and thinking.

Guns and steel do not make people's more "advanced" it makes them better armed is all.

Immunities do not make a society more advanced than another either.

Evidence on hunting and gathering:

Pemmican and the fur tade and exploration of NA. None of it could have happened without FN's and their actions.

Nor could it have been done without FN's technologically advanced means of transportation. I.e. birch bark canoes.

Nor could it have been done without the vast trade networks already in existence for thousands of years.

Inabiltity of colonialists to survive in NA until they learned gathering skills and eatable plants from FN's.

Medicines today come from FN and SA indigenous knowledge.

Romans were Mediterranean peoples NOT Europeans.

[Figleaf]

The original charter mandate has been so greatly exceeded that it has established, what can be best described as single party rule.

In other words the liberals pursual of socialistic ideologies, involving the charter, has turned or transformed Canada into a country that is next to state controlled.

The stacking of the Senate, federal courts and charter interpretations have made it impossible for other political parties primarily the traditional Conservatives to implement changes beneficial to the country to deal with important issues.

Has the time come to re-ratify our charter before it is to late and allow immature rule to destroy the country?

We have no idea what the traditional Conservatives might be capable of, since they no longer exist. The present 'Conservatives' are anything but traditional. They are Karl-Rove style Republicans, disdaining institutions in favor of ideology.

[White Doors]

Romans were Mediterranean peoples NOT Europeans.

Wow.... Italy isn't in Europe.. greece either. guess we better redraw the maps.

LOL

most advanced = superior

Only in your little mind is that the case I guess.

Guns and steel do not make people's more "advanced" it makes them better armed is all.

Merely the title of a book that I have read and you have not otherwise you wouldn't type something so silly.

The opinion you are holding about "more advanced" is spurious and biased, particularily when you insist at not looking at truth and facts regarding FN's, and even regarding the book you are thinking you are citing or using for evidence. Then with listing all the things you did, that you appear to think denote a more advanced status, that were invented long after contact, casts its own long shadow on your motives and thinking.

Europeans were more technologically advanced. That is all I said and it is a fact as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in thw west. I'm suproised people would argue it. Well idealogues will argue thr colour of the sky if it makes their narrow views on the world untrue.

pity.

[Argus]

most advanced = superior

The opinion you are holding about "more advanced" is spurious and biased,

I'm sorry to tell you this, but you write like someone who is desperately trying to include 'big' words that, unfortunately, she does not really understand.

Weren't you going to tell us about your education?

Guns and steel do not make people's more "advanced" it makes them better armed is all.

Immunities do not make a society more advanced than another either.

The ability to make guns and steels does not MAKE one advanced, it is a sign that one IS advanced. Likewise immunity from disease, and a superior ability to withstand disease would make one genetically superior, at least in that particular area.

This is so absolutely basic logic that I'm amazed you can turn on a computer and yet not grasp it.

Evidence on hunting and gathering:

Nobody cares about hunting and gathering. ALL societies were hunter gatherers at one point. Some moved on to more advanced systems. The natives of North America did not.

Romans were Mediterranean peoples NOT Europeans.

Okkkaaaayyyyy. So much for education.

[jbg]

And yet, they were still primitives, savages, easily crushed and pushed aside by the more advanced Europeans as soon as the two civilizations met.

Argus, normally I agree with you. Smallpox, not advancement, get those dubious honors.

[jbg]

We have no idea what the traditional Conservatives might be capable of, since they no longer exist. The present 'Conservatives' are anything but traditional. They are Karl-Rove style Republicans, disdaining institutions in favor of ideology.

You'd probably call me a "conservative" in that sense though in fact I am an extreme leftist.

[Argus]

We have no idea what the traditional Conservatives might be capable of, since they no longer exist. The present 'Conservatives' are anything but traditional. They are Karl-Rove style Republicans, disdaining institutions in favor of ideology.

I wonder what your idea of a "traditional conservative" is. Joe Clark, perhaps, who wasn't conservative in any sense of the word?

[Argus]

And yet, they were still primitives, savages, easily crushed and pushed aside by the more advanced Europeans as soon as the two civilizations met.

Argus, normally I agree with you. Smallpox, not advancement, get those dubious honors.

Smallpox made it easy. But the end result was inevitable. The Europeans were simply better organized and armed. Once large scale travel between their territory and the Americas became possible they would have imposed their will on the natives.

[seabee]

... they would have imposed their will on the natives.

It is quite sickening to see that Europeans, particulary the Spanish and the Anglo-saxons, always want to impose their wills upon others. This is at the root of the present Québec-Canada problem.

[Argus]

... they would have imposed their will on the natives.

It is quite sickening to see that Europeans, particulary the Spanish and the Anglo-saxons, always want to impose their wills upon others. This is at the root of the present Québec-Canada problem.

Hello. Planet Earth calling. Have you been here lately? The history of this planet is the history of one cultural group dominating or destroying another going back as far as history can record. The natives exterminated each other without remorse, entire tribes being wiped out, obliterated because they stood in the way of other, expanding tribes. It was no different in Africa. The history of cultural communities in Asia and India is, if anything, even worse than Europe, with massive slaughter taking place on a regular basis.

Your ignorance is a troubling reminder of the poor state of education in Canada.

[jbg]

Your ignorance is a troubling reminder of the poor state of education in Canada.

Argus, don't you remember, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-89 was caused by Europeans, Canadians and Israelis?

[Argus]

Your ignorance is a troubling reminder of the poor state of education in Canada.

Argus, don't you remember, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-89 was caused by Europeans, Canadians and Israelis?

I think one of the problems is a lack of knowledge of history. I don't regard myself to be a historian, but I am aware of the massive, brutal slaughters which occurred during Indian and Asian history (for example) and I think most people know absolutely nothing about the wars and wholesale killing there. They only know a little north American and European history (and not much of that). They know little or nothing about the wars of conquest among the Mayans and Incas and Aztecs either, or, for that matter, about the wars between native tribes here in Canada.

[jbg]

Your ignorance is a troubling reminder of the poor state of education in Canada.

Argus, don't you remember, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-89 was caused by Europeans, Canadians and Israelis?

I think one of the problems is a lack of knowledge of history. I don't regard myself to be a historian, but I am aware of the massive, brutal slaughters which occurred during Indian and Asian history (for example) and I think most people know absolutely nothing about the wars and wholesale killing there. They only know a little north American and European history (and not much of that). They know little or nothing about the wars of conquest among the Mayans and Incas and Aztecs either, or, for that matter, about the wars between native tribes here in Canada.

I went to a Great Big Sea concert in NYC in April 2006. I met two schoolteachers from Peterborough, who had no idea who Montcalm and Wolfe were. Before I went to a Jim Cuddy (of Blue Rodeo) concert several weeks ago I had dinner with a Canadian couple and their relatively bright son. He similarly didn't know those names, though he had heard of the Plains of Abraham.

The lack of knowledge of your countries' youngsters concerns me. Their history lessons should not be coming from a Yank who, as Rick Mercer properly points out, would look for seal hunting opportunities in Saskatchewan.

[Argus]

Your ignorance is a troubling reminder of the poor state of education in Canada.

Argus, don't you remember, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-89 was caused by Europeans, Canadians and Israelis?

I think one of the problems is a lack of knowledge of history. I don't regard myself to be a historian, but I am aware of the massive, brutal slaughters which occurred during Indian and Asian history (for example) and I think most people know absolutely nothing about the wars and wholesale killing there. They only know a little north American and European history (and not much of that). They know little or nothing about the wars of conquest among the Mayans and Incas and Aztecs either, or, for that matter, about the wars between native tribes here in Canada.

I went to a Great Big Sea concert in NYC in April 2006. I met two schoolteachers from Peterborough, who had no idea who Montcalm and Wolfe were. Before I went to a Jim Cuddy (of Blue Rodeo) concert several weeks ago I had dinner with a Canadian couple and their relatively bright son. He similarly didn't know those names, though he had heard of the Plains of Abraham.

The lack of knowledge of your countries' youngsters concerns me. Their history lessons should not be coming from a Yank who, as Rick Mercer properly points out, would look for seal hunting opportunities in Saskatchewan.

There are damned few Americans who know anything about early Canadian history either - not that they necessarily should. But there are damned few who know anything about India or China or, for that matter, European history either. History is not being taught in North America. Schools needed somewhere to put all the social science type teaching that school boards mandated and they wound up taking the time from Geography and History. The only reason Americans tend to know a little more about their history than Canadians do is through Hollywood - and much of it is grossly distorted. How many Americans, for example, really know much about their own revolutionary war, and how truly vicious the fighting was between loyalists and rebels? They know the glorious, freedom loving rebels beat the evil redcoats, but how many know the redcoats were mostly Americans?

[stignasty]

I met two schoolteachers from Peterborough, who had no idea who Montcalm and Wolfe were. Before I went to a Jim Cuddy (of Blue Rodeo) concert several weeks ago I had dinner with a Canadian couple and their relatively bright son. He similarly didn't know those names, though he had heard of the Plains of Abraham.

The lack of knowledge of your countries' youngsters concerns me. Their history lessons should not be coming from a Yank who, as Rick Mercer properly points out, would look for seal hunting opportunities in Saskatchewan.

Alberta includes that in the grade 8 curriculum. As it is, it's included in "Canada: History to the Twentieth Century" which is about a third of the course material for the semester.

http://www.education.gov.ab.ca/k_12/curric...ocial/jhsoc.pdf

Themes of the topic are:

- New France

- British colonies

- authority of the colonial government

- trade with Britain and France

- Native people

- United Empire Loyalists

- explorers of Western Canada

- immigration/migration

- Red River Settlement

- two founding peoples

- Proclamation Act 1763

- Quebec Act 1774

- Constitutional Act 1791

- struggle for reform in the colonies

· Louis-Joseph Papineau/William Lyon MacKenzie

· Rebellions of 1837

· Act of Union 1841

- Confederation

· American Civil War

· B.N.A. Act, 1867

· John A. Macdonald

· bilingualism

- response to expansion

· Louis Riel

- Canadian Pacific Railway

- creation of provinces

I just asked my 14 year old daughter and she told me all about the Plains of Abraham. She learned it last year.

Much like your thread on multiculturalism, you seem to rely on a couple of anecdotal stories to form your opinion.

[Argus]

I met two schoolteachers from Peterborough, who had no idea who Montcalm and Wolfe were. Before I went to a Jim Cuddy (of Blue Rodeo) concert several weeks ago I had dinner with a Canadian couple and their relatively bright son. He similarly didn't know those names, though he had heard of the Plains of Abraham.

The lack of knowledge of your countries' youngsters concerns me. Their history lessons should not be coming from a Yank who, as Rick Mercer properly points out, would look for seal hunting opportunities in Saskatchewan.

Alberta includes that in the grade 8 curriculum. As it is, it's included in "Canada: History to the Twentieth Century" which is about a third of the course material for the semester.

http://www.education.gov.ab.ca/k_12/curric...ocial/jhsoc.pdf

Themes of the topic are:

- New France

- British colonies

- authority of the colonial government

- trade with Britain and France

- Native people

- United Empire Loyalists

- explorers of Western Canada

- immigration/migration

- Red River Settlement

- two founding peoples

- Proclamation Act 1763

- Quebec Act 1774

- Constitutional Act 1791

- struggle for reform in the colonies

· Louis-Joseph Papineau/William Lyon MacKenzie

· Rebellions of 1837

· Act of Union 1841

- Confederation

· American Civil War

· B.N.A. Act, 1867

· John A. Macdonald

· bilingualism

- response to expansion

· Louis Riel

- Canadian Pacific Railway

- creation of provinces

I just asked my 14 year old daughter and she told me all about the Plains of Abraham. She learned it last year.

Much like your thread on multiculturalism, you seem to rely on a couple of anecdotal stories to form your opinion.

The problem isn't that this material isn't included, it's that it's very briefly mentioned. You can fit all the above into one semester, and then who remembers it five years later?