In Search of a Post-Confederation Maritime Historiography

Abstract

This paper began as a critical review from a Maritime perspective of Professor Carl Bergers The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of EnglishCanadian Historical Writing, 1900 1970 (Toronto. 1976). I had initially envisioned it as a contribution to a kind of Carl Berger "roast". The approach had its appeal for had not this work received the highest award to which a Canadian historian might aspire? And had not the author supped with the gods, or at least the governor-general? Obviously some good-natured raillery and honest criticism would be in order to help restore the author's statusas a fallible human being. To this end one could point out that in The Writing of Canadian History, Professor Berger did not mention a single major historical work on the Maritimes for the period after Confederation. Surely this was a shocking display of regional bias! But upon reflection, this author too was unable to name any books dealing primarily with aspects of postConfederation Maritime history written in English by a professional historian in the first century after Confederation. Thus the paper turned into an examination of the deficiencies of Maritime post-Confederation historiography. In fact, this is a story of two failures: the failure of mainstream Canadian historians to pursue themes which readily included the Maritimes, or to include the Maritimes in the themes which they did pursue, and the failure of academics residing in the region to respond effectively to the Maritimers' own obvious, and sometimes desperate, search for an historical perspective which would help them to understand their plight in a modern world. Neglect and stereotyping left the Maritime student with a version of Canadian history to which he was unable to relate and seriously distorted the national picture.