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CM . . .
. Volume IX Number 8. . . . December 13, 2002
excerpt: The leading guy
through all of this was a rascal named John Alexander Macdonald. He
was a sort of genius, and put all the very different parts of Canada
together like he was jamming a super-hard jigsaw puzzle into place,
amazing all the big boys in England, who had assumed they were superior
to our hayseed leaders. When it was over, this "fox" was
asked to be the first Prime Minister of Canada. A recurring
refrain in discussions Canadian education is the lament that we have
done an inadequate job in preparing an informed citizenry that the
nation's schools do not provide a sufficient grounding in Canadian
history and in the political process that shapes contemporary Canada
(or, alternately, that they have not found an effective way to make
that grounding interesting and relevant). In fairness, it must be
acknowledged that history and politics are not always of innate fascination
to adolescents, and finding approaches that will render the subjects
engaging is a challenge to the best teachers. For this reason alone,
Unusual Heroes will be welcomed as a useful addition to their
arsenal. Shane Peacock uses the characters of the Canadian Prime Ministers,
from Macdonald to Chrétien, as the vehicle for tracing the
story of the country's development. Because of its (potentially) inherent
human interest, biography is probably the most effective vehicle for
making history attractive to those without any compelling appetite
for the subject. Peacock has done a very effective job of making each
of our twenty Prime Ministers an interesting person regardless of
his (or her) particular strength as a politician. Rather than simply
presenting a sequence of sketches, the author has given each of his
subjects a particular persona, around which the individual story can
be structured. Sir John A. Macdonald is "The Great One";
William Lyon Mackenzie King "The Supernatural One"; Sir
John Abbott "The Great Pooh-Bah"; and so on. The author
makes an effort to speak the language of his adolescent audience (the
Fathers of Confederation have infrequently enjoyed the rubric "dudes");
and although this does at times sound rather like a recently acquired
second language, it will no doubt help to reinforce the message that
the subjects themselves are in fact "real people" and not
soulless icons. The author has attempted to give a positive cast to
each of his characters (arguing, in effect, that each, regardless
of comparative success or failure, was committed in his or her own
way to the nation not infrequently to the point of significant self-sacrifice).
At the same time, he has been fair and balanced in his assessment
of personal traits and actions, and of the unique situation and circumstances
in which each struggled. Again, the reader is left with a picture
of real people in real settings and, accordingly, a better understanding
of the constraints under which the major decisions that have shaped
the country were made. Recommended.
Recently retired, Alexander Gregor was a professor of the history
of education in the
To comment
on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal
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other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
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