Canadians need to tell their own stories, according to historian J.D.M. Stewart

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Historian J.D.M. Stewart wants Canadians to know their history. He worries they don’t, and he’s on to something. In the opening pages of his recent book, The Prime Ministers: Canada’s Leaders and the Nation They Shaped, he writes of high-school students who didn’t know who Lester B. Pearson was. Not knowing the name of a prime minister may be disconcerting, but it’s worse than simply being weak on trivia. It points to a lack of historical knowledge and capacity to understand the breadth and depth of the country, both its past and, perhaps, its present.

30 essays from Globe writers explaining the newspaper's role in Canada's history

The late editor and writer Lewis Lapham defended historical education with passion and purpose, once writing: “Unlike moths and goldfish, human beings deprived of memory tend to become disoriented and easily frightened. Not only do we lose track of our own stories – who we are, where we’ve been, where we might be going – but our elected representatives forget why sovereign nations go to war. The blessed states of amnesia cannot support either the hope of individual liberty or the practice of democratic self-government.”

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If you believe that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, then it’s important to know just what we’re up against, present and past. The Globe and Mail spoke to Stewart about the importance of Canadians telling their own stories and talks about who this country’s most consequential leader was.

Why did you write a book about the prime ministers?

It’s been more than 25 years since there had been a book on Canadian prime ministers. A lot of history has happened since 1999. Topics that weren’t covered in previous books on prime ministers are now necessary parts of the story. That’s why I’ve included a significant amount of information on relations with Indigenous peoples and the environmental policy of prime ministers.

Why did you choose to include all of them?

I wanted to have a comprehensive place for readers to come to where they would be able to get important information on all of our prime ministers. I think that’s really the only way to handle it. That’s also why I included a rich and detailed index. This is a book that can be useful for journalists. It can be useful for students, which I think is important either at the secondary or postsecondary level.

Throughout the book, you lament how little we know about our history. How did we get there?

This lament has been around for a long, long time. I think part of the reason is we’re overshadowed culturally by the United States, and so they take up a big space in our mind. We’ve had to fight against that. And then we’ve just never really taken our history seriously. Most Canadian provinces don’t require a high-school credit in Canadian history. That’s something that I just still can’t understand. We don’t do a very good job of telling our stories.

It may also be part of that Canadian modesty, but it’s been something that I’ve tried to fight for my whole life, and it’s one of the reasons why I was a teacher. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve written this book, and it’s one of the reasons why I just write generally on stories about Canadian culture and history.

There might be a bit of a moment right now for the history of prime ministers. We have your book, as well as Raymond Blake’s Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity, which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize; John Ibbitson’s The Duel was excellent and well received. Stephen Maher captured the Justin Trudeau years in The Prince. What do you make of the recent bump in books about prime ministers?

If you go back even to John English’s two volumes on Pierre Trudeau, there is a decent library of books on Canadian prime ministers if you look at recent history. But a lot of them are also really outdated. There hasn’t been a biography on Robert Borden since 1980. That’s almost 50 years. There hasn’t been a comprehensive biography on Wilfrid Laurier in 60 years.

There are some books on the prime ministers, though, and we are in a bit of a moment. The thing is, we have to keep making those moments and keep making contributions so that not only are those books out there, but so that we also ensure there’s an audience for them. And that comes back to this idea that political history has kind of fallen out of fashion in educational circles. I think that’s one of the reasons why the kids didn’t know who Lester B. Pearson was. I think we still have to continue to make a sincere and concentrated effort to teach our political history.

If you were to write a biography of a prime minister, just one, who would it be?

I would love to try to write the magisterial biography of Wilfrid Laurier, just because he was one of our greatest prime ministers. His eloquence with his oratory would be beautiful to try to dig into. He was an interesting human. So, if I had the time and the financing to write a book like that, that’s what I’d like to do. In addition to Laurier, I think it’d be fun to take a stab at writing a political biography of the Brian Mulroney years because he’s a fascinating character as well.

Who’s the most consequential prime minister? I won’t ask about the best because we could run out of ink debating that. But for better or worse, who’s the most consequential?

It’s probably John A. Macdonald. We’re still talking about him today. The railway remains a vital piece of Canadian infrastructure and imagination. His treatment of Indigenous peoples still animates us with our unhappiness, with how he handled relations with them. He also forces us to reckon with the imperfection of our political figures, because he was a consequential and great prime minister who did great national things, but he also has significant blemishes on his record that make us wince. So we have to reckon with those things. And I think it forces us to, in the best scenario, understand that two things can be true at the same time, even among our leaders; it reveals to us the challenges of evaluating historical figures, but also reminds us people who led the country more than 150 years ago can still have an impact on how we feel as Canadians today, both for good and for ill.

The government’s treatment of Indigenous peoples features prominently in the book. Do you think mainstream publishing and media, and readers themselves, are taking the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada seriously now?

I think they are taking it very seriously. Ever since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report or even Stephen Harper’s apology in 2008 for the residential-school system, we’ve been forced to take that history seriously. And we’re pulling it out of the shadows. I’m pleased to have been able to bring forward some of those stories to new readers and expand the interpretation of Canadian prime ministers.