Canadians and Their Pasts: An Exploration in Historical Consciousness

Abstract

In March 2006 a group of Canadian researchers formally embarked on a collaborative project to explore how ordinary Canadians engage the past in their everyday lives. The Canadians and Their Pasts project was inspired by previous studies undertaken in Europe, the United States, and Australia that used survey data to probe people's historical consciousness. This paper will briefly summarize the findings of the earlier studies, offer preliminary results from the Canadian survey, and, where possible, reflect on similarities and differences in the consumption of the past across national boundaries.