Someone emailed me to ask how we have used Canada, A People's History in our homeschool. I answered the email, of course, but thought I should put this information out there for everyone who wants to use this resource for Canadian history.
I loved this from the forward by Mark Starowicz:
“This is a narrative work, not an academic work. I was reminded of the importance of this when a high school teacher stood up in the huge plenary session of the conference Giving the Past a Future in Montreal in January 1999 and said, ‘There has been a narrative cleansing of Canadian history.’ He is right. We have bleached the dramatic narrative out of Canadian history and reduced it to social studies units in our schools. If you want a sociological history, or a military or diplomatic history, seek elsewhere. If you want to get a sense of what it felt like to be an eleven-year-old girl in the Loyalist exodus, a nineteen-year-old Hudson’s Bay Company clerk seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time, or a terrified eighteen-year-old Acadian refugee at the Plains of Abraham, then this is the right book.”
We have used this 2-Volume set from grades 7-10 in our homeschool, though it could be used through grade 12, in my opinion. My third grade 7 student is now working through "Year 1" below, and I still really love these books. They
are well-written and quote quite a bit from original sources. We usually do one 40-minute Canadian history slot each week for reading and written narration, and then at the end of the week we watch some of the TV series (available on YouTube) with the whole family. It would be no problem to let the books stand alone, though.
Content warning: There is a little bit about native spiritual/sexual practices at the beginning of Volume 1 that I didn’t feel comfortable with for this age and censored for my children. This was an issue in the corresponding video too. It's at the bottom of page 3 and into page 4.
Also, as you get into the Modern era in Volume 2, I would recommend prereading as there are more mature and complex issues that you may wish to discuss with your high school students.
Year 1:
Term 1: pp 2-27 (…’then a star was lost in the sky never to be seen again.’)
Term 2: pp 27-55 (…’and the race to the New World began with new fervour.’)
Term 3: pp 55-74 and 180-186 (…’new commercial relationship had been established.’)
Year 2:
Term 1: pp 76-103 (…’she died in 1755’)
Term 2: pp 103-135 (‘…his lofty ambitions were finally achieved.’)
Term 3: pp 135-162 (…’almost 60,000 would be recently arrived Americans.’)
Year 3:
Term 1: pp 162-178 and 218-243 (…’at the expense of the whole Canadian people.’)
Please note that I skipped chapter 6 (except for a few pages at the end of Year 1) only because there was so much material to cover this year and we had already read a lot of supplementary living books on the explorers.
Term 2: pp 243-285 (…’The surveyors withdrew.’)
Term 3: pp 285-292 and Volume 2 pp 2-50.
Year 4:
Please note that this year’s reading load was particularly heavy, and I did two Canadian history slots per week instead of one. Looking back, I think it may have been too much reading, and next time I might cut some out and highlight some of the main stories. But that’s a big job. I had students in grades 10 and 8 when we did this. I think ideally I would prefer to do this era no earlier than grade 9 or 10.
Term 1: pp 52-136
Term 2: pp 138-236
Term 3: pp 238-322
I hope this helps some of you! I'd love to hear from you if you have used this series, and what you think of it.
