History in the Modern World: What Canadians Can Learn About the Future from Our Past

The Empire Club Presents


Dan Snow and Peter Mansbridge, on: History in the Modern World: What Canadians Can Learn About the Future from Our Past


Welcome Address, by Mr. Kent Emerson, Associate Vice President at the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation and President of the Empire Club of Canada


April 23, 2019


Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. From the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto, welcome, to the Empire Club of Canada. For those of you just joining us through either our webcast or podcast, welcome, to the meeting. Today we present Dan Snow and Peter Mansbridge for today’s topic, “History in the Modern World.”


Head Table


Distinguished Guest Speaker:


Mr. Peter Mansbridge, Journalist, TV News Anchor, and Former Chief Correspondent for CBC News


Mr. Dan Snow, Popular Historian and Broadcaster; Ambassador, English Heritage; Founder, History Hit TV


Guests:


Ms. Vivien Clubb, Head, Marketing and Communications, IBK Capital Corp.


Ms. Kelly Jackson, Associate Vice President, Government Relations and Strategic Communications, Humber College; Director, Empire Club of Canada


Ms. Nona Macdonald Heasli, Past President, Empire Club of Canada


Ms. Kate Mavor, Chief Executive Officer, English Heritage


Mr. Kevin McGurgan, British Consul General in Toronto and Director-General for the UK’s Department for International Trade in Canada


Dr. Gordon McIvor, Past President, Empire Club of Canada


A quote from a 1998 speech “Who Killed Canadian History?” to the Empire Club by the then Director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum was: “Without a sense of our past, we are like poor souls wandering lost in the forest without a map. Without a sense of our history, we can have no future. Without a firm grasp of whom and where we are, we cannot hope to successfully integrate the newcomers who come to Canada to build a new and a good life in this most favourite of nations. Without history, our children will know nothing of what made Parliament, our laws, our society the way they are. Without history and the techniques that study teaches us, the ability to read, write, reason can never be well taught. Without history, our sons and daughters will never know what their fathers and grandfathers did to help save the world.” I think that it is incredibly well said. The Empire Club of Canada has always been a believer in the importance of documenting our past.


That is why the speech I just quoted you and all speeches from the past, 114 seasons, have been preserved and bound in what we call The Red Book. Since 1903, The Red Book has been used by university students in understanding Canadian history. It has been a part of the tapestry of our history. Thanks to all of you guys, all the audience members today for sharing this experience with us. Our collective history about the country we live in determines, in many ways, our view of the world and how we make decisions. The old adage that “Those that do not understand history are condemned to repeat it” is well accepted as being an obvious truth. In people’s understanding of their personal history and that of the country is so often strongly influenced by political, and in many places, the religious ideology of that point in time. What makes Canada, Canada?


What makes all of us Canadian? It is our shared experience and our shared understanding of that experience. That is why today the Empire Club will present one of the world’s most renowned historians, in conversation with one of the most successful broadcasters and communicators of past decades. Together, they will dive into how Canadians can better understand their future by having a good grasp on events and leaders who got us to where we are today.


I am going to start with Dan Snow. Today’s guest is the host of one the world’s most-listened-to history podcasts, and founder of a new history channel, historyhit.tv. He regularly works with the BBC and The One Show.


Born and raised in London, England, he remembers spending every weekend of his childhood being taken to castles, battlefields, country houses and churches alongside visiting Canadian historic landmarks. Half Canadian, half English, Dan developed a great love of history while studying at Oxford and immediately started presenting military history programmes with his father, Peter Snow, the notable BBC Broadcaster.


He has written or contributed to several books including On This Day in History, Death or Victory which is the story of the siege of Quebec in 1759. He wrote also The World’s Greatest Twentieth Century Battlefields and most recently The Battle of Waterloo Experience.


Dan is a proud ambassador and champion for English Heritage, a UK based charity that uniquely cares and looks after over 400+ historic sites across England and tells the story of England and its world history.


The Empire Club is proud to welcome historian, broadcaster, television presenter, and ambassador for English Heritage. Ladies and gentlemen, please, put your hands together for Dan Snow. At the Empire Club of Canada, we have often used the turn of phrase “the speaker needs no introduction.” This could not apply more to anyone than today’s moderator, who is a household name in Canada.


He is a widely respected journalist and has been the face of CBC News for nearly 30 years. Nonetheless, I am incredibly honoured to make this introduction. I take pleasure in this because I grew up watching our guest on his nightly spot, along with the rest of you, as the chief correspondent and lead anchor of CBC’s The National. He had this role from 1988 to 2017, winning 12 Gemini Awards for broadcast excellence, including the Gordon Sinclair Award for the Best Overall Broadcast Journalist in 1990 and 1998.


His other honours include two Canadian Screen Awards, numerous honorary degrees and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association.


He has also been inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.


He is deeply passionate about the importance of history and national history. To underscore this, I have found a passage in his 2002 Empire Club speech entitled “Canada in the Future.” He said about this country, “We were meant to have courage, and determination and spirit. We were meant to teach our children that life is good. And we were meant to teach them that they can make it better. Robertson Davies once said that Canada is not a country you love.


It is a country you worry about. He was right. I certainly worry about it. I worry that we may become a timid people.


I worry that so many of us are unaware of the greatness of our past that we may become doomed to believe that we cannot be great in the future. And I know how sad that would be.” Peter is drawn to broadcast the most historic events.


He set his retirement broadcast to the coverage of Canada’s 150th celebration. He has most recently worked with today’s feature speaker, Dan Snow, on a number of things, including December’s CBC program called Royal Wedding for the Ages.


For his third appearance at the Empire Club of Canada, please, welcome renowned television news anchor, journalist, columnist, Peter Mansbridge.


Mr. Dan Snow with Mr. Peter Mansbridge


PM: Thank you, everybody. That was just the way I wrote it for you, Kent. Let me say a couple of things, first of all, about our real guest here today, Dan, who has brought to life history in ways that I do not think any historian has. He has brought in a whole new audience of young people by his dynamic presentation and, of course, he is young. He is also really tall. I did not agree to do this unless we were sitting. It is an interesting mix because you have got the British historian who has deep connections to Canada. Many of you would know his mom, Ann MacMillan and his aunt Margaret MacMillan.


We would like to say he is Canadian really, even though he was born in Britain. On the other hand, you have got me who was born in Britain and 65 years ago, today, I got off the boat in Quebec City as we came to Canada. I did not realize that until my sister wrote me this morning or sent me an email this morning and told me this is the anniversary.


DS: Carried off the boat. Babe in arms, right?


PM: I wish.


DS: Little, tiny newborn.


PM: A newborn, yes, I was just struggling in my sixth year at that point. Nevertheless, it was a great opportunity for our family, and we, obviously, never regretted the move. For Dan, he has the best of both worlds.


He gets here pretty frequently to visit relatives and to talk history. I am going to throw back a quote of his right away: “History is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to anyone on this planet.” That is before the Leafs game tonight, right? Tell me about why it is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to anyone on this planet.


DS: It is funny that lots of people pick out that quote to suggest that I am insane, but it seems to me self-evident. History is everything that has ever happened to anyone who has ever lived, who breathed, who has ever walked this planet. Therefore, whether or not it is Alexander the Great, leading the cavalry charge of the Battle of Gaugamela, pushing off to the right wing, swinging around and taking Darius out at the end of that battle, or whether it is the Leafs winning, now, ancient history, the last Stanley Cup, or whether it is your parents’ eyes meeting across the dance floor in that nightclub for the first time. That is what history is for me. I think sometimes we are not good enough at defining history. I think we can say that history— we hive off all the other bits, culture and film studies, engineering and medicine, and what is left is a kind of slightly dry, legal history, if you like, of constitutional development and kings and queens. I think we need to just be confident and firm about dragging back all that other stuff and talking about the—because human beings, we are an astonishingly eccentric species. The stuff we got up to when you realize, when you set your boundaries from ancient Sumeria right up to Donald Trump’s America is completely remarkable.


PM: That is quite a spin. It does not seem to be heading in the right direction. Kent mentioned in his remarks that saying that we have all grown up with that unless you understand your history, unless you know your history, you run the risk of repeating the mistakes that history teaches you. I like that quote for this reason.


I remember doing my first broadcast from Afghanistan, when the Canadian troops were there. It was 2003 or 2004. We were doing it live back here.


My first guest was Rick Hillier, the Canadian general who was, at that point, the Commander of all coalition forces in Afghanistan. I looked at him, and I said, “When you look around this country and you see the kind of carcasses on the ground of past armies who have tried to invade Afghanistan, and it has not worked out very well in most of those cases, and now you are coming in here, a big coalition force, I am sure you have read history”—because that is the kind of guy General Hillier is—“why do you think that you could not repeat the same mistakes that happened in the past?” He said, “We know our history and that will never happen. We know how we are going to deal with this.” Here we are almost 20 years later. The Afghan war is not over, and they are sitting down negotiating with the Taliban, the people who they went in there to defeat about trying to come up with a peace agreement.


You could argue whether that phrase works in that case or not, but, generally, how do you feel about, given what you know about history, what do you feel about that phrase that we use, that if you do not know your history, you run the risk of repeating it?


DS: I think it is one of the most well-known phrases. I think there is a lot of truth in it. Again, coming back to my early point, which is the scientific principle is all about history. You learn; you do an experiment; it does not work out; you build. In large, failure is a key part of development in engineering and science or medicine. The first thing when you go to the doctor’s, the first thing that happens is you talk about your history. You talk about what the events that have led you to the place you are at at the moment. Yes, clearly, I find that for any study of state craft, history is vital.


If you are going to sort out—I mean, look at the world at the moment, if you are going to try and go to Israel, Palestine, Northern Island, Sudan, Mali, Timbuktu in Mali. Any way, any solution, any way of coping with these problems in these countries does not just start with—you first have to work out where that history has come from.


The composition—what is Mali and where did it come from? The unique geography of Mali, bolted together by the French, a Tuareg, large Islamic northern half of that country with Timbuktu in it, and then a Bantu African largely Christian or animist south— these two bits put together for imperial convenience by the French. Any discussion around Mali, that blighted country, which I happened to visit the other day, needs to start with history. Any discussion. Trump and the government—we must not endlessly talk about your southern neighbour. It is so difficult not to, because he looms so large.


PM: He is your friend. You just invited him for another state dinner.


DS: Right, he is coming to the palace. He is coming to the palace that is right. I would like to say it is unusual to invite, but the poor, old Queen has had a lot of dodgy folk at the palace over the years. What is interesting about him is he does not seem like he is aware of the complexities of the Golan Heights, for example, or the complexity of what is going on in Israel-Palestine or, indeed, in Korea. That is why I think he is ultimately frustrated, and Mike Pompeo is ultimately frustrated in their attempts to fix problems in the world, because they do not have a strong enough grasp of the underlying—of what is causing those problems. Of course, we have got Brexit close to home. I do not want to be a smug Brit who is always laughing at North Americans. We are leading the field at the moment when it comes to ahistorical mistakes. I think we are going to talk about Brexit in a bit. I will not jump the gun there.


PM: No, we had better spend a few minutes on Brexit. Before we get there, there is another one of your quotes. You wrote a piece in the Telegraph in 2017 where you said, “Canada and Britain share a past. We are fellow travellers in the uncertain world of the present.”


What were you thinking when you came up with that?


DS: Until 150 years ago, the place that we are sitting in now was known as British North America. It is fascinating that Britain, just after the fall of Quebec in 1759 and the end of that war in 1761, there was this brief remarkable period of North American history where Britain basically controlled the entire continent west of the Mississippi from Florida up to Hudson’s Bay. That did not last long because those ungrateful Americans, patriots, upset the apple cart there, but, anyway. The bits that were left, there was the United States of America and then there was British North America, the bits. That is why, by the way, when people in the UK, as they often do, go, “Well, this is the great thing about Britain, standing alone in 1940 against German Wehrmacht Luftwaffe,” I just get—I am sorry, but I just have a quick point to make there. The second largest country on planet earth was firmly alongside Britain. This giant economic, demographic, agricultural, industrial powerhouse, the largest chunk of North America, in fact, and people say it was not truly a World War until—and hold on—the largest bit of North America was involved in the Second World War from September 1939. I think the Atlantic is—just as the channel, the English Channel has been—an air gap for many people in the UK, seeing Europe ending in one place and Britain and starting, even though we are a 20-mile gap between Calais and Dover. I think the Atlantic Ocean has acted as a kind of air gap for British understanding and sort of remembering Canada. Nineteenth century stories talk about Canada being Britain’s Wild West. The Americans had their western expansion, Britain also had its western expansion, but there was the Atlantic Ocean in the middle, and it was Atlantic Ocean dominated by British ships and increasingly, telegraph cables and things. Politicians, in the early 20th century, when there was this thought about how the world was full of empires and some were transitioned to nation states, and British politicians complained endlessly about why the Americans were allowed to conquer a whole bunch of territory and called it America, the Russians conquered a bunch of territory and called it Russia; and Britain’s own expansion was going along through British North America into Canada out west, but because there was an ocean in the middle, it certainly looked completely illegitimate. They called it the “tyranny of saltwater.”


They said the only difference is we have to get on the boat at Bristol, and we get off in Halifax. Apart from that, show me the difference. The Russians are dispossessing the Chinese. We are moving native people from land east of the Urals. The Americans are on this giant imperial project in the south and west of that continent and into the Pacific. So, how come Britain is the bad guy? What is going on around here?


Britain was unable to make that transition into—a lot of people were suggesting, “Would it not be great, Britain, that the commonwealth could have an imperial parliament?” I think, in the end, the geography kind of undid it. Also, you see Britain, the great British invention, its gift to the world, the railway, kind of undid Britain in the end, because the railway forged an empire in America, in Germany, in Russia, in India, and in Canada, and it meant, because you could not get on a train and hop somewhere, it suddenly, it just had the effect on the kind of building of nation states.


It kind of went differently. I think that the Canadian story is, of course, partly, is the stories of Indigenous peoples, of course, as well. But it is partly the story of the British. If you look at the people we are talking about—we are sitting in this building, which is named after one of George III’s slightly errant sons as was this city, Fort York.


I was looking on the map today. You have got Simcoe born in Britain; you have got Macdonald, whom I was considering in terms of the western expansion, which is apparently now controversial, certainly on the west coast, as some statues are being pulled down. These are British-born people. The Canadians and British were—and then we have got the First World War and the Second World War.


We have got 100 years ago, last year: The Canadians played a disproportionately large role in the defeat of Germany on the Western Front. By 1917 and 1918 and the Battle of Amiens, the Canadian Corps advanced the furthest any Allied unit had advanced in the whole of the First World War on the Western Front. That is a fact I enjoy telling Brits as often as possible.


PM: What do they say when you tell them?


DS: Well, they just go huh. We have taken different tracks, because Canada has become a hugely self-confident, independent, proud country with its own national story, and has drifted apart, of course, from Britain. It is no longer economically, politically, socially or culturally dependent on Britain. Even when I was a kid, I understand that British soap operas, British TV shows were like top-rating Canadian shows. And, today, British people are surprised to hear the Queen is still on Canadian bank notes and stuff, as our paths have diverged, of course. The links are so powerful. I am here on behalf of the English Heritage for this trip. On English Heritage, you go through these English Heritage properties, these medieval castles.


Regarding the Magna Carta, the thinking that was going on, the decisions that were being made in these great castles, these parliament buildings, affected all of our ancestors, whether or not they were among those who took the boat west or were staying in the home country. That was the cultural, intellectual and political milieu and linguistic milieu. We are speaking English in this room, named after the errant son of George III. So much of this story of us meeting today goes back beyond Confederation to a time when Britain and Canada were almost as one.


PM: The relationship has changed over time. There has always been that connection, but it started off with sort of England as the parent, us as the child. Then, it became sort of England as the older sibling of the two.


DS: I think I know where this is going.


PM: You guys are in one hell of a mess over there.


DS: That is right. It is a bit like The Godfather, where there is the younger sibling, and then here is Fredo, who is the useless older, so we are Fredo, and you guys are—


PM: How would you describe the role? I find it interesting when you talk about trying to explain our role in the First World War. Wait until they find out that we were at D-Day.


DS: Not just at D-Day. There is English Heritage properties across Southern England where the Canadian troops trained for D-Day and garrisoned these wonderful castles and things, but, no, the Canadians played an enormous role in D-Day. They played an enormous role, as you know, in liberating Holland, in particular, and Canadians are still welcome there as liberators.


PM: How would you describe the relationship now? Where are we on that scale of how the relationship has developed over time?


DS: You have outgrown your creators. It is the old Frankenstein “I am going somewhere where they are and stuff, but I am not really going to get there. “You are now this hugely powerful, huge, well, one of the world’s greatest soft powers, cultural, intellectual powers with a hugely dynamic economy that is not in any way dependent on Britain. You do not need us for anything anymore. You used to need us as sort of immigrants, maybe, or migrants. That is no longer true. It is a story, now, as you say, of siblings. It is like there is my uncle in the audience there. When I was growing up, my uncle Tom was a god, to me. Now, I have grown up, and he is still a god to me, but we can have a beer, and we are going to watch hockey, and we are buddies now. We give each other relationship advice or whatever it is.


I think that is kind of the story. Particularly, as Britain lost its global empire, then like with Australia, like with Canada, you guys started paying more attention to the neighbourhood because Britain was unable to offer to you. Australia, halfway through the Second World War went, “Britain, it has been great; our security against Japanese now depends on the U.S. Pacific Fleet, sorry,” and Britain said, “Yes, I am afraid so; we cannot afford to have a massive fleet in the Pacific and a massive fleet in Europe—just cannot do it—and in the Mediterranean.” The same kind of thing happened with Canada.


If we are having interesting discussions about the Pacific area, the Arctic, Britain does not really have a huge role to play. Ironically, it is us going to come knocking on the door now for trade deals and things, because we are severing our links with Europe, apparently, if that happens. I think the relationship will be completely reversed. We are going to come to you as supplicants.


PM: The Consul General is sitting here, right?


DS: Oh, yes, sorry.


PM: Let us deal with the elephant in the room, being Brexit. DS: That is harsh on the Consul General.


PM: The Brexit issue I find fascinating for a number of reasons. In a way, it is the flipside of what we went through almost 30 years ago with the free trade negotiations where there was a fear on the part of a good number of Canadians that we were giving up our sovereignty by working into a deal with the Americans.


In the election that followed, I think it was about 60/40. Bill Graham would remember, in terms of, he lost, but he made a remarkable comeback a few years later, but the issue was those who were against free trade outnumbered those who were for it. But because of our first-past-the-post-system, the Conservatives won and free trade went into effect, and it has been there ever since. Here, you have the situation that you were protecting your sovereignty, at least that is what the leave people would say, right. Where is this now?


Because I have got to tell you, for most of us, we just think, Wake me when it is over, because there have been so many false starts on an ending to this.


DS: This is one lesson from history. I think is very interesting. It is very unusual for people to voluntarily pull their sovereignty upwards, right. It is much more attractive—like we all do, and I do especially as I enter middle age—to dream about an island with just me on it, sitting around, no one telling me what to do. That is why Canada is so wonderful, because you have got a Georgian Bay, and you can live that dream. You rarely hear people going, “You know what I want to do?


I want to pull my sovereignty to achieve outcomes together, but I recognize that I will maybe be outvoted and have to do things I do not particularly want to do, but I am bearing in mind it is for a greater good.”


That is a harder philosophical principle. The USA managed to bind those colonies together, but then fought the bloodiest war in their history in the 1860s to try and keep that dream alive. In Scotland, we recently had a referendum that was remarkably close, unbelievably. And in Britain, which is thought around the world to be a pretty unified nation state, the northern half of our island, 45% of people voted to leave the UK project. In Canada, you guys had two referenda in the ‘90s. The second one was like the most complicated question in the history of the world, and it was what, 0.1? It was crazy the percentage in Quebec—the majority for remaining in Canada. And Spain, Italy— there were huge pressures on modern nation states, because it is a very beguiling thing, which is, “Guys, let us get rid of those southern Italians, and we will be rich.” I remember being in Alberta in the ‘90s and with the oil sands. Everybody was like, “You know what? Hang on. What about Quebec? What about Alberta’s independence? Now, we are talking.” It is an attractive concept both individually to assert individual sovereignty: “I am going to take back control. I want to make myself great again. I am going to get rid of all these other people.” We are experiencing a spasm of that in Britain at the moment, both internally because of Ireland and Scotland, but also with our relationship with the EU. It is attractive. People are saying we are outvoted; we are doing things, and we are not able to have as much control over these outcomes as we would like. That is a reason, in my opinion, that point of view underestimates the nature of the interconnected globalized worlds. It also underestimates the nature of Britain as a European country in the last 2,000 years. Britain, for much of the last 2,000 years, has been part of a trans-channel empire. We do not like to think about it because of Britain’s kind of snapshot of itself is the hot summer of 1940: “Winston Churchill, White Cliffs of Dover, RAF—everything is fine.


No Canadians, certainly no Poles. We do not like to think about the Polish airmen.” But there is a snapshot. Or in the 1890s when Britain had the largest fleet in the world, the largest empire the world had ever seen, and it could just say, “You know what, Europe?


You do whatever you like. We are fine over here.” Those were actually abnormal moments in British history. Normal in British history is we are like insanely integrated. Our entire British economy was basically built on supplying the low countries with wool through the medieval period. Our whole economy in the 19th century was importing stuff from the rest of the world and then pushing it into Europe, into Danube and the Rhine. Our trade with Europe was much more than our trade with our empire. It is difficult for British people sometimes, to—and history is a huge part of that. We see ourselves as this fiercely proud, independent, once mighty nation, and we do not understand why we have to walk into a room in Brussels with 25 other finance ministers and hammer out a compromise, which brackets, ironically, that we are usually on the winning side of. We have pretty good outcomes in Brussels for us, but it was sold to the British people that we were being outvoted; we were being railroaded, and it is an attractive argument to say let us put up a barrier. Of course, there was the question of race as well. The Russians—we now know through disinformation and the nationalists on the other side—during the leave campaign were putting up huge, big posters of predominantly non-white people coming over from the Middle East, refugees from ISIS or North Africa and scaring people into thinking we were about to be submerged under a wave of non-white immigration. There are all sorts of things going on there.


PM: I am going to ask for questions from the audience in a minute, but there are just two other areas I want to go to. Just the last point on Brexit, because it is often at times this in a country where there is a crisis surrounding an issue that you tend to define yourselves.


I know that Canada went through this both on free trade and on the various constitutional crises of the 1980s and 1990s, that at least at the end of it you had a better sense of kind of who you were as Canadians. Is there any sort of revaluation or defining of what a Brit is today?


DS: That is interesting. During the Scottish Referendum campaign—this is the same in Quebec—the number of people in Scotland identified as British actually crept up slightly. We do not know where this crisis is going to end, but, certainly, it is funny, because it has turned, most people—like I did not really think about the EU that much, to be honest, five years ago.


Now, my kids are in EU t-shirts. We are marching through the streets. I am like, “The EU—I do not even know how it works.” I am not even sure about the statutory function of the EU. I think there will be a process.


If the leavers win and we do see tighter immigration, it will be harder for international students to come, harder for people to get Visas and start businesses. I have got a wonderful nephew here today.


His brother came and studied business school in Spain and met lots of other really bright kids, and it was the obvious decision. They want to start a tech business. They want to come to London, because that is the thing to do. After Brexit, if we lose, the fear that London will lose that lustre—we will not be attracting brilliant young, European minds to come and start their businesses in London. I think it is a battle at the moment between a vision of Britain that is older; it is whiter. This is probably sounding a bit similar to some of our southern neighbours here, but it is a vision that is older; it is whiter; it is more culturally homogenous, ethically homogenous, and a