My Experiences With History (Falsities I Have Experienced)

My experiences with history are limited to a few elective courses in High School, and some tid-bits I picked up just living in Canada. Nevertheless I have had my fair share of historical bull-crap thrown in my face, which have become increasingly apparent the more time I spend in an institution of higher learning, especially in this course. There are three major falsities I have been told which I would like to discuss here…

1. Canada Never Had Slavery

So this one actually comes from my parents, and I don’t know why I ever listen to them when it comes to school work. They told me this when I was in grade eight or nine and I believed it up until one of my friends corrected me, rather harshly, and boy did I feel like an idiot. I later confronted my parents about this and we figured out that, since both of them had lived in small towns in Ontario, the school curriculum they had was biased in the sense that this topic was never discussed  in class, completely covering up the atrocities that were committed. This was when I realised that not everything I learn in school has to be completely accurate.

2. Canada’s Residential School System Ended Hundreds of Years Ago

This one was told to me by one of my high school teachers, not my history teacher, outside of class. My school had just had a seminar/assembly about the local residential area where had they had discussed the residential school we have in Kamloops. Apparently this teacher was upset about the interruption and I overheard them complaining about it to one of their colleagues, and I asked why they were so upset. I was met this bull crap that I doubted immediately and brought up to my history teacher later on. She corrected me on this, telling me how it ended as late as the 90’s, and explained how many history courses ignore this topic. Luckily she did incorporate it into to our course and I was able learn more about this.

3. Black People Never Owned Slaves in North America

So this one I learned from one of my friends who I was hanging out with at the time, and we had just watched Django Unchained where they brought up ‘black slavers’ so I asked them if black people, like freed slaves not the historical Africans, owned slaves. They said of course they didn’t it was just made up for the movie. However, since this is the age of google, I looked it up and found a book that gave accounts of black slave owners and slavers in North America, which is completely logical when you think about it. Me and my friend figured that it was just our general assumptions that all black people were slaves at the time that led us to believe that no black person could ever participate in slavery.

If you want to check it out click here. The book was called Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina 1790-1860 by Larry Koger.