Commemorating Canada is a concise narrative overview of the development of history and commemoration in Canada, designed for use in courses on public history, historical memory, heritage preservation, and related areas.

Examining why, when, where, and for whom historical narratives have been important, Cecilia Morgan describes the growth of historical pageantry, popular history, textbooks, historical societies, museums, and monuments through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Showing how Canadians have clashed over conflicting interpretations of history and how they have come together to create shared histories, she demonstrates the importance of history in shaping Canadian identity. Though public history in both French and English Canada was written predominantly by white, middle-class men, Morgan also discusses the activism and agency of women, immigrants, and Indigenous peoples. The book concludes with a brief examination of present-day debates over Canada’s history and Canadians’ continuing interest in their pasts.

Cecilia Morgan is Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She is the author of Commemorating Canada: History, Heritage, and Memory, 1850–1990s (2016), as well as Creating Colonial Pasts: History, Memory, and Commemoration in Southern Ontario, 1860–1980 (2015).

Cecilia Morgan's profile page

"Commemorating Canada offers a deep and thoroughly informative history of what collective remembering in Canada has been in the past and invites attention to what it is yet to become."

University of Toronto Quarterly, vol 87 3, Summer 2018

‘This will be a useful resource for teaching how history has been used and abused for nationalist and other purposes.’

Canadian Historical Review vol 98:01:2017

‘This is a book that should be widely read…All who are interested in Canadian history will benefit from this wide-reaching study.’

Canada’s History October-November 2016

‘Anyone interested in teaching students about how history of education can reveal prevailing contemporary attitudes would do well to assign this book.’

Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’education, Spring 2017

"Commemorating Canada contributes to the series Themes in Canadian History, which aims at undergraduate readers by filling the gap between specialist monographs and textbooks. Cecilia Morgan pays careful attention to the ways particular communities have fronted their versions of history, from Roman Catholic francophones in Quebec, to First Nations, to African Canadians. She is also attentive to gender roles."

Canadian Literature No. 235