The stunning misinformation and whitewashing of racism behind Canada's Heritage Minutes
Written by: Tyler Shipley
A generation of Canadians was influenced by the Heritage Minutes, those little historical vignettes that began in 1995 and which are still in circulation today. While presented as neutral and apolitical, the Heritage Minutes reflected Canada’s true core: settler capitalism and white supremacy.
As usual, all of this is given broader context and much more detail in Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination (available in physical and electronic formats, discounts available by directly messaging this account.)
The billionaire who funded the creation of Heritage Minutes
Before looking at the Minutes themselves, let’s look at their founder: billionaire Charles Bronfman. Bronfman was born into a wealthy Montreal family and inherited a massive business empire including the alcohol brand Seagram and the oil company that became Sunoco.
An image of Peter Bronfman.
Bronfman is perhaps most known for his failures in running the Montreal Expos and earlier versions of the Alouettes, but some of his most significant impact has been in building networks of Canadian Jewish support for the Zionist project in Israel.
Canada’s role in supporting the Zionist conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine is described in an earlier post. In addition to being invested in Israeli companies, Bronfman created the Birthright program, which sends Jewish youth to Israel for a heavily propagandistic trip.
So, the 14th richest Canadian and committed Zionist decides in the early 1990s that Canadians are not proud enough of their history and funds the creation of the Heritage Minutes. Enlisting the help of news broadcaster Patrick Watson, Bronfman sets out to instill Canadian pride among its citizens.
The vignettes would “reflect and celebrate Canadian social and cultural values: tolerance, fairness, courage, tenacity, resourcefulness, inventiveness.” Ok, but this was a country that was built on genocide, slavery, and exploitation. How would the Minutes address those historical realities?
Heritage Minutes obscure Canadian racism, while glorifying imperialism and colonialism
The Minutes were a masterclass in obfuscation and misdirection, often dealing with Canada’s questionable history by avoidance or co-optation. For instance, Nitro (1992) rightly highlighted the hyper-exploitation of Chinese workers on the railroad, and the violent anti-Asian racism of the time.
It’s important that the story was told and this was one of the best Heritage Minutes. Hundreds died on the railroad, Canada imposed a tax on Chinese immigration to prevent families from uniting, and later supported fascist Japan’s murder and enslavement of millions of Chinese people. But the Minute ends on the narrator: once a railroad worker, now a comfortable middle-class grandfather.
In this way, even one of the most critical Minutes reassures the viewer that anything bad was in the past and modern Canada had made everything right. One might even be left thinking “yes the railroad was bad, but this man is lucky he came to Canada in the end!” It’s obviously not that simple, as the recent wave of anti-Chinese racism suggests.
In total, more than 80 Heritage Minutes were made, and only a handful dealt with colonialism and the genocide at Canada’s heart. “Louis Riel” (1991) was sympathetic to Riel but made a gruesome spectacle of his hanging. “Syrup” (1997) dubiously emphasized cooperation between settlers and Indigenous people.
And despite giving scarcely any critical take on the conquest, a Minute was made to celebrate a NWMP officer, “Sam Steele” (1993), who played an integral role in clearing Indigenous people off the plains, policing the hyper-exploitation of Chinese workers on the railroad, and creating concentration camps in South Africa.
The Minutes were not simply a product of a less ‘woke’ era. “John A Macdonald” was created in 2014, wherein the aggressively racist man who explicitly sought “to kill the Indian in the child” was portrayed as a hero, and received a slow clap for Confederation (itself a project premised on conquering the west.)
While conquest and genocide got little airtime, the World Wars were a favourite topic. “Vimy Ridge” (2005) repeated a tired and debunked mythology around a glorious Canadian victory, and “John McCrae” (1992) celebrated the poet without mentioning that he despised French-Canadians and voted for conscription.
“Pauline Vanier” (1995) is all about her tireless efforts to help refugees get settled after WWII... despite the fact that Canada refused to accept Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. Similarly “Underground Railroad” makes no mention of the legacy of Canadian slavery and segregation.
So far, we see a lot of empty mythologizing of white Canadian history, attempts to downplay violence and genocide, and efforts to exaggerate the seemingly ‘good’ humanitarian moments in Canadian history while ignoring the fact that such moments were *exceptions* to the rule.
“Lucille Teasdale” (2000) portrayed the surgeon as a hero who devoted her life to the poor in Uganda. But Teasdale’s presence was a product of British colonialism and the “civilizing” missionary legacy. The Minute frames her as “modern” while the Africans literally fight with spears (see 0:47).
Similar dynamic in “Water Pump” (1995) where grateful Africans thank Canadians for their modern ideas. This is an ongoing dynamic where Canadians are presented as modern and advanced, while people from the global south and especially Africa are portrayed as backwards and simple.
Canada and the assassinations of leftist revolutionaries in Africa
This reaches its peak in “Dextraze in the Congo” (2005) which deserves a more detailed account. In the vignette, plucky Canadian peacekeepers outwit a ‘crazed’ African militant, who is slapping nuns and threatening murder like some kind of cartoon villain. Interestingly, he sputters something about missionaries and colonialism - probably an important point, obscured and deligitimized by the portrayal of the man as a deranged lunatic.
Enter the Canadian peacekeeper. Clever, restrained, eminently ‘civilized,’ the frenzied African militant can only submit to the authority of his ‘better.’ An innocent African asks “who are you” in amazement! The self-satisfied Canadian announces that he is part of a UN peacekeeping mission. This vignette was produced in 2005.
The presentation is masterful, if the goal is to convince an audience that Canadians are a gift to the world and Africans need saving from themselves. But while this vignette reveals much about Canada’s self-image and colonial imagination, it obscures the reality of Canada’s intervention in the Congo.
Congo had been horrifically conquered and colonized by Belgium in the late 1800s. Some suggest a death toll of up to 10 million people under Leopold’s rule and Canadian ‘adventurer’ William Stairs actually laid the groundwork for the Belgian King with a violent invasion of the country in the 1890s.
Canada was a big fan of Belgian rule. In the 1950s, Ambassador Charles Hébert called Congolese people “backwards” and as having “no conception of government,” also accusing them of rampant cannibalism. A.B. Brodie added that “savagery was still very near the surface.”
The Globe and Mail printed letters from Canadians calling Congolese people “savages,” “apes who cannot read,” and “dirty, smelly n—-s.” The Toronto Star published a story about Congolese “primitives on the loose” with the headline “Cannibalism Making Comeback.”
This was in response to an incident in Leopoldville (Kinshasa) wherein Canadian peacekeepers had been beaten up by a group of local authorities. Why? It seems the peacekeepers were starting fights at local brothels and bars. The military later had to establish rules that forbade Canadian soldiers from describing Congolese people as “black bastards” or “jigaboos.”
Canadian behaviour in its mission in the Congo was so disgraceful that the Congolese Prime Minister demanded that they leave. Canada refused, citing “inverted racism,” while the Globe and Mail opined that the Congolese “had never approached European standards of knowledge, competence or intellectual ability.”
The peacekeeping mission had been launched to assist Congo’s PM Patrice Lumumba, who had asked for UN support. Belgium had technically withdrawn from the Congo but fomented a civil war and supported a breakaway, right-wing, pro-Belgian faction. Canada joined the mission but sided with the pro-Belgian forces.
An image of Patrice Lumumba.
In fact, a Canadian was responsible for the capture and murder of Lumumba himself. Jean Berthiaume had developed a friendship with the right-wing leader Joseph Mobutu, and provided him with Lumumba’s location and a suggestion that they use paratroopers to capture him.
So the peacekeeping mission so dashingly portrayed in the Heritage Minute? It involved calling Congolese people cannibals and apes, starting fights at brothels, and helping to murder the elected Prime Minister. (Mobutu would go to be the dictator until 1997, just 8 years before the Minute was made.)
In sum, the history lessons provided by a billionaire Zionist were predictably misleading. The Heritage Minutes ranged from wildly disingenuous to empty mythologizing, serving to radically downplay, soften or obscure the reality of Canada’s actions.
Much more detail on each case, of course, is provided in the book. On Canada’s Congo mission, see also Kevin Spooner’s book with UBC Press, Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960-64.
Tyler A. Shipley is professor of culture, society and commerce at the Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and author of Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination. The book is available to order now. Learn more about the book on Twitter and Instagram.
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