A history of the people who built this country
Canadian historians like to think of themselves as friends of the little people. Unlike the Great Man histories of our colonial parent and imperial neighbour, the key moments in our past are often told through the eyes of regular folk swept up in larger events. But there's a catch: those stories still tend to center on the momentous events themselves, with the humble figures in them typically remembered for rising above their circumstances to achieve something greater.
But what about the people who built this country by spending their whole lives inside those circumstances? The ones with no war to ennoble them, no famine to later romanticize — who simply toiled through grime and hardship, day after day, laying the foundation our modern society now stands on? The shovellers and cutters, the muck scrapers, the tanners, herders, log-drivers and blood-letters — shouldn't they be remembered too?