Forgotten History?

The newspaper business is an interesting one. For a number of years, I served as a volunteer for the University of Toronto's student newspaper The Varsity and then later, I worked for the French-language newspaper Le Franco in Alberta. One of the things that I learned from the experience was the art of writing the headline: it must be the right length (not too long, not too short) while summarizing the article. Usually, the journalist has not say in what the headline will actually read. In reading the headline of a story published in The National Post, I was struck by the awkwardness of the headline: "400 years of forgotten history." The published piece itself is not bad, but the the title brings forward the questions "forgotten by whom?"

The fact of the matter is that the 400 year history of Québec is taught in French schools in Canada and this history is quite important to French-speakers. They, for the most part, have not forgotten their history. Also, this history is often features in movies and in the popular media. We French-speakers have not forgotten our history per se, though it could be debated as to how accurate our history is. So, what the headline is really highlighting is not a forgotten history, but rather a history that is ignored by English-speakers. Simply put, parallel histories exist and the history that is remembered by most French-speakers is quite different from the history remembered by English-speakers.