contortions of history

An episode on the History Channel from the ‘Peoples’s History of Canada’series produced by Mark Starowitz,former radical student at McGill.It covers the same historical period of the 1860’s that I examine from a very different perspective in my play “Joe Beef:A History of Pointe Saint Charles”
Starowitz profiles some of the Fathers of Confederation,Thomas D’Arcy McGee,Sir John A. Macdonald,Sir Georges Etienne Cartier,focusing on their private and personal pains.He lingers with soft background music on the sorrow that Sir John A. felt when he lost his first wife and son
No mention of the impersonal and massive suffering of ordinary working class people due to the economic and political policies Macdonald championed in parliament,
policies that lead to the premature deaths of one out of every four kids born in the Pointe
Starowitz presents McGee and Cartier as pristine champions of a united Canada based on equal opportunity
No mention of the fact that both McGee and Cartier were paid promoters of the Grand Trunk Railway,the same company that used the militia to shoot down workers in the Grand Trunk yards in the Pointe when they went on strike for a living wage
He does mention that there was extreme poverty in the 1860's in cities like Montreal but fails to make the connection that this poverty was largely the result of the same people eulogized as Canadian heros
Its no surprise that Starowitz didn't make that connection because if he did,he wouldn't be a television producer.