An Unauthorized History of Canada
by George Bowering
EXCERPT
LIKE LONG POEMS and war songs and parental advice, history books are generally about myths. The primary myths are about origins. Where did we Greeks come from? Why do humans have to die? Where did you get my baby brother? Where and when was the first baseball game played?
In places where white people used not to live, the white people always want to know who was there first. How did the Aboriginal people get there, and then who was the first European to get there?
When I was a kid the first European to get to the New World was Christopher Columbus, and somehow my province got his name. Well, his name was Colón, but no teacher was going to tell that to elementary-school boys with their cloacal humour.
We were told that the first European to get to Canada was an Englishman named Cabot. The first time I heard of him his name was pronounced Cabeau. Then it was Kabbit. It turned out that he was as Italian as Cristobal Colón (which is Spanish for Cristoforo Colombo), and his name was Giovanni Caboto. When we got to Champlain, I was sure you had to have a name that started with C if you were going to get anywhere in the exploration business.