DON’T RE-DO HISTORY, PLEASE

Recent efforts to restore/rebuild the Bluenose sailing sloop ($15.5m???) got me thinking about another attempt to re-do the past…

It has come to my attention that the National Battlefields Commission has decided to re-enact the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on, well, the Plains of Abraham, in Quebec City.

(I had a Jewish classmate at Crestwood Elementary in Edmonton who told me the Plains of Abraham was also another name for the Israeli Air Force).

I don’t know who the National Battlefields Commission is, but I think this is a bad idea. 

It is a bad idea because it is like re-enacting a marriage that ended in divorce – I defy you to find two people who want to go back to the church to re-recreate that moment.

Some things are just better left alone.

To re-cap, the French lost this battle.

The British who were downriver snuck upriver and the French didn’t notice. Probably watching a Habs game at the time.

The British then climbed up a cliff and started singing all those annoying soccer songs on the Plains of Abraham to let the French know they had arrived.

Remember, it was September, and the French were inside the strongest fortress in the solar system with winter on the way.

All they had to do was sit tight, invent poutine, lob a few shells out onto the front lawn to keep the English up at night, wait for the weather that made even the Quebec Nordiques leave town, and watch the English go back down the cliff and sail home for Christmas.

But oh no.

Mister Smarty Pants Montcalm has to sashay out of the fortress and dare the English to take him on, saying (in French) “You want a piece of me?!  YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?!”.

They did, actually.

In thirty minutes, it was over.

Montcalm lost the battle, the fortress, and the continent, although bilingualism would survive.

He even got himself shot and was carried to a house a few blocks from the Chateau Frontenac where he died.  A plaque on the house still marks the occasion, and you can buy some truly awful souvenirs there while you mourn his passing.

The only good news for the French was that they did pick off British General Wolfe, although even then, he got a better painting of his death that did Montcalm.

All in all, not a good day for the French, and I am thinking certainly not one that a national federal body should try to ‘re-create’ for historical purposes.

Here is the problem:  where do you stop?

Why wouldn’t they also re-create the fall of the Fortress of Louisbourg to the British, where the winners got the fort and all the lobster they could eat?

Why don’t they head out to Regina and re-create the hanging of Louis Riel?

And while we are out there, let’s have a do-over of the Battle of Batoche where an army of North West Mounted Police creamed a rag-tag bunch of Metis who just wanted to preserve a threatened way of life.  I’m sure their descendents would be thrilled to participate.

See if the Iriquois want to re-create the Battle of Sorel in 1616 when Champlain cleaned their clock because all his guys had a blunderbuss and the Iriquois only had bows and arrows.

Lets get out to the West Coast and throw some Chinese in jail to re-create our horrible overreaction to the start of the Second World War.

I mean, hey National Battlefields Commission, be creative!

But of course, none of this should be done in the first place.

That is why I think this whole Plains of Abraham thing is a bad idea.

History should sometimes just be history.

Sometimes, a country can have too much history, and bringing it all back brings old animosities back with it, even if it happened a long time ago.

A memorial service to mark the soldiers who fell on both sides?  Fine.

But if we are going to do this, then lets do it right.

My personal favourite would be to get the Montreal Canadiens and Detroit Red Wings Old Timers onto the ice to re-create the 1966 Stanley Cup Final where the Habs won, only because Henri Richard illegally kicked in the puck to win Game Six.

A true miscarriage of history.