The Halifax citadel was built in 1749 during the Seven Years’s war, (or french and indian war, or Le Grand Dérangement), but when I visited it in 2019, I found no mention of that war. Instead, there was an exhibit on Canada’s much less controversial involvement in the two World Wars.

I can’t blame Parks Canada for not touching that can of worms and strangely, it might be the fault of those who care (or pretend to care) the most about this event.

Later that summer, Heritage Minutes made an episode about the Acadian Deportation. If you look it up on Youtube now, the comments section is now closed but it wasn't back in 2019. Most of the people involved in the creation of that video are acadians themselves but I saw Quebec sovereignists yelling “federalist propaganda” in the comments section (Quebec nationalists have been portraying acadians as the helpless victims of the evil anglos for decades), a conservative albertan saying that the deportation was justified because acadian-mikmaq militias raided some british forts and ships and a few indigenous activists saying that an ad about a non-indigenous genocide was somehow an insult to indigenous people!

All of them -including those who I agree with politically- do not care about history or reality, made with complex human beings with complex emotions and decisions and complex outcomes and complex interactions between those people, they care about a story; a handy little tale with simple good guys and simple bad guys with simple motivations and simple actions that can fit in your back pocket, ready to be pulled out whenever it is politically (or worse, psychologically) helpful to do so!

Yes, Parks Canada’s Citadel museum and Heritage Minutes are propaganda made by a government but most people, especially the Jack and Jacques of the World who make their entire identities revolve around their political views, love or even need propaganda more than reality...as long as it flatters them.