The Past Speaks

That was the subject of a recent poll by the Association of Canadian Studies which asked Canadians when their country was founded.

“As Canada approaches the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017, a bare majority of citizens considers the 1867 deal struck by Sir John A. Macdonald and his fellow architects of the BNA Act the “founding” event in the country’s history, according to a new national survey.”  Other Canadians mentioned 1812 and 1608 as Canada’s founding dates.

You can read press coverage of the survey results here.

For some reason, detailed information about this survey is not available on the Association of Canadian Studies website. We do not, therefore, know much about the survey methodology used here. The lack of transparency here is surprising, given that the Association of Canadian Studies a) run by academics, who are supposed to “show their work” b) funded by the taxpayer c) has put detailed information about past surveys online in the past. (For instance, they recently put information about their soccer/turban ban poll online).