We Canadians are not innocent in his regard. The conservative Canadian government has been pushing an agenda to rewrite Canada’s history in a more “patriotic” vein. Its heinous War of 1812 drum-beating last year made me squirm, and in May 2013 the Canadian House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage announced a "thorough and comprehensive review of significant aspects of Canadian history." They had to back off in response to a public outcry (everybody assumes the real agenda was to construct a more militaristic, conservative version of the Canadian story). There is a second disturbing trend: the government is cutting funding to public archives and limiting public access, even for historians.