Capturing our history: The Jean Chrétien Oral History Project

“Canada has too much geography and too little history,” Mackenzie King once opined. It was an uncharacteristic comment: it was memorable and thus takes its place among the half dozen witty things King is known to have said.

King was a notable contributor to Canadian history. Prime minister for 22 years with a political career stretching for 40, how could he not be? But King was not just a performer, he was a recorder. The Mackenzie King diaries, started in 1893, chronicled one man’s journey through the first half of the 20^th century, ending only days before his death. Of course, it is a monument to the prime minister’s considerable ego, but it is much more. King met a great many people in his life. He listened to them, and he recorded what they said and how they said it – of course filtered through King’s own mental prism. Thanks to King, his associates, acquaintances and even his rivals and enemies live on, along with their view of the world. By the time King expired, Canada had a lot more history – not in the abstract, but in colourful detail. 

Of course, the recording of history need not be a diary, but the reporting of it is immensely enhanced if it can be put in the words of those who made it. This is the rationale behind oral history, a growing practice among historians: by interviewing people, we obtain firsthand accounts of their experiences, told in their voice with their perspectives.

The Canadian International Council’s oral history project on Canadian history from 1990 to 2006 began with a conference on Jean Chrétien’s foreign policy. Noting that there was much to say, and relatively few sources that had recorded it, we thought it worthwhile to interview key actors of the Chrétien era to preserve a record of this period.

The project began in earnest with a trip to Ottawa in September 2023, where we, along with CIC co-chair John English, interviewed Chrétien himself, as well as his longtime advisor Eddie Goldenberg, and several former cabinet ministers. For all his accomplishments, Mr. Chrétien remains quite down-to-earth, even mildly self-deprecating. He recounted his life to us with zeal and what we would come to know as characteristic wit. 

To date, we have interviewed over 100 individuals, from Cabinet ministers to academics to civil servants, and from Liberals to Conservatives to Reform. With over 300 hours of recordings and 8,000 pages of transcripts, this project is equivalent to two editions of Marcel Proust’s full In Search of Lost Time, and our video footage is greater than the entire run of The Simpsons. This archive will be available to the public through Trinity Archives, and will also be highlighted on the CIC and Open Canada websites. Our goal was to create a narrative as comprehensive as possible, which meant including as many perspectives as we could. Our role is as historians, not propagandists. By tackling this particular chapter of Canadian history, we not only had to contend with partisan divisions, but the internal fracturing of the Liberal Party. 

Nonetheless, while many were critical of aspects of the Chrétien government, or of Chrétien himself, most interviewees conceded that he was, and is, a man with a nearly unparalleled political instinct. Often, at the end of these interviews, we have asked, “what, in your opinion, are the greatest successes and failures of the Chrétien Government?” This question is meant not only to wrap up the interview by refocusing on the larger picture, but to create a unifying thread between all 100 plus interviews. 

Overwhelmingly, and regardless of profession or partisan affiliation, interviewees have identified the following three items as the government’s greatest successes: the refusal to invade Iraq alongside the US in 2003; the 1994-1996 Programme Review, which drastically slashed federal expenditures and saved the country’s economy; and the narrow defeat of separatism in the 1995 Quebec Referendum, followed by the 2000 Clarity Act. 

The responses about the biggest failures varied more. Some thought that Chrétien and Paul Martin let their bitter political feud supersede the well-being of the Liberal Party. Others thought that the Chrétien and Martin Governments mishandled the 1996 Sponsorship Scandal during which public money was directed by the federal government to private advertising agencies to promote Canada and the federal government in Quebec. A few were critical of the Clarity Act, or otherwise took issue with the expansion of the federal government. Unique was one interviewee who opined that Canada should have entered the Iraq War, albeit with a defined timeline and exit plan. 

While we are confident our project will better preserve this chapter of history, this effort, like any oral history, has its limitations. One of the biggest is the factor of time. Oral history is an exercise that is limited to the recent past. Several key individuals – including Aline Chrétien, Jean Pelletier, and Bill Graham – had passed away before this project began. This archive would be richer had their voices been included. Several people declined to be interviewed or simply did not respond to our requests. Finally, memory is fallible, especially when discussing events that are two or three or more decades in the past.

Despite these limitations, we believe this project fulfilled its goal of documenting a critical, transformative part of Canadian history. The issue with Canadian history is that if Canadians don’t learn about it, they will not care about it. Few, if any, historians from other countries pay much attention to Canada, and when they do, it is often in passing and in relation to what they consider l’histoire mondiale powers. We contend that Canada is, in fact, an important part of that histoire mondiale, and we hope our project has proven that that is so. We intend to continue this initiative with a planned Oral History Project on the Harper Years (2006-2015) with the hopes of improving historical and civic literacy among Canadians. 

In closing, we are also very grateful to the donors who made this entire project possible.