Creating Interest in History

The entrance to Granville Island where the 

Vancouver Writers' Festival is held 

Canadian history is just not sexy enough to sell well. That was the message I heard from Charlotte Gray at the Vancouver Writers' Festival. (I wasn't taking notes so that is not a direct quote but the gist of what she said.) After Ms. Gray took a look at what was selling in bookstores, she started writing about historical crimes in Canada rather that the books about more typical historical events and people which she was noted for. She saw that true crime flies off the bookstore shelves and, if she were to write about historical crimes, she could write about the history she loves.

It's true. I love reading about history but give me an historic crime or mystery to puzzle over and it makes the pages of books of historical non-fiction turn quicker and quicker as I race to find out what happened. That's especially true when it is creative non-fiction and I can see the characters come alive through dialogue and action.

But putting words in our ancestors' mouths might not sit well with genealogists who don't want to tamper with the facts. However, our writing can focus on the mysteries that we find and we do find many. What, after all, are the hunts for clues to break down the brick walls in our research but cases of detectives trying to solve mysteries?

John Phillip Colletta used his trail of detection to create interest in his family history in Only a Few Bones: A True Account of the Rolling Fork Tragedy and Its Aftermath. His tale can be used for inspiration when writing about our own family histories. But that is an American story where history is considered sexier. What about our Canadian stories?

Closer to home is a recent book about a Canadian mystery, John Little's Who Killed Tom Thomson? The Thomson mystery is one that was never solved and, even though it is Canadian, it still garners interest in more than just this country. Maybe if we look closely, we can find unsolved mysteries in our own families to write about or perhaps, like John Phillip Colletta, we can find family mysteries to puzzle out on the written page. Take a closer look. I'm sure we can come up with a few.