Looking Past Mirrors

The main preoccupation of historians is with the truth. Since the invention of the camera, the past has been documented with an effort to remain objective and factual, resulting in a conscious deflection through mediums. Photographs, footage, interviews and articles are all viewed as candid sources, however history has always been viewed through a medium even if it is simply our own minds. Machines and concrete evidence do not make a moment any truer, and similarly “objectiveness is not a truth but simply the expectations of a time”. Historians then must recognize first their own relationship with the medium being interpreted, even if it is simply a photograph or a document. For years, the portrait of Louis Riel was regarded as the face of treason for a large population of Anglo-Saxon Ontarians and Canadians. Today, however, after a shift in fundamental societal belief with an emphasis on equality and multiculturalism, his rebel status has been replaced by that of a visionary. The viewpoint of the historian is now inescapably altered, and thus the most effective way to understand the past is to embrace the difference between current societal thought and its predecessor without contempt for ignorance.