EXPLORERS AND APPROPRIATION

I will never forget the day that I left the children's hospital and entered the park in front that contained the Atwater metro station. I stopped abruptly in front of a statue and my world view widened. There stood a name I knew from grade school, but in a form I had never seen before: Giovanni Caboto.

I had learned, from an anglo Canadian perspective, that my education was off. The textbook I was taught from had Christopher Columbus as the first person to "discover" North America (In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, my dad would say), and John Cabot discovered Canada. I believed him to be English, and indeed he claimed Newfoundland and, by proxy, Canada, for Henry the VII of England.

I remember explorers named named Lewis and Clark.

I had also learned, in my travels across Canada, and some Scandavian pride instilled by the Persson's who came from Stockholm, Saskatchewan that this was preceded by a far earlier landing by Norseman Lief Erikson.

I believe I even knew that the French celebrated Jacques Cartier, who made it inland in 1534, and Samuel de Champlain with his founding the first North American city, the city of Quebec, in 1608.

But my world was altered to translate the Latin looking name (I hadn't studied much Italian, but Mozart's Don Giovanni was a familiar name from the thrilling Opera that bears his name) into the explorer I remembered as English. As it turns out, Italians were exploring the world under all sorts of flags, not least their powerful coastal city states far before the country was united under one king.

So John Cabot, now and forever, Giovanni Caboto, an Italian from maybe Genoa, maybe Venice, sailed for England and marked the start of Canada as seen by it's occupiers for over 500 years. How easy it is to reduce history, and the history of one man, or one country, to the simpliest, but least true and probably least interesting story for the sake of a soundbite in a social studies class, before soundbites were even a thing!

For a nice table and more details, see this excellent wikipedia article.