Many years ago, while attending University, a friend was telling me about this fantastic professor he had. This professor taught history in such an engaging fashion that it suddenly seemed relevant. My friend insisted that I attend a lecture and hear this master teacher myself. After receiving assurances that the professor wouldn’t mind, and indeed probably wouldn’t notice, I agreed.

It didn’t take too much cajoling. I’ve always enjoyed history. Not in an organized way, but in the travelogue way. I had enjoyed reading about ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. I’d wondered what it would be like to have lived then. While in junior high I had considered studying archaeology.

George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher gave us this phrase: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. He was trying to tell people that knowledge of the past is necessary for progress to be achieved. Without knowledge of the past to anchor you, all future change is just as likely to be harmful as beneficial.

So I attended this history lecture. The professor chose to discuss the period of the American Revolution. But he did it in a strange way. He began by asking us to come up with words that are used to describe Americans. At this point in the story, I have to remind people that this took place in Canada. The words, to the best of my recollection, were: Yankee, pushy, loud, can-do, aggressive, argumentative, etc. You get the idea. Then he asked for words about Canadians. We got: conciliatory, peace-keepers, status quo, quiet, negotiators. You can see the trend.

He then asked us to consider the historical period in question. In America at the time, there were two large, powerful and opposing groups. There were the revolutionaries. They wanted change. They were done negotiating with King George and Britain. They weren’t going to pay a tax just because the government said they should. They were going to do something about it. The other group was the Loyalists. They felt that the correct path was to discuss things in a rational manner. There was no reason to upset the whole apple cart over a small tax. Respect for authority was highly valued. Things eventually came to a head. The Loyalists had to choose to fight or leave. They would either have to fight beside their neighbors against their rightful King or fight against their neighbors for their rightful King. Or they could leave. And that is what many of them did. They moved north into what later became known as Canada.

This professor saw the seeds of our present day lives deeply rooted in our cultural past. There is a momentum that carries us along, day by day. Each day influenced by the one before it, and the one before that. Our biases, our assumptions, are often handed to us by the people around us. We got them from the people before us. You don’t think so? Consider this: In 1835, a Halifax, Nova Scotia newspaper created a character for a regular feature. He was Sam Slick, the Yankee clockmaker. This character was a plain speaking man who would poke fun at people on both sides of the border. But he would also encourage the old-fashioned Canadians to be as hard working and clever as the Yankees. Just 60 years after the American Revolution, the differences were evident.

More than 30 years have passed since that lecture but it lingers in my mind. It shapes how I think about politics and world events. That man changed my life and neither of us knew it at the time. His name? I don’t remember.