Who will write the history of the big battles of our 21st century , keeping in mind these variously-attributed maxim:

History is a lie agreed upon.

History is written by the winners.

History is written by writers of history, often but not always, on the winning side.

Historically, Adam Dollard was a bit of a jerk. Sorry Stew; I took the easy Canadian history course. I know he was written up in some early "habitant" accounts as a martyr and a heroic defender of New France who fought to the death when an Iroquois raiding party attacked his small band of infantry, but he was a jerk, even in 1660s Montreal.

In spite of later attempts to make over his contribution to early Canadian history, he was really an opportunist who paid the price for his own greed. He took a group of soldiers and some Huron guides to kill a small band of Iroquois and steal their beaver pelts. When it turned out the "small band" was somewhat larger than expected and weren't about to play nice with a crazy Frenchman and his buddies, young Adam got himself (and his buddies) killed. And the rest became history, the almost beatification of a homicidal pirate as written by the folks who could write that history.

Come along a few hundred years and we find Louis Reil in the Red River settlement who has a brilliant plan to bring a province into confederation. When the Hudson Bay company licence for territorial exploitation expired or was transferred to the new Dominion of Canada, Louis, an elected representative to the new Canadian parliament came up with this idea. The territory would declare itself a sovereign nation and then ask to negotiate joining the confederation as a province. Hey, not bad - something Danielle Smith might have approved of. Was Louis a hero or a heretic?

Sir John A would have none of it in any case, and sent an expeditionary force of zealous recruits from York (Toronto and thereabouts) to put down this "Red River Rebellion". Reil's Métis and Indigenous friends offered to annhiliate the para-military force by releasing logs into the river and ambushing the survivors, but Louis wouldn't agree to violence and left the country. Manitoba was recognized as a province, its Indigenous and Métis population remained as disenfranchised as in other parts of the new Dominion, the buffalo herds continued their path to extinction and time passed.

Fifteen years down the road, the folk in the north-west in present-day Saskatchewan asked Riel to come help them defend their land holdings. They wanted to try the same gambit – declare independence and negotiate the terms of association with the Dominion of Canada. The big difference this time was the presence of a railway and an organized military and the "Northwest Rebellion" or the "Battle of Batoche" was nastier than anything from Red River days. Still, it lasted for some time and produced a lot of casualties and the later trial and executions of Reil and some of his Indigenous war chiefs. Buffalo herds continued to face extinction and it took until 1905 for Saskatchewan to become a province, even if it's the easiest one for school kids to draw. Louis was a criminal to most easterners even if he was an elected MP, although Conservatives never elected anyone from any Métis riding for some time.

So much for my simplistic romp through the stories of "my home and native land". The 19th to 21st centuries have also produced lots of examples of the precept that historical records can be tricky to decipher. In the US, was it the "Pine Ridge Campaign" or the "Massacre of Wounded Knee"? Was it the "fall of Saigon" or the "liberation" thereof? And was there ever even an event at Tianamen Square? Time will tell and the telling will vary with the teller. All of which brings us to present-day politics and the competing narratives of politicians.

A 20 year-old tried to kill Donald Trump and succeeded in grazing his ear, but killing a bystander and wounding others before being himself killed. Bad news which was decried by Trump's opponent and many other world leaders, some of whom such as Canada's leader of the opposition also expressed thankfulness at the death of the would-be assassin. I have a problem there. Violence is violence and death by bullet is in that category. I wouldn't elevate the kid to sainthood, but I am sorry he had to die. It would have been humane, even useful, to have had him alive to tell us why he did what he did and to point us towards solutions other than those bullets that are becoming far too common a tool for resolution today.

The organization, Hamas, and its allies such as Houthi and Hezbolla and even PLA or PLO, all have a problem with Zionism and the appropriation of Palestinian lands by settlements sanctioned by Israel. There are of course different perspectives on the historical record. Were the UN General Assembly Resolutions of 1948-49 or the Camp David Accord or the Oslo Accord really going to satisfy all parties concerned? Definitely not, but they were a start.

This morning I read two long interviews from Hamas sources—one with Basem Naim and Ghazi Hamad and another by Palestinian Islamic Jihad representative, Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi – yes, really an MD. At the end of the hour (and I'm a fairly fast reader) I still couldn't condone the use of violence advocated by some in their groups who claimed, "what has been taken with force has to be regained by force," but I was persuaded on other issues that the Israeli voices shouting for Gaza to be “bombed back to the stone age" or that Netanyahu's justifying the killing of Palestinian civilians by reference to a biblical verse wherein Saul says to his army,"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys," was also unacceptable. It has led to young men with guns (and mortars and bazookas) killing Palestinian civilians, and even killing ambulance crews, food delivery volunteers and Israeli hostages trying to get home. Whoever writes the history won't be kind to them.

How will our great-grandchildren view the responses of world leaders, or campus leaders to those conflicts? I would say that we, right here, right now, can start telling the story to the next generation and the one after. We will have our opinions and we will reinforce them with conversations and readings, but I leave you with an excerpt from my final read this morning. It was a statement by Spencer Izen, an opinion editor for the University of British Columbia's campus newspaper, The Ubyssey. He said:

We can’t expect to escape our own echo chambers by walling ourselves off from ideas we claim are less than our own. Apprehension to persuasion should be viewed with suspicion, and seen as an absence of argumentative confidence.

As long as you’re grounded in reflectivity and intellectual humility, conversation is the best way to confirm your own perspective or become convinced of another.

So, if you're afraid to hear opinions contrary to your own, be suspicious of your own reasoning. And if you want to enjoy the summer weather – sorry about the rainfall, Toronto; and pardon the heat wave, Central Canada; and excuse the hurricane Beryl swipe, Maritimes – don't read too many news feeds before breakfast.