Canadian historians have long engaged in a passionate debate about the nature and role of collective memory in building national identities. In this important work, Alan Gordon presents a single national hero - Jacques Cartier - to explore how notions about the past are created and recreated throughout generations. "The Hero and the Historians" shows how the celebrations of Jacques Cartier took on forms connected to the development of historical studies in the nineteenth century and how these forms, in turn, shaped the political and cultural currents of national identities and nation building. The image of Cartier changed gradually over time, reflecting the long-term ideological fluctuations that alter the nature of historical understanding. Setting this book apart from other works on commemoration and memory is the effort made to integrate divergent views into a single argument. Jacques Cartier represents a point of contact between English- and French-Canadian nationalisms but, as this book reveals, there are profound limitations to the nature of that contact. This book is necessary reading for people interested in the underlying culture of national identity, and national unity, in Canadian history.