In this episode, Greg Marchildon interviews former Parks Canada historian Robert Coutts. After his retirements, Coutts did his PhD in history on the meaning and reinterpretation of historic sites. He then turned his dissertation into the book Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada that was published by the University of Manitoba Press in 2021. In the book, Coutts explores the mean of federal and provincial government official historic sites and the meaning of the authorized histories they produce. He covers historic sites focused on pre-contact Indigenous settlements, the fur trade, Euro-Canadian settlements and places of conflict between Indigenous peoples and settlers. Coutts is currently editor of a new journal called Prairie History based in Winnipeg.
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