Canadian history as I was taught goes John Cabot-Confederation-WWI-WWII-present. The country apparently did nothing else during the literal centuries of downtime. I assume I am forgetting SOME of it, but certainly not all of it. For instance, I am damned sure learned about the Family Compact from getting curious about a Stan Rogers song. My entire understanding of the October Crisis was definitely from my parents who lived through the invocation of the War Measures Act (and started a family hatred of people named Trudeau I proudly continue). I also didn't know about the Canadian battles of the Seven Years' War until my mom told me about the Plains of Abraham after she got annoyed at newspaper article talking about how Wolfe was
totally taking it up the ass from several of his soldiers.
Education's really gone to shit if whenever you were in school they didn't teach you about ANY of that.
It was a few years later - not many - but wrong coast. Education in the Maritimes is - as far as I could tell at the time - neither funded nor cared about. I never had a social studies school book that referred to the Berlin Wall in the past tense, because by the time we got books published after the fall it was too late for me. Social Studies had to cede ground to the new Personal Development (50% sex ed 50% self-esteem) and what was left had been split into world history and Canadian Studies which wasn't history, it was current events: Stuff like comparing Port Hawesbury to Stoney Creek and how they were managed differently, and how Canada is a "patchwork quilt" not a "melting pot". (I was like 17 and even then I could smell the bullshit.)
I did have to take a mandatory history class in high school, but my choices were literally "Prehistory to 1900" and "1900 to 1970". I suppose I would have learned a thing or two had I taken the second instead of the first because Canada didn't even exist in the curriculum of mine until like a week before the final exam - and like fuck I was taking both, I hated the teacher. I suppose that's part of it. I can only think of ONE social studies teacher I liked after about grade 6, the rest really hated their work and/or the subject matter and took it out on the class.