I try to keep my Canadian history study very simple. I use My First History of Canada as a spine and add some additional books on the side. I’ll be doing it this year with 8th, 6th and 1st grade. I bought a few Discovering Canada titles to supplement My First History, and I’ve got a bunch of historical fiction that I’ll assign or maybe read aloud (like Madeleine Takes Command, The Bully Boys, etc.).
Covering very recent history is a problem, because My First History only goes up to just after the World Wars. My solution this time around is to use a few of the ending chapters of A Hoser’s Guide to Canadian History. I bought this book because I was curious about it and it’s pretty funny, but I would not recommend it as a spine because you kind of have to already know Canadian history to get some of the jokes, and for kids learning it for the first time, that will just be confusing. Still, I thought it would be good enough to use the end of the book just to cover about 1950 to the present, it’s what I had on hand, and I really have not found anything I like better.
Modern History Through Canadian Eyes is a good resource but it can be overwhelming. It also schedules My First History as a spine. I never used The Spirit of Canada and I have never really liked The Story of Canada, so it can be used without those two books. It also schedules both Story of the World Volumes 3 and 4 if you want to connect your study to world history. That might help you if you want to line it up with SCM’s Early Modern and Modern (they use different spines but maybe the chapter titles and events will give you an idea of what to use where).
I think if you substitute My First History for Stories of America, and then substitute Canadian books for the American history books scheduled in the guides, it would all work out very nicely. I can perhaps suggest substitute book ideas if you’d like. Also, you could keep some of the American history titles, because some of them are really good, and American and Canadian history is pretty intertwined.
I hope something there is helpful. Feel free to ask questions if something didn’t make sense.
