The historians of these volumes want to have it both ways: an image of a European Canada that "decimated" the Natives through diseases, and an image of "First Nations" as co-partners in the creation of Canada's parliamentary institutions, legal system, schools and universities, churches, and modern economy. They want students to believe that the Natives were the "first peoples," followed by the French and English, as the next two "major groups," followed by the arrival of "non-British and non-French immigrants," as a fourth major group. This fourth group is portrayed as a multiracial lot, even though the statistics contradict any such picture.

The facts about the ethnic composition of immigrants, which this text cannot hide altogether, show that, at the time of Confederation, the English constituted about 60 percent of the population, the French 32 percent, and the remaining "non-British and non-French immigrants" about 8 percent. The non-British and non-French were all whites from Europe and the United States.