Reissuing historical books can provide a window through which to view the past. But many of these books can be fraught with thorny issues, such as cultural appropriation or outdated – even racist – language.

In 2004, Cormorant Books re-issued Gwethalyn Graham’s Earth and High Heaven, a love story set in Montreal about a Jewish soldier from Northern Ontario and a Protestant woman from Westmount. “It’s a wonderful book that’s very important” to Canadian history, says Cormorant publisher Marc Côté. Originally published during the Second World War, when Canada’s immigration policy toward Jews was “none is too many,” the book “pulls apart anti-Semitism,” says Côté, “and is a fine example of 1940s social realism.” Also, any “inappropriate” words contained in the book are used in a way that showcases their unacceptability.

Another problem with reissues can be reviving interest in the book. When Cormorant launched Earth and High Heaven, there wasn’t much fanfare. “Until the desecration of Jewish graves in North Toronto and the spate of swastikas painted on the doors in Jewish neighbourhoods,” says Côté. “Then we were news.”

Other books simply don’t hold up well.

Invisible Publishing recently decided to dust off Canadian Wonder Tales, a book of children’s stories originally published in 1918. “I wanted to explore outside the normal boundaries in our literature and see what might be of interest to people,” says Invisible publisher Leigh Nash.

Canadian Wonder Tales contains some language that is squirm-inducing by today’s standards. In the book’s forward, for example, author Cyrus Macmillan – once a minister of fisheries and lecturer at McGill University – thanks “the nameless Indians,” among others, “from whose lips he heard these stories.”

Such books are part of the historical record and may make people uncomfortable today, but can be forgiven, provided the reader is given a lesson in the historical context of its usage.

“Those books are a map to tell us how we got to the problems we have today,” says Côté. “If you pretend there weren’t problems 40, 50, 100 years ago, then you really have no idea.” Even the shameful parts of Canadian history should be scrutinized by looking at the literature of the time, Côté argues. “Those should be reissued as documents and studied as documents. They are part of the record and they should never be altered.”

But in the case of Canadian Wonder Tales, Nash had trouble finding someone to help put Macmillan’s book in context, in part, she learned, because the book may not have been Macmillan’s. Nash discovered there likely weren’t any “Indians” who shared their stories with Macmillan – he may not have even undertaken his claimed cross-country travels. “Macmillan had faked his research and lied about his method,” writes Thomas Parkhill, a professor of religious studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, in his book Weaving Ourselves into the Land. Parkhill was researching an 1884 book by the American folklorist Charles Leland, The Algonquin Legends of New England, or Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Tribes, and happened across a mention of Macmillan’s work, where a colleague of Macmillan’s accused him of having written work very similar to Leland’s. While there might be a market for a contextualized historical book written by a racist, plagiarism is a different story, and Nash could find no one to support the project.

“The scholars that look at this stuff get really angry about it,” says Parkhill. “He had stolen stories from Charles Leland. Macmillan is an absolute charlatan and fraud. So, I don’t know what you’d say about Macmillan’s work. I would have trouble.”

Côté says he still would like to see the book printed. People like Macmillan would have been architects of restrictive government policies against First Nations Peoples that led to some of the injustices faced by generations of those communities. “I actually think that would be one hell of an interesting book to reissue,” says Côté.

Whether there would be a market for it is another issue. Originally written as a children’s book, it could be difficult to create an introduction that would be able to explain things like racist terminology (by today’s standards) and plagiarism.

“You don’t want to erase history,” says Nash, “but at the same time you might not want to promote it, either.” To publishers on the hunt for the next great Canadian reissue, Nash says: “Canada has a lot of forgotten pieces. Some things should stay forgotten.”