In March 2006 a group of Canadian researchers formally embarked on a collaborative project to explore how ordinary Canadians engage the past in their everyday lives. The Canadians and Their Pasts project was inspired by previous studies undertaken in Europe, the United States, and Australia that used survey data to probe people’s historical consciousness. This paper briefly summarizes the findings of the earlier studies, offers preliminary results from the Canadian survey, and, where possible, reflects on similarities and differences in the consumption of the past across national boundaries.