Daniel Cho is a history teacher at Lakeshore Secondary who believes that genuine history should encourage critical thinking, even if doing so means challenging what is written in the textbook. Part of the curriculum covers the construction of the national railway, and Cho was dismayed to find the textbook material to be "little more than celebration, which presents the railway as a purely heroic achievement."

Cho argues that education is supposed to teach students to weigh evidence carefully, yet textbooks frequently favour certain viewpoints and present them as the only truth. In the case of the railway, he was particularly troubled to find that the hardships of the workers who built it were barely mentioned. "The absence of other perspectives suggests that this chapter of history has been transformed into a kind of legend that leaves no room for difficult questions," Cho says.