Whereas the historian's role is, first and foremost, to explain the past, to make it understandable in terms of today's norms and values, fiction can create meaningful "realities" that people may never perceive otherwise, and even bring about changes in our conventional attitudes toward the world. The historical fiction of Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear and George Bowering's Burning Water not only brings the past to life, but it succeeds in changing our interpretation of it. By telling an "other side" of Canadian history, one that has not found its way into the accepted world view of White historiography, Wiebe achieves more or less the same effect as does Bowering by parodying the conventions of historical and realist fiction. Both provoke the reader's awareness of the omnipresence of historical and cultural conditions and of the need to look beyond the conventionalized perceptions of reality, beyond, that is, the apparent objectivity, representativity, and unchangeability of stories.
