The current Canadian debate on historical consciousness in history education takes place against the backdrop of larger contemporary changes reshaping how people engage with the past and understand history. According to Seixas (2012b), historians, educators, and school teachers in our post-progressive age are thus faced with a problem, which has both epistemological and ontological dimensions: How do we know the past, and how do we position ourselves in historical time? Though many in the field of history education have turned their attention to the notion of historical consciousness, the published literature on the topic generally lacks cohesiveness. In this article, I seek to bring together theoretical and empirical studies of historical consciousness, and offer a critical review of the literature. First, I discuss the intellectual and social context surrounding the study of historical consciousness. Second, I present various attempts to define, study, and justify the concept. As such, this article makes a case for furthering theoretical and empirical explorations of historical consciousness, as well as its potential role in debates on history in Canadian schools and society.