This article is for anyone who might want to become a historian: anyone who is interested in understanding their surroundings or their origins. Do you ever wonder how Quebec came to be? Or how your ancestors came to this continent? Why French is such an important language or why there is the Queen on the Canadian money? As a historian, not only do will you have reliable knowledge to all these answers, but you also will have an authority on the past, meaning that what you say about the past is almost written in stone, versus what Bob the police officer says about it cannot be regarded as the same, the historian's authority being the only one on the subject. Our knowledge comes from reliable sources, unlike Wikipedia, for example. Be the master of the past and use it to make a better future.
It's like being a real life detective trying to figure out a certain thing that happened in the past. Who? Why? When? are three of the most essential questions historians look answers for.
They might be sitting in a library looking for clues on what they are looking for. Looking for links between dates, people and places are an essential in order to find the right answers. Keeping track on dates and authors is also a key to success.
They might be reading an old book in an abandoned library, go to museums for answers, or they could even be the ones showing people around in museums.
They could be working at a school (university, cégep, etc) or at research organisations, at a library (that's basically where they live), a museum or at specific history related groups.
You only need a university degree, for which you will have to go to cégep. It's definitely not the hardest job to get, but it can help if you already like reading or exploring.
The average makes around 80 000 to 200 000 dollars, peaking at around 450 000 dollars.
They only need a masters degree at university.
The dangers could be that some opinions can be conflicting. There can be strong disagreements between historians, since they could be getting their information from opposing parties, for example. You might not always know which historian to trust since the past is in the past and some sources can be misleading or incomplete, especially if the time period you are studying is from a forgotten language, for example, or there wasn't any writing back then.
Since what gets on the internet stays on it, there will probably not be a specialist needed to understand what happens in this digital era. Having to draw conclusions from web pages or social media are definitely something new, there could be a new branch of historians appearing only for this type of information. Maybe, they will be called modern historians or maybe the "classic" ones will be called "old historians". Things definitely are changing.
Historians can do their work for as long as they can take a book off the shelf and read it, meaning that you won't be retiring soon.
Being a historian is essential for understanding one's surroundings. They do an honorable job that can help make a difference. Things could be changing for them tough, with the internet making things more concrete than what one's memory could have reproduced centuries ago.