Sir John A. Macdonald High School in Upper Tantallon, N.S., has announced that the school will change its name. Photo: Google Maps.
November 2020
For the past several years, the “woke” crowd have been calling for the Stalinesque erasure of people from Canada’s past. Our first prime minister and father of confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald, has been a favourite target for his support of Indian Residential Schools. Now Sir John A. Macdonald High School in Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia, has joined the “cancel mob” by announcing that they will be changing the name of the school.
An inconvenient truth is that Sir John A. Macdonald’s views on Residential Schools, or even his opinions of Aboriginal people, were in line with others of his time. That’s not to say that things like Residential Schools or slavery weren’t reprehensible (they were), but societies evolve and some things that were acceptable even 10 years ago are no longer acceptable today.
Why should we stop at Sir John A.? How about every politician, liberal and conservative, from every level of government, who didn’t actively advocate for their abolition, prior to the closure of the last residential school? Aren’t they equally culpable, especially federal politicians, for at least tacitly condoning them?
By the way, the last federally operated school, the Gordon’s Indian Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996.
We do need to be careful about judging the past using today’s morals and standards. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t condemn those past attitudes or actions, but if we condemn the people themselves for following what was then socially acceptable, where do we stop?
Does Tommy Douglas, the “father of socialized Medicare in Canada” get a pass? He is a hero to many Canadians, not just to those of the left, yet in his day, he advocated for labeling homosexuality as a mental illness. Ironically, this was a very progressive opinion because homosexuality was considered a criminal offence at the time, so despite the repugnant nature of this opinion by today’s standards, it was a step forward.
Further, Douglas wrote his master’s thesis in Sociology supporting the then popular social philosophy of eugenics, the idea that the genetic quality of people can be improved by interning in camps those deemed “subnormal” (those of low intelligence, loose morals or suffering from sexually transmitted diseases) and sterilizing those judged “mentally defective.” Eugenics was something the Nazis practiced. Was the socialist Douglas a Nazi supporter?
How about Nellie McClung, a Canadian feminist, politician and social activist? McClung was an activist who promoted social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s and one of “The Famous Five” who launched the “Persons Case”, a constitutional case that declared women were eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate. Well, McClung also espoused eugenics and she contributed to the passage of eugenics legislation in Alberta.
How about celebrated Mohawk warrior and political leader Chief Joseph Brant, who fought with the British forces during the American Revolutionary War. The City of Brantford, Ontario and Brant County are named in his honour, as is Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, Ontario, which occupies part of the original land grant given to Brant in recognition of his service to the crown. Brant was a slave owner, so should he be erased from Canada’s history too?
The “cancel mob” recently turned its sights on Henry Dundas, a Scottish politician and the name-sake of Dundas Street and the Town of Dundas, both in southern Ontario.
Dundas, a man that frankly few, myself included, were aware of before this cancel campaign began, advocated for the gradual abolition of slavery during British House of Commons debates in 1792, something that is quite offensive to the “cancel mob.”
Oxford University professor Brian Young, who has written about Dundas, points out that Dundas, who was ultimately in favour of abolition, “…saw that the immediate abolition of slavery was impossible: there were simply too many established interests,” and that he wanted the word “gradual” included in the legislation, “…to ensure it made it to the statute book and that slavery would ultimately be abolished. Anything other than this would have been a provocation that would have put back the cause of abolition by decades.”
While some could argue Dundas was putting business profits over human lives, others could argue he was simply being realistic, not only in its effect on business, but in its ultimate passage into law and public acceptance. Need I remind everyone that the Americans fought a war over slavery? By advocating for abolition, even if it was a gradual process, politicians like Dundas were going against the social norms of the time, and against a commonly held view world-wide that slavery was essential to profitable business.
How about the great Civil Rights leader Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? He was against homosexuality, so should we remove monuments to him, like the one recently unveiled in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia? How about all the schools and streets named after him, or even the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day?
Are any of the politicians, in both Canada and the U.S., who voted against same-sex marriage going to be denied any future honours? While it’s now legal, as well as socially acceptable, are we already forgetting how divisive it once was, even among celebrated progressives? Both Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton were against same-sex marriage back in 2008, as were many prominent Canadian politicians.
In fact, there were a lot of people, politicians and the general public alike, who disagreed with same-sex marriage back then. Don’t forget that until 1969, homosexuality was a criminal offence in Canada, something that many “liberal-minded” people agreed with prior to the abolition of that law.
What about the people who supported the internment of Japanese, Italian and Germans living in Canada during World War II?
Do you see where this is going?
Bottom line, you really do need to be careful what you wish for. We shouldn’t ignore the horrible things we did in the past, but we do need to keep those sins in context.
Sources: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/news/local/sir-john-a-macdonald-high-school-in-upper-tantallon-looks-to-change-name-519866/, https://sjm.hrce.ca/sites/default/files/websites/sjm.hrce.ca/our-school-file/2020/11/invitation_letter_from_principal_nov_12_2020.pdf, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/10/obama-frustrated-same-sex-marriage-david-axelrod-book, https://www.eqca.org/hillary-clinton-has-a-new-position-on-same-sex-marriage, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system.
